Chapter 539: Another Disaster-Grade Lifeform

It felt as if a massive drain had opened up in the sea. Seawater whirled around it in a corkscrew, trying to fill the gaping hole. The air above the whirlpool formed a twister, one so strong that space distorted around it.

Zhang Lie felt unfathomably small, as though he were nothing more than a bug.

This wasn't a whirlpool; it was a black hole that would swallow everything up!

Indeed, this had to be a disaster-grade lifeform, a disaster-grade lifeform on the level of an apocalypse. Not only did it manage to consume the seawater, it even consumed the radiant light of the sun. No—to be specific, what the whirlpool was consuming was the energy of the sunlight incident on the surface of the sea.

No matter how strong a disaster-grade lifeform was, it wouldn't be able to swallow up the sun. What the whirlpool swallowed up was its remnant energy. That was why it was impossible to see the few seconds of green light that emerged at the end of a sunset—the whirlpool was swallowing it all up.

Zhang Lie's gaze turned complicated. He was excited, but he had to take the measure of this foe carefully. This was a true disaster-grade lifeform, one that had grown into its prime.

The energy of the sun was all but an infinite reservoir of power, even if the lifeform was only taking it in indirectly and at reduced efficiency.

The sun's power was greatly diminished at sunset, but even then, the energy that coursed through the lifeform was immense. What the sunlight lacked in intensity, it made up for in volume—the whirlpool lifeform was sucking up the incident sunlight in an unbelievable region all around the whirlpool strait.

They were quite some distance from the merpeople's village, but if Zhu had never seen that flash of green light, then the whirlpool lifeform had to be absorbing sunlight in at least a humongous area around it—a circular region with a radius of at least ten nautical miles.

Zhang Lie could hardly imagine just how strong such a lifeform had to be, if this was its daily intake of energy.

As the remaining sunlight was swallowed up, night descended on the realm.

Subsequently, a white pillar of light connected the sea and the sky, tearing apart the darkness and illuminating the entire world. It was almost like a thick pillar of lightning, whose crackle echoed through the sky long after the light had dissipated.

The pillar lit up the moon, and the stars began to twinkle.

Rain fell from the skies. Zhu tried it. "It's salty."

Zhang Lie grinned maliciously. "Open your mouth wide! This is the snot from the whirlpool tyrant of the deep sea. It might extend your life—who knows?"

Zhu shivered. "What?!"

The beam of light was the energy from the sunlight that the whirlpool tyrant was unable to consume, which it subsequently released back into the sky.

Under the light of the moon, the water vapor falling through the sky formed a rainbow.

The conjunction of a rainbow and a starry, moonlit sky would have almost been romantic if not for the fact that the water vapor that was still drizzling down was essentially vomit from the whirlpool tyrant.

Such was the facade behind which romance hid, after all. An "I LOVE YOU" formed from 999 roses was, in some sense, the same as an "I LOVE YOU" formed from 999 cockroaches. After all, growing so many roses surely needed a great deal of fertilizer, and fertilizer came from nothing but feces.

Zhang Lie glanced up at the sky. "Why are there two moons in the sky?"

Zhu cocked her head. "Haven't there always been two moons in the sky?"

𝐟𝐫𝕖𝗲𝘄𝚎𝗯𝕟𝐨𝕧𝐞𝚕.𝕔𝕠𝐦

Zhang Lie: ? ? ?

Zhang Lie glanced carefully at the second moon, the one that he didn't recognize. It was slowly moving, and it radiated silver light as it did so.

"Could it be another byproduct of the whirlpool tyrant's vomit...?"

Even after the tyrant had spat out the remnant sunlight, the suction force was as strong as ever. Indeed, it was so intense that even the starlight was being sucked toward its maw, forming a river of stellar condensate that trailed down the sky and toward the center of the whirlpool.

The stellar light contained flecks of gold, green, silver, and blue, and it was a miraculous sight to behold.

Zhang Lie sucked in a deep breath. This was where the legend of a monstrous lifeform swallowing up the sun and stars had come from!

This was surely the largest and most dangerous disaster-grade lifeform that Zhang Lie had met to date. It consumed not only sunlight, but starlight as well. Just how large was the whirlpool tyrant's appetite?

"I've caught a big fish."

Even before he came, Zhang Lie was certain that oceanic lifeforms would be stronger than terrestrial ones, and the same would be true for the disaster-grade lifeforms at sea. He simply hadn't expected just how much stronger such lifeforms would be.

It had taken him months to find this one disaster-grade lifeform, and there was no way Zhang Lie was giving up on it now. He summoned Whitey and had it bring Zhu away to safety so he could fight without any distractions.

"[The Boundless Blade: Yawning Wave]!"

Because of the fact that he was at sea, all his water-attuned techniques would grow far stronger as a result.

Sword energy filled the air, cutting apart the massive whirlpool. However, the suction from the whirlpool was so intense that it captured even the sword energy itself, which was consumed in its entirety in the blink of an eye...