Grilled Fish

Surging waves roared, wild winds howled, and a gigantic shark named "Clash" came crashing in with the force to topple mountains and overturn seas. The stench of death filled heaven and earth.

Facing the gigantic shark's savage maw, Li Qing calmly lit a cigarette.

At that moment, time seemed to stand still.

His gaze passed through the raging winds, waves, and the enormous shark, fixing itself on Squalo's uncertain, alarmed face from afar:

"Instant teleportation with no cooldown, speed that leaves others in the dust—your Stand is indeed formidable."

"To fight such a nimble Stand, no matter how you looked at it, the priority should have been to bypass the Stand and attack the user directly, right?"

"So."

"Why didn't I do that?"

"Why?!"

Squalo obligingly asked the question.

He had initially assumed Li Qing was simply too slow-witted to do anything but foolishly tangle with "Clash." But now, it seemed things were not that simple.

"Because I was waiting."

"Waiting until the time was right to strike back."

Li Qing raised his hand, aiming the cigarette butt burning with embers at the gigantic shark charging straight at him:

"Take a look—"

"Isn't there something extra on your Stand?"

"What?"

Squalo's expression froze as he hurriedly looked toward the savage giant shark suspended above the sea.

At first glance, its appearance seemed no different from before:

Its mountain-sized body was covered in hard keratinous armor, and two rows of sharp, pale shark teeth gleamed coldly inside its slightly opened crimson maw.

A great deal of seawater that had not yet fallen back into the ocean clung to its streamlined body, reflecting multicolored ripples beneath the sunlight.

"Wait."

"That light is wrong."

"That rainbow-like color isn't light seawater can refract!"

Squalo's face changed instantly:

"What's clinging to 'Clash' isn't seawater at all, but—"

"Gasoline!"

He was instantly plunged into profound shock:

"When?"

"When did he splash gasoline onto 'Clash'?!"

"I didn't splash that oil on it."

"Your Stand ran into it itself just now."

Time quietly "stopped," and Li Qing began explaining things in keeping with local custom:

"While I figured out that your Stand teleports through pooled water, I also noticed the vastly different air disturbances it stirred up during its two movements. That told me its size might change depending on how broad the water's surface was."

"When it teleports into a smaller puddle, your Stand is only a few centimeters long."

"But once it teleports into a larger body of water, your Stand can instantly expand to half a meter in length."

"That was when I started wondering:"

"Seawater is water too. If it teleported onto the ocean's surface—"

"Would it become some monstrous sea beast I couldn't possibly contend with?"

He paused, and his voice gained the confidence of someone who had everything under control:

"So."

"From that moment onward, I began preparing for that utterly terrible possibility."

Squalo's face turned incomparably grim.

Li Qing's words were like the Luoyang shovel in a tomb raider's hand, digging up the deepest fears in his heart one scoop at a time:

"You know, this boat had been leaking oil even before you attacked."

"You probably couldn't see it clearly from where you were, but I knew that the sea behind this yacht had long been covered in a thick oil slick."

"And I deliberately tangled with your Stand aboard the ship just now to buy time—time for the yacht to leak more gasoline, time for the oil slick covering the sea to grow larger—"

"Large enough to put a coating on a sea monster!"

From the very beginning, he had known that with the vast ocean all around him and an enemy capable of teleporting endlessly through water, there was no way he could bypass that powerful Stand and attack Squalo himself.

So, Li Qing chose to attack the Stand directly.

And to injure a monster that could apparently turn into a sea beast with the body of a weak human, he could only borrow whatever external forces the environment offered.

He had deliberately stalled for time so that a sufficiently large and thick oil slick could gather on the sea behind the yacht.

Then, Li Qing had deliberately fired a Sonically Enhanced Wave at Squalo himself—

Not to attack Squalo, but to force him to order "Clash" to teleport in front of him and block the Sonically Enhanced Wave's tracking light.

As expected, his opponent took the bait.

"In truth, as long as you moved quickly enough, you could have dodged the tracking light from the Sonically Enhanced Wave yourself from fifty meters away."

"But you overly confident Stand Users..."

"You rely too much on those supposedly 'invincible' Stand abilities, so you can't even think of methods that require a little more effort."

Li Qing spoke in a faint voice:

"So after seeing the Sonically Enhanced Wave I fired, you definitely made your Stand block it for you."

"Just like nouveau riche returning home in glory—if they don't flaunt those distinctive fine clothes at every moment, they simply can't stand it."

"Damn it!"

Squalo finally realized his nearly fatal mistake:

"I fell completely into his trap..."

"That place, that place had already been covered in gasoline!"

"I had 'Clash' teleport in front of me to take the hit, but I personally sent my own Stand into the trap!"

But he no longer had any chance to correct that mistake.

Li Qing had already raised his hand toward the sea monster lunging at him and lightly flicked out a cigarette glowing with faint embers:

"I'm done talking, so."

"Burn!"

Because of the world rule of "explanation time stop," Li Qing had not actually wasted any time talking, nor had he warned his enemy of his attack beforehand.

So, when Squalo realized something was wrong and tried to order "Clash" to teleport away.

That cigarette butt glowing with sparks had already, under Li Qing's precise and swift throw, struck the oil-coated skin of "Clash" in midair without missing by an inch.

Boom!

Flames erupted explosively.

"Clash's" mountain-like body became an enormous torch, and blazing scarlet fire shot into the sky.

Terrifying heat engulfed Clash, and that pure energy instantly damaged the physical form it had condensed in order to attack on a material level.

"Ah!!"

Squalo let out a pained howl.

The damage suffered by a Stand was immediately reflected onto its user's body.

As the giant shark burned in flaming oil, Squalo looked as though he had fallen into a sea of fire himself, his entire body covered in blackened, reddened burn marks.

He instinctively wanted to order "Clash" to teleport into the sea and extinguish the flames, but the intense pain of being burned alive severely disrupted his mind and destroyed his control over the Stand.

A Stand was the manifestation of its user's mental energy. If the mind could not remain focused, the Stand would quickly lose control.

At this moment, the massive "Clash" was like a dying whale gone mad:

It completely lost control. Just like its owner, whose body trembled violently in agony, it began rolling madly across the sea without awareness.

Very soon.

Squalo's mind collapsed under the pain.

He could no longer maintain "Clash's" existence, much less sustain such an enormous size.

The terrifying giant shark that had dominated the sea and seemed capable of swallowing heaven and earth just seconds ago vanished without a trace in an instant.

All that remained were the waves soaring into the air, the roaring flames that had yet to burn out, and the azure sea surface reflecting the blazing red glow.

Fire covered the sea, and muddy waves surged into the heavens.

Li Qing felt no ripples in his heart. He even wanted to light another cigarette.

Although there was a saying that only a Stand could defeat a Stand, a Stand still had a definite physical form whenever it carried out physical attacks. Since a Stand could physically smash a brick, then that brick could clearly physically come into contact with the Stand as well. Besides, the original work's settings on this matter were extremely contradictory. For example, in Part Four, Josuke could trap Angelo's Stand with a balloon, while in Part Five, Sex Pistols could be struck by a knife. In any case, this book would follow this book's setting, or it would not be exciting to write.