Wen Boyuan looked around. After waiting a while without anything happening, he relaxed a little and shouted, "Hu Xiaotian, I see you! I see you!" His voice echoed across the water, but no one answered. The screams around him were growing fewer, too. Clearly, fewer and fewer warriors remained alive.
Just then, someone in the distance shouted, "A ship is coming! A ship is coming!" With a chance of survival in sight, some warriors who had been about to give up struggling mustered their last reserves of hope. Cries for help rose one after another across the water.
Wen Boyuan was overjoyed. Heaven truly never sealed off every road to survival! He had never expected a ship to arrive so quickly. As he craned his neck in anticipation, something suddenly tightened around his ankle, and a powerful force dragged him under. For all his martial prowess, he had nowhere to put it to use in the water. Dragged beneath the surface, he swallowed several mouthfuls of river water in succession. Instinctively, he slashed wildly with his saber, but struck nothing. Amid his panic, his assailant seized his wrist as well. Wen Boyuan knew beyond doubt that the man attacking him underwater had to be Hu Xiaotian. He struggled desperately to break free. Death could easily unleash a person's hidden potential, and once again, Wen Boyuan wrenched his saber hand out of his opponent's grasp.
The man ambushing Wen Boyuan underwater was indeed Hu Xiaotian. He had held his breath and waited a long time, only launching his attack once Wen Boyuan lowered his guard. Hu Xiaotian had expected a desperate struggle, but Wen Boyuan resisted far more fiercely than he had anticipated.
Hu Xiaotian seized Wen Boyuan's wrist with one hand and reached for his neck with the other. During