When it arches its back, the vertebrae bulge into coral-like spines, and its tail sprouts a fan-shaped tail fin made of fluorescent anemones.
"Kexi...sea otter?" Ma Tuan laughed while choking on water.
The monster paused for half a second after hearing this, and a hint of offended anger flashed in its milky white eyes.
Nansong took the opportunity to pull him towards the exit in his memory.
The shadow sea otter followed slowly, and each swing of its forelimbs caused a local water vortex.
The most terrifying thing was that it began to sing—a mix of the low-pitched calls of humpback whales, like courtship, and the melodies of human nursery rhymes:
"~Sleep, sleep on the coral bed~ Moonlight weaves into a shroud~"
"Over there!" Ma Tuan pointed to the upper left.
"What a weird song." He complained in a low voice after saying that.
A peeling ceiling reveals the reflection of municipal pipes.
The two of them used their last bit of strength to sprint upwards. The shadow sea otter suddenly accelerated, and the rapids generated by the slapping of its forelimbs clamped Nansong's waist like a hydraulic clamp.
At the moment of life and death, Ma Tuan grabbed the rusty iron chain thrown from the pipe and smashed it into the monster's eyeball.
The sea otter reflexively protected its face with its forelimbs, an action that accidentally triggered a glowing rune carved into its abdomen—a variation of the warning on the note.
At this moment, Nan Song stood there in a daze.
The Ksei sea otter—if the monster must be named—was fully formed.
Its massive body took up half the cellar, and its twelve tentacle-like forelimbs swayed gracefully in the water, carrying a deadly threat.
"Swim separately!" Ma Tuan gestured, broke off a wooden stick and stabbed it into the monster's eyes.
Nan Song nodded, turned and swam in another direction, but the image of the moon jellyfish flashed through his mind again.
Why now?
Why, at this critical moment of life and death, did she keep thinking of the little jellyfish that had died many years ago?
The sudden change in the water's current interrupted her thoughts.
The monster was enraged by the hemp ball. It let out a silent roar, and the water in the entire cellar began to shake violently.
Nansong watched as the glutinous rice balls were swept by an undercurrent toward the monster's bloody maw. His limbs struggled in vain...
There is no time to think about it.
Nan Song gritted his teeth, kicked his legs hard, and rushed towards the terrifying creature like a fish.
The moment she got close, she did something inexplicably - she stretched out her right hand, palm facing up, just like she did when she fed the moon jellyfish many years ago.
Something incredible happened.
The monster's movements suddenly stopped.
Its milky white eyes moved slightly and its gaze fell on Nansong's palm.
What was even stranger was that Nansong felt his palms starting to heat up, and a vague pink mark slowly emerged - the shape was the outline of a small jellyfish.
"Peach blossom...?" she murmured silently.
The monster let out a faint sigh, and its huge body suddenly began to disintegrate, turning into countless glowing particles and dissipating in the water.
The water level in the cellar began to drop rapidly, and the strange symbols on the ceiling went out one by one.
When the last drop of water disappeared from the drain, Nansong and Matuan fell down on the wet ground in embarrassment.
The two gasped for breath, but were shocked to find that their mutant characteristics had returned.
Nan Song's indigo-colored tentacle-like hair hung limply on his shoulders, and Ma Tuan's mask had returned to his face at some point.
"What happened just now was..." Ma Tuan's voice was terribly hoarse.
Nan Song looked down at his palm and saw that the mark of the pink jellyfish was slowly fading away.
She suddenly understood something, but couldn't explain it clearly.
"I don't think..." she whispered, "we were chosen by chance."
Ma Tuan looked at her silently, and the mask on the back of his head seemed to have more cracks than before.
In the distance, outside the iron fence of the municipal pipeline, the sound of the tide could be faintly heard - this was simply incredible in an inland city.
But at this moment, what Nansong cared about most was that lingering feeling:
The story of the moon jellyfish may not be as simple as she remembers.
And this little creature, which has long since departed, may be affecting everything they are experiencing now in some way.
There was a roar like waves in the distance.
Deep in the pipe, new black shadows are condensing into a larger outline.
This time, hundreds of mutants could be vaguely seen floating in the darkness.
The silhouette of the man in the front row wearing a broken mask looks very much like Ma Tuan when he was a teenager.
Neither of them spoke, they just watched quietly.
After a while.
"Are we both doomed?"
Nan Song looked down at his hands—the translucent webbed membranes were growing again between his fingers, and a faint blue fluorescent light was pulsating under his skin.
She looked up, but was stunned.
Ma Tuan had taken off the tattered mask at some point. Water droplets slid down his sharp jawline, and his black hair clung to his neck, its tips gleaming with the same indigo hue as hers.
The upturned curve at the corners of his eyes was more obvious than he remembered, and when he smiled, his eyes narrowed into two long and narrow slits, making him look like some lazy aquatic creature.
"Finished?"
Ma Tuan shook her hair, and the water droplets drew bright arcs under the dim emergency light of the pipe.
"Weren't we finished long ago? Ever since we grew gills—"
Before he finished speaking, a loud noise like a glacier breaking came from deep in the pipeline.
The blue-gold mist surged like a tide, and the metal pipe walls were instantly covered with frost wherever it passed.
In the mist, the K-series sea otter, formed by the afterimages of hundreds of mutants, finally took full shape - it was as tall as three stories, and when its front limbs slapped the ground, the entire underground pipe network trembled, and an aurora-like halo flowed in its roller-shaped pupils.
My dear, there is more to this chapter. Please click on the next page to continue reading. It will be even more exciting later!
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