Dozens of heavily armored Trench Scorpions stopped their restless crawling across the dark red rocks at the exact same moment.They all turned their eyeless, plated heads toward the spot where Zhentian had just fallen from the ceiling.A chorus of sharp, rhythmic clicks filled the heavy water as the beasts snapped their massive pincers in unison.Zhentian lay flat against the scorching stone, his heart hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird desperately trying to escape."Stop thrashing around down there," Ye Canghai’s voice drifted down from the black shaft above.The old man sounded incredibly bored, his voice funneling perfectly down the narrow fault line like an acoustic tube."I am not moving," Zhentian hissed back, keeping his face pressed firmly into the burning dirt."Your heart is beating so fast I can feel the vibrations all the way up here," the assassin noted dryly.Zhentian swallowed the bitter taste of sulfur filling his mouth, watching the swarm of monsters slowl

The icy numbness raced up his calf long before the scorpion disappeared into the thick sulfurous smoke.Zhentian stared down at his right leg, watching the muscle twitch involuntarily beneath his torn trousers.He tried to wiggle his toes, but the limb refused to answer the command.It was a total disconnect, as if the bottom half of his leg had simply ceased to exist.He pressed his fingers against his own neck, feeling his pulse hammering wildly against his skin in the aftermath of the geyser eruption.The Azure Dragon Hall taught its disciples to identify poisons by their immediate symptoms.A localized paralytic that moved this fast was a neurotoxin, and it was currently using his own rushing bloodstream as a highway.If he let his panic control him, his racing heart would pump the venom directly into his chest within three minutes.Once it reached his heart, his lungs would stop working, and he would suffocate right there on the burning rocks.Zhentian closed his eyes and pushed

Ye Canghai's retreating footsteps didn't make a single sound against the deep ocean mud.The weight of his final words pressed down on my chest like an anvil as he walked away.Pick up the needle, boy, or close your eyes and die.I stared at the jagged piece of hollowed bone resting in the dirt next to my face.The icy numbness in my right leg throbbed with a sickening, tight pressure just beneath the surface of my skin.I didn't want to die down here in the dark, forgotten by everyone in the Azure Dragon Hall while Mo Wudi lived my life.I reached out with my left hand and wrapped my trembling fingers around the crude tool.My right arm was still bound tightly to my chest, which meant I had to brace my paralyzed leg against a nearby rock using only my good heel.I took a slow, shallow breath to keep my heart rate down, pressing the razor-thin edge of the bone against my ruined trousers.The fabric tore easily, exposing the pale, swollen skin of my calf where the scorpion's stinger ha

The water tore apart.A terrifying vacuum sucked the air right out of my lungs as his fist launched toward my temple.I didn't try to raise a guard or brace for impact.A standard block would just drive my own shattered arm into my skull and kill me anyway.I threw all my weight backward, letting my knees collapse so I could fall straight into the dirt.His knuckles grazed the top of my scalp, shearing off a thick handful of my hair in a split second.The kinetic shockwave of the missed strike slammed into my face, throwing me into a wild spin across the seabed.I hit the freezing mud hard, tasting sulfur and my own blood as I tumbled to a dead stop.My scalp burned like someone had dragged a hot iron across the skin, but I was still breathing.I scrambled to get my good knee underneath me, keeping my one working hand raised in the pitch-black water.The temperature dropped sharply, chilling the sweat forming on the back of my neck.He wasn't testing my reflexes anymore, and he wasn't

I threw my weight backward and yanked hard on the kelp rope anchored to the stalagmites on the floor.The tension ripped me downward through the freezing water just as the monster's teeth pulverized the solid coral outcropping into a cloud of sharp debris.Chunks of crushed rock rained down around me, bouncing off my shoulders as I crashed into the deep mud.I rolled desperately to the side, trying to put distance between myself and the thick cloud of sediment kicked up by the brutal attack.The Leviathan Spawn let out a deafening, guttural hiss that vibrated right through the marrow of my bones.It whipped its massive head around, searching the dark water for the prey that had somehow slipped through its trap.The creature was the size of a small watchtower, covered in thick, overlapping plates of pale chitin that looked harder than forged iron.Dozens of barbed legs scraped against the cavern ceiling as it crawled down the wall toward the floor.I looked at the bone hook still tied