Chapter 403: Hunting the Flood Dragon (3)
As Jiang Chen piloted the Thunder Dragon Water-Repelling Boat closer to the target coordinates, he frowned. The vessel wasn’t ascending toward the surface; it was plunging deeper and deeper into the abyssal trenches of the seabed.
His initial hypothesis was that the millennial flood dragon had retreated to the ocean floor to rest and lick its wounds.
However, when the target finally materialized in the murky depths, Jiang Chen’s eyes widened in sheer disbelief.
It wasn’t a flood dragon. It was a massive crystal spire.
The structure was an irregular, double-pointed crystalline obelisk. It stood roughly thirty feet tall, its thickest central section spanning nearly twenty feet across. The spire looked as though two jagged bolts of solid, purple lightning had been violently fused together. The apex tapered into a needle-sharp point, while the base was blunt and heavily faceted. The entire surface of the crystal was densely etched with an agonizingly complex array of microscopic runes.
A deep, circular groove girdled the obelisk’s midsection. Embedded within this groove were nine fist-sized thunder crystals, arranged in a perfect ring. The purple crystals were as translucent as flawless glass, and deep within their cores, a single thread of liquid silver constantly writhed and pulsed.
Jiang Chen narrowed his eyes. “These ancient, hyper-dense runes again.”
They were structurally identical to the runic matrix carved into the sealing well beneath the Flood Dragon Suppressing Pagoda. It was undeniably the work of the same architect.
Analyzing the ambient energy saturation, Jiang Chen concluded that the obelisk hadn’t been here for centuries. It was a recent installation. The silver threads inside the thunder crystals pulsed rhythmically, emitting a low-frequency energy wave that felt distinctly like a transmission signal.
Jiang Chen mentally mapped the trajectory of the energy pulse. He blinked in surprise. “Mystic Heart City?”The obelisk functioned as a two-way relay. If the primary node was locked onto Mystic Heart City, where was the secondary node pointing?
Jiang Chen instinctively peered into the crushing, lightless depths of the trench. Nothing. The abyss was empty, save for the occasional blind sea monster. But his paranoia flared—he was absolutely certain something catastrophic was waiting at the end of that signal.
Not my problem right now, he decided pragmatically. The priority is locating the flood dragon and harvesting its bloodline.
However, Jiang Chen wasn’t about to leave a massive, suspicious energy relay unchecked. He commanded the Thunder Dragon Water-Repelling Boat to dredge the silt around the base of the crystal. He then produced a thick stack of high-yield Self-Destruction Talismans and meticulously buried them around the obelisk’s foundation, linking their detonation triggers to the relay’s primary energy flow.
If this array fully activated, it would instantly trigger the explosives and blow the entire spire to irradiated dust.
No matter the situation, always leave a lethal backdoor, he thought, satisfied with his sabotage.
He ripped the steering column hard to starboard, propelling the Thunder Dragon Water-Repelling Boat away from the trench and angling upward toward the surface.
Long before he breached the water, Jiang Chen felt the violent, chaotic shockwaves of spiritual pressure rippling down from above. The ocean was boiling with the displaced energy of a massive, high-stakes battle.
Prioritizing absolute stealth, he immediately engaged the vessel’s third special effect: Thunder Light Concealment.
The boat’s cloaking mechanism upgraded from a simple optical camouflage to full-spectrum lightning refraction. The hull dissolved into a pale blue, semi-translucent phantom, rippling with microscopic electrical arcs.
This state provided two massive tactical advantages. First, in deep water or during a thunderstorm, the vessel became completely invisible to both the naked eye and spiritual probing; physical contact would only register as a localized, natural static discharge. Second, the propulsion system was entirely masked by a dampening field of silent thunder runes. Any physical displacement of water caused by the boat’s passage was delayed by three full breaths, completely scrambling any attempt to track its wake.
Even if a Golden Core master somehow detected a blip on their Divine Sense, they would instantly dismiss it as a random, deep-sea bio-electric anomaly. Never a ship.
As the surface grew closer, Jiang Chen didn’t recklessly break the water. He remained submerged and deployed a single fire crow, encasing it in a pressurized bubble of water before launching it upward.
The moment the crow breached the surface, Jiang Chen hijacked its visual feed.
Good lord, he thought, taking in the sheer scale of the violence.
Suspended above the churning ocean, Qin Hao led a strike team of over a dozen elite core disciples. Every single one of them radiated the oppressive aura of the Golden Core stage. And every single one of them was mercilessly jumping the flood dragon.
Jiang Chen shook his head in amusement. So much for righteous orthodox martial virtue. Even Qin Hao, an undisputed combat genius, had zero intention of fighting fair. This wasn’t a duel; it was an execution by firing squad.
“Press the attack! The beast is crumbling!”
“A millennium of cultivation, and it’s still holding out against all of us?!”
“It doesn’t matter how tough it is! Bleed it dry!”
Qin Hao, Chen Tian, Feng Lie, and the rest of the Cloud Sea Sect elites were riding a high of adrenaline and bloodlust.
The flood dragon was a mythical beast, the closest living relative to a true dragon. Its veins pumped with an incredibly potent, primordial bloodline. Not only did this grant it terrifying combat strength, but its entire carcass was a walking treasury. Every scale, tendon, and drop of marrow was worth a small fortune; its core essence was virtually priceless.
Below them, the ocean had been whipped into a frothing, dark green maelstrom. Trapped in the center of the vortex was the colossal, bluish-gray leviathan that had broken its seals only days ago.
It was in agonizing shape. The vast majority of its impenetrable scales had been blasted away, exposing acres of pale, raw flesh. A horrifying, bone-deep trench ran down the length of its spine, violently pumping black, corrupted blood into the sea.
Though every desperate thrash of its massive tail still displaced thousands of tons of water, raising tidal waves high into the air, its movements were growing sluggish. The crushing weight of exhaustion and blood loss was dragging it down.
“End this now!” Qin Hao roared, his voice cutting through the roar of the ocean. “Zhao Lie and Su Ningshuang are already en route with their respective sects. We exterminate this beast before they arrive!”
“Yes, Senior Brother!” Chen Tian and the others bellowed in unison.
In this moment, the internal politics of the Cloud Sea Sect vanished. Core disciples and regular elites operated as a single, ruthless killing machine.
Qin Hao raised his hand, intending to summon his signature Magical Artifact—the sunflower—but changed his mind. He needed raw, penetrating execution power. He formed his right hand into a sword-finger and thrust it toward the dragon.
The atmosphere violently tore apart with a deafening shriek. A blinding, pure white sword radiance coalesced at his fingertips.
Normally, Qin Hao wielded golden sword energy. But this was Geng Metal sword energy—the absolute pinnacle of offensive metal-attribute alignment. The destructive penetration of the attack instantly doubled.
ROAR!
The flood dragon sensed the lethal threat locking onto it. Its massive, turbid vertical slit pupils snapped toward Qin Hao. It unleashed a hoarse, ragged bellow that caused the very fabric of the ocean to violently shudder.
The sea rebelled. Driven by the dragon’s desperate, dying will, massive walls of water, hundreds of feet high, surged upward. The tsunami rose like an inverted, liquid mountain range, intent on crushing Qin Hao and his team from below.
“Break!”
Chen Tian stepped forward, his right hand falling like an executioner’s axe.
His strike cleaved perfectly through the center of the ascending tsunami. The liquid mountain range was cleanly bisected, peeling apart to either side and leaving the flood dragon completely exposed at the bottom of the trench.
Qin Hao didn’t miss his window.
The Geng Metal sword energy he had been compressing violently discharged. The pale white beam of annihilation crossed the distance instantaneously, slamming directly into the exposed, bone-deep wound on the dragon’s spine.
PFFT—!
The Geng Metal beam punched cleanly through the leviathan’s torso. Flesh, organ tissue, and vertebrae were instantly vaporized.
SKREEEEEEEEECH!
The flood dragon unleashed a soul-rending shriek of agony. Its colossal body violently seized, thrashing uncontrollably as a geyser of black, corrupted blood erupted from the exit wound, filling the air with a suffocating, rotting stench.
A moment later, the catastrophic spasm ceased. The massive, serpentine body went entirely limp, crashing heavily back into the ocean and sending up a localized monsoon of shattered waves.
Through the fire crow’s eyes, Jiang Chen grinned. Target neutralized.
To maintain absolute operational security, he instantly dissolved the fire crow construct. He plunged the Thunder Dragon Water-Repelling Boat directly toward the massive shadow of the flood dragon’s tail as the corpse began its slow descent into the abyss.
Above the surface, Qin Hao and his team were bathing in the euphoria of the kill. They had just successfully executed a millennial flood dragon.
Moments later, the airspace above the ocean fractured. Zhao Lie from the Dragon Tiger Immortal Sect and Su Ningshuang from the Mystic Heart Sect arrived with their respective strike teams. When they looked down and saw the colossal, bleeding corpse slowly sinking into the sea, their expressions morphed into shock, followed immediately by outrage.
Zhao Lie pointed a trembling finger at Qin Hao. “We had a tripartite agreement! The three Immortal Sects act in unison! Why did the Cloud Sea Sect mobilize a strike team without notifying us?!”
Su Ningshuang’s eyes narrowed dangerously. “Are we suddenly considered enemies, Qin Hao?”
Qin Hao floated above the water, his expression perfectly composed and utterly unapologetic. “The flood dragon is a creature of immense cunning and speed. To prevent it from slipping the net, I was forced to mobilize an advance team to intercept and pin it down.”
Zhao Lie sneered, his face twisting with anger. “You call that an interception?”
Qin Hao offered a faint, dismissive smile. “I genuinely didn’t expect it to be this fragile. After centuries of being sealed, its combat strength had degraded to less than half its peak. We simply… put it out of its misery.”
Deep beneath the chaotic political squabbling on the surface, Jiang Chen floated in the crushing darkness of the ocean.
He swam out of his cloaked vessel and pressed both hands firmly against the freezing, iron-hard scales of the sinking flood dragon’s tail.
His eyes gleamed with absolute predatory focus. Extraction Technique.