Chapter 957: Swallowing the Swamp
Turning back the clock a bit…
The swamps that Zhen Liu and his cohort were traversing weren’t normal swamplands, rather, they were at the very edge of the lands known as the Endless Swamplands.
Due to the Endless Swamplands’ location, the region was basically bordering neighbors to every single nation and kingdom that called Roaring Tide home. Literally, the only way to get from one nation to the next was through the Endless Swamplands, at least if one was going through internal routes as opposed to coastal travel.
The Endless Swamplands were, essentially, the equivalent to a certain blue planet’s Silk Road, but significantly more moist and wild.
In other words, if a nation, sect or top tier cultivator were to claim the Endless Swamplands as their territory, they would become the penultimate hegemon on the continent.
However, there were two major reasons as to why this hasn’t occurred yet.
Firstly, since every nation, sect and aether warrior in Roaring Tide knew that controlling the Endless Swamplands was the equivalent of controlling the continent, they had done a spectacular job of keeping each other in check. The moment any one nation tried to pull a hostile takeover, all the other nations would join in and beat their ass back into a more humble position.
Granted, there was this one stint in history where that wasn’t the case, but that will be addressed later.
Secondly, and probably more importantly, the Endless Swamplands were home to dozens, possibly hundreds of Bloodliner tribes that can trace the bloodlines to powerful Aether Beast Kings that have originated from the Endless Swamplands.
Thanks to a mix of this innate potential and the harshness of the Eternal Swamplands, the aformentioned Bloodliner tribes were chock-full of power aether warriors that could bring most nations to their knees. The only reason this hasn’t happen yet was due to the simple fact that most of these Bloodliner tribes were at each other’s throats most of the time.
However, these aformentioned tribes have been known to put aside their differences under certain circumstances.
Like say, the unexpected presence of an invading aether beast king, a pacification attempt by local leaders, or the arrival of a strange looking wagon being pulled by a Raijin Hippo.
The moment Zhen Liu and his entourage entered the Endless Swamplands, there were already several dozen bloodliner informants who had spotted him.
What these informants used this information for varied greatly from individual to individual. Hell, how they interpreted the information was different from informant to informant as well.
“An intruder has entered the Swamplands…”
“A merchant? A warrior?”
“A playboy?”
However, amongst these observant fellows, there was one among them who could more or less discrn the truth of the situation, a bit more thoroughly than the rest.
“Wait… they’re not heading to any of the tribes nor in the direction of any of the nations. They appear to be heading towards…no…”
And once they had figured it out, they had to go and find their chief as quickly as possible.
“The promise, the promise must be kept! Until the successor, the successor can be found.”
___________Back to the present ___________
[Uh…maestro? Why am I feeling a massive spike of disgust and anxiety in our connection?]
[I’m in his head right now, you really don’t want to know,] Blazejudicator answered.
[Unsettling…why?]
[Remember how he acquired the Purple Berserker Spring Flame?]
[Yeah, he…no…maestro, you can’t be seriously thinking of-]
‘Both of you hush now, I have a thing I need to try and it works…I’m going to need to rinse out my insides.’
Zhen Liu swam over to the as close as he could to the sunken ship without crossing what he believed to be the barrier’s maximum boundary.
In order to make sure he was close enough though, he used one of his [Chaos] coated fingers to check.
Evidently, he wasn’t afraid of possibly exploding due to having dealt with that kind of crap for years on end up until now.
A loud pop could be heard in the water as the [Chaos] coating his finger got overloaded and broke apart.
‘Ow.’
As for his finger, Zhen Liu felt as if it got bitten by an ant with large pincers. A quick shake was all he needed to numb out the pain, but still…he wasn’t going to like this next part any better.
‘Alright…let’s do this thing.’
Now that Zhen Liu had confirmed the barrier’s reach and existence he began to concentrate his mind and [Chaos] towards one particular point on his body: his mouth.
‘If swallowing sea water makes you dehydrated and crazy, what happens when I swallow swamp water?’ Zhen Liu mused.
Evidently, he was about to find out.
…
=Has our lord finally decided to swim away from the interference source?=
=Something… interesting? Interesting how?
=Huh…that is interesting. Any idea on how he’s doing it?=
=Which one?=
=Ah.=
…
[Alright, I can confirm it. Swimming sucks ass.]
As the only one without an elemental opposition to swamp water, Screamira was sent to go and check on the producer and Hurricroak.
This logic sort of made sense, since Screamira was predominantly made of bone and her innate death aether made it so that most creatures of the deep would want to avoid her.
However, this consideration did not take into account that she had a massive head of hair.
More than once, she could feel branches and shit get caught in it. More than once, she had to stop to pull things out.
[Not to complain about my looks, but was the hair really necessary for me? I get banshees have long flowing locks but this ridiculous.]
Despite her grumblings and misgivings though, Screamira still carried out her task dutifully. There was just one problem.
[Okay, I think this is the same direction that Hurricroak and the producer went, but why can’t I sense anything? I figured by now I would be able to pick up their aether or Chaos by now. If this keeps up, I might have to…wait a minute…]
Just as Screamira was about to consider learning how to do echolocation in an adhoc manner, she finally sensed Hurricroak’s aether signature alongside…what felt like the producer’s but with something extra added.
[What the Chaos?]
Weirder still, as this source of [Chaos] was getting mixed into Zhen Liu’s, Screamira could feel intense feelings of building disgust being directed towards this source, coming from her bond with Zhen Liu.
Screamira couldn’t help but wonder what about this [Chaos] source that was so bad that illicited this…wait a minute…
[Logos and Pathos said that Chaos treasures has a habit of leaking Chaos into their surroundings…meaning the producer has to get rid of that before being able to interact with them…meaning…oh no…]
Screamira could only come to one conclusion at this point, and it wasn’t pleasant.
[Okay…never complaining about my hair again. I have zero legs to stand on now.]
…
[How…how are you feeling, Executor?]
‘Well…on the plus side, I don’t taste anything and I think this easier than whenever I try to swallow fire.’
[That’s…good.]
‘On the down side, this water is so incredibly gritty that this feeling will haunt me until the end of days.’
[Yeah… I figured.]
With a mouth reinforced by [Chaos] and his hands forming a funnel, Zhen Liu had attempted to swallow just the [Chaos] infused swamp water.
Rephrasing, he was actually succeeding in swallowing just the [Chaos] infused water, but it was the worst feeling in the world.
Which was saying something, given that the man had the ability to swallow fire and had consumed flames associated with the undead, violence and…wait, did he swallow that weird hellfire that the SATAN Monkey tried to burn him with?
Maybe?
Shit, the fact that he couldn’t remember right now was honestly a testament to how disgusting this moment was.
‘Wait…would this have been more or less pleasant if I had a thing in my formula that allowed me to absorb weird water aether treasures better?’
[I…want to say…no? Because this isn’t an aether treasure this just…Chaos infused water.]
‘Fair enough.’
As Zhen Liu continued to swallow the [Chaos] infused water from around the sunken ship, Hurricroak continued to watch and float from off to the side.
Her role in this situation wasn’t to assist Zhen Liu in removing the [Chaos] or providing emotional support, rather, it was to move in and lift the ship out of the water when the time was right.
Granted, it might be a bit tricky since she wasn’t built for-
[Hurricroak!]
[Screamira! You came just in time.]
