Before dawn had fully broken, the sea began to stir.
It was a sound that set one's teeth on edge—a rustling noise.
Like billions of silkworms gnawing on mulberry leaves, amplified countless times over.
"Boom—"
The towering black wall that had been hovering in the air began to move.
They had ended their dormancy.
As the first rays of sunlight pierced the horizon, this overwhelming Black Tide seemed to receive a marching order, beginning to surge frantically toward the east.
Its speed was even faster than yesterday.
In the regional channel, desperate cries and wails instantly flooded the screen.
The entire sea surface was thrown into chaos.
Countless rafts, like startled flocks of ducks, paddled desperately toward the east.
Amid this chaotic flight.
One ship stood out as distinctly out of place.
It did not flee.
Instead, it remained quietly anchored on the path of the advancing Black Tide, as if waiting for a bus.
On the deck of the "President."
Qin Yu held a cup of hot coffee, squinting against the briny sea breeze as he watched the encroaching black curtain in the distance.
"These bugs are quite punctual."
He took a sip of coffee and glanced at the tactical watch on his wrist.
"Six o'clock sharp."
"Not even this diligent when clocking in for work."
Standing beside him, Yao Xue was calibrating the tablet in her hands.
On the screen, the red dot representing the sensory source of the [Ocean Soul Crystal Mother] maintained a startling synchronization with the Black Tide.
"It's not that they're diligent."
Yao Xue said without looking up, her fingers swiftly swiping across the screen.
"It's that the big guy below is hungry."
"According to calculations, the Black Tide's movement speed is thirty knots per hour."
"This indicates that the 'Leviathan' below is accelerating."
Qin Yu finished his coffee in one gulp and casually handed the cup to Yao Qian, who was yawning beside him.
"Thirty knots?"
"For a patient in a weakened state during molting, that's not a slow speed."
He turned around, his gaze instantly turning cold.
The lazy demeanor vanished completely, replaced by the ferocity of a hunter about to enter the fray.
"Notify all personnel."
"Time to work."
"Since it wants to run, let's give it a send-off."
"Dive!"
...
"Hum—"
The massive black hull slowly descended.
Seawater flooded over the deck, swallowing the sleek, technologically advanced exterior.
A few seconds later.
Only a massive whirlpool remained on the sea surface before it calmed once more.
At a depth of twenty meters underwater.
The "President" hovered silently in the water like a lurking steel behemoth.
Inside the cockpit.
The lighting had switched to the dim red of combat mode.
"Depth 20 meters, airtight integrity good."
"Power output stable."
"Sonar system activated."
Yao Qian sat before the main console. Though she still looked like the soft, nerdy girl, her fingers moved with such speed they were a blur as she operated this killing machine.
"Yu-ge, the Black Tide above has passed."
Qin Yu leaned back in the captain's chair, watching the surveillance feed from above.
On the screen, the sea surface had been dyed black.
Even through twenty meters of seawater, the suffocating sense of oppression was palpable.
Countless tiny insect corpses and excrement fell into the sea like snow.
The surrounding fish swarmed in a frenzy to snatch it.
"Don't worry about the bugs up there."
Qin Yu lit a cigarette, his gaze fixed intently on the very bottom of the sonar screen.
There.
Lay an abyss of unfathomable darkness.
"Our target is below."
"Turn the sonar to maximum power."
"Scan out its position for me."
"Yes!"
Li Ruobing responded excitedly, shoving the power lever forward with force.
"Hummm!!!"
An invisible sound wave, centered on the President, radiated wildly into the deep sea.
One second.
Two seconds.
Three seconds.
"Beep—!"
A crisp feedback tone sounded.
On the main screen, the previously pitch-black deep-sea topographic map suddenly lit up with a large patch of red spots.
The red patch was enormous.
So large it nearly covered half the screen.
"Hiss…"
Li Ruobing drew in a sharp breath, her eyes widening in disbelief as she stared at the data on the screen.
"Is this… what we're hunting?"
"Isn't this a damn aircraft carrier?"
"No."
Yao Xue calmly adjusted her glasses, looking at the terrifying string of values.
"Approximately 5,200 meters in length."
"About 800 meters in width."
"This isn't just an aircraft carrier."
"This is… a living mountain range."
Even though they had mentally prepared themselves.
When the outline of that colossal entity truly appeared on the screen, the air in the cockpit still froze.
Five thousand meters long.
What did that mean?
Take the tallest skyscraper on Blue Star, lay it horizontally, and you'd still need to add five or six more.
And their proud 50-meter-class submarine was like a mere sesame seed in front of this monster.
"Scared?"
Qin Yu exhaled a smoke ring, a hint of arrogance curling at the corner of his mouth.
"Being scared is fucking useless."
"Ruo Bing, where's that crazy streak of yours?"
"That's meat."
"A massive, moving treasure trove, S-class or above."
Provoked by his words, the fear in Li Ruobing's eyes instantly turned into fervor.
She licked her lips and reached for the weapons console.
"Who's scared?"
"I was just thinking about how much loot would explode if we blew this thing up."
"Even if we just stripped its skin, it'd probably wrap our ship ten or twenty layers thick."
Qin Yu laughed.
He liked this desperado attitude.
In this post-apocalyptic world, the bold thrived while the timid starved.
"Follow it."
"Maintain a distance of two thousand meters directly above it."
"Don't get too close, but don't lose it either."
"Let's see just how weak this old thing really is."
The President's stern emitted an eerie blue exhaust flame.
Cutting a straight trajectory through the deep sea, it clung tightly to that massive shadow.
The further they advanced.
The more abnormal the seawater conditions became.
The originally clear, azure water began to turn murky.
Suspended in the water were large amounts of flocculent matter.
Like tattered cotton wool, or the decaying skin of some creature.
"Test the water quality."
Qin Yu ordered.
Yao Xue quickly operated the analyzer.
"It's organic matter."
"High concentrations of protein and keratin fragments."
"And also…"
Yao Xue frowned as she looked at the analysis results.
"A significant amount of toxins."
"The water's toxicity now is ten times stronger than cobra venom."
"If our hull didn't have anti-corrosion coating, the outer shell would probably be corroded through by now."
Qin Yu looked through the reinforced glass at the white, ghostly flocculent matter drifting past outside the window.
"This is 'molting.'"
"The old thing is shedding its old body."
"These toxins are waste products from within it."
As he spoke, a gleam flashed in his eyes.
"The more toxins it expels, the more intense its current bodily replacement reaction."
"In other words."
"Its new skin hasn't fully formed yet."
"Right now, it's like a peeled egg."
"Soft and vulnerable."
This was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
Normally, a monster of this level would have scales that could probably withstand a few nuclear hits.
But now?
It was just a massive piece of sashimi.
"Yu-ge, there's a situation!"
Yao Qian suddenly pointed at a corner of the sonar screen and screamed.
"Around that big guy..."
"There are lots of little red dots!"
"No, not so little... each one is dozens of meters long!"
Qin Yu immediately looked at the screen.
Around the massive red shadow, hundreds of smaller light points densely encircled it.
Like escort ships, they tightly guarded the central mothership.
"A defensive perimeter."
Qin Yu snorted coldly.
"The system was right."
"If this thing dares to come out at this time, it definitely has a backup plan."
"The Black Tide is the shield in the sky."
"These things are the spears underwater."
Li Ruobing zoomed in, trying to get a clearer look at the escorts.
The blurry sonar imaging showed a group of creatures with elongated bodies, resembling sea snakes or eels.
"Deep Sea Giant Eels?"
"Over three hundred in number."
"Each has an energy level reaction above A-grade."
"A few of the leaders even have quasi-S-grade fluctuations."
Li Ruobing reported the data, her palms slightly sweaty.
This setup.
It was practically a fully assembled deep-sea fleet.
If they charged in recklessly, they'd be torn to shreds instantly.
"Can our firepower handle this?"
Li Ruobing might be bold, but she wasn't foolish.
The "President" was strong, but it was just one ship.
Two fists can't fight off four hands, let alone three hundred mouths.
Qin Yu stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray.
"Of course, a head-on fight won't work."
"We're here to be assassins, not tanks."
He stood up and walked to the tactical board.
His finger drew a circle around the massive red shadow.
"It's molting."
"For such creatures, molting usually starts with a split at the head or back."
"That's its most vulnerable and fatal spot."
Qin Yu's gaze swept over the three women.
"Yao Qian, control the ship. Use ocean currents and those flocculent substances as cover."
"We need to slip in like ghosts."
"Turn off active sonar. Switch to passive mode."
"Yes!" Yao Qian immediately shut down active detection. The beeping sounds in the control room vanished instantly, replaced by dead silence.
"Ruo Bing."
"I'll create an opportunity for you later."
"Your only task is this."
Qin Yu pointed at the center of the red patch.
"Fire the Great White Shark (torpedo) into that old thing's flesh."
"Let it burrow in through its wound and explode inside its belly."
Upon hearing this, the red light in Li Ruobing's eyes intensified.
She nodded fiercely, a cruel smile curling at the corner of her mouth.
"Don't worry, Yu-ge."
"This kind of job is my specialty."
"I'll make sure it enjoys it to the heavens."
"Yao Xue."
Qin Yu finally looked at the calmest woman.
"You're in charge of those ten All-Terrain Black Ant Robots."
"Once the battle begins,"
"I need you to create a firepower isolation zone, obscuring the vision of those hundreds of eels."
"Or at the very least, buy us three minutes."
"Just three minutes."
"That's all I need to send this Leviathan back to where it came from."
Yao Xue adjusted her glasses, her fingers typing a command on the keyboard.
"Black Ant Robots are preheated."
"Ready for deployment at any moment."
"Good."
Qin Yu settled back into the captain's chair.
He gripped the control sticks with both hands, feeling the faint vibrations transmitted by this steel behemoth.
Outside the window.
In the murky seawater.
The moving mountain of flesh was now faintly visible.
Even in the darkness of the deep sea.
The glowing, fissure-like patterns on its body resembled flowing rivers of magma.
That ancient, savage, and overbearing aura pierced through the barrier of seawater, pressing heavily upon everyone's hearts.
This was the Abyssal Lord.
The former ruler of these waters.
But in Qin Yu's eyes.
It was merely a massive, mobile treasure chest.
"Stealth mode, maximum power."
"We're going in."
"Don't blink."
"This strike, I'm aiming for its heart."
The "President" extinguished all external lights completely.
Like a dead fish drifting through the murky, toxic waters.
Riding the push of the ocean currents.
Bit by bit.
It slid toward the abyssal maw large enough to swallow everything.
...
Distance to target: five nautical miles.
The surrounding water temperature began to rise sharply.
From bone-chilling cold to a now tepid forty degrees.
That was the intense heat radiating from the Leviathan's body.
"Warning! External temperature too high!"
"The cooling system is operating at full capacity!"
Yao Qian's voice held a note of tension.
"The water is almost boiling!"
"Any closer, and our radiators will burst!"
Qin Yu stared at the instrument panel.
"Hold steady."
"Not close enough yet."
"We must get within one kilometer."
"Otherwise, the torpedoes will be intercepted by those guardian eels."
At that moment.
On the sonar screen, a green dot suddenly flickered.
It was one of the quasi-S-class guardian eels.
It seemed to have sensed something.
Its massive body gave a sudden flick of its tail in the water.
Breaking from its patrol route, it swam directly toward the direction where the "President" was hiding.
"Have we been detected?"
Li Ruobing's finger hovered over the launch button, her knuckles white.
"Don't move."
Qin Yu's voice was dangerously low.
"It's just suspicious."
"Don't give it a reason to be sure."
It was a distance of several dozen meters.
Everyone could see the enormous serpentine head through the portholes.
Those dead-fish eyes glowing with a ghastly white light slid past outside the window.
That row of razor-sharp teeth even scraped against the ship's outer hull.
"Screech—"
A chilling sound of metal grinding.
Yao Qian covered her mouth, holding her breath.
The eel circled around the ship once.
Seeming to mistake this cold hunk of iron for a slightly larger rock or an inedible piece of hard bone.
It flicked its tongue.
Finally, with a swish of its tail, it turned and swam away.
"Whew..."
A collective sigh of relief echoed through the cockpit.
Yao Xue wiped the cold sweat from her forehead.
"That was close..."
But Qin Yu showed no sign of relaxation.
He watched the direction in which the eel had swum.
There.
It was a massive fissure on Leviathan's back.
That crack was hundreds of meters long.
Crimson flesh curled outward, revealing pulsating blue blood vessels within.
That was the weak point.
That was the gate.
"Now's our chance."
Qin Yu forcefully pushed the throttle lever.
"Now!"
"Full speed ahead!"
"Ruo Bing! Aim for that crack!"
"Fire!!!"
Since stealth had reached its limit.
Then with absolute firepower, tear off this last shred of cover.
"Boom—!!!"
The "President," silent for so long, bared its fangs at this moment.
All four engines simultaneously spewed dazzling blue light.
The hull, like a black sword, instantly pierced through the murky seawater.
Two "Great White Shark" torpedoes, carrying an aura of death, trailed long streams of bubbles.
Screaming.
They charged toward the Abyssal Lord's spine.
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