Chapter 6

"Ah! Big guys have big guys' troubles too!" In the shallow waters near the shore, an enormous Giant Beast let out a long sigh.

After leaving the Ice Trench, Sui Xiong headed toward the land from the giant whale's memories and reached this coast before long.

The scenery here was dreadful. The shore was covered in black mudflats, and the stench of rot could be smelled from far away. It was practically one enormous bog.

Sui Xiong disliked this environment greatly, but he had no choice. According to the giant whale's memories, all the known areas nearby were covered in the same black mudflats. It was the same everywhere.

The giant whale had not been particularly curious. It had merely roamed the sea out of habit, but even so, it had once followed the coastline for two or three days straight. Everywhere it passed looked much the same.

So Sui Xiong could only sigh and control the deformed giant jellyfish body, trying to make his way ashore.

He was not worried about suffocation or drying out. The jellyfish had been dead to begin with, so it did not matter what happened to it. Besides, its thick skin had been reinforced repeatedly, then covered with the giant whale's tough hide. It was more than enough to prevent the loss of water within its body.

However, he had overlooked one major issue.

Once he went ashore and lost the buoyancy of seawater, the immense weight of the Giant Beast's body would become a colossal problem.

He had just tested it. Even without completely leaving the water, merely lifting his upper body above the surface had caused the tentacles bearing his weight to sink deeply into the beach mud. Every step forward was extremely difficult. If he completely left the water, he would probably be unable to move an inch.

Perhaps he could force his way forward with brute strength, leaving a huge crater in the ground with every step, but that would not only waste a great deal of energy, it would also look rather stupid.

Was he walking, or digging?

Sui Xiong truly did not want to do something so idiotic, so he had no choice but to rack his brains for a solution.

After thinking it over and over, he finally came up with a solution that barely counted as one.

Since his body was enormous, heavy, and inconvenient to move, why not make it smaller and lighter?

He could break down the muscles and bones that made up his body into nutrients, then compress those nutrients to reduce its volume and weight.

Something that so thoroughly defied biological common sense and conservation of mass would have been absolutely impossible on Earth, but it was not impossible in this world.

It was simply troublesome, and the conversion process would waste a great deal of nutrients.

Sui Xiong did not want to waste them like this, but in order to reach land, find signs of civilization, and learn more about this world, he had no other choice.

The enormous sea monster's body trembled and rapidly shrank. After a while, it had gone from a Giant Beast the size of a small mountain to less than one percent of its former size.

According to the information in the giant whale's memories, he was now roughly the size of an ordinary fisherman's small boat.

Sui Xiong wanted to shrink further, but his current body had already reached its limit. Aside from the necessary skin, flesh, and bone structure, nearly all the remaining parts consisted of highly condensed nutrients. There was no room left for further compression.

"Though it's still a little big, this will have to do..."

With a sigh, the large jellyfish, still worthy of being called a sea Giant Beast, set off with dozens of tentacles supporting its body. It crossed the muddy beach and climbed onto land.

The muddy shore posed little obstacle to Sui Xiong. His tentacles paddled briskly, and before long, he had crossed the beach and entered the coastal woods.

The woods here were rather strange. The ground, the grass, and the trees were all grayish-black, differing only in shade. As he walked through the forest, he could better feel the eerie power permeating the air—murky and chaotic, making Sui Xiong uncomfortable.

"Strange magic. The giant whale's memories never mentioned a place like this. It seems to be unique to land." As Sui Xiong advanced, he sensed his surroundings. "Odd. Why are there so few living creatures in these woods? The trees are lush and the vegetation is thick, yet there are hardly any insects. What is going on?"

His soul was so powerful that even the giant whale, which had lived for who knew how many years, could not compare. Even without deliberately strengthening his senses, every movement within several miles was clear to him. He had distinctly discovered that although the forest's plants flourished, it lacked animals and insects, leaving him rather puzzled.

In the vast natural world, wherever plants existed, there should be herbivores that fed on them, followed by carnivores that fed on the herbivores, thus forming a food chain. Even if there were no animals, there should at least be highly adaptable insects. Yet the situation in these woods completely defied all the biological knowledge he knew. It was strange beyond description.

He had been in this world for quite some time. He had traveled through many parts of the boundless ocean and gained part of the One-Horned Giant Whale's memories by devouring its soul. Yet neither what he had seen with his own eyes nor what existed in the giant whale's memories included such a bizarre phenomenon.

Together with the strange magic filling the air, which even the giant whale had never encountered, it gave him a vague and unsettling suspicion.

"This damn place... Could it be one of those so-called forbidden lands created by chaotic magic?"

In this world, forbidden lands existed. Such places either housed terrifying monsters so powerful they were absurd, or contained magic so dense and chaotic that it was unbearable, becoming forbidden zones of life that most living beings would avoid.

For example, the Ice Trench where Sui Xiong had cultivated not long ago was a forbidden land.

Judging by the forest's strange appearance, it did seem somewhat like a forbidden land. Sui Xiong simply had not expected that there could be such an odd forbidden land in the world—one that barely affected plants, yet was extremely hostile to animals.

The bad news was that the fleshly body he was currently using also counted as an animal.

Upon realizing this, he immediately became alert, strengthened his awareness of the surroundings, and did not dare relax in the slightest.

Although his true body was actually a soul, and he might not fear the dangers in this forbidden land, who knew whether something worse might happen?

Better safe than sorry!

He proceeded cautiously for some distance, yet encountered no danger. Instead, the number of insects around him gradually increased. Only then did Sui Xiong realize that he had probably been overly cautious and mistaken.

Perhaps the woods had so few animals and insects not because of some danger, but simply because they disliked the coastal environment.

Sui Xiong had mistaken one thing for another and made a small fool of himself.

Fortunately, he was the only one here. A joke was just a joke, and no one would truly laugh at him.

With a self-mocking smile, Sui Xiong finally relaxed and continued onward.

The black forest covered a vast area. He had come ashore in the afternoon and walked until nightfall, yet still failed to leave the woods. As the sun set and the moon rose, the darkness did not hinder Sui Xiong's movements, but he still habitually found an open space in the forest to rest for the time being.

Traveling by day and resting at night was a habit he deliberately maintained, not for safety, but simply to preserve some trace of being human.

During this time, Sui Xiong had discovered that he was becoming increasingly accustomed to the lifestyle of a monster, gradually forgetting the way he had once lived as a human. That made him uneasy, so he deliberately retained some human routines. It was for no other reason than to remind himself that he was not truly some huge monster, but a "human."

No grass or trees grew in the forest clearing. The soil was especially black, and the chaotic, murky magic in the air was much denser. Sui Xiong had chosen to rest here partly to test something.

If there truly was something strange in these woods, it would probably be in a place like this clearing.

He stopped beneath a large tree at the edge of the clearing and waited patiently.

Sure enough, not long after the last ray of sunset vanished beyond the horizon, a sudden change occurred in the forest.

Wisps of black vapor rose from the ground like smog, gradually covering the land.

Sui Xiong clearly saw that the black vapor rising from the clearing was dense and thick. It was no longer merely wisps, but streams of it, like small fountains.

He grew vigilant and prepared for battle.

As more and more black vapor emerged, the murky, chaotic magic in the air gradually grew denser. Above the clearing in particular, the magic gradually condensed until it became visible to the naked eye, mingling with the black mist and forming clusters of flowing vortices.

After a while, the ground slowly cracked open, and black skeletons crawled out one after another.

"What is this? An undead calamity?" Sui Xiong froze. He had not expected to encounter something so fantastical. He immediately observed the skeletons closely, only to find that they did not give him much sense of danger. They did not seem very powerful.

He waited for a while and saw more and more skeletons emerging from underground, gradually crowding into a dense mass. Yet they stood there without moving, as though they were simply staring blankly into space.

"What exactly is going on with these skeletons?"

Sui Xiong did not act rashly and continued waiting patiently.

Once the number of skeletons reached a certain point, no more emerged from the ground. Instead, the murky, chaotic magic in the air gradually began to gather, converging toward the skeletons.

Sui Xiong keenly sensed that although the process was slow, the skeletons were absorbing the magic bit by bit.

This continued for the entire night. Not until the moon was about to set and dawn began to appear did the ground split open again. All the skeletons returned underground, while the dense magic and black vapor swiftly dispersed together.

When the sun shone upon the earth once more, the forest had returned to the state Sui Xiong had first seen.

Sui Xiong did not leave. Instead, he stayed beside the clearing and waited for the next night.

On the second night, the scene he had witnessed the previous night repeated itself.

When sunlight once again shone upon the earth and the skeletons returned beneath the clearing, Sui Xiong could not help laughing.

This was incredibly strange, but it was also very interesting!