Chapter Eighty-Four: With a Turn of the Hand, Slaying the Whale

On the fourth day at sea, the frigid wind from the Odin Icefield fell still for a rare and brief reprieve. The dark clouds in the eastern sky gradually dispersed, and from beneath the horizon there rose, astonishingly, a red sun. Its crimson light washed over sea and sky alike, gilding even the great icebergs in a scarlet sheen. Those red ice mountains drifted across the waves as though lumps of congealed blood were swaying upon the water.

At the bow, Lin Qi stood with a great fishing pole in hand, baited with the entrails of a black-striped snapper, trying to catch a sea turtle. This stretch of sea lay not far from the territory of the single-horned mad whale. It was famous for a kind of green leatherback turtle: enormous in size, delicious in flavor, a delicacy prized by the noble houses of the mainland, and also the favored prey of the mad whale itself.

These turtles bred with astonishing speed and grew at a prodigious rate. It was once said that if the mad whale were not slaughtering them so relentlessly for food, they would long ago have covered every ocean in the world.

"One of those great green sea turtles would fetch at least three hundred gold coins on the mainland!" Lin Qi said, holding the rod and gazing toward the rising red sun in the east. He shook his head and sighed. "Damn it, a sunrise. That is not a good omen. There will be a blizzard in the next few days."

Wrapped in a blue fox-fur coat, with his usual haughty, overbearing expression, Long Cheng sat atop the mermaid statue at the bow and looked at Lin Qi in confusion. "The sun coming out is a good thing. What does that have to do with a blizzard? Look at this: clear sky for miles, the blue heaven washed clean. What fine weather!"

Long Cheng shook his head and sighed. "Such an auspicious day, such a magnificent wilderness. If only there were three or five lovely women to keep me company in the nude, how joyous that would be."

This fellow was a lecher to the bone. Lin Qi cursed him inwardly and snorted unhappily. "Honored Mr. Long Cheng, this is the North Sea. In winter, the North Sea must not have sunlight. If the wind and snow keep blowing without cease, then this winter can be passed safely. But if the sun comes out on any given day, then a blizzard is guaranteed in the next few days. A colossal hurricane will bring disaster to the mainland!"

Long Cheng looked at Lin Qi in surprise. He spread his hands and laughed in astonishment. "Is that so? Truly? What damned weather!"

Lin Qi gave the fishing rod a twitch, then looked at Long Cheng in bewilderment. "It is strange. You know nothing at all about life at sea. How did you sail a little boat into the North Sea? Where did you come from?"

Long Cheng twisted his mouth and gave several cold laughs. At last he gritted his teeth and said, "Nothing more than a wager with someone. A wager that I could cross the North Sea in winter by little boat, reach the Western Continent, and then bring back a few things!"

A wager? To cross the North Sea in winter in such a rotten little boat? Long Cheng had far too much confidence in himself. Lin Qi smacked his lips and asked, thoroughly shaken, "Then where did you set out from? I know there are several famous ports in the east: Spring City, Su City, Hang City, Sea City, Bear City. Those are all several times larger than our own Dunerke, true great seaports!"

Long Cheng fell silent for a while, then said with some unwillingness, "I set out from Bear City. That is our northernmost port. I sailed four thousand li north into the North Sea, then another thousand li to land on the Odin Icefield. I carried that little boat across the icefield on my shoulder, fighting my way all along, and entered the sea again at a place on the Odin Icefield called Viking Axe Gorge."

"Viking Axe Gorge?" Lin Qi cried in alarm. "That is a dangerous place. To be precise, it is a den of damned bandits!"

Long Cheng smiled cruelly, the corners of his mouth tightening. He glanced sidelong at Lin Qi and said coldly, "Yes. A group of blind fools wanted to seize my little boat, so I sacked Viking Axe Gorge. Of course, I did not plunder their wealth. I only wanted their lives."

Lin Qi gaped. What a ferocious man this was. Viking Axe Gorge was infamous even in the Western dark world, a nest of dragons and tigers. For years, thousands of foreign bandits and their families had dwelt there. It was a crucial supply point along the secret routes of the dark world, and an important lair for the North Sea pirates and smugglers.

To sack the entire Viking Axe Gorge alone, with a single spear? Lin Qi asked, dazed, "How many did you kill?"

Long Cheng tugged at the corner of his mouth and, after counting on his fingers for a while, said slowly, "Probably about half. I burned down most of the remaining small half, and the last small half fled. About that many, more or less. Those who fled were the strong and healthy ones; the old, the weak, and the women and children should all have been burned to death."

He let out a soft sigh and said rather helplessly, "At first, besides taking lives, I also meant to take a little pleasure, but unfortunately there were no truly beautiful women there. Even the women were covered in hair from head to toe. I simply could not work up any interest."

Shrugging, Long Cheng sighed deeply. "Killing, burning, looting, and ravishing—these things ought to have been done as casually as one breathes. Unfortunately, I only managed the killing and burning. Before I could get to the latter two, I was surrounded by a pack of bastards who called themselves Odin Sacred Guards. After a hard fight, I killed more than ten of them and broke out. Then, on the sea itself, I ran into a three-headed sea dragon. Truly the height of bad luck!"

Lin Qi shut his mouth. This was a complete madman, and he could not be bothered to speak further with such a creature. The Odin Sacred Guards—those religious lunatics who had terrified the mainland's elite legions throughout the century-long war between land and island—had been cut down by him by the dozen? And after that, he had still fought the tyrant among North Sea beasts, the three-headed sea dragon, without being killed?

Then Long Cheng gave a distant sigh and said, "It is a pity the three-headed sea dragon was truly extraordinary. I had already suffered slight injuries in the struggle with those Odin Sacred Guards, and then, in a desperate battle, I exhausted my vitality badly and lost all my food and drinking water as well. With no other choice, I sealed myself within an iceberg and used winter hibernation to heal and preserve my life. In any case, judging from the wind, that iceberg was drifting toward the mainland."

Long Cheng's words were far too unbelievable. Lin Qi nearly went mad. "Weren't you afraid of being sealed alive inside the iceberg?"

Long Cheng laughed in a strange way and forcefully patted Lin Qi on the shoulder. "That is what betting your life means! It was a wager, wasn't it? And since I ran into you people, doesn't that mean I still haven't lost?"

Before his words had faded, more than ten yards ahead, a green sea turtle over two meters long suddenly leapt from the water. Behind it, a golden horn some four meters in length ripped through the waves, and a colossal mad whale, its entire body gleaming with gold, burst from the sea and opened its vast mouth full of fangs, lunging to swallow the turtle in a single bite.

Lin Qi's voice changed abruptly. "The mad whale! Harpoons ready!"

Then came Long Cheng's wild laugh. His form flickered, leaving dozens of afterimages, and in an instant he was atop the huge whale far ahead.

His right fist was encircled by a dense purple aura. Long Cheng gave a long, piercing cry and, with what seemed like a casual gesture, pressed his palm onto the whale's massive head.

A shrill, miserable howl rang out. The giant whale convulsed violently and crashed back into the sea.

The enormous creature floated silently on the water. It had been slain by Long Cheng's single palm strike.