Beyond the Timescape

Chapter 882: Gobsmacked Old Grandpa

The only thing Xu Qing could do in response to the Captain’s crazy behavior was sigh. None of it was a surprise. When his Eldest Brother asked for that Dawning Sun, it explained everything. Xu Qing knew that he couldn’t stop the Captain from acting suicidal, and that the best reaction was to just back away.

On the frozen red sea, the Captain’s eyes and facial expression were both masks of craziness. He was the one who went around biting things. But then this shell bit him! It left him feeling like he had lost a lot of face in front of his little Junior Brother.

Glaring down at the shell, the Captain laughed loudly. “It’s time for you to learn, fool, that you can’t just go around biting anything you please!”

The Dawning Sun continued to power up, emitting astonishing heat waves that rolled out in all directions. The shells were starting to glow red, and ripples were now visible on the surface of the water. That terrifying heat was rapidly spreading out across the entire sea.

Despite being several thousand meters away, even Xu Qing could feel the intensity of the heat.

That said, though the Captain was acting crazy, he didn’t actually want to end things in mutual destruction with the shell. Or perhaps it was that the shell just wasn’t very ferocious. Either way, the Captain was still thinking straight enough to just let out some of the heat from the Dawning Sun. He didn’t truly detonate it.

It really highlighted how familiar the Captain was with Dawning Suns. Originally, this sun started out as an ancient sun that the Captain fished out of a river. Of course, the Dawning Suns were also the domain treasures of humankind. And considering that Xu Qing had put some of Crimson Mother’s flesh into this one, it obviously surpassed ordinary Dawning Suns. Because of that, even just the mere heat it could radiate was astonishing, even inside of a god domain.

Ripples were now visible everywhere as the frozen sea turned into an actual sea. As for the shells... they were all bright red, and the eagles inside of them were trembling. The heat of the dawn light, and the mutagen, were so strong that the entire world in the area was changing.

Laughing madly, the Captain shot down to the shell that had bitten him, jumped inside, and quickly dug out the pearl inside.

Then, he took advantage of the fact that the other shells were all open due to the heat. Moving at top speed, he raced from one to the next, digging out pearls.

“You trashy shells!” he said loudly. “You couldn’t just let me have the pearls, could you? Oh no. You just had to force my hand. Well, if you refuse to do things the easy way, we’ll do them the hard way!

“Back in the day, I froze you and took the pearls as I wished. I had you locked down so tightly you couldn’t fart! Well, my cultivation base isn’t the same as it was back then, but I still have ways of dealing with you. This time, I can’t freeze you, so I’ll boil you!”

The Captain felt wonderful. Looking over at Xu Qing, who was still carefully backing away, he called, “Little Junior Brother! Don’t be such a scaredy-cat! Come, come! Help me grab a pearl or two!”

Xu Qing was 15,000 meters away, and he wasn’t stopping. He didn’t even look over his shoulder.

The Captain shook his head. Clearly, little Ah Qing needs some toughening up.

Humming a little tune, the Captain continued taking out pearls until he had more than a hundred....

Meanwhile, the water was bubbling with more and more intensity as the heat increased. From a distance, the previously frozen sea now looked like a pot of boiling water. The shells were bright red, and the huge eagles inside of them had been stimulated to the point of opening their eyes. Their eyes glowed black, and they let loose piercing cries. For thousands of such shells to all be issuing such howls created a deafening sound wave that could end the heavens and crush the earth.

Soon, the struggles of the eagles reached a peak level. The shells were rocking back and forth violently. Some of them even moved their bivalve shells like wings, and flew up into the air. Sprays of water shot up like geysers. The sea was mutating!

Stunned, the Captain looked at the shaking shells.

“They can actually fly?”

Based on what he remembered, this frozen red sea had never done anything like this, and the shell eagles definitely hadn’t ever flown.

As the Captain looked on in shock, the sea churned. Countless shells flew up into the air. In fact, all of them were flying. At the same time, the water erupted. Sea water shot up into the air!

The cries of the huge eagles were both excited, angry, and murderous. And they were all glaring at the Captain. And then they started racing toward him.

Up to this point, none of this was too much to deal with. The Captain’s eyes glowed with cold light.

“Who are you trying to scare?”

Snorting coldly, he was about to launch an attack when, all of a sudden, something happened that made even him gasp....

The entire sea was floating up, revealing that at the bottom of it was a mass of tentacles....

The Captain looked on, stunned. Instinctively putting the Dawning Sun away, he turned and raced madly in Xu Qing’s direction.

Off in the distance, Xu Qing could sense the terrifying fluctuations behind him, and eventually couldn’t help but stop and turn around.

What he saw floating up into the air wasn’t sea water. Rather, it was an absolutely gargantuan red jellyfish! The massive jellyfish had just been resting there, with the huge sea being nothing but its head. Now it had been woken up, and had floated up into the air. Compared to it, the Captain was like nothing more than a mote of dust.

The mere sight of the terrifying jellyfish caused Xu Qing’s scalp to go numb. Turning back around, he fled at top speed. The Captain was behind him, moaning and groaning as he tried to catch up.

“Little Junior Brother...” he cried. Xu Qing didn’t respond, but he reached back with his right hand and lent some power to the Captain. As a result, the Captain achieved a burst of speed that put more distance between himself and the huge jellyfish and its tentacles.

Gasping for breath, the Captain then threw out the rope of flesh. Xu Qing grabbed it and yanked it, pulling the Captain a bit closer.

“This was just a slight mishap, little Junior Brother...” The Captain said as he caught up. Xu Qing just kept going.

They were now being chased by several thousand eagles as well as a floating jellyfish. Angry howls echoed out; from the sound of it, they wouldn’t rest until the object of their animosity was dead.

Thankfully, the spider webs were still around, and the jellyfish was gargantuan. It couldn’t pass through the spider webs without having to worry about being stuck, and that slowed it down a lot. This also served to highlight how terrifying the jellyfish was, as some of the strands of spider web snapped due to its passage. Some of them ended up tossed aside by the jellyfish's tentacles.

Xu Qing was reeling from the sight of it

Even the Captain was scared witless. “This sea was never like this in any of my past lives! It’s-it’s-it’s... it’s actually a gigantic jellyfish??”

Xu Qing wasn’t in the mood to reply. Gritting his teeth, he kept fleeing.

In that manner, time passed.

***

A few days later, another person could be seen fleeing through the sky of the god domain just like the Captain and Xu Qing. He was none other than Tuo Shishan. His hair was disheveled, and he looked to be in pretty bad shape. He was being chased by two tentacled fish who were hot on his tail.

Why am I so unlucky?

Tuo Shishan felt like he was running out of options, and was starting to get anxious. After entering the god domain, things had gone smoothly at first. But the more time that passed, the less smoothly they went. He had even had to deal with eyes of annihilation. If he hadn’t paid the price of putting the old grandpa inside of him to sleep, the eyes of annihilation would have killed him.[1]

He had assumed his misfortune had passed after that incident, but had somehow ended up running into these two tentacled fish. And now the old grandpa was asleep.... Tuo Shishan sighed. Unless he had no other options, he didn’t want to force the old grandpa to wake up. It would be too hard on the old man.

It’s fine. I have other options. These tentacled fish will go away once they catch prey....

He started looking around for someone to transfer his calamity to. After searching hard for about two hours, the bedraggled Tuo Shishan saw two figures racing along in the distance.

Xu Qing? But who’s that other guy? Another human?

Tuo Shishan’s eyes lit up. For a short time, he wrestled with whether or not to cause trouble for Xu Qing. In the end, he gritted his teeth and reminded himself of the two common sayings: better you than me, fellow daoist and all great men are ruthless. [2]

Oh, Xu Qing. We’re not really friends, and thus, our meeting here... is just bad luck for you!

Without any hesitation, he tapped into all the strength he could muster to shoot rapidly toward Xu Qing, with the two tentacled fish right behind him.

***

Xu Qing and the Captain were in rough shape. For several days straight, they had been pursued relentlessly by the giant jellyfish. Even when they tried to lead the chase through areas heavily congested with spider webs, the jellyfish never seemed to slow down. Apparently, the effects of the Wordless words didn’t apply to the jellyfish.

“It’s not that the invisibility stopped working,” the Captain explained. “It’s just that karma is bound too tightly. If we can just get far enough away from it for a few hours, then we should be able to sever the karma threads.”

Xu Qing nodded. Around then, they happened to spot Tuo Shishan flying toward them with two tentacled fish behind him.

Xu Qing’s eyebrows shot up.

At the same time, a heaven-shaking, earth-shattering roar echoed out from behind Xu Qing and the Captain as the jellyfish snapped through spider webs to chase after them.

Whether because of its size or its momentum, the jellyfish shook everything in the area.

***

Tuo Shishan had been focusing on Xu Qing as he attempted to get the tentacled fish to switch targets. But then he looked up. He immediately caught sight of the terrifying jellyfish and the host of shell eagles.

One look was all it took to cause sweat to break out on his forehead. The two tentacled fish stopped in place, shivered, then spun and fled in the opposite directions. In the blink of an eye, they were gone....

As Tuo Shishan hovered there with his heart pounding, Xu Qing and the Captain got closer. They had clearly seen the two fish chasing him, which then fled.

A sense of deadly crisis exploded within Tuo Shishan. Without any hesitation, he proudly called out, “Fellow Daoist Xu Qing, I’m here to lend a helping hand!”

As the words left his mouth, he prodded the old grandpa inside of him, then waved his hand. Glittering light shone out as a projection of the old grandpa appeared. Looking confused, he flew straight toward the jellyfish.

1. Back in chapter 842, when Xu Qing clashed with Tuo Shishan, we learned that Tuo Shishan has a sealed Smoldering God that he controls. ☜

2. I just have to point out that the first phrase is indeed a common Chinese idiom that has the term ‘fellow daoist’ in it. The phrase can be interpreted different ways depending on the context, and though the meaning is as I have rendered it, the more direct rendering would be something like ‘the fellow daoist dies, but this poor daoist (me) is not dead.’ ☜