After figuring out the enemy Stand's ability, the battle quickly became clear:
"Teleportation doesn't make any sound, but it definitely leaves traces."
"Since the coordinates and medium for its teleportation are water, then..."
"Where there are ripples in the water, there must be fish beneath!"
"As long as I listen for the tiny ripples caused by something disturbing the standing water on the nearby deck, I can immediately locate that Stand!"
Li Qing abandoned his previous method of judging the enemy's movements by listening to changes in the airflow, shifting his attention to the new idea of monitoring the rhythms of the surrounding water ripples.
At that instant, Li Qing could hear everything clearly, from the surging waves of the sea to the faint ripples in the shallow water on the deck.
Then, when "Clash" launched its third attack, Li Qing heard the strange ripple it raised when teleporting.
"Found you!"
"Nine o'clock, less than half a meter away from me."
"The standing water on that patch of deck moved!"
After being frustrated twice in a row, Li Qing finally seized the initiative.
"Clash" had only just repeated its old trick, leaping out of the standing water it had teleported into, when Li Qing swung a punch toward the direction from which it lunged, as if he had foreseen it.
Li Qing's fist, carrying all his strength, collided head-on in midair with "Clash's" savage shark head.
Bang!
With a dull, thunderous crash, "Clash" was sent flying backward like a kite with its string cut.
"Urgh!"
On the speedboat fifty meters away, Squalo cried out in pain.
A Stand was the manifestation of a Stand User's spiritual energy. In a sense, it was equivalent to the Stand User himself.
Thus, any damage suffered by a Stand would be reflected in full upon its user.
Just like now, Li Qing had dealt "Clash's" shark head a vicious blow, and a bizarre swollen lump immediately rose on Squalo's young, handsome face, following the injury suffered by his Stand.
"Damn it!"
"Teleportation doesn't make any sound at all. How did he find 'Clash's' location?!"
"Could it be... could this blind man have understood my Stand ability in just a few seconds?!"
Squalo covered his swollen cheek, his expression quietly turning serious.
"No wonder he's the man the Boss personally named for execution."
"Looks like I underestimated him this time."
Though he had suffered a minor setback, Squalo did not panic.
That little set of "silent killing techniques" had merely been a tactic he came up with on a whim. Its purpose was simply to exploit Li Qing's blindness and end the battle easily while saving effort.
As for Squalo and his Stand, "Clash," silent assassination was not actually their usual fighting style.
What they truly excelled at was—frontal combat!
"Go, 'Clash'!"
"Full-speed burst!"
At Squalo's command, "Clash's" fighting style underwent a complete one-hundred-eighty-degree shift.
It no longer lurked silently or launched sneak attacks from the shadows. Instead, it "swam" recklessly around Li Qing with an incomparably fierce and unpredictable speed.
The yacht Li Qing was riding was only a small one, with a low, cramped deck covered in seawater swept aboard by the waves.
Those pools of standing water, scattered all over the deck and surrounding Li Qing from every direction, now became springboards for "Clash's" teleportation.
It burst forth with extreme speed, teleporting back and forth through those "portals" formed by the standing water.
"So fast."
"It's far too fast!"
"It was in front of me one instant, then behind me the next."
"Even if I can determine where it appears, there's no way I can keep up with its movements!"
Faced with this situation, Li Qing immediately felt a massive headache coming on.
The enemy's "Flash" actually had no cooldown!
At this moment, he could only watch helplessly as the opponent "hopped around repeatedly" him, unable to decide which direction to strike.
And "Clash" teleported faster and faster, with ever-increasing frequency.
The ripple from the previous splash had barely reached Li Qing's ears when another ripple appeared from an entirely different direction.
As a result, in Li Qing's perception, "Clash" seemed to have countless shadow clones, able to appear in different places at the same time.
Finally, just as Li Qing's head was about to be spun dizzy by "Clash's" endless "Flashes," "Clash" made its move.
It sprang into the air from a pool of standing water, once again revealing its indestructible, pale shark teeth.
As a long-range controlled Stand known for speed and endurance, with a destructive power rating of only D—slightly weaker than a human—"Clash" was not actually very powerful offensively.
However, one thing needed to be noted:
Stand stats could only serve as a reference. They could not represent a Stand's true combat capability.
"Clash" looked like a shark, and its actual attack power, just like that of sharks in nature, was largely tied to its size—the larger its body, the stronger its destructive power.
Its size would also automatically adapt and change according to the amount of water in the pool it occupied, or in other words, the size of the water-surface "portal."
If it appeared in a small teacup, it would only be a "goldfish" a few centimeters long.
If it appeared in a washbasin, it would become a "grass carp" more than ten centimeters long.
But now, the pool of water was nearly a meter across. The "Clash" that suddenly leaped from it was an enormous half-meter long!
From a distance, it truly looked like a shark leaping from the sea to wound someone—swift, fierce, and brimming with killing intent.
Li Qing was immediately "terrified."
He seemed deeply afraid of "Clash's" bite and was so "frightened" that he dropped onto the deck on his backside.
Then, like a monkey whose butt was on fire but had no idea how to put it out, he began rolling frantically around the tiny deck in an extremely undignified and utterly comical manner.
"Hahaha!"
"Is that all you've got, blind man?"
"Running around so miserably with your head in your hands won't let you escape my 'Clash's' pursuit!"
Squalo shared his Stand's vision, so even from fifty meters away, he could control everything happening on the battlefield.
Seeing Li Qing roll across the ground in such a pathetic escape, he quickly controlled his Stand, "Clash," having it teleport continuously through the "portals" formed by the standing water on the deck.
That "shark" stayed tightly on Li Qing's heels, refusing to ease up in the slightest.
Then...
Squalo realized that something was wrong.
During this easy process of "beating a dog that's fallen into the water," the puddles of standing water that had originally covered the deck and allowed "Clash" to teleport back and forth had somehow disappeared by more than half in just a few seconds.
The number of "teleport points" "Clash" could reach had unknowingly dwindled, and it could no longer use repeated teleportation tactics to disrupt Li Qing's senses as it had just done.
"Damn it!"
Squalo immediately realized what had happened.
"That blind man wasn't running away at all..."
"He was deliberately rolling around on the ground, using his clothes as a mop to soak up all the standing water on the deck!"
"This... this..."
His expression suddenly twisted—
From laughing too hard.
"Isn't that ridiculously stupid?!"
"Hahahaha."
"Did I make you misunderstand my ability because I wanted to save some effort and didn't use my real skills?"
"The idea of wiping away the standing water to restrict teleportation isn't wrong, but..."
Squalo laughed so hard he could barely straighten his back.
"This is the sea!"
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