118 The Myriad Bloodstone Kraken

As the cargo ship was wrapped up heavily in the massive tentacles Yun stared on aghast. She hadn't expected to encounter something quite so dangerous on her journey down the waterways. Recalling the map she had looked over before leaving she recalled that there were a few areas near some of the larger bodies of water where the riverbed became unfathomably deep, allowing for some larger beasts to get there, but frequently they had trouble leaving, which resulted in them coming to the surface and wreaking havoc. Just her luck that she'd be present when one of these monstrosities arose.

In their great fury they would never let even the smallest vessel pass from their reach. Yun prepared herself for the inevitable tentacle that would reach for her vessel. She was confident she'd be able to at least temporarily maneuver on the surface of the water without the vessel, as she could use her Qi to freeze large sturdy segments of ice with enough mass for her to push off of, but this would rapidly deplete her energy. In such a damp environment she couldn't use her Dragon Aura to generate a dry zone and pull lightning energy our of the air, she would have to rely on her cultivation base to provide enough energy.

Yun also prayed that the Goldenflame Lynmurku that resided in her Neidan would refrain from causing trouble, as an inopportune timing could end both of their lives. It had stayed fairly quiet since it dug a den, but as it absorbed the incredibly pure flame and lightning energy in her Neidan's gravity and withstood the incredibly powerful attractive force it's body continued to grow even larger than it had been before while also gaining elemental properties of it's own.

Strangely, instead of acquiring the element it was exposed to, the odd creature began to develop opposite elemental affinities, as though its body were trying to resist the local elements by developing a countermeasure! Yun was astonished as she looked within herself while she was floating down the river this past ten days and observed some of the minor changes that the beast was already showing. Within it's body was the seed of Earth Elemental Qi as well as Metal Element Qi!

Breaking free of her worries and recall, Yun payed attention to the water beneath her and circulated her Qi secretly to prepare for any techniques she might need to use. She had already withdrawn a rope and hook from her storage and latched it onto the boat so that she could pull it free from danger after evading the first attack, then store it in her spatial storage when it was safe. Knowing that she would be attacked, Yun had taken strong precautions against the looming assault on her vessel.

As the cargo vessel released a loud creaking noise from the extra weight it was burdened with Yun sensed a stealthy attempt to attack her from beneath by not one, but two of the beast's extensive array of appendages. She quickly used the boat to leap up and forward before turning and pulling the boat after herself with a sharp tug against the metal ring built into the bow, pulling it free just as the large tips of the tentacles smashed down where it was moments before. Yun quickly channeled her Qi to sap all the heat out of a large chunk of water beneath her, creating a large piece of ice that she landed heavily on, tipping it on it's side and sliding across the water from her momentum until the growing weight of the frozen surface managed to slow down to a crawl.

The small boat was rapidly drawn in by Yun, then she reached down and used a small trick to freeze enough water beneath it to raise it out of the water rapidly, resulting in it lifting into the air for an instant, but an instant was all she needed for it to be in free-fall in order to put it in her storage artifact. She had long ago learned that you could only store items you could lift, but if they were not in contact with the ground at all and she made contact with them it would be successful. She had used this trick to store things much larger than she could lift, such as the corpse of the Immortal Wyrm which she used a complicated block and tackle system to raise off the ground before she released it and managed to transport it into her artifact in that moment it was free falling.

Standing on her icy platform Yun could easily see into the water beneath her. Having such a rapid and thorough freeze created an almost unnaturally clear ice block, giving her a window into the deep waters below her with only minor surface distortions. What she was witnessing below her sent yet another shiver down her spine, and even her hackles were shivering unnaturally.

The beast below her was one she had been warned about before she left. This was a creature that even the strongest warriors seen in the past millenia on the Cradle would not dare say they could win against! Yun could see it's massive body deep beneath her, shrouded in the darkness as the murky water occluded the light from the suns. Despite it's depth and the murky shadow, Yun could still recognize enough about it to know what beast she was being attacked by.

This was the Myriad Bloodstone Kraken! As a juvenile it would only have around ten tentacles, two of which had large flat surfaces on their ends with hooks to grasp onto prey embedded into the surface, but as they grew mature they would begin to grow more and more tentacles rather than growing thicker tentacles. By the time they were as large as the one beneath her they would have dozens of tentacles about twice as thick as a juvenile's, and their appetite would be impossible to sate in these rivers and lakes. Only the other enormous monsters in the wide oceans could satisfy it's hunger.

Yun saw another attack coming at her and quickly dodged just like last time, drawing out her energy to create another platform as she created more distance between herself and the doomed cargo ship, this time leaving her platform flatter to give her more distance before she stopped gliding. Using this method Yun didn't stop fleeing. Rather than waiting for the next attack she kept leaping whenever her momentum slowed, refusing to be a sitting duck. Before she could even make her fourth leap she had to quickly change her trajectory, causing her to take a much smaller jump without much momentum, as the Kraken's tentacle came shooting up in front of where she was about to leap, smashing down heavily on the ice platform she had just leapt from.