Chapter 5: The Bride
The ship hull around the boarding hall cabin door had long been covered in countless cracks from the bear-like creature’s impacts, teetering on the brink of collapse.
This time, with just one impact, the bear-like creature completely shattered the cabin door and surrounding ship hull, forming a two-meter-high gaping hole. Fortunately, it was tightly blocked by various cabinets and tables and chairs, able to hold it off for a moment longer.
Seizing the opportunity, Li Weiyi threw all the explosives made by Cai Yutong at it in one go.
Who cared now about what consequences it might cause?
“Boom!”
“Boom!”
…
The explosives erupted with tremendous force, temporarily forcing the bear-like creature back.
The cabinets and tables and chairs blocking the cabin door burst into flames in the explosion.
The cabin windows in the boarding hall all shattered, with howling winds and snowflakes surging in, further fueling the blaze.
The shockwave from the explosion sent the Security Team members, Cai Yutong, and the short-statured trainee in the restaurant behind the boarding hall flying out, some collapsing unconscious on the spot.
Li Weiyi, retreating at the time, was also flung away, his body slamming into the wall with bone-piercing pain, feeling like his whole body was falling apart.
Flames roared toward him, scorching and scalding hot.
Before Li Weiyi could even stand, he saw the bear-like creature’s massive body smash through all obstacles, charging out of the inferno and tearing off an arm from the Security Team member who had thrown the concentrated acid, blood spraying everywhere.
That Security Team member screamed in agony, using his taser gun to attack the bear-like creature’s abdomen.
It had no effect.
Instead, it further enraged the bear-like creature, which opened its bloodied maw and bit off the man’s head in one bite. Like devouring a snack bar, its second bite tore away his entire chest cavity, crunching and swallowing it down.
Then, it let out a deafening roar that shook heaven and earth.
The roar burst Li Weiyi’s ears with blood, leaving his head dizzy and reeling.
At the same time, he saw the bear-like creature toss aside the Security Team member, now reduced to half a body, its eyes turned blood-red, fur burning on its body, staring at him with furious eyes like a demon.
Its mountain-like bulk, blood-red eyes, sharp teeth filled with flesh scraps… Anyone trapped in such despair would have legs turn to jelly, collapsing in terror.
Human power seemed utterly insignificant before such a ferocious beast.
Just a brief moment of eye contact.
A shiver ran through him, and Li Weiyi gritted his teeth, nimbly flipping to his feet and dashing toward the stairs.
Normally, people fleeing for their lives would retreat to the restaurant, using the Security Team, Cai Yutong, and the short-statured trainee as meat shields. No need to outrun the bear-like creature—just outrun them.
Li Weiyi naturally disdained such selfish and despicable acts.
Besides, he had another plan.
He believed the bear-like creature was not without weaknesses, and he was not without a chance to fight back.
Its overly massive size was its weakness.
On the research vessel, the passages were narrow, and the bear-like creature could barely move. The stairs and lower cabins were even narrower, with tighter spaces—perhaps an opportunity to counterattack.
The people in the restaurant, hearing the sounds gradually fading away, felt their despair ease slightly.
The short-statured trainee huddled in a corner, trembling with relief and worry: “Brother Li led that bear-like creature away!”
Cai Yutong crawled out from the rubble, still with some ringing in her ears, her long black hair disheveled, glaring at the Security Team members: “You’re holding weapons and hiding here—what are you doing? Why not go help him?”
The Security Team members exchanged glances, unsure what to say.
They were elites, but none had ever faced life and death. When the shadow of death loomed, how could anyone not fear?
That bear-like creature could shatter the alloy ship hull— what use would they be charging in?
Just one impact, and everyone would likely turn into blood mud and rotten flesh.
Xie Jin, unwilling to back down, said gravely: “We were preparing to ambush it in the restaurant, but unexpectedly, Li Weiyi led it elsewhere, disrupting our plan.”
…
…
“Thud! Thud! Thud…”
The bear-like creature’s power exceeded Li Weiyi’s expectations. Despite the many obstacles on the research vessel and the narrow passages, they were like paper in its path.
It smashed through, doors and walls shattering into pieces.
Li Weiyi held the sword in one hand and grabbed the stair railing with the other, leaping to the next level cabin, nimble as an ape.
The next instant.
“Boom!”
The bear-like creature overturned the entire stairwell, landing in the next level cabin, stomping the ground into a depression.
It growled lowly, searching around.
Li Weiyi, hidden atop a pile of mechanical devices, crouched with sword in hand, holding his breath, keenly observing that the bear-like creature was bleeding. Clearly, the earlier multiple rifle hits had inflicted serious injuries.
This was undoubtedly good news!
The Yellow Dragon Sword was sharp, but as a cold weapon, it might not pierce the bear-like creature’s skin and bone defense. But its pair of massive eyes could certainly be stabbed through.
The gap in power and speed was huge—only one chance.
Just as Li Weiyi was about to strike, the bear-like creature below suddenly looked up, spotting him and swinging its claw first.
It was the scent.
A bear’s sense of smell was two thousand times that of a human.
This bear-like creature’s was probably even more acute.
It had long locked onto Li Weiyi’s position via scent.
The bear-like creature’s paw was huge as a banana fan, heavy as a thousand jun— even grazing him would tear off a huge chunk of flesh and blood.
From Li Weiyi’s analysis, besides its huge size limiting movement and its eyes, the bear-like creature’s third major weakness was that its intelligence had surely not evolved to match humans.
Otherwise, it wouldn’t have only attacked that one cabin door in the boarding hall but sought another entrance.
So, targeting this third weakness, Li Weiyi’s current perch was in the research vessel’s pump equipment area.
Only by leveraging mechanical power and humanity’s wisdom surpassing all creatures did he have a chance to contend with the bear-like creature.
The instant the bear-like creature swung its claw, Li Weiyi pushed off with both legs, leaping to the side.
“Thud!”
The massive paw smashed the pump pipes.
Instantly, high-pressure seawater erupted as a water column, striking the bear-like creature’s head.
Li Weiyi, landing on the ground, used hands and feet to scramble low and fast. In the moment the bear-like creature retreated, evading the water column before its sight and smell recovered, he thrust his sword out with flawless precision.
The sword was like a yellow dragon, fast as lightning.
“Pfft!”
The bear-like creature’s right eye was pierced, blood surging out like an arrow.
A roar filled with pain, rage, and fury echoed through the entire research vessel, shaking the cabin walls.
Li Weiyi struck true and immediately withdrew.
But his speed was still far slower than the bear-like creature.
In its rage, the bear-like creature wildly flailed its claws, one grazing past Li Weiyi’s left arm.
With a rip, Li Weiyi’s left sleeve tore instantly, a deep wound exposing bone on his upper arm, blood gushing wildly.
Li Weiyi’s speeding body lost balance, flung by the force to tumble and slide back toward the stairs. The left half of his body ached to the point of numbness.
Compared to the bear-like creature’s terrifying power, humans were like wheat stalks, snapping with the slightest bend.
Li Weiyi crouched against the wall, gritting his teeth against the pain, using strips from his torn left shoulder clothing to simply wrap and bind the wound, lest he bleed out too much.
He picked up the fallen Yellow Dragon Sword again.
After a bout of agonized roars clutching its eye, the bear-like creature charged at Li Weiyi in murderous fury, intent on tearing him to shreds.
Li Weiyi knew fleeing was impossible—his speed couldn’t match it—so he gripped the sword one-handed, standing tall, eyes glaring defiantly and coldly.
Be it ferocious beast or demon, nothing could shake his resolve to fight to the death.
He roared, swinging with all his might.
“Splash—”
The blood from his left arm wound, spilled on the ground earlier, suddenly vaporized, turning the dim cabin passage into a world of pale red blood mist.
The ground, cabin walls, pipes… inch by inch decayed and moldered.
Behind him, in the vast, hazy blood mist, a graceful figure in ancient-style bright red wedding dress materialized out of nowhere, tall and slender, with a long jade neck and jade belt at the waist.
The wedding dress was grand and luxurious, embroidered with gold and silver dragon-phoenix patterns for auspiciousness, lotus motifs on cuffs and hem, the skirt flaring like phoenix wings.
But she wore a red silk head covering with copper coins at the four corners, hiding the bride’s immortal face.
The entire figure was blurry, ethereal as illusion, beautiful yet eerily chilling.
How had she appeared?
Why had the surroundings turned ghostly like a ghost domain?
This bridal specter seemed formed from Li Weiyi’s blood, or like his eternal unseen newlywed wife following him. As he swung his sword, her slender jade hand elegantly lifted in a striking motion.
“Pfft!”
Li Weiyi had steeled himself to die under the bear-like creature’s claws, but this sword strike sent it flying backward several meters.
In midair, blood sprayed like a fountain.
A horrific sword mark over a meter long appeared on the bear-like creature’s neck and abdomen.
Li Weiyi, as if drained of all strength, staggered back, barely steadying against the wall. He looked in shock at the bear-like creature crashing to the ground…
This was all too unreal!
“With my mortal body, how could I send it flying with one sword? What just happened?” Li Weiyi gasped heavily, his left arm wound overflowing blood again, vision darkening.
The blood mist, decay, ghost domain, and red-head-covered bride had vanished, as if never there.
“Roar… Awooo…”
The bear-like creature struggled to its feet, its roars no longer as resounding as before, now hoarse and trembling.
It approached Li Weiyi again, steps much slower, full of caution.
“Junior Disciple Brother!”
On the verge of passing out from blood loss and searing pain, Li Weiyi heard his senior disciple brother’s furious voice.
Immediately after came the boom of bullets firing.
“Thud!”
“Thud!”
…
Zhao Meng was truly enraged, eyes bloodshot, clutching the shotgun with both hands, relentlessly pulling the trigger, forcing the bear-like creature to roar in agony and retreat into the darkness.
“Go, up top first.”
Zhao Meng reloaded while retreating, pulling Li Weiyi along.
The two fled one after the other to the fourth layer cabin with the deck above.
The shotgun’s power was immense, but the bear-like creature was no mortal beast—its defenses and vitality beyond scientific understanding—still growling lowly from behind.
They fled all the way to the boarding hall, where the cabin door side had a massive hole smashed by the bear-like creature earlier.
Raging cold winds poured in, cutting like knives on their faces.
So cold!
It was like two different worlds compared to when there was sunlight before.
The blood from Li Weiyi’s left shoulder wound and his soaked clothes nearly froze into ice crystals in an instant.
Zhao Meng had an army-green satchel on his chest, bulging as if packed with something important. His piercing tiger eyes, full of farewell, looked at Li Weiyi: “Senior Disciple Brother probably won’t be able to look after you anymore—take care of yourself.”
Zhao Meng charged out of the boarding hall without looking back.
He dashed across the deck, vaulted the ship’s rail, and jumped off the research vessel.
Except for the farewell to Li Weiyi, he showed no hesitation from start to finish.
“Senior Disciple Brother…”
Li Weiyi chased to the deck.
Outside, the wind howled like wrathful ghosts, nearly blowing him away.
He didn’t know why Zhao Meng was doing this, but he knew if he didn’t follow, this might be their last meeting.
Watching the figure receding on the ice plain, Li Weiyi’s heart sank, and he too leaped from the several-meter-high ship’s rail, crashing onto the hard ice surface.
Hearing the heavy thud behind him, Zhao Meng dozens of meters away abruptly stopped, turned, and ran back.
Zhao Meng scolded angrily: “Why did you follow?”
“After Master died, you’re the only family I have left, Senior Disciple Brother! Die together, live together.” Li Weiyi said.
Zhao Meng’s eyes brimmed with hot tears, sighing helplessly at the sky.
…
“Awoo!”
The bear-like creature’s roar came from the research vessel’s deck above.
It leaped down, thudding to the ground not far from Li Weiyi and Zhao Meng, advancing step by step.
In the dimness, the bear-like creature’s teeth gleamed white and sharp, one eye scarlet, the other bleeding nonstop. Blood from the meter-long sword wound on its neck and abdomen dyed the ice red.
It wasn’t immortal, already gravely wounded, but its single eye fixed deadly on Zhao Meng’s chest satchel.
“Good! Die together, live together—we brothers today.”
Zhao Meng raised the shotgun, his expression fiercer than the bear-like creature.
Li Weiyi gripped the Yellow Dragon Sword tightly, his gaze sharp as its edge, like a drawn bow ready to loose.
Suddenly.
Infant cries echoed from the seabed, low yet spreading across the entire Arctic, making icebergs and snow ridges tremble lightly.
Like weeping, like laughter.
Precisely, there was more than one infant voice, from different directions, eerily spine-chilling.
The bear-like creature opposite immediately showed terror, trembling as it stared behind Li Weiyi and Zhao Meng, crouching low, all prior ferocity gone.
Li Weiyi and Zhao Meng slowly turned their heads.
There.
A house-sized infant head floated in midair, disheveled black hair. When it laughed, its mouth cracked from corners to ears.
Its dark red tongue stretched several meters.
The neck connecting the infant head extended like a pillar into the icy seawater.
“Thud!”
The next instant, a second infant head appeared, smashing through the research vessel’s deck, rising to the top tenth layer cabin, as if vying height with the sky dome.
“Splash!”
A third infant head burst through the ice cap ten meters away, behind Li Weiyi and Zhao Meng, emitting a low wail.
The fourth, the fifth…
The Nine Infants’ nine house-sized giant heads all emerged from the sea, hovering grotesquely, awe-inspiring. Long necks like scaled tentacles wrapped and squeezed the research vessel, gradually deforming and shattering it.
The massive body hidden in the seawater flipped the increasingly broken research vessel sideways.
On the ship, screams, cries of agony, wails, and crashing heavy objects rang out nonstop.
Before this, Li Weiyi had no idea of the Nine Infants’ existence; witnessing this, it was like falling into a ghost wasteland world of rampaging demons, his heart struck by unprecedented shock.
Seeing all nine pairs of bone-green eyes fixed on him, fear filling his heart, Zhao Meng smiled bitterly to himself: “Thinking I could carry the Buddha’s Sarira to draw away the calamity—turns out it was delusion from the start; shouldn’t have held out hope.”
All of the Nine Infants’ heads laughed eerily, like nine pythons lunging swiftly at Zhao Meng.
“Splash!”
Unclear if it was Li Weiyi’s blood staining the Dao Ancestor Tai Chi Fish or another reason, this Chan Sect Sect Leader token around his neck suddenly burst with dazzling green light.
The green light like brilliant Arctic aurora shot to the heavens, instantly filling heaven and earth.
The Nine Infants attacking Zhao Meng let out shrill screeches from all nine mouths, repelled by the green light erupting from the Dao Ancestor Tai Chi Fish.
At the same time.
Zhao Meng’s chest satchel trembled violently, bursting into flames.
Inside the bag, the gold coffin and silver coffin holding the Buddha’s Sarira shattered, a red glow flying out and crashing into the Dao Ancestor Tai Chi Fish around Li Weiyi’s neck.
…
Brothers, you’re awesome—Old Fish checked, first day on shelves: #1 on sales list, #1 on hot search, about 80k collections.
