Evolution Begins with Elemental Domination

Without a moment’s hesitation, the instant he fired, Su Chen’s physical body began to dissolve into flowing water. A bizarre figure, launching a sneak attack from behind, slammed into his original position with astonishing force.

Nothing happened.

The creature’s terrifying charge passed through nothing but an intangible current of water. Inertia carried its unstoppable momentum right into the rock wall at the side.

Rock shattered and silt billowed, instantly clouding the surrounding water.

Visibility plummeted. Yet, the current of water coiled like a serpent, silently converging on the creature’s head. A right hand slowly solidified and materialized from the water, a flicker of Sun Flame igniting in its palm.

BOOM!

His fist slammed down. The gilled head caved in and disintegrated, its brain matter and the surrounding water instantly vaporizing.

What was astonishing was that the headless body had not yet completely died.

Even after being decapitated, its fish-man tail thrashed like a whip, and its arms, which bore bladed bone fins, continued to flail wildly on instinct, tearing through the water and leaving behind ghastly white trails.

Su Chen’s form re-coalesced in the water. As his right hand released the Water-Splitting Pearl, he thrust it forward. A Strong Thought Burst, amplified by his Amplification Bracelet, precisely penetrated the creature’s chest and obliterated its heart.

Only then did the fish-man’s body go still and begin to sink.

’Interesting.’

Su Chen maintained his Resonance, and the chaotic currents felt like an extension of his own senses.

Still, that last ambush had been unnervingly sudden, like a pedestrian blindly jumping into traffic. Two figures had materialized from beyond the black, boundless edge of his Perception.

’The moment I detected them, they had already breached the eighty-meter safety perimeter and were right on top of me, going for the kill.’

It wasn’t exactly heart-pounding.

But in terms of sheer pressure, it was, to a certain extent, even more dangerous than the Bloodthirsty Fungus chimera.

At that moment, Yan Ruoruo realized a fierce battle was taking place at the narrow, water-filled pass and immediately hurried over, holding a Water-Splitting Pearl.

”Together,” she said, her indifferent eyes seeming to hold a flicker of emotion.

Su Chen didn’t refuse. He first retrieved the two valuable corpses, suitable for sacrifice, from the rapids and moved them onto the platform above. Only then did he and Ruoruo dive deeper.

After passing through the S-shaped narrows, the crushing water pressure eased considerably, allowing the halo of light surrounding the Water-Splitting Pearl to expand slightly.

「Before long.」

The cavern suddenly opened up.

The two of them emerged from the water into a large, naturally formed air chamber. Beyond the rock platform where they could rest, the path split into two.

Here, the once-mighty waterfall was split in two, each stream pouring into a dark, deep tunnel to the left and right.

Without a hint of hesitation, Yan Ruoruo summoned the Cyan Nether Bow from her Sea of Consciousness. She immediately nocked and fired two Echo Arrows, one into each of the dark waterways.

HUMMM!

The moment the arrows entered the water, ripples of Spiritual Fluctuation spread out.

Like sonar, they propagated wildly through the murky water.

Through the vision shared via Mind Transmission, Su Chen spotted several large fish swimming upstream in the left fork. Their scales were half-peeled away, completely exposing the raw flesh beneath. Their appearance was utterly grotesque.

In the right fork, two Fish-man figures were startled. With a flick of their tails, they began swimming upstream at incredible speed.

Su Chen’s expression remained unchanged; he had already chambered a round with his left hand.

BOOM!

A gunshot thundered. A highly condensed bolt of electromagnetic plasma instantly streaked across the air chamber.

The Fish-man had just broken the surface, almost as if it had intentionally met the bullet with its scaly forehead. BANG! Its skull was instantly obliterated.

Meanwhile, Yan Ruoruo’s bowstring twanged in quick succession, and she pierced the other figure as it broke through the water.

The first Wind Split Arrow’s arrowhead managed to lodge firmly in its skull, but the second arrow, aimed at the heart, was deflected by the slippery skin and only pierced its shoulder socket.

Before the two bodies could be swept downstream, a wave of weightlessness, combined with Telekinesis, violently flung them onto the platform. Their immense vitality prevented them from dying instantly; their bone-fin blades and tails thrashed wildly. It took several follow-up Strong Thought Bursts to finally silence their struggles.

”These fish-men are hideous,” Su Chen commented.

Judging by their faces, their eyes were murky and lifeless, having lost their sight like troglodytes.

Their legs were fused into a swollen, twisted fish tail that had absolutely nothing in common with a mermaid’s.

At the same time, the grotesque large fish swimming upstream were also hauled onto the rock platform with his Strong Will. They were over half a meter long, with swollen, misshapen heads, somewhat resembling deep-sea fangtooth fish.

Their upper and lower jaws were filled with dense, interlocking, barbed teeth. They bit off a large chunk of the hard sedimentary rock, proving their teeth were not only sharp but also corrosive—the rock they touched continued to crumble and flake away.

Su Chen’s consciousness split into threads. While one part held the fishes’ bodies steady, another precisely targeted their cervical joints. With a sudden wrenching force, he twisted each of their heads into knots.

Although their scales had fallen off, the flesh beneath was so tough that their necks weren’t even severed by the twisting.

”Can you still breathe okay?” Instead of rushing to go deeper, Su Chen turned and asked Ruoruo how she was feeling.

They had descended from the cave entrance to a current estimated vertical depth of nearly 2.5 kilometers. Factoring in the winding, twisting paths, the total distance they had traveled was even greater.

”No problem,” Yan Ruoruo replied. ”The main thing is that this large air chamber has plenty of oxygen. It’s enough for the two of us to stay here for a long time.”

”Good.”

Su Chen nodded. Thanks to his outstanding cardiopulmonary function, he felt no discomfort at all. Both of their backpacks contained a small bag of oxygen-producing algae, ready to generate a large amount of oxygen at a moment’s notice.