Plunged into the surging torrent, only two words flashed through He Lingchuan's mind:
I'm done for.
Sure enough, Wen Daolun's glyph-reading prophecy had proven true. *Depart upon encountering water.* He should have turned back the moment he reached the Han River.
Yet regret offered no remedy. All he could do was hurriedly shove a turtle pearl into his mouth.
This wondrous object allowed him to breathe underwater, keeping him from drowning for the time being. Once past his lips, it shrank to the size of a quail egg, leaving his throat unobstructed.
Perhaps because he had brushed with death so many times, he felt an odd detachment toward dying. His mind spun rapidly, focused entirely on how to claw his way out of this desperate situation.
The raging waves promptly hurled a massive log forward, slamming straight into the monstrous bird and knocking it out cold.
The impact instantly thrust the bird downstream, leaving Dong Rui and He Lingchuan trailing behind.
Acting on pure instinct, both men seized the tail end of the drifting trunk. They watched helplessly as the wild bull and the monstrous bird were swept apart by the current, drifting farther and farther until they vanished from sight.
"Thirty-Four!" Dong Rui spat through gritted teeth, water streaming down his face. "My Thirty-Four is gone! How in the world did I cross paths with a wretched bane like you!"
"If you hadn't—*ptui!*" The moment He Lingchuan opened his mouth, he swallowed a mouthful of muddy water. "If you hadn't plotted against my father and me, how would you have ended up in the river?"
This Dong fellow was as slippery as an eel. Relying on his winged mount, he had repeatedly provoked father and son before fleeing to safety.
Now that the monstrous bird was gone, He Lingchuan found no joy in it.
Was he really going to die alongside this freak today?
The rotten log they were clinging to was hurtling downstream at sixty or seventy kilometers an hour. Hoping for rescue from someone else was nothing short of a pipe dream.
He quietly triggered the mechanism to reel in his sleeve arrow's grappling cord, hoping he might get another chance to fire it later. During the process, the cord caught on branches and debris several times. Fortunately, Master Li Fubo's craftsmanship was genuinely top-notch; otherwise, the mechanism would have given up the ghost long ago.
With one hand dug into the drifting wood so hard his fingertips sank into the timber, He Lingchuan struggled to untangle the line with the other while keeping his eyes peeled in all directions, thoroughly occupied.
In floodwaters, some debris drifted slowly, while other pieces shot forward like arrows.
He Lingchuan's luck was fair enough, but Dong Rui was struck in succession by drifting roots and tumbling stones. Blood poured from his nose, and his ears rang violently.
With all kinds of flotsam hurled straight at their faces by the churning waves, neither dared keep their eyes wide open.
A jagged stone even tore Dong Rui's mask away in passing.
The two were virtually side by side, gripping the same trunk shoulder to shoulder. He Lingchuan glanced over, let out a startled gasp, and nearly lost his grip.
Dong Rui's face was mangled.
From the bridge of his nose upward, he looked normal enough, but everything below his philtrum had collapsed.
It looked as if his lower face were made of papier-mâché that someone had crushed with a fist. His cheeks were sunken, his mouth horribly deformed, and his skin bore a sickly, purplish-black hue.
Hardly any teeth remained in Dong Rui's mouth; it was a wonder how he spoke without air whistling through the gaps.
Moreover, because the skin of his lower face lacked underlying support, the flesh beneath his eyes sagged as well.
In short, his face looked like a wax statue that had half-melted and cooled back into shape—bizarre from afar, horrifying up close, the sort of visage that would terrify a child to tears in the dead of night.
He Lingchuan's shock was plain in his eyes. Normally Dong Rui would have flown into a rage, but right now he had no time to care.
He cast a glance backward, and his soul nearly flew from his body.
A vast, sprawling debris belt choked with countless fallen trunks was surging forward, rapidly closing the distance!
"We're dead." He Lingchuan also caught a glimpse of it and muttered to himself, his heart sinking entirely. They had been swept out to the middle of the Han River, dozens of yards from either bank, with no hope of reaching the shore.
Along this entire stretch of river, not a single crag broke the surface.
Dong Rui suddenly drew out an object, thinking, *I have to try it—treating a dead horse as a living one!*
He covertly dipped the object into the water, pretended his hand had slipped, and let out a startled cry as he released the drifting log.
The swift current tore him away in an instant.
He then frantically kneaded the item in his hands, muttering urgently, "Faster, come on, faster!"
It was a soft, squishy, transparent lump. It looked like the agar jelly He Lingchuan enjoyed eating, yet also resembled a slug, clearly sporting little antennae...
Whatever Dong Rui was doing to knead it, the thing began to swell—or rather, expand rapidly.
At first it was the size of an egg, then it blew up to the size of a coconut.
*It works! It really works!* He looked back toward He Lingchuan and laughed wildly. "Goodbye! No, never see you again!"
Twenty feet now separated them, and Dong Rui let out a breath of relief. Now that his life-saving treasure was working, he was going to watch this little mongrel drown in the flood with his own eyes!
Little did he expect He Lingchuan to have been watching him like a hawk. The moment Dong Rui's grin spread across his face, He Lingchuan raised his arm—
With a sharp twang, the newly reset sleeve arrow shot out once more.
This time, no rogue wave interfered, and Dong Rui, drifting helplessly on the current, had nowhere to dodge. The sleeve arrow struck his shoulder true, punching clean through.
A flying cable trailed behind the dart.
He Lingchuan yanked hard and triggered the mechanism. With a shriek of agony, Dong Rui was dragged straight back toward him!
The current happened to push in that direction as well, doing He Lingchuan a huge favor.
In just a few breaths, the two were face-to-face again.
Only this time, Dong Rui was in such excruciating pain he nearly blacked out, while He Lingchuan looked at him with a grin. "Don't be afraid. I'm here to save you!"
He Lingchuan hadn't missed any of Dong Rui's subtle movements. Given how desperately this fellow treasured his life, how could his hand suddenly slip from the log keeping him alive? There was bound to be a trick!
To Dong Rui, that infuriating grin looked no different from a devil's.
They had both fallen into the water, both teetering on the brink of death—weren't they supposed to be panicking on their own? Why was this little mongrel staring at him the whole time?
Yet the item in his hands didn't slow its growth at all; it expanded even faster.
As the two grappled, it ballooned from the size of a coconut to that of a millstone, impossible to hide.
He Lingchuan looked down at this bizarre object, feeling not alarm, but delight.
*So this is Dong Rui's life-saving straw?*
If it could save Dong Rui, it could certainly save him too. At worst, he would claim it all for himself and kick Dong Rui out!
Then the thing expanded at an astonishing rate.
When it finally settled into its definitive shape, it had become an ellipsoid roughly ten feet across—convex on top, flat on the bottom, with a fringe of tentacles of varying lengths dangling underneath.
Strangely enough, both He Lingchuan and Dong Rui were enveloped completely within its interior.
Because the creature was entirely transparent, the two stared at each other, every shift in their expressions laid bare.
*Isn't this just a...*
He Lingchuan looked left and right. His body felt mired in a bog, offering no leverage in any direction.
Both of them were trapped frozen inside this jelly-like creature's body.
The more he looked, the more it seemed—goddammit, wasn't this just an oversized jellyfish?
Naturally, this jellyfish-like beast possessed an exceptionally supple, resilient body. The countless drifting logs and tumbling stones that slammed against it simply slid harmlessly off its surface.
It was remarkably bouncy, too.
Floating down with the current, the jellyfish was soon overtaken by the massive drift belt. He Lingchuan and Dong Rui felt as if they were riding inside a rubber raft. The thick, fleshy body of the jellyfish shielded them from all external harm, while giant thickets of brambles floated past like runaway trains, hurtling downstream.
He Lingchuan breathed a long sigh of relief. *Whew, saved.*
However, he soon noticed that Dong Rui's face opposite him had turned bluish-purple. Dong Rui spat out several bubbles with a wet gurgle, flailing his arms desperately in an attempt to swim upward.
*Is this guy... drowning? Suffocating?*
Then why was He Lingchuan perfectly fine?
Checking his own breathing, he realized the interior of the jellyfish was almost entirely fluid—probably eighty or ninety percent water, with the remainder being a viscous gel. Dong Rui was essentially trapped inside a giant ball of water, unable to break free. Of course he would suffocate!
Straining with all his might, Dong Rui only managed to claw his way upward a short distance—three feet at most—while the breath held in his chest was running out.
Dong Rui glared at He Lingchuan, his eyes wide with utter disbelief.
How could this kid be floating there so leisurely? Did he possess some secret method for breathing underwater?
He pointed frantically at himself, reaching out toward He Lingchuan over and over.
Meaning: *help me?*
He Lingchuan smiled back at him and spread his hands.
This bastard had caused trouble for him time and again; otherwise, neither of them would have ended up in the river. Watching him choke to death face-to-face was truly a sight for sore eyes.
Realizing that He Lingchuan intended to leave him to die, Dong Rui shouted at the top of his lungs:
"The jellyfish is poisonous! If you don't save me, you'll die too!"
Water conducted sound. When Dong Rui shouted it twice in succession, the smile vanished from He Lingchuan's face.
The jellyfish was poisonous?
After all, this was an abomination concocted by Dong Rui, and He Lingchuan knew well enough that certain jellyfish were indeed deadly.
*Better safe than sorry,* He Lingchuan sighed inward.
On second thought, there was no telling how long this jellyfish would continue drifting. He had no desire to soak in corpse water, nor did he want to open his eyes every time only to find a drowned ghost staring back at him.
Especially a drowned ghost as hideous as this one.
And so, He Lingchuan produced another turtle pearl, waved it at Dong Rui, and reeled in the grappling cord.
This time Dong Rui understood. Instead of resisting, he swam toward him like a madman.
The distance between them had only been seven or eight feet to begin with, so meeting halfway brought them together in no time.
Dong Rui practically snatched the turtle pearl from He Lingchuan's hand and shoved it into his mouth.
He Lingchuan watched as Dong Rui inhaled sharply, the limbs that had been on the verge of convulsing slowly settling down.
Their gazes locked, and an awkward silence fell between them, broken only by the purple hue on Dong Rui's face gradually fading back to normal.
After a long while, Dong Rui finally opened his mouth. "Neither of us makes a move in here. We'll settle our scores once we're out!"
The fluid inside the jellyfish flowed slowly, seemingly exchanging with the outside water at a sluggish pace. He Lingchuan said crossly, "Where's the antidote?"
"As long as things stay peaceful between us, I'll give it to you before we get out." Dong Rui was still panting. "It's a slow-acting poison. It won't kill anyone in two or three days."
Seeing He Lingchuan raise an eyebrow, Dong Rui hurriedly added, "I carry over a hundred different medicines on me, and the antidote has to be compounded on the spot. If you kill me now, you won't even know which medicine to take!"
He Lingchuan had no way to judge the truth of those words, so he had to treat them as genuine for now. Pointing to the sleeve arrow lodged in his shoulder, Dong Rui said, "Could you pull it out?"
Only then did He Lingchuan help him extract the arrowhead.
Fortunately, the wound was small. Rather than tearing a strip of cloth to bind the injury as He Lingchuan expected, Dong Rui pulled two objects resembling silver tree ears from goodness-knows-where and slapped them directly over the wound.
With a firm press, they adhered tightly to his skin, effectively sealing out the water. Otherwise, soaking an open wound in the river for an extended period would be no different from slitting his wrists; he would have bled to death sooner or later.
When Dong Rui moved to reach for medicine bottles, He Lingchuan naturally forbade it. Who knew what devilish trick this scoundrel might pull?
Tossing Dong Rui an elixir pill, He Lingchuan snapped, "To stop the bleeding. Swallow it."
Chapter 303