Chapter 39: The Dragon's Nature Is Inherently Lustful
The voice was thunderous, wild and aggressive, stunning Quan Zhi into instinctively shrinking his neck, his heart pounding with lingering fear.
The sensation was utterly unsettling.
"What happened?" Quan Zhi asked the slaves around him, but they were just as bewildered, huddling nearby and trembling, utterly helpless.
Seeing this, Quan Zhi did not hesitate and commanded, "Come with me outside, let's investigate!"
Anyone capable of leading five hundred mermen to establish a city could hardly be a coward. After hearing such a roar, as if from the abyss itself, his first reaction was to find out what was happening, not to flee.
The merman slaves he chose looked as if mourning the dead, but before their lord, they had no choice but to follow Quan Zhi.
In the City of Wisdom, all were soldiers.
After all, Quan Zhi harbored great ambitions and thus maintained a warlike spirit, training a respectable army.
But before Quan Zhi could lead his troops, they saw a distant hill begin to move.
Yes—a hill was moving!
From afar, its presence was suffocating. The surrounding fish scattered in terror, lest they anger this colossal being, and Quan Zhi, who had just intended to mobilize his soldiers, instantly abandoned the idea.
Eight hundred mermen would stir not a single wave before such a behemoth. They would be annihilated in an instant.
Where had such a monstrous beast come from, and why did it appear here?
Moreover, after its arrival, Quan Zhi could feel the water temperature around him rising.
A deep, resonant hum reverberated through the seabed. Quan Zhi's face turned deathly pale, his legs weak, and the confidence he had felt vanished without a trace.
He drifted in a haze for an unknown while, and only when he finally regained his senses did he see the sea giant moving off in another direction.
He exhaled heavily, his mind blank and muddled, and as he finally cleared his head, he felt ashamed of his own behavior.
Such conduct truly disgraced the ancestors.
The late king once battled a giant shark in the sea, defeating and taming it to serve as his ally. Yet now, faced with a mountain-like sea beast, Quan Zhi could only cower and tremble—a shame to his forebears!
Sometimes, the mermen would unconsciously embellish the deeds of their ancestors.
Though the chronicles of the mermen clearly stated that the great shark's power was a gift from the Primordial God, Quan Zhi stubbornly believed it was his uncle, Quan An, who altered history to tarnish the late king’s heroic deeds out of spite.
"Lord, should we continue?" a timid merman slave beside him asked.
At this, Quan Zhi seemed galvanized, springing to his feet, drawing a long sword fashioned from fish bone and stone, pointing it in the direction the tiger-serpent had gone. "Pursue!"
Hearing Quan Zhi's command, the surrounding slaves shot the questioner resentful glares, as if wishing to devour him alive.
The order was Quan Zhi's, yet centuries of servitude left them unable to direct resentment at royal blood like him. Instead, their bitterness turned upon their peer.
Reluctantly and sluggishly, eight hundred mermen gathered their arms. Quan Zhi selected five hundred to march out with him; the remaining three hundred stayed to hold the city under the magistrate’s guidance.
These five hundred mermen, though a slave army considered the lowest of the low in the Merman Court, cut an imposing figure among the mindless sea creatures, who fled before them.
Following the path of the tiger-serpent, Quan Zhi’s "army" pressed forward.
Wherever the tiger-serpent passed, a stream of heat remained, though it was not unbearable, only noticeable.
Suddenly, a massive "corpse" floated in the water ahead.
Lying belly-up, the creature was about seventeen or eighteen meters long. Cautiously approaching, Quan Zhi realized it was a sea ink beast.
This name was given by the Merman Court to these creatures. They ranged from seven or eight meters to fifteen or sixteen meters in length, with four limbs and a rounded, timid form. When they spotted a group of mermen, they would flee far away.
The court had once captured several sea ink beasts, keeping them for hauling stone.
Though a beast of this size was rare, it was not unheard of.
Compared to the thirty or forty-meter tiger-serpent, however, this seventeen or eighteen-meter sea ink beast seemed almost cute.
Quan Zhi also noticed that the beast wasn’t dead—just utterly exhausted, unable to move.
It seemed to have been "violated."
Scalding hot currents still surged around them—there was no doubt that the mountain-sized tiger-serpent had vented its desires upon the sea ink beast.
The sight left Quan Zhi astonished.
Such a savage giant—yet so wanton?
"Lord, what do we do now?" the same slave asked, quivering.
The other slaves glared at him again, disgruntled by his speaking out of turn.
Quan Zhi gazed into the distance, at the mountain on the horizon, and could not bring himself to shout for a crusade against the beast. Instead, he said, "Take this sea ink beast back. See if it can be nursed back to health."
This expedition had not been in vain—they’d gained a sea ink beast for free.
If they managed to save it, the City of Wisdom would have a seventeen or eighteen-meter beast for transport; even if its appetite was large, it could forage once tamed.
If not, they would have plenty of meat, saving provisions for a long time.
Either way, they had nothing to lose.
Of course, for them, "saving" meant putting the creature in a spacious area and seeing if it survived.
The slaves breathed a silent sigh of relief and began tying up the beast with seaweed ropes to haul it back.
What Quan Zhi did not know was that within the belly of this sea ink beast, a new life was already taking form.
The nature of dragons is lustful.
Though the tiger-serpent was not a true dragon, it carried a trace of draconic might.
Having unleashed its fury, the tiger-serpent had left its seeds behind.
These seeds would not grow into tiger-serpents, yet would each possess extraordinary abilities.
They would take root in the ocean and spread in all directions.