Star Rank Hunter

Chapter 363: Underwater City [Part 1]

Cillin followed Wheeze's voice and found it crouching in front of a plant and pulling something out of the coral next to it.

Roll roll roll—

A round object rolled into view. It was light blue in color and about as big as a pigeon's egg.

"I have a feeling this ball is pretty valuable, Cillin," Wheeze said while playing with the crystal-like ball.

Cillin grabbed the ball and examined it briefly. It felt cool to touch, but not so much that it was uncomfortable. There was also a faint plant scent that greatly invigorated the mind.

"Oh. I wasn't expecting to find this here," Lung said when he walked over and saw the ball. "We call it the 'Guardian Heart'."

"Guardian Heart?" Wheeze repeated while waiting impatiently for Lung to continue. Now it was even more certain that the ball was worth a lot of money.

"Yep. It's something that's only found in some special ocean environments. Moreover, the Guardian Heart found in Sea Paradise possesses the highest quality and effect."

Lung began explaining the origin and uses of the Guardian Heart. The crystal-like ball was formed by the root system of certain plants that were commonly found in coral reefs. They were used to repel sea beasts and some herbivorous animals and insects. The ball would slowly be pushed to the surface after it was formed, but not completely. In big enough numbers, they could form a protective circle around the plants and keep them safe from smaller sea beasts. Although it wasn't strong enough to repel a larger sea beast, it could neutralize their appetite and make them uninterested in consuming a plant that was protected by a Guardian Heart.

"You noticed that there aren't any smaller sea beasts around the plants even though this atoll is jampacked with them? That's because the Guardian Heart smells nice to us, but is quite disgusting to the sea beasts. Long story short, if you find a plant that is strangely free of sea beasts, it probably means that their root system has formed a 'Guardian Heart'. The weird thing about this object is that its effects are pretty poor when created artificially. It is why natural Guardian Heart are always sold for a high price in the market. Of all the planets that produces Guardian Hearts, Sea Paradise's is easily the most expensive. This one for example can probably sell for six or even seven figures. Feel free to dig up as many as you want, but please leave those that aren't fully formed yet untouched, okay? We need them to keep the sea beasts away."

Lung's last two sentences were directed at Wheeze because its eyes kept growing brighter as he spoke. In fact, its gaze reached peak intensity when he said that Sea Paradise's Guardian Heart was the most expensive.

It was at this moment Czedow walked over from another direction and reported, "There are a lot of hallucinatory substances within the sea water. The Indigenous organisms have developed various degrees of resistances toward it, but the same cannot be said for foreigners like us."

He then showed Cillin his analysis and briefly mentioned the distribution of sea beasts at the atoll as well.

"That is why the sea beasts and some of the fishes of Sea Paradise cannot be eaten directly," Lung said. Suddenly, he recalled Wheeze swallowing a ton of sea beasts while it was clearing out the area and shot the gray cat a glance. It was currently digging out more Guardian Hearts from the nearby plants with great spirit. "Will your cat be fine, Cillin?"

"It's fine, it has digested worse things. Just ignore it."

Cillin had long since gotten used to it. Wheeze had eaten plenty of sea beasts back at the Mist Bodhisattva Empire, and those creatures were special in their own right. However, even they weren't enough to give Wheeze indigestion.

"The scanner found something, young master," one of Lung's subordinates said.

After Lung had landed on the atoll, his subordinates had deployed some scanners into the sea to scan their surroundings. He specifically requested ordered his subordinates to deploy more scanners in the direction the star map was pointing toward.

"What is it?" Lung asked.

Cillin and Czedow joined him. Wheeze was the only one who ignored the discussion because there were still a couple of Guardian Hearts it hadn't dug out yet.

"The scanners are currently three thousand meters below the sea level, and this is what they found," the man passed a tablet to Lung.

The tablet was displaying a wavy line. Due to the Sea Paradise's unique environment and the unusual electromagnetic field that affected the entire planet, the data the scanners captured wasn't very detailed. However, it was still enough to draw a 3D image based on some pictures, probing waves and unusual energy fluctuations in the scanned area. Every marked depth had a corresponding 3D image, and it was at the three thousand meters mark that the scanners began detecting abnormalities. The color of the 3D images they drew was deeper than normal, and the deeper the scanners went the darker the color became.

Lung bubbled with excitement when he saw this. It was because the results showed that the reflection of energy of the affected area was different from other areas. No other scanner had detected such an abnormality, so there was a very high chance that that was where God's Tear was at.

"Why is there a step-like formation here? Is this normal?" Cillin pointed at an unusual spot of the 3D image and asked.

According to this image, there was a steep incline beneath the sea surface of this atoll, and on the incline was what seemed to be a flight of steps leading all the way to the sea bed.

"These steps clearly aren't made for human beings though. Was it made for sea beasts?" Lung asked thoughtfully.

No one could tell if it was man-made or natural, but it had caught their attention nonetheless.

"Anyway, keep a close eye on the scanners in this area and begin making the preparations. We're moving once the scanners are done scanning," Lung instructed.

"Uwah—"

Suddenly, a long howl erupted from the forest where Wheeze was at.

When they turned their heads to look, they saw a massive tail with dark stripes swinging wildly amidst the plants and destroying them. The plants were around twenty to thirty meters tall, but the were nowhere tall enough to conceal the tail at all. Some nearby sea beasts were frightened by the howl and sent scattering in every direction.

Pwish—

The howls were accompanied by occasional spurts of blue blood that dyed the big leaves blue. Eventually, everything including the tail flailing subsided into nothing.

A while later, the sound of something heavy being dragged across the ground and rustling tree branches came from Wheeze's direction. Then, the head of a massive sea beast poked out of the plants.

It wasn't the sea beast that surprised Lung and his subordinates, however. It was the fact that Wheeze was dragging it out by the feelers around its mouth. That the size difference between the predator and the prey was even bigger than the time Wheeze had devoured the smaller sea beasts made it even more shocking.

The sea beast looked a little like an eel. Its torso was about five meters wide, and it was lined with a lot of feelers. It was probably higher up on the food chain compared to the sea beasts Wheeze had chased away earlier.

It wasn't long before the sea beast was fully dragged into the open. There was a long, deep wound around its abdominal area, and blue blood was leaking out of it. It formed a blue trail behind the sea beast.

After Wheeze had dragged the sea beast before Cillin, it asked, "Do you guys want to eat it?"

Pascado and everyone else shook its head in unison. No one wanted to eat something with a giant monster with mouth full of sharp teeth and eyes wide open with dying grievance. The internal organs and blue blood trailing its bacl alone was enough to cause them revulsion.

"Something's not right about this. This sea beast isn't strictly an amphibian—it can crawl along the coral reefs for a short time, but only a short time—and it wouldn't come here unless it's time to feed. However, it's obviously not its feeding time right now, not to mention that Wheeze had chased away the smaller sea beasts in the area a while ago. So what the heck is this big guy doing here?" Lung questioned while scratching his chin.

Wheeze was in the middle of licking the blue blood on its paws when it heard this. It hurriedly defended itself, "It's not my fault! The big guy crawled out of the sea on its its own! I wasn't going to pay it any attention—I was busy digging out the rest of the treasure—but for some reason it charged straight toward me. My pile of treasures were in the way, and there's no way I was going to let it eat them! Really, it's not my fault!"

It was at this moment Big Rock looked toward the sea and said, "A school of largetooth sawfishes is nearby."