This was an underground river that plunged almost vertically, its current pouring down from a fissure high above.
Like a broken silver chain, it cascaded down through the deep cavern, forming several suspended waterfalls.
The roar of the water thundered, echoing between the stone walls.
Su Chen fell rapidly. As he descended deeper, the space sometimes narrowed, and the current grew turbulent and violent.
Suddenly, the waterfall churned, and a black shadow shot out.
A streamlined, sawtooth fish nearly thirty centimeters long charged at him. Before it could get close, a surge of Strong Will instantly immobilized it.
"A little interesting."
Su Chen could feel that this strange fish was unusually strong. Its body was covered in a slippery slime, and its spine vibrated rapidly like a spring, causing it to struggle violently within his mental grip.
Its tail thrashed wildly, its serrated fins slicing through the air with a piercing hum.
The mental force that could normally restrain a giant man was not enough to completely bind it. This forced him to suddenly increase the pressure of his Strong Will, violently twisting off the fish’s entire head and extinguishing its life.
HISS!!
The scent of blood spread with the current.
Almost simultaneously, there was another disturbance. Two more shuttle-like fish burst from the water. Several ghastly white Bone Blades extended from their dorsal fins and tails, spinning like bladed wheels and creating a piercing hum as they cut through the air.
However, as they flew to within a meter of Su Chen, they slammed into an invisible wall, and their high-speed cutting Bone Blades came to an abrupt halt.
’So these fish are the so-called Blood and Flesh Contaminated Creatures. They have some sacrificial value,’ Su Chen thought with a sigh. ’They’re like bioweapons.’
Their eyes glowed red, as if they had been driven into a frenzy. He had no idea where they had come into contact with this power of blood and flesh creation.
With a thought, he used his Strong Will to snap the fishes’ heads. After communicating with Ruoruo via Mind Transmission, he applied a Weightless Gravity Field to each of the three dead fish, making them as light as feathers and sending them floating up the shaft toward the entrance.
Without delay, Su Chen continued his descent deeper into the cave.
This part of the descent was full of terraced cliffs and drops.
Every time he descended about fifty meters, he would take a Light Storage Stone from the bag Yan Ziqian had prepared and, using his Strong Will, embed it deep into the slick rock wall like a nail.
The stones emitted a brilliant glow, dispelling the darkness and also marking his path.
Resource points where Nether Sand Ore Crystals and Ashen Bud Flowers grew were also marked with specific highlights.
Additionally, any lurking cave dwellers or mutated aquatic fish he encountered along the way were precisely eliminated.
He gathered the corpses, using his Telekinesis to stack them in a narrow recess in the cave, leaving them for the personnel following behind to handle.
’I’ve already descended for a kilometer,’ Su Chen thought, pausing his descent.
This was even deeper than he had imagined.
The once-trickling waterfalls had now converged into a massive torrent that roared like thunder, filling the air with mist. The chokepoint at the bottom was completely submerged.
’Oxygen isn’t a problem.’
In a cave with an underground river, air could circulate with the water flow, so hypoxia was usually not a concern.
However, there was a noticeable Elemental Suppression effect. At the very least, his personal Elemental Resonance had been compressed to a range of within eighty meters.
This was not a good sign.
It also meant that the killing power of related Elemental attacks would surely be hindered.
’Suppressing Elemental Power in the Age of Magic... This is just outrageous.’
Interestingly, his personally released Strong Will was unaffected, and his global Telekinesis Perception range had not narrowed in the slightest.
This differential treatment suggested something unusual was afoot.
Su Chen’s gaze fell downward. The water continued to converge, and the further down he looked, the more the cascading waterfalls merged into a vast, white torrent.
The once-wide rock walls suddenly constricted, forming an extremely twisted, S-shaped pass—a siphon that could only be traversed by diving.
’Time to dive.’
Su Chen informed Yan Ruoruo above him. She was just eighty meters over his head, while the other personnel were even higher up, transporting and excavating minerals, securing the sacrificial materials first.
BUZZ!
The Water-Splitting Pearl floating before him shimmered with an azure light. The surrounding water automatically parted, and even the mist from the waterfall couldn’t penetrate this boundary.
Holding a shotgun in both hands, Su Chen leaped into the water.
After diving more than thirty meters and passing a dark, winding rock corner, something unexpected happened.
WHOOSH!
A black shadow burst out without warning from a blind spot in his Perception. It was a cave dweller with fins. The moment it moved in the water, its entire body shot forward like a high-pressure torpedo.
Fast!
In the medium of water, its speed was even more advantageous than on land. Its trajectory was as straight as an arrow, stirring up a dense wake.
Faced with an impact that could shatter his bones, Su Chen’s expression remained as calm as a deep pool. Under threat, he naturally and smoothly entered a transcendent Heart Stream state.
CRACK!
A Water Mirror Screen he had deployed couldn’t stop the creature’s charge. It merely impeded its momentum for a moment before being shattered.
But that fraction of a second was enough.
A Single-Headed Bullet inscribed with triple Elemental mystic patterns was instantly chambered. The motion was fluid, and the Acceleration Rune Array within it had already been activated.
When the enemy closed to within two meters...
BOOM!
When the trigger was pulled, the muzzle erupted in a flash of silvery-white fire. A beam of lightning plasma—an electromagnetic current that seemed blindingly brilliant in that moment—pierced straight through the creature’s head.
Without any suspense, its hard, fish-like head exploded like a smashed watermelon, and a foul mixture of red and white spread out beyond the Water-Splitting Pearl’s barrier of light.
The first kill for the triple-composite Technique ’Extreme Thunder-Piercer’ was officially secured.

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