Apotheosis Begins with Tai Chi

’A Cyan Ink Treasure Snake!’

Chen Cheng’s heart leaped, a distinct glint flashing in his eyes.

Wu Ziyu had mentioned it before. This type of Treasure Snake was extremely rare. Its gallbladder was highly nourishing, and eating it raw provided the greatest benefits. The snake’s body, stewed with nine different medicinal herbs, produced the exact effect Chen Cheng needed...

To improve his Root Bone.

According to Wu Ziyu, the Cyan Ink Treasure Snake Medicinal Cuisine was even better at improving one’s Root Bone than the Golden Ring Treasure Snake Medicinal Wine from the Jiuan Hunting Manor.

Of course, this was just a generalization based on common experience. In reality, which one was better ultimately depended on the individual.

With this in mind, Chen Cheng immediately began swimming close to the riverbed, rapidly approaching the area.

Meanwhile, the Cyan Ink Treasure Snake was trying to escape through a gap between two fishing nets.

Its swimming speed was already extremely fast. At the last possible moment, its body coiled and then shot forward, accelerating dramatically like a cyan arrow released from a fully drawn bow.

Had it been ordinary fishermen, they wouldn’t have even been able to see its shadow at that moment, let alone stop it.

Unfortunately for the snake, the ones surrounding it were five specialized fishermen who worked with exceptional coordination and had spent years using special techniques to hone their swimming abilities to a level far beyond that of ordinary people.

They understood the characteristics of the Cyan Ink Treasure Snake very well.

The moment the Cyan Ink Treasure Snake coiled its body, before it could even shoot forward, a net was already blocking its path.

Crucially, the encirclement formed by the five large nets had already shrunk to a small enough size.

Seeing it was about to crash into the net ahead, the Cyan Ink Treasure Snake tried desperately to slow down and change direction.

But in the next instant, the net from behind descended upon it.

The material of these fishing nets was extremely pliable, and the mesh was woven to be small and dense.

Once the net was suddenly thrown over and cinched tight, the Cyan Ink Treasure Snake couldn’t squeeze out at all. In fact, the more it struggled, the tighter the net became. In just a few moments, it was completely subdued.

The five men exchanged a smile and began swimming toward the surface.

Three of them swam faster than the others; from their purplish faces, it was clear they were in a hurry to get a breath of air.

The other two were clearly better swimmers. Their faces were only slightly flushed, and their movements were calm and unhurried.

One of them held the Cyan Ink Treasure Snake, tightly bound in the fishing net.

The smile on his face was the widest of them all.

Evidently, although the five had cooperated on this venture, most of the credit would ultimately go to him, and he would receive the lion’s share of the reward.

His smile grew even wider at the thought of receiving the reward when he returned.

”Urgh—!!”

Suddenly, the smile was wiped from his face, replaced by a terror that nearly twisted his features.

A large hand had seized his right ankle in a death grip.

In the next instant, a terrifying surge of Dark Force exploded beneath the skin of his ankle.

He could clearly feel his bones shattering and his flesh turning to pulp. The pain was so excruciating it made his vision go black.

He instinctively opened his mouth to scream, but no sound came out—only a dense stream of bubbles that gushed upward, bursting with a series of muffled pops.

Before he could react further, the large hand on his ankle yanked him violently downward.

He felt as if he were being dragged down by a massive boulder, completely powerless to resist. He didn’t even have time to flail his arms before he was plunged into the deeper darkness with a SWOOSH.

The instant he was forcefully dragged into a patch of waterweeds, another large hand closed around his throat.

”CRACK!”

The sharp sound of breaking bone was completely muffled by the heavy current.

And just like that, he was a corpse.

Amidst the swaying waterweeds, Chen Cheng took the net holding the Cyan Ink Treasure Snake in one hand and the man’s coldly glinting fish spear in the other.

”SWISH!”

With a backhanded thrust, he drove the fish spear through the corpse’s heart, pinning it firmly to the riverbed.

Above, the other, more skilled swimmer had already noticed something was wrong.

He stopped swimming toward the surface and looked down.

The bottom was exceptionally dark, and the waterweeds were too dense. All he could see were the last few tiny bubbles rising up, but he couldn’t see his companion’s figure at all.

’A predator fish?’

The moment the thought flashed through his mind, his expression changed drastically. Not daring to linger for even a fraction of a second, he swam toward the surface with all his might.

By the time he surfaced, climbed onto the fishing boat, and explained what happened, Chen Cheng was already hundreds of yards away, having swum along the riverbed until he vanished completely into the endless gloom.

「Some time later.」

Chen Cheng surfaced in a body of water several miles away.

It was a stretch of reed marshes, dotted with numerous shallows.

Dense thickets of withered, yellow reed stalks stood much taller than a man. Their tassels were long gone, leaving only bare stems to sway gently in the wind.

A water bird, startled from deep within the reeds, took flight with a flutter of wings, gliding low over the water before settling down again in a more distant patch of marsh.

”...Where the hell am I?”

Chen Cheng climbed onto a small sandbar. He gazed into the distance, then looked up at the sun.

He was headed in the right direction, but he couldn’t be sure exactly how much farther it was to the Wu Family Wharf.

A cold wind blew past, causing his skin to tighten and instantly break out in goosebumps. After soaking in the bone-chilling water for so long, his body temperature had dropped below a critical level, even with the aid of the Wandering Dragon Technique.

If his temperature continued to drop, even he would be in mortal danger.

Furthermore, his stamina was also greatly depleted.

And this was with the aid of his Harmonious Attribute; anyone else would have drowned long before they even reached these shallows.

The situation looked extremely bleak.