A man among dragons, building a mysterious ancient church.

Chapter 373 The Big Black Catfish, So That's You!

76 degrees north latitude, Arctic Ocean.

The world seems to freeze here, yet breathes slowly. The sea struggles, as if unwilling to be completely frozen, surging powerfully through the gaps in the ice of varying thicknesses, crashing against the glaciers everywhere.

The clouds hung low, and the biting sea wind, carrying ice crystals and salt grains, howled and pierced through everything.

Ordinary life can hardly survive here. The wind scrapes against your skin like ice blades, and each breath feels like inhaling cold shards of glass. The moisture in your nasal cavity instantly condenses into frost.

Xu Lie appeared here, the cold wind blowing in his face, but it couldn't fog up his monocle. Normally, Xu Lie would wipe his monocle just for fun; how could his uniqueness be fogged up by an ordinary north wind?

However, being constantly exposed to the north wind was not a pleasant experience. Xu Lie's clothes suddenly stopped swaying, and the north wind completely subsided.

Stealing a portion of the wind element, or even deceiving the North Wind, is all very easy for Xu Lie now.

Xu Lie traveled thousands of miles to this far north, not to deal with the north wind, but to target the big guy under the glacier.

This is the true incubation ground for Nidhogg the Black King!

In the field of modern science, oceanographers have discovered that ocean currents do not have a single destination; rather, they are a vast, interconnected, and circulating water system on a global scale.

What modern oceanographers don't know is that, in the realm of mysticism, under the influence of the Black King's authority, the end point of the ocean currents beneath the deep sea is in the Arctic Ocean, right in this Black King's hatchery.

This continuously draws in deep-sea creatures from around the world, turning them into nutrients for the Black King.

Unfortunately, the Black King Nidhogg here did not develop sentience; he merely possessed a god-like body.

However, for Xu Lie's plan, the Black King with a divine body is enough. The next godhood ceremony only requires feeding the White King's holy remains some of the Black King Nidhogg's materials, which should be enough to elevate the White King's rank.

Xu Lie's gaze easily pierced through the ice, revealing countless schools of fish swimming and being swallowed layer by layer at the bottom of the Arctic Ocean, a prehistoric beluga whale, and a giant creature resembling a dragon.

But these marine creatures, which look frightening enough, cannot compare to the behemoth at the bottom of the Arctic Ocean.

The largest object at the bottom is over 100 meters tall and lies quietly on the bottom of the Arctic Ocean, resembling a submerged mountain.

If it weren't for the two rows of golden dragon eyes at the back of its head, arranged in an orderly fashion from small to large, one wouldn't dare to believe it was a living being.

"Come out and have some fun, big catfish." Xu Lie casually reached out and stole the black catfish's spot!
"Boom!" A giant catfish, entirely black, suddenly appeared on the surface of the glacier. Its enormous weight instantly crushed many glaciers, causing them to subdivide infinitely, transforming from glaciers into independent icebergs, and then into giant ice blocks.

The catfish, now exposed to the sunlight, reveals its true form. It is not only many times larger than an ordinary catfish, but its back is also covered with countless coral structures resembling dense forests and flowering trees.

Two thick, highway-like fish whiskers shatter glaciers and cleave open oceans with a single sweep.

The nine rows of golden dragon eyes that stretched from the back of his head to his spine squinted uncomfortably as the long-absent sunlight gently shone upon them.

In just a few seconds, the catfish had adapted on its own, and all eighteen of its dragon eyes were wide open, trying to find the culprit that had brought it out of the deep sea.

The giant catfish has no intelligence whatsoever; even when it seeks out enemies, it is merely a subconscious behavior.

In the vast sky and endless icy ocean, there were no creatures that could be considered enemies, only two or three polar bears and Arctic terns fluttering their wings in a desperate flight.

Enraged, the catfish began to wreak havoc on the surrounding area. Every leap of the catfish caused the earth to shake and the glaciers that had accumulated over thousands of years to tremble.

The giant fins on its sides can flap and create ice waves that are tens of meters high, as if it is trying to find the hiding enemy.

The surrounding Arctic foxes and seals were so frightened that they fled in panic.

Xu Lie quietly observed the catfish, a complete black king, whose position belonged to sequence zero.

The catfish before me, devoid of soul and intelligence, possesses unparalleled physical strength, capable of destroying entire areas with a mere whim. Due to the Black King's influence, it is considered half a Sequence Zero in terms of rank.

According to the principle that mystery will yield to higher levels of mystery, a catfish with a higher rank can basically ignore the abilities of many lower-ranking catfish.

If Xu Lie were to directly steal the catfish's location, it would likely place a considerable burden on him. Fortunately, Xu Lie has the advantage of the Source Fortress's status, as well as the uniqueness of the thief's path.

With the two additional features combined, moving this cumbersome catfish became relatively easy.

That's not the point. The point is, what exactly is going on with the Black King's soul?
Xu Lie was not only observing this naturally formed divine body, but also the connection between this divine body and the Black King's soul.

"As expected, it's hard to see anything just by observing like this." With a thought, Xu Lie sent several Sequence 3 clones formed by Time Worms to strike the catfish like a beam of light.

parasitic.

The catfish rolled even more violently in the icy ocean, stirring up towering ice waves. With a few leaps, they forcefully expanded the unchanging glaciers that had stood for millennia to the vast sea.

The entire world was blurred, with ice shards and waves filling the space, as if a giant master craftsman had transformed this area into a child's toy—a Christmas crystal ball that would keep snowing.

The difference is that the snowflakes in children's toys are pretty and harmless, while the high-speed ice shards in this world can kill living beings in a matter of minutes.

Xu Lie was multitasking, observing the catfish's specific changes from the outside while keeping one of his Time Worm clones connected to the catfish ready to sever ties at any moment. Aside from becoming even more ferocious and enraged, the catfish outside showed no other changes; however, the Time Worm inside the catfish was experiencing immense rejection.

That was a tsunami at the spiritual level, utterly irresistible, washing away Xu Lie's clone and preventing him from achieving parasitic control.

"Interesting." Xu Lie's eyes lit up. The big black catfish seemed to have no soul or intelligence, but it hid such powerful spiritual power.

Xu Lie adjusted his monocle, and an ancient, mottled stone clock phantom appeared behind him, its dial divided into twelve asymmetrical sections of gray-white and bluish-black.

The time-worm pointers of varying lengths jumped once, with the semi-transparent worm pointer in the middle that was neither too long nor too short.

when!
The strange bell sound, which only Xu Lie could hear, rang out here, and the giant catfish that was ravaging the icy ocean was completely frozen in place.

Maintaining a bizarre leaping posture, one can even see numerous ice shards and splashes of water, all frozen together with the catfish.

At the same time, the cleansing at the spiritual level was also affected by the time stoppage of the Time Worm, and was forced to slow down, until it came to a standstill.

The Time Worm clone inside the catfish breathed a sigh of relief. The main body was still trying to act like a human, once again going against the wave of rejection from the spiritual level to trace the source of the mysterious rejection.

For a short period of time, time in this area was under Xu Lie's control. It should have remained frozen until Xu Lie took the initiative to release it.

However, an unexpected event occurred. Inside the massive body of the black catfish, something seemed to be stimulated, and a torrent of time mixed with the concept of restarting the world surged and broke through Xu Lie's time stop.

That temporal torrent that led to the concept of restarting the world came to an end, without spreading further, but it just so happened to break the time freeze.

This allowed the black catfish's soul-level rejection to recover, and the Time Worm clones that were swimming upstream were directly washed away and disintegrated by this enormous rejection.

Xu Lie observed carefully but could not find the source of the inexplicably appearing torrent of time. It was as if some being, through its connection with the catfish, was remotely sending out a torrent to counteract Xu Lie's control.

To prevent black catfish from being forcibly parasitized.

There was no time to mourn for the clone. Xu Lie used his abilities from the time of the Trojan Horse to see the corresponding changes in fate through the clone's experience at the time of its death, and to find the source of the disturbance, or rather, the source of killing the clone.

With the unique advantage of having a source fortress and possessing a portion of the power of destiny, this ability is far more useful than Xu Lie imagined.

In a way that felt similar to dream divination, Xu Lie's perspective, accompanied by the gray mist, rose and fell, leading him to a strange, independent space—an independent space located in the far north.

The isolated space couldn't block Xu Lie's vision at all, allowing him to follow the source of his clone's death, delve deeper, and continue downward.

Finally, deep enough underground, Xu Lie saw a huge pool of mercury, a pool of mercury powerful enough to poison most dragons.

The walls of the pool were covered with dense alchemical patterns, used to cook the entire pool of mercury—or more accurately, to cook the mercury inside the pool.

Deeper within the mercury pool, four solid, pure gold pillars and a mysterious metal pillar broken in the middle form a platform of ruins.

The four pillars that had been soaking in mercury for a long time were not the main point. The main point was that each metal pillar was attached to a crimson gold chain, and the four crimson gold chains suspended a pale human figure in the center.

Seeing the young and pitiful figure suspended by the four pillars and four chains, Xu Lie slowly grinned, a slight smile playing on his lips: "I didn't expect it to be you."

The hanged man had a childlike face and looked like a child, but in fact he had a special kind of arrogant and noble air about him, as if he had once stood in the sky and looked down on all things in the mortal world.

Four chains suspended him, but what truly sealed this guy was the dark gold spear that pierced his chest—Gungnir.

The real Gungnir is right here. Every time Odin used Gungnir before, it was just a conceptual weapon from one of the Seven Kingdoms of Alchemy.

Xu Lie might not recognize the child's face, since only Lu Mingfei and the three members of the nanny group had ever seen it before.

But who else could be the little boy who is still sealed by the main body of Gungnir in the independent space (Nibelungen) near the Arctic Ocean and in the far north, besides Lu Mingze?

Tsk tsk, so this is what Lu Mingze looks like. Xu Lie took a few glances and made sure to remember his appearance.

His vision began to blur; fate could only lead him this far. As his perspective receded, everything slowly faded away, and his vision returned to its original state.

"boom!"

The giant catfish continues to ravage the glacier, like a relentless demon, destroying everything in sight.

But these were not what Xu Lie wanted to see. He had come all this way to this icy wasteland specifically to obtain the Black King's heart, so that the White King could have the nourishment to advance further in the future.

As for discovering the connection between Lu Mingze and the catfish in front of him through the death of his clone, that was an unexpected gain.

"Woo~!" The catfish, which had been silent since it came out, finally let out a weak whimper. Sometime during the night, the huge heart that powered its body had vanished! It had mysteriously disappeared!
The heart that keeps the dragon blood flowing through his body was stolen in such a bizarre way.

The terrifying divine body will not die. Even the king of the ocean and water, who is only an embryo, can regenerate a heart. How much more so this catfish?
But catfish cannot cause endless destruction, so they are forced to sink to the bottom of the sea and begin to hunt frantically to repair themselves.

(End of this chapter)