Tianjin, starting with unorthodox methods to achieve immortality

At the bottom of the river, Chen Mo was covered in mud, his ten fingers gripping the rotting flesh on Shui Sha's chest so tightly that his fingertips sank half an inch deep.

Eight bone spears pierced the opponent's body from different angles, pinning it firmly in place.

The water monster opened its mouth wide, and invisible sound waves vibrated underwater, making Chen Mo's eardrums ache.

The surrounding undercurrents surged simultaneously, causing chaos throughout the entire riverbed.

The river water, which was originally quite clear, is now so murky that you can't see your hand in front of your face.

Chen Mo kept his eyes tightly closed, gripping the rotting flesh on the other person's body tightly by feel.

At the same time, his right hand pierced through the soft, rotten tissue, probing deeper into its chest, groping in a sticky, viscous sensation.

Finally, he touched a cold, hard object near the other person's kidneys.

It's a size larger than a fist, with a smooth surface, like a stone or a bone.

It is it.

The core of water-related evil influences.

Every evil spirit that can be warded off basically has such a core.

It doesn't have to be in a specific location; once you find it, the rest will be easy.

Sensing a deadly threat, the Water Demon's already weakened struggle suddenly intensified tenfold.

Instead of tumbling and crashing, it concentrates all its strength in one instant and contracts sharply.

The raging torrent of water closed up like a flower in an instant, enveloping Chen Mo completely.

It felt like being crushed by a mountain.

His vision went completely black, and all he could hear was the roar of the rushing water, which made his brain shake.

My ribs are creaking and groaning; I don't know which one will break first.

The last breath of air in his lungs was squeezed out, and a string of bubbles overflowed from the corner of his mouth, gurgling upwards.

"Die, you son of a bitch!"

Chen Mo's veins bulged all over his body, and he roared inwardly as he gripped the core with both hands.

Ten fingers gripped its smooth surface like iron clamps, nails digging in and leaving white marks.

He poured all his immense strength into his hands and suddenly exerted his power.

The core was forcibly pulled out of the rotting flesh.

......

In that instant, Shui Sha's body seemed to have all its tendons and bones removed, and it collapsed with a crash.

The water scattered, the rotting flesh fell off, and the water whips that were wrapped around Chen Mo lost their power in an instant.

The pair of dark red eyes flickered violently twice, like two lamps running out of oil, before finally going out with a "poof".

The remains slowly dispersed at the bottom of the river, turning into a murky mass of black water, which quickly merged into the silt at the bottom of the river, leaving nothing behind.

Except for one thing.

The core lay quietly in his palm.

The water gradually returned to calm.

"I've survived."

He looked down at the core in his palm.

The dark red luster stood out conspicuously in the murky water, and it was still faintly glowing red.

With a thought, the core disappeared from his palm and lay quietly in the corner of the storage space.

The water elemental energy has completely dissipated; not even a trace can be seen.

The surrounding silt was still slowly settling, falling piece by piece from the murky water.

The rubble and remnants of wooden stakes swept up by the whirlpool were scattered on the riverbed, lying in disarray.

He closed his eyes and focused his mind on his back.

The eight bone spears slowly retracted from different angles, shrinking into the acupoints on both sides of the spine, section by section.

With each reel in, the wound on my back would close up a little on its own.

Once the last bone spear had completely retracted into the body, the eight tiny wounds had already formed a thin layer of scabs.

After doing all that, he kicked his legs twice and floated upwards.

The moment he broke through the water's surface, Chen Mo opened his mouth and greedily inhaled a breath of air.

The river breeze, carrying the smell of fish and the chill of the night, filled his lungs, causing him to cough violently, his spittle tinged with blood.

It felt like there was a lump of burning coal stuck in my chest, and every breath was accompanied by a stinging pain.

It's likely that there's been a hidden injury to the lungs.

Chen Mo circulated his divine sense and scanned his body. Sure enough, his internal organs had suffered considerable damage.

Several small cuts appeared on my lungs, and each breath felt like being scratched by shards of glass.

His liver and spleen also had varying degrees of congestion, but fortunately there was no extensive rupture, otherwise he would have sunk to the bottom of the river by now.

"It's alright, I won't die."

He understood the situation, withdrew his consciousness, floated on his back on the water, and let the river carry him slowly toward the shore.

The moon was still hanging in the sky, its dark red light spilling onto the river, though paler than before.

In the distance, the Jianglong floated in the waves, its lights still on, and figures moved on the deck.

.....

Chen Mo took a few breaths before sending a wisp of his mind to probe the bottom of the water.

The eight shadow puppets had re-established contact with him, and the horizontal sword was stuck in the silt at the bottom of the river, with only the hilt showing.

The scabbard is nowhere to be found. It was probably shredded by the burst of water before Shui Sha died, or it was carried away by the undercurrents.

A shadow puppet rose from the mud, reached out and grasped the hilt of a sword, and pulled it out.

The black blade slashed through the muddy water, leaving a dark trail as mud slid off the edge, revealing the same cold light beneath.

The shadow puppet, holding a horizontal sword, floated towards the water. Chen Mo reached out, took the sword, and swam towards the shore.

As the mudflat drew closer, the figures on the earthen slope became clearer.

---

On the earthen slope.

From the moment the water surface exploded again, the group panicked completely, unsure of what was happening below.

Master Long stood at the very front, his hands clenched into fists.

He had spent most of his life on boats and had seen many strange things on the river, but he had never seen or even heard of a scene like this tonight.

Someone actually managed to fight the water demon at the bottom of the river? And they even managed to turn the entire river surface into boiling water.

Old Zhou picked up a stick from somewhere to support himself. The blood on his face had dried, making him look like an old ghost who had just crawled out of a grave.

"Stop looking. It looks lively on the surface, but nine times out of ten, the people underwater are already..."

He didn't finish speaking, but everyone understood.

The fat man's face paled even more.

The commotion at the bottom of the river gradually subsided.

The waves dropped from a height of ten feet to half a foot, then from half a foot to a foot, until finally only a few fine ripples remained, swaying back and forth on the water's surface.

Li Jinrong got up from the ground, staggered forward a couple of steps, and looked towards the water.

His whole body was trembling, but he still stared wide-eyed, desperately searching for something on the dark surface of the water.

There was nothing there.

Only the pale red moonlight shone on the river, and in the distance, the Jianglong was floating.

"It's over..." Master Long murmured, his voice so soft it sounded like a sigh.

Just then, the old man suddenly grunted and pointed his wooden stick at the river.

"Look!"

Several people looked in that direction at the same time.

Under the moonlight, a black dot was moving on the surface of the river.

From this distance, it looks like a piece of driftwood floating on the water, appearing and disappearing indistinctly.

But he was indeed moving, and he was swimming towards the shore.

Master Long squinted for several seconds, then suddenly gasped, "It's a person! It's a person!"

Li Jinrong's legs stopped shaking immediately.

He rushed forward two steps and almost tumbled down the slope, but Shen Yunjin grabbed him.

"Is it Chen Mo?"

No one answered him.

Everyone was staring at that black dot, watching it get closer and closer.

The moonlight fell on his bare upper body, making the crisscrossing scars look particularly gruesome in the dark red light.

Chen Mo's feet finally touched the muddy ground.

The water only reached his calves, but he was already exhausted, and every step he took was unsteady, as if he were drunk.

The mud squeezed out from between my toes, soft and cold.

The people on the earthen slope finally saw his face clearly.

"It's him! It's Chen Mo!"

Li Jinrong was the first to shout, and he scrambled down the slope, not caring that his trousers were covered in mud, and rushed into the shallow water to grab Chen Mo's arm.

"Uncle Chen, you're too fierce..." The fat man saw the bruises and wounds on his chest, his lips trembled, but he couldn't say anything coherent.

Seeing how excited the fat man was, Chen Mo twitched the corner of his mouth, which could be considered a smile. "He won't die."

Master Long walked over and looked him up and down several times, his gaze somewhat complicated.

"He's really hiding his true abilities."

Old Zhou stood a little distance away, leaning on his wooden cane. His cloudy eyes stared at Chen Mo for a long time before slowly looking away at the river.

The river surface has become completely calm.

The pale red moonlight spread across it, so that not a single ripple could be seen.

That unsettling sense of oppression completely disappeared.

"Did it die or escape?" Old Zhou asked.

Chen Mo straightened up from the fat man's shoulder, wiped the river water from his face, and said, "Dead."

Master Long took a deep breath and slowly exhaled, as if trying to clear all the fear from his lungs.

He turned around and said to Old Zhou and the old man, "Let's go back first; we can't stay here any longer."

Just as the group was about to set off, Chen Mo suddenly stopped in his tracks.

He turned around abruptly, his gaze sweeping across the river and looking further into the depths of the main current of the great river. Beneath the dark surface of the water, something stirred.

Chen Mo's pupils constricted slightly.

That felt very strange.

Just a moment ago, he sensed a strange gaze upon him.

"What's wrong?" the fat man asked anxiously when he saw that he wasn't moving.

Chen Mo stared at the river for several seconds, but the feeling disappeared again.

The river flowed calmly, moonlight shattered on its surface, but there was nothing there.

"...It's nothing." He looked away and turned to walk up the earthen slope.

That wasn't my imagination.

.....

In the deepest part of the Yangtze River, where even sunlight cannot reach,

A pair of eyes opened in the darkness, the pupils vertical, their color somewhere between amber and dark gold.

There was no emotion within it; it was so ancient as to be almost indifferent.

It sensed it.

That little thing that had been causing trouble underwater for decades has stopped breathing.

What killed him?

That's interesting.

His eyes blinked once in the darkness, then slowly closed again.

The silt fell back down, covering it layer by layer.

But it remembered that lingering scent.

It was very faint, carrying a feeling that made it uncomfortable, like an old friend from a long, long time ago.

Sigrún has taught at the Iceland University of the Arts as a part-time lecturer since and was Dean of the Department of Fine Art from -. In – she held a research position at Reykjavík Art Museum focusing on the role of women in Icelandic art. She studied fine art at the Icelandic College of Arts and Crafts and at Pratt Institute, New York, and holds BA and MA degrees in art history and philosophy from the University of Iceland. Sigrún lives and works in Iceland.

The next day, the Jianglong set sail again.

As dawn broke, the red moon on the river had already set, replaced by a grayish-white morning mist that shrouded the entire river in a hazy glow.

Chen Mo leaned against the ship's railing, holding a bowl of hot ginger soup in his hands, sipping it slowly.

The ginger soup was made by Uncle Tie before dawn, with a full half-pound of old ginger. It was so spicy that it made your throat burn, but after drinking it, your internal organs felt much warmer.

The tear in my lung has mostly healed, and the sensation of shards of glass scraping against my skin when I breathe has faded considerably, leaving only a dull ache.

Master Long stepped out of the cockpit, holding a wrench in his hand, with some engine oil still on his face.

He had been inspecting the ship since early morning. The big waves last night had severely damaged the Jianglong. Two railings on the deck were broken, and a steel plate at the bow was dented by something.

"How's the boat?" Chen Mo asked.

Master Long wiped the sweat from his face with his sleeve and shook his head. "It's not a big problem. The keel isn't damaged, and the machine can run normally. It's just that there are a few scratches on the bottom of the boat, which will have to be repaired when we get to the dock."

He glanced at Chen Mo's expression, then hesitated, as if he wanted to say something but couldn't.

Chen Mo noticed his expression. "Master Long, just say what you have to say."

Master Long looked around; there weren't many people on the deck at the moment.

"When I was inspecting the ship just now, I found something in the steering gear room at the stern."

He pulled something wrapped in oilcloth from the pocket of his work pants, opened it, and found a small piece of charred yellow paper inside.

The edges are blackened, and you can vaguely see dark red patterns on them, like the remnants of a talisman painted with some special pigment.

Chen Mo put down the bowl of ginger soup, took the piece of scrap paper, and smelled it.

It had a faint, fishy smell, not like ordinary ink or cinnabar, but more like something mixed with blood.

"It was found in a corner of the servo compartment," said Mr. Long. "Hidden behind the pipes, I wouldn't have noticed it at all if I hadn't crouched down to check the servo lever."

He pointed to the half-finished pattern on the tattered paper, his finger trembling slightly, "I recognize this thing."

Chen Mo looked up at him.

"Soul-Guiding Spell"

The three words were practically squeezed out between clenched teeth by Master Long, his face extremely grim.

A soul-summoning spell?

Chen Mo frowned.

He didn't press Master Long about how he knew about this thing. Everyone has their own secrets. It's not surprising that Master Long, who has been on the river for decades, knows things that ordinary people don't.

The key point is that someone put a soul-summoning spell in the steering gear compartment of the Jianglong, and it was someone from their team.

"Are you sure?" Chen Mo asked.

Master Long nodded. "This thing can attract dirty things from the water, and if you set them on fire on the boat, it's like sending an invitation to those things."

Chen Mo didn't speak, his gaze fixed on the tattered piece of paper, his mind racing.

Why did the Water Demon specifically target Jianglonghao?

He's been thinking about this problem since last night.

With so many boats on the river, why was their small boat, less than a hundred tons, targeted by the water demon?

Now we have the answer: it was clearly someone who deliberately lured them here, or rather, someone from their ship.

Chen Mo rewrapped the scraps of paper and handed them back to Master Long, saying, "You can decide what to do with it yourself."

Master Long took the oilcloth bag and stuffed it back into his pocket. He took a deep breath, his eyes filled with gloom.

Despite all precautions, we never expected that there was a mole on our own side.

Chen Mo patted him on the shoulder and didn't say anything more.

Only Master Long and his few deputies were allowed into the steering gear compartment.

It's just the same few people coming and going, so it shouldn't be hard to find them.

Let Master Long handle this himself; he's too lazy to get involved.