Ihasli

"Haige, the plan is about to succeed, and Lord Shandi will be back soon. Your days are numbered!" Lu Li spoke with a different voice now. Through constant probing, he had already gathered a significant amount of intelligence on the hybrids, and he slowly closed the distance to Haige, who was walking ahead holding a torch.

"So what if he returns? His mother was just an ordinary human. Even if she gave birth to him, we are the ones who are brothers of the same race. That old hag was nothing more than a breeding tool. It's generous enough that we let her live this long; the fact that she dared to harbor an outsider means she deserved to die." Haige held the torch high, speaking with utter indifference, when he suddenly heard a strange voice from behind:

"What a truly cold-blooded race."

Haige sensed something was wrong and spun around, only to see Lu Li standing alone behind him, while all his companions had vanished. "You're the human that old hag took in? Where did you take my companions?"

"Don't worry, you'll be joining them soon enough..." Lu Li moved, lunging in front of Haige. His muscles bulged as he unleashed his power, throwing a punch straight at him. Haige hurriedly swung the torch forward while raising his other hand to parry Lu Li's attack.

In Haige's eyes, this lowly human before him might have had some strange tricks, but when it came to raw strength, he was no match for him. The great Deep One bloodline within his body had already awakened; in terms of power, that human was absolutely no match for him.

But by the time Haige regained his senses, Lu Li's fist had ignored the torch and knocked him down in a single blow. Shadows writhed behind him, binding Haige's limbs and dragging him forward. A shadow tentacle also manifested in Lu Li's hand.

As Lu Li had been using shadows to fight frequently of late, his control over them had improved drastically. The shadow in his hand shifted and deformed, thinning into a blade that resembled a scalpel. Looking at the immobilized Haige, Lu Li smiled excitedly: "I've been studying anatomy lately but never had the chance to practice. Thank you for helping me with my lesson."

Lu Li raised the shadow scalpel, speaking as he worked: "Let's start with a small incision on the chin, then peel back the surface layer... Honestly, your skin, covered in fish scales, is truly hideous."

"You lowly human, you filthy mongrel! How dare you treat the great Deep One race like this? You will suffer the wrath of the Great God, and your soul will..." Haige cursed frantically, but before he could finish his malediction, Lu Li had already excised a piece of his strange lung lobe.

"Your lungs actually have the capacity to store water, used to regulate internal pressure and body weight." Lu Li sliced open the blister-filled lung, which was brimming with fishy-smelling water. The shadow tentacle forced Haige's head to the side, and Lu Li observed the gill-like structures on his face: "Is your respiratory system becoming more and more like a fish's?"

"And your heart... excuse me, I've severed your main artery!" Blood reeking of fish sprayed all over Lu Li, and our poor hybrid breathed his last. Seeing that the hybrid was dead, Lu Li immediately lost interest. He retracted the binding shadows and let the hybrid's mangled corpse slump to the ground: "How boring, dying just like that. I should practice more next time."

Through his previous interrogations of the hybrids, Lu Li had learned quite a bit about this place. At the end of the passage was a three-story structure on the seabed where some humans were being held captive.

Reproduction among Deep Ones was extremely difficult. To maintain the size of their population, they chose to mate with humans, with whom they had no reproductive isolation.

These humans were naturally assigned to the second and third floors.

Outside that three-story building lay the city built by the Deep Ones on the seabed: Ihasli. Most of the severely mutated hybrids and a small number of Deep Ones lived and performed rituals there. Once the rituals were completed, they would leave alone, heading into the cold, deep sea.

To keep the humans alive, they had renovated the first floor of the prison. Half-a-man-high seawater seeped in there, and this water had been enchanted with sorcery, allowing it to exchange oxygen with the outside seawater and release it into the building.

Lu Li had reached the end of the passage, the seawater already soaking his lower body. Ahead lay the first-floor prison, guarded by quite a few hybrids. The footwork Lu Li had learned from the Shadow Assassin could move without making a sound and conceal his tracks, but that was for use on land. Now, submerged in seawater, no matter how refined his footwork was, moving through the water would inevitably create currents. To the hybrids who had lived on the seabed for years, it would not be difficult to notice these abnormal currents if they were careful.

Lu Li narrowed his eyes, thought of a plan, and waited silently for the right moment. He didn't know how much time had passed when a pair of Deep Ones appeared in the distance ahead. They exchanged a few words with the guards and opened the door to a cell, extracting a dozen or so humans with numb expressions. The Deep Ones needed to perform a sacrifice to please their god.

The dozen humans were driven toward the side. Their expressions were vacant, as they had already foreseen their fate. They had seen many people taken away over the past few days, none of whom had ever returned. Some were shipwreck survivors, some had been sold to the hybrids by slave traders, and others had been traded by Deep Ones to islanders in exchange for fish and gold. They had been locked in the water prison for some time; no matter how they struggled, they only received a few fish as food at fixed times each day. By now, they no longer wanted to resist; they only wished for death.

But suddenly, the last human in line struggled in terror, disturbing the water flow. The Deep One leading them let out a hoarse, shrill cry of anger and walked over, intending to discipline the troublesome human. The human was grabbed by the Deep One and beaten without explanation, which triggered a commotion. One human tripped over something and fell into the water. Before long, the Deep Ones finally quelled the disturbance, but they did not know that there was now one extra person among the humans...