Chapter 160: Thunderous Colossal Beast, the Avatar Under Official Scrutiny

Bang!

As the waves on the sea exploded dozens of meters high, the Thunder Fiery Colossal Beast’s figure instantly disappeared beneath the sea.

As soon as it entered the water, however, the Thunder Beast keenly sensed something different. Its normal speed was now more than twice what it used to be; almost every time it flicked its tail, it could dash out far ahead. An invisible force circulated around its body, much like a lubricant, weakening the water’s resistance.

In addition, not only could the row of dorsal fins on its back store, convert, and generate lightning, they were constantly emitting waves of weak electric signals.

Much like radar waves, these subtle and untraceable signals spread out to cover several hundred meters, bouncing upon contact with objects or organisms. They would then be detected by the sensory cells on the dorsal fins, and information would be transmitted to the brain.

This third perception method complemented its visual acuity and detection of changes in water currents through its feathered horns. Combined, they allowed the Thunder Beast to monitor its surroundings from all angles.

Under these circumstances, hardly any mutated creatures could sneak up on it. As long as they approached within a certain range, they would be detected, unless they were in a different spatial layer entirely.

These changes made the Thunder Beast even more excited. Its massive figure soared and swam in the sea, disappearing beneath the depths in the blink of an eye.

Hundreds of kilometers away, an alarm suddenly sounded at a coastal monitoring base at the moment that the Thunder Beast had burst out of the cave, and some personnel frantically rushed over.

"Report, a level 7 high-energy reaction has been detected on the sea surface at coordinates 735, latitude 4°175, longitude 98°169, 170 kilometers off the coast."

"Have satellite monitors been mobilized?"

"We immediately mobilized three high-definition satellites nearby, but due to weather and darkness, only a few blurry photos were taken."

As the staff member spoke, three huge images appeared on the large screen, all showing something standing on a dilapidated island from different angles.

However, as the staff mentioned, the images were somewhat blurry. What could be seen was the vague figure a slender black creature that stood in the midst of thunderous activity, with what seemed to be a flaming halo burning above its head that illuminated the surrounding sea surface.

Despite the lack of detail, everyone still felt an invisible sense of oppression emanating from it.

"Anything else?"

"Based on the positioning and comparison with the surroundings, we estimate the mutated beast's length to be between twenty-three and twenty-seven meters, with a shoulder height of four to six meters. Its instantaneous energy burst had reached the peak of level 7."

Upon hearing this, a middle-aged man with the rank of major general assumed a serious demeanor. "This should be a newly leveled up mutated beast, with the potential to ascend to king-level."

"From its trajectory, the beast appears to have swum out to the open sea."

"Classify this data as highly confidential. Lock the images and have satellites monitor the beast’s movements whenever it surfaces in the ocean. Hopefully, its final destination is one of those deep-sea passages, and it won't cause trouble in the human world."

With the general's command, dozens of satellites in outer space adjusted their positions slightly, aiming at one particular part of the sea, as massive objects quietly floated in higher and farther orbits overhead.

***

After the Thunder Beast entered the sea, Chen Chu withdrew some of his attention and resumed pondering the changes brought about by this evolution, becoming contemplative.

It seemed the main body and the avatar were not synchronously reinforced, but rather relatively reinforced.

Synchronous strengthening implied that for every increment in the strength of the avatar, the main body should also experience a corresponding increase. Now that the avatar had reached level 7, he should have broken through to the Seventh Heavenly Realm.

Obviously, that wasn’t the case. He was still at the beginning stage of the Fourth Realm, although his physique and strength already far exceeded that of a Fifth Realm cultivator.

Chen Chu had noticed this problem a long time ago. Ever since the avatar’s first evolution had begun to strengthen his main body, that increase simply couldn’t keep up with the avatar’s growth rate. Until now, he estimated it to be a rate of only a few hundredths.

In other words, although the main body was strengthened when the avatar evolved and grew, the amount of that strengthening was equivalent to the size of a human body.

The reason could lie in the soul’s influence. Whether it was the avatar or the main body, they both belonged to the same soul. Therefore, when the avatar's physical body evolved and grew, the main body, which was considered part of the same entity as the avatar, was also strengthened simultaneously.

Although Chen Chu had already sensed this result to some extent, he couldn't help but feel a little disappointed. Initially, he had thought that his human body would keep pace with the avatar's continuous growth, eventually becoming a more terrifying entity than the avatar itself.

𝑓𝘳𝑒𝑒𝓌𝘦𝘣𝘯ℴ𝑣𝘦𝑙.𝘤𝑜𝑚

After all, when a terrifying colossal beast with a density thousands of times that of steel and a length of thousands of meters was compressed to the size of a human body, the intense gravitational force it emitted would tear everything around it apart. At that point, he probably would have been more akin to a humanoid celestial body.

Despite the disappointment, Chen Chu quickly set this issue aside. After all, there were no perfect things in the world; one had to take what they could get.

On top of that, although it had been determined that there was corresponding reinforcement between the two, no one could currently confirm whether the avatar's potential was greater than that of the main body. While the avatar could continuously devour and evolve, the main body could also cultivate and train, relying on attribute points to enhance cultivation at a terrifying speed.

Or rather, the main body and the avatar seemed to be following two different paths. One involved biological evolution, using absolute physical strength and evolved abilities to dominate everything, while the other path resembled principled cultivation.

When Chen Chu had broken through to the Fourth Heavenly Realm, his understanding of cultivation had deepened.

Compared to the inherent advantages of those colossal beasts, human bodies, no matter how much they evolved, could not match theirs. Therefore, humans explored the true martial path to become stronger, from the initial tempering and strengthening of the physique, to the transformation after cultivating true power, to the True Martial Phantom at the Seventh Heavenly Realm, and finally the principle domain at the Ninth.

Such as the powerful individuals who could set up barriers covering an entire country; these methods were already comparable to many gods in mythical legends. Or rather, many ordinary gods in rural legends were not even comparable to Seventh Heavenly Realm cultivators.

Just as Chen Chu was sighing inwardly, his eyes suddenly narrowed.

It really was impossible to avoid one’s enemies.

In the depths of the sea, more than three hundred meters below, the Thunder Beast, which had just rushed hundreds of kilometers in one breath, suddenly came to a halt.

It had a mutated marlin over ten meters long in its mouth, its claws holding onto the marlin’s body as it had greedily devoured it. With each bite, several hundred kilograms of flesh and blood had been torn off.

However, what made the Thunder Beast stop was not its meal, but the mutated colossal beast it sensed several hundred meters ahead.

This was a towering underwater area, resembling hilly terrain. In these waters lurked a ferocious Dragon Turtle with a length of thirty-seven meters.

The turtle's shell was thick and covered in short spikes, its limbs were as sturdy as pillars, and its dragon head boasted two long horns, giving it a fearsome appearance.

This was the same deep-sea turtle that had previously devoured the volcanic corals, surging from level 6 to level 7 in a single bound and awakening its dragon bloodline.

It had caused the Sword Beast significant losses; not just the corals, but also consuming six Crystal Horn Fish and allowing two others, each over twenty meters in length, to escape. Had it not been for the turtle's interference, the Thunder Beast would have met the requirements for its fourth evolution about a week earlier.

Contemplating this, flames flickered between the Thunder Beast's scales, while arcs of blue electricity danced among its dorsal fins, emanating a palpable sense of dread.

In an instant, the colossal turtle several hundred meters away rose abruptly, its gaze fixed solemnly on the dark abyss ahead.

From that murky darkness emerged a ferocious mutated beast, flames flickering on its body while lightning crackled around it, exuding an even more menacing aura despite its smaller size.

Roar!

A low roar reverberated as the turtle's thick, yellow energy connected to the seabed below with a weight as formidable as a mountain.

Simultaneously, a powerful pressure burst forth from its body, instilling fear in all marine life within a few hundred meters and causing them to scatter in panic.

However, this faint display of draconic power failed to perturb the Thunder Beast.

Roar!

With another roar, an even more potent surge of draconic power erupted from the Thunder Beast, creating a ring of white water waves around it with sheer terrifying force.

Bang!

The clash of forces, both imbued with draconic power, caused the surrounding water to tremble violently for a moment.

After reaching level 7, the fusion of spiritual will and internal energy had transformed the creatures' auras from intangible to tangible, disrupting reality itself.

For human powerhouses, this fusion was what allowed them to manifest phantoms using martial arts and command the power of heaven and earth to dominate everything, rendering it near impossible for ordinary individuals to withstand.

Suddenly, the Thunder Beast vanished from view, followed by a deafening explosion as a vacuum shockwave swept through the underwater space, covering a radius of over a dozen meters; a burst of speed which had exceeded that of sound

In an almost instantaneous manner, the Thunder Beast appeared beside the turtle, its muscular claws swollen with flames and entwined with lightning as they crashed down with the force of an impending cataclysm.

Boom!

With this tremendous strike, the turtle's thick protective energy field, nearly a meter in depth, shuddered violently, causing its body to lurch as its limbs sank several meters into the seabed.

Instantly, surrounding rocks shattered, and fissures propagated for hundreds of meters.

This giant turtle’s abilities were akin to those of Xia Youhui's martial arts; when connected to the earth, it could channel most of the attack's force into the ground while absorbing the earth's energy to fortify its defense.

Even though the Thunder Beast had unleashed all of its normal power in this strike, without the strength ability’s explosive enhancement, it had merely succeeded in jolting the turtle's body.

As the Thunder Beast paused momentarily in the water, a roar suddenly erupted, and the turtle’s head, previously retracted into its shell, shot out. With near supersonic speed, the ferocious dragon mouth materializing in front of the Thunder Beast in an instant.

A turtle’s attack speed when poking its head out had always been swift, lest it be unable to catch prey at all. At that moment, however, the Thunder Beast abruptly turned around, its eyes icy as its rugged right claw swang out at an imperceptible speed.

Boom!

With a terrifying swipe, the energy shield on the turtle’s head, only half a meter thick compared to its back, collapsed instantly. Following that, its sturdy dragon scales were rent asunder by the sharp claws, and it emitted a piercing scream as flesh and blood burst forth.

The Thunder Beast had long anticipated this move, and the strike it had executed earlier, approaching the turtle's shell from the side, had been intended to provoke such a reaction.

Nevertheless, the turtle’s defense proved formidable; half of its face had been reduced to a bloody pulp, but that hadn’t been enough to kill it.

Truly, it was a formidable mutated beast now that it had awakened its dragon bloodline.

Biu!

At that moment, a jet-black afterimage darted past the retreating turtle's head, landing on the turtle shell behind with formidable force.

Splat!

The black tail spike, engulfed in flames, only hesitated for a moment before piercing through the turtle's thick yellow shield, penetrating the alloy-like shell to a depth of over a meter.

If the turtle hadn’t withdrawn its head in time, the Thunder Beast's instant combination strike would have almost killed it.

Despite the vast difference in size between the two, in the brief moment they had clashed, the turtle found itself suppressed, even though it had also awakened its dragon bloodline.

Buzz!

Sensing the brush of death passing by, a terrifying shockwave erupted from the turtle's body, transforming into circles of yellow ripples.

Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!

The surrounding water boiled and exploded as if heated, and all matter within range was shattered and destroyed.

Even the hard seabed hills beneath the turtle cracked under the shockwave’s power, collapsing with a thunderous roar in just a few breaths and sending up billowing clouds of sediment.

Within moments, the kilometer-wide area of water became murky, and the sea surface roared with tumultuous waves. The might of this move was several times greater than before.

Clearly, during this time, the turtle had also been growing, and this ability to unleash close-range shockwaves had become even more powerful, capable of pulverizing everything around it.

The terrifying shockwave continued for over ten minutes. When everything finally calmed down, the turtle had vanished...

No, not vanished, but buried itself.

Watching the faint yellow light emanating from the collapsed hillside, even the Thunder Beast, which had charged hundreds of meters away to escape the shockwave, couldn't help but be stunned.

Wait a minute, aren't you a ferocious mutated colossal beast? Why are you hiding when we’ve just warmed up?

For a moment, even the Thunder Beast was baffled by this move.