That's it?
Eighty wen, just like that? A full day's earnings for a fisherman?
Liang Qu's spirits lifted. Money earned this easily was hard to walk away from.
Still, it had been tiring. Controlling thirty jin of water was like running a thousand meters, and his stomach was growling again.
Fusing the marsh spirit had improved his body somewhat, but his foundation was too shallow; he remained frail.
The night was still deep, so Liang Qu decided to rest a while and try once more.
Uncle Chen scraped by on eighty wen because he had a child, with old folk at home to support besides. Liang Qu had no one to provide for — this income was anything but small. Tonight he would see whether he could strike twice.
An hour later, Liang Qu slipped into the water again.
With the Water Monkey's gifts, he expended hardly any strength underwater: swimming a hundred meters cost him about as much effort as walking two or three hundred on land. He could hold his breath for roughly seven minutes now — and not seven minutes of floating in place, but seven minutes on the move. Enough to astonish anyone.
Unfortunately, the yellow croaker seemed to have used up his luck. After surfacing four or five times for air and drifting for the better part of an hour, he spotted only one spotted fish worth around a hundred wen.
The spotted fish wasn't worth as much as a yellow croaker; its hundred-wen price came purely from size — a good ten jin. A jin of fish carried ten jin of strength: a fish that big, bursting out all at once, could put out nearly a hundred jin of force.
In his current state, with only thirty jin of water control, taking it on would be a real struggle. He could only watch it swim away.
"Looks like next time I should bring a spear — that would let me handle bigger fish. Then again, dead fish don't fetch what live ones do... and I haven't got a net, either."
While Liang Qu mulled this over, he swam farther than he realized, drifting to a shallower shoal on the river bottom — though "shallow" here still meant ten-odd meters of water above it.
"Huh? Lotus roots?"
The moment his feet touched the bottom, clusters of plant tubers surfaced in his perception. He drew close, examined them carefully, and found they really were lotus root.
Lotus, in water more than ten meters deep?
Liang Qu marveled at it.
Floating plants, emergent plants, submerged plants — none could grow without photosynthesis and respiration, and the deeper the water, the harder both became. Lotus was especially demanding about light and air; as far as Liang Qu knew, in water deeper than two meters it simply could not survive.
Realizing how abnormal this lotus's habitat was, he grew excited.
Plants needed photosynthesis and respiration — but that was true of ordinary plants. Treasure plants were another matter entirely.
This world had supernatural power!
A lotus that grew this deep had to be no ordinary one. He'd heard that Squire Zhao in the next town had a cold pool a few dozen meters deep, with horned water caltrops growing at the bottom that could lengthen your life — and on the strength of that pool alone he had bound two martial practitioners to his side. Whether it was true, who knew?
And now he had stumbled onto the same thing?
Liang Qu swam at once along the lotus's line of growth, and found it was no small patch — ten-odd meters on, he still hadn't reached its end. Just as he moved to keep going, a large blurry shape suddenly appeared within his perception.
What was that?
What a big one!
Liang Qu stopped short and put distance between them.
The thing did not react. Had it failed to notice him?
Lotus roots that might be a treasure plant... Liang Qu hesitated, but instead of leaving he began circling warily, reading the water.
The thing lay in wait in the mud — long, a good two meters, yet no fish: four limbs, a very long tail, a slender body.
Beyond three meters its outline was hopelessly blurred to him, but the silhouette was too distinctive to miss. Liang Qu's brows rose slightly.
A Sow Dragon!
"Sow Dragon" was what people called them — in plain speech, a crocodile. It was the fishermen's blanket name for every crocodile, and the rivers of Jianghuai held more than one kind; Liang Qu had no way to tell what species lay beneath the mud.
Around here, the commonest was probably the Taihua alligator?
The body's original owner had seen Taihua alligators, and to Liang Qu they seemed much like the Yangtze alligators of his past life — not large, adults reaching just two meters and thirty-odd kilograms.
That size meant little to a grown man; the weight was the only lethal part — and that was on land. He was underwater now, and Liang Qu was only a malnourished teenager who, even at his heaviest, outweighed the alligator by little.
Besides—
"This Taihua alligator is lying right beside the lotus roots. Don't tell me it knows the lotus is good for it?"
Sensing carefully, Liang Qu found the mud had indeed been churned up, exposing several segments of gnawed lotus root.
Trouble.
He could not take the lotus roots; the Sow Dragon sprawled across them would never consent. It had clearly made its den here.
Or — maybe it was still worth a try?
Running it through, Liang Qu decided the thing was far from impossible.
Not that greed had clouded his judgment. In his past life he'd loved watching a wilderness-survival streamer called Bi Fang and had picked up a fair knowledge of many creatures — including the crocodile's fatal flaw: its bite was tremendously powerful, but the force it could use to open its jaws was pitiful.
An adult could pinch a crocodile's snout shut with one hand, and most of its savage strength went to waste.
It was simply that in the whole living world only humans could grip an object with precision — even apes could not manage a true precision grip, their thumbs being short — and that was why the crocodile seemed invincible in nature.
For this "little" crocodile before him, Liang Qu's water control alone would be enough to pin it down. Add the advantage in weight, and it would not even be able to work up a death roll.
It was late October and the water was cold; a cold-blooded creature moved far more sluggishly than in summer. Perhaps it was precisely because this crocodile was so dull that it had noticed nothing drawing near.
The hour was right, the ground was right, everything was in his favor — to sit unmoving now would be a waste.
"If only I could control it. A creature that big could catch fish for me while I reaped the benefit. Plopping into the water all the time is a hassle — I don't actually want to be a fisherman."
People always wanted more — one prize in hand, and their eyes were already on the next. Now that he felt he could handle a Sow Dragon, a bolder idea flashed through Liang Qu's mind.
As if in answer, the Marsh Cauldron in his head gave a tremble, and a strange rune lit up on its body, shaped like the character for "water" in oracle-bone script.
More information poured in.
Blood Rune: Command of Aquatic Creatures. Draw the water character in fresh blood upon an aquatic creature's body, and there is a chance of becoming the master that commands it?
Damn — the Marsh Cauldron could do that too?
The information settled, and Liang Qu's eyes lit up. The Cauldron's origins had to be extraordinary — out in the world, men would battle over it until heads cracked!
All the more reason not to let the Sow Dragon slip away. A minion's help was enormous, and a crocodile had four limbs — far nimbler a servant than any fish.
Mind made up, Liang Qu found an angular stone on the riverbed, about the size of a man's head, and eased toward the Sow Dragon in the mud. Once he was sure of its snout's position, he brought the stone down hard.
The river water parted under his control, propelling the stone and shedding its drag; it knifed through the rolling current and struck the resting Sow Dragon.
The weather had turned cold; a crocodile's blood ran thick and sluggish, and the beast was slow to begin with — ambushed on top of that, it stiffened upright for an instant, and then came the pain, as though it were splitting apart.
His chance!
Liang Qu lunged, darting behind the Sow Dragon, jamming the stone down from its blind spot, veins standing out along his right arm. With his left hand he raked his fingers across the stone's sharp edge, and several threads of blood scattered into the water.
Blood scent drifted through the river. Catching it, the Sow Dragon's ferocity exploded — it heaved itself upright, wrenching and twisting, trying to open its jaws and bite. But before they could part, a ring of water closed around its upper and lower jaws.
Pinned by the stone, gripped by the current — pressed and held at once — the Sow Dragon could not open its mouth at all. It could only thrash its body in a frenzy, its tail, hard as pig iron, whipping desperately at the rocks.
Every part of Liang Qu drew taut like a longbow bent to its limit, all his muscles twisted into one straining cord, veins swollen, holding the Sow Dragon down with everything he had.
The current carried off his cold sweat. He had commanded twenty jin of water twice in a row and drained his strength to the dregs, but he dared not rest. Three fingers bleeding, he swept them swiftly along the Sow Dragon's back.
The blood hung in fine threads, congealing under the pull of some strange power instead of dispersing, and imprinted itself on the scales, tracing the lines of his fingers!
Blood light bloomed in the darkness. In the same instant the Sow Dragon's vertical pupils dilated, and a savage spiritual force smashed into Liang Qu's mind.
If controlling water had been an overdraw of the body, then controlling the Sow Dragon was an overdraw of the mind — like pulling several all-nighters in a row and then being made to sit a stack of math exams. Liang Qu's skull seared with pain, and he very nearly fainted.
But a beast was a beast in the end. How could it stand against a man whose mind grew sharper by the day?
Within a few breaths, a strange, wondrous link had formed in his head.
The dull glaze left the Sow Dragon's eyes, which quickened back to life — no longer vicious now, but carrying a spark of cunning.
The Marsh Cauldron shed its light once more.
[Aquatic beast commanded: Taihua alligator. Evolution possible.]
Joy broke across Liang Qu's face — it had worked!
A Sow Dragon?
He'd take it in as his dog!
End of Chapter 3. excluded as a structural marker; the site watermark line was excluded as advertisement. Summary: After an easy eighty-wen catch, Liang Qu returns to the river at night. Following lotus roots growing impossibly deep, he finds a two-meter Sow Dragon — the fishermen's blanket name for crocodiles — lairing beside them. The Marsh Cauldron reveals a Blood Rune for commanding aquatic creatures; Liang Qu pins the beast's snout with a stone and currents of water, draws the water character in his own blood on its back, withstands its spiritual counterattack, and takes command of a Taihua alligator that can now evolve into his servant.
Chapter 3