Chapter Ninety: A Culinary Journey, Part Two of the Middle Section (with thanks for the generous ten-thousand-reward from the esteemed patron “I Am a Pendant”!)

At the brink of crisis, Catherine suddenly remembered something Ling Mo had once told her: venomous beasts were usually the strongest among monsters of the same rank. Having survived the natural process of elimination, the venomous beasts that remained generally possessed toxins of truly terrifying power.

The yellow-green thick smoke was in fact a swift, fierce jet of liquid. Before it even came close, a pungent stench slammed into her face, almost suffocating her. If this had been the old Catherine, she would have panicked and been hard-pressed to cope. But she was no longer who she had been before. Her eyes flickered, and a curved wall of fire appeared before her, blocking the yellow-green venom for an instant. Seizing that brief opening, Catherine pushed off the lakebed with both feet and slipped effortlessly aside, brushing past the jet.

Having personally witnessed Ling Mo killing those elemental sprites, Catherine now had a fresh understanding of martial combat rhythm. Though she blocked and evaded at once, her hands never once stopped moving. She turned the dagger in her right hand, and the sharp edge shaved away a large patch of carapace around the mouthparts of the turtle-like strange square crab. Still unsatisfied, she thrust it in a little farther before withdrawing it.

The crab she had struck was wracked with pain. Its face had nearly been split open completely, and of the four plates around its mouth, only two remained. It looked as though a front tooth had been knocked out, and the sight was absurdly comical. It glared at Catherine in furious rage, shrieking wildly as it raised its claws high. The already red shell over its body turned an even deeper crimson, taking on a bright sheen, as though it were gathering power for some ultimate move.

Seeing this, Catherine hurried into full guard, not daring to relax for a moment as she met the crab's gaze head-on. The two of them were locked in a stalemate. Around them, a crowd of crabs large and small gathered to watch. They silently observed the two combatants striking dramatic poses, not one of them coming forward to interfere. Their manners as spectators were impeccable. Now and then they even stuffed some plankton into their mouths and chewed with crunchy little sounds, like people cracking sunflower seeds.

The stalemate lasted half a minute. The two were still locked in passionate eye contact when Catherine was just about to lose patience. Then a light, drifting shower of marine snow slowly fell from above, veiling their sight in a misty haze. The instant their vision was obscured, the wounded strange square crab suddenly moved.

Perfect.

Catherine cried out inwardly. Such a petty trick had entirely failed to exceed her expectations. Though she was not yet sure exactly how the other side would attack, she still urged the flames around her body into motion and held her blade horizontally before her chest, making full defensive preparations in advance. She was confident that no matter what gimmick this strange square crab tried, she would be able to block or evade it at the first possible moment.

Her eyes fixed tightly on the crab's pair of great claws, her whole body coiled and ready to spring. The strange square crab spread its forelegs, stirred the water lightly, and drew out a small whirlpool. With a gentle pinch of its claws, it gathered a large mass of plankton into a compact little ball, then brought it to its half-rotten mouth and crunched it with little crackling sounds before swallowing it down with a blissful expression, as if nothing at all had happened.

Of course, that "blissful expression" was something Catherine had imagined herself. She suddenly felt that standing there with such grave vigilance made her look like an idiot. The crab had simply never taken her seriously. To it, filling its stomach mattered far more than fighting Catherine. The dry season was almost upon them; by then the stream would run dry, and there would be no more such abundant plankton for it to eat. If it could not accumulate enough energy before then, it would not survive the long period of dormancy.

With a push of her feet, Catherine rose from the lakebed. Her head broke the surface, and she asked Ling Mo in some confusion, "Master, this crab... it has already gone beyond the bounds of tame, hasn't it? I nearly skewered its brain, and it doesn't even think of revenge. Instead, it just goes on leisurely foraging?"

Ling Mo shook his head and said, "Perhaps you've indeed survived in the wild for quite a while, but clearly you still haven't truly regarded yourself as part of nature. You haven't thought of yourself as an animal. You're still using the experience of human society, using human logic to infer the behavior of beasts. That's highly inadvisable."

"Think of myself as... an animal?" Catherine stared blankly.

"Yes. Don't anthropomorphize animals. Think from the perspective of beasts. Right now, you're actually playing the role of a predator, like a tiger or leopard, while the strange square crab is prey, like cattle or sheep. When have you ever seen cattle or sheep, after escaping an attack from a tiger, still thinking about revenge? Plenty of antelope race with leopards until the leopards are exhausted, and then they just keep grazing in all their old calm, doing whatever they were doing before. Put it that way, and isn't this crab's behavior perfectly ordinary?"

Catherine pondered it carefully. It did make sense. She wiped the droplets from her face and asked, "Then what should I do? Just cut one down and haul it up?"

"Dead crabs don't taste as good when roasted. Live ones are better eating. Let me tell you, you don't need to be afraid of those crabs at all. Pick one that's currently feeding and just grab it and run. That crab definitely won't fight back, and the surrounding crabs won't stop you either. But..." Ling Mo had not yet finished when there was a splash. Catherine had already plunged down again in one swift dive, leaving only a trail of bubbles on the surface. She was gone.

"But don't go provoking the one you injured, or you'll get a surprise..." Ling Mo finished the rest to himself, then shrugged at the magic-eye sprite. "Friends, did you all see that? She was too impatient. It wasn't me trying to trick her on purpose."

"A viewer named 'The More Trouble, the Better' tipped the streamer a Chaos Meteor and left a message: I smell the scent of a good show!"

"This new version of the magic-eye sprite has amazing quality. The underwater world is filmed so clearly!"

"Of course. Otherwise, would it be worth over thirty thousand gold coins? That's almost enough to buy three or five houses, right?"

"Quit yelling! Those recording the video and taking screenshots, get ready!"

"Give Sister Catherine a shot, where's the spotlight? Aim it here!"

"..."

To avoid affecting the battle, Catherine had already turned off the scrolling comments, so naturally she could not see any of this. She reasoned that the crab she had just injured must be less mobile, and therefore easier to catch. So she quickly descended back to the earlier spot, came above the crab that was still feeding, and grabbed a protruding ridge of its shell with one hand. With a hard pull, she was about to haul the crab out of the water.

As expected, there was no resistance.

Catherine was overjoyed. One hand was a little inconvenient, so she reached out with the other as well, gripping both sides of the strange square crab's shell. With a forceful kick of her legs, she swam upward. The crab remained calm, its two small eyes set high on its shell tilting back slightly to look at Catherine, all the while not forgetting to stuff the plankton from its claws into its rotten mouth.

"Ha, I didn't expect this crab to be so heavy! Even with my current strength, lifting it is a bit of a strain," Catherine said, feeling the situation was already under control. Swimming upward, she bragged to the viewers in her livestream. "But a bit of weight is good. It means the meat is firm. It'll definitely be delicious when cooked. Guys, I'm almost drooling... Hmm? Why is it so hot in my arms?"

She looked down, and her eyes nearly burst from their sockets!

The shell on the crab's back was now blazing red, then turning bright yellow. Even the pale white stripes on the shell had been stained with a layer of red. The entire crab was frightfully hot, and violent energy churned beneath the base of the shell. The sight was all too familiar. Many fire-type beasts knew this move. It seemed to be...

Self-detonation!!!

Catherine screamed, and with a violent heave of both arms, slammed the crab hard toward the lakebed. At the same time, she kicked hard against the shell with both feet, using the recoil to shoot upward. Her reaction could not be called slow, yet it was still a fraction too late. The crab, glowing throughout its body, had scarcely moved five meters from her when it burst apart with a thunderous explosion.

With a deafening boom, a savage shockwave swept into Catherine, hurling her body from the lakebed like a cannonball. When she shot past the surface, it kicked up a huge spray of water. She soared dozens of meters into the air before plunging back down like a plumb weight, splashing into the lake and sinking to the bottom. It was quite a while before she floated up again, spinning on the surface like a corpse adrift, her face full of utter despair...

P.S. Thanks to the generous donor for the huge tip! If you'd like to appear in this book as an extra, please indicate in the comments whether you want to be one of the crowd in the scrolling comments or some kind of creature. If you want to become a beast, you can even invent your own beastly traits, and the author will definitely arrange an honorable death for you!