CH 44

Translated by Addis of Exiled Rebels Scanlations

Editor: KarateChopMonkey

As Lan Yu ran in silence, he began to think back to Officer Wang’s usual words and actions. The way he was teaching people with his electric baton at any time couldn’t be associated with the Lontan person. He could only sigh in his heart, because this person’s acting skills were really good, compared to himself, the movie star, he was also the same.

He sighed, but was vaguely unconvinced.

The best thing was to have the opportunity to act together, and must be able to act better than that person.

The road was gradually filled with other people, handymen who hadn’t gone to see the movie, running around in a frenzy, interspersed with shouts of panic.

“Where’s the warden?” Lan Yu heard someone ask.

“The warden is also in the warehouse, and I heard he’s going to speak to the inmates tonight, so two of our backroom workers have gone to join the fun, and they’re not out yet.” Another man was answering anxiously.

“Why don’t they come out? Why didn’t they come out with all that water?”

“The warehouse door is locked! We took turns trying to open the door, but it wouldn’t budge…”

The mountain wall suddenly exploded and water began to gush in. They had been going fast, but never encountered such a thing, and didn’t know how to deal with such chaos.

Lan Yu and Lu RanKong looked at each other quickly, and without speaking, ran quickly to the warehouse. As they got closer and closer, the roar of the waterfall was deafening, the air started to get wet, and there were cold water droplets splashing down all over their faces and bodies.

When they ran to the warehouse to look down, both of them drew in a cold breath.

Although it was night, every few dozen meters there was a large lamp, illuminating the area as if it were day, they were no longer in front of the warehouse, but a deep and large pool of water. The warehouse was built in a depression, and overhead was a huge waterfall, the water column directly impacted on the top of the reservoir, and was flowing down from there.

The water was very fast, now only about ten minutes have passed, and nearly 1,000 square meters of the warehouse was half flooded, and only the upper half of the metal wall and a roof was exposed. There were a few handymen swimming on the edge, and others popping up out of the water, breathing heavily.

“How is it? Can you open the door?” Someone standing next to Lan Yu asked in a loud voice.

The handyman shook his head desperately, his mouth was saying something, but because of the sound of the waterfall, it was too loud to hear. By the shape of his mouth and expression, he should be saying that the door could not be opened.

Lan Yu thought that everyone was still inside, including the people in cell 11, and was about to jump into the water. But someone next to him was faster, and a shadow flashed as he flung himself down.

Lan Yu glanced with his afterimage, and Lu RanKong was gone. He didn’t have time to think too much, just took a deep breath, and followed by jumping into the bottomless pool of water.

As soon as he entered the water, he felt the cold penetrate his skin, and every pore suddenly tightened. It was a coolness unique to groundwater, making him think of Pelican Lake in an instant.

But now wasn’t the time to be thinking about this, so he opened his eyes in the water, looking for the location of the warehouse door.

The water was clean and clear, and he saw someone swimming in front of him, his prison clothes and figure resembling Lu RanKong.

Lan Yu intensified paddling, flexibly swinging his two long and slender legs as he followed Lu RanKong, and he soon swam to the warehouse gate. The door was very low, submerged in water. At the door, the two men looked around and felt, trying to find a place to open. Because it was a warehouse of precious ores, the door was built very solid and firm. They didn’t know what material it was made from, the surface didn’t have any locks, only the left side of the door had a scanner panel.

Lan Yu quickly surfaced, while breathing heavily to look at the people on the shore, and when he saw the medical officer’s assistant also standing there with an anxious face, he asked loudly, “Do you have a pass card?”

The assistant, unlike the handyman, was an official employee of prison and should be equipped with a pass card. The assistant looked at him with a blank face, obviously unable to hear his words.

Lan Yu hurriedly swam back, and while swimming, he continued to repeat aloud, “Pass card, pass card.”

After he swam back a dozen meters, the assistant was still smart enough to finally understand what he meant and pulled out a metal card from his pocket, throwing it at him with all his might.

The metal card fell into the water in front of Lan Yu, he reached out and picked it up, and when he turned around, he found Lu RanKong also surfaced and was catching his breath. Not far from the shore came a large flock of ducks running and making quacking noises.

Because of the shock of the explosion, the door of the nearby duck house was shaken open and the ducks ran out. These ducks weren’t afraid of people, when they saw the light and they swarmed over. They rushed so fast that the ones in front couldn’t stop themselves and fell into the water.

Poor ducks born in QuYa Planet had never seen the water, and those who fell down desperately fluttered and screamed, and those standing on the shore stretched their heads to look down, their small flat beaks wide open to quack.

After two flutters in the water, they began to swim around without any knowledge, and when the ones on the shore saw this, they hesitantly jumped down again.

Then, the ducks all jumped into the water.

Lu RanKong saw Lan Yu swim back with the pass card, both took a deep breath and dove into the water again. Lan Yu quickly dove to the door lock and put the pass card on it.

Beep… 

The scanner lock emitted two short error sounds and flashed a red light.

Lan Yu’s heart went cold and he and Lu RanKong looked at each other in the water, understanding that not only had the door been locked on purpose, but the lock’s reading information had been tampered with.

He looked around and saw an iron bar lying under the water, so he dived down and held it in his hand. This iron bar should’ve been brought by the current from somewhere, it was a meter long, the thickness of a child’s wrist, and looked very sturdy.

He swam back to the door, along the side of the frame all the way to feel, wanted to find a gap, and then pry open with the iron bar. But the door was tightly sealed and closed, unusually strong, and there was no gap or other gaps that he could stick the iron bar in.

Lu RanKong swam along the warehouse in a circle, wanting to see if there were any windows or vents. But the warehouse was built in strict accordance with the standards of sealing, not to mention the windows, looking out, the entire warehouse was an airtight iron barrel.

Only between the roof and the walls, every few meters, there were two-inch high and a foot wide vents. People couldn’t drill out, but the water could flood in.

Seeing the level keep rising, from the vent only less than a meter away, Lan Yu’s heart was unusually anxious. He felt the metal door under him also in a regular vibration, that was the inside of the people in the door, trying to save themselves.

The air in his lungs was almost gone, so he surfaced to catch his breath and dove down again, ready to feel the bottom of the door. The moment he stepped on the ground, he suddenly felt the light to his left dim, and his eyes glanced at a huge black shadow that swam silently past.

His heart tightened, and before he could turn his head to see, his arm was pulled to the right by someone, and he drifted out with it.

At the same time the underwater currents surged, as the black shadow of the place where he just stood rushed, flying to the warehouse door, sending out a dull noise.

The warehouse door shook a few times in that instant, the water curled up and spread out in layers, Lan Yu and the people around him were swept to the edge of the pool of water and crashed into the wall of the crater.

Lan Yu didn’t feel the pain in that moment, and when he reacted, he found that it was Lu RanKong who had wrapped him in his arms, and he was between him and the wall.

Across the water, a giant black monster fish was rushing towards them both from the warehouse door.

It was covered with black scales with wing-like fins, wide open mouth full of jagged snowy hideous long teeth, looking like a fish with a pile of teeth.

This was the crystal-devouring beast.

And inserted in its throat was a gray stick-like object, the top of the upper and lower jaw, that looked like a stalactite.

Lan Yu immediately recognized that it was the one he met in the underground Pelican Lake, and the stalactite in its mouth was pierced by Lu RanKong at that time.

Just a few days without seeing it, the fish had lost a lot of weight, and the jagged fish bones seemed to be coming out of the fish skin, obviously it had been suffering very badly. Lan Yu saw its small eyes flashing with anger and vicious light, apparently having recognized him and Lu RanKong.

The crystal-devouring beast swung its tail fin, rushing towards them like lightning, as the two hurriedly paddled desperately, swimming away to the two sides respectively. Although it could not close its mouth to bite people, it had long teeth, and could still poke a few holes in the body.

The crystal-devouring beast hit the wall of the mountain where they had just been, and there was another shaking of the earth and mountains, and the water pool was swept up with huge waves and chunks of rock smashed into the water.

Lan Yu was instantly pushed several dozen meters away by the huge waves and was a little dizzy for a while, then he hurriedly surfaced to change his breath. He looked at the surface of the water, the people standing on the shore were shouting in panic, waving to him to get on shore, apparently all had seen the strange fish under the water.

The ducklings were also dazed by the waves, and there were little yellow balls floating everywhere on the water, chattering excitedly and nervously.

Lan Yu didn’t see Lu RanKong, so he took a deep breath and sank back into the water.

Once in the water, he saw the strange fish was frantically scurrying around, apparently not biting people, but hitting the thick wall twice to make it unusually furious. Feeling Lan Yu’s side of the water waves, it abruptly turned around and it met his line of sight with its sinister little eyes.

Lan Yu spat out a string of bubbles in panic and was about to burrow to the surface when he saw Lu RanKong swim out from nowhere, stopping a dozen meters from the crystal-devouring beast, lifting the gun in his hand and pulling the trigger.

The bullet flew through the water and hit the black scale armor of the crystal-thirsty beast, and although it didn’t penetrate the flesh, it also left a gun hole in the scale armor.

The crystal-devouring beast that was about to come at Lan Yu abruptly stopped moving and swung its fish tail, turning its huge body around and facing Lu RanKong.

Lan Yu’s heart lifted high at that moment, forgetting that he was still in the water, and out of his mouth, he shouted, “Watch out!”

Blub… 

There was only the sound of a series of water bubbles.

Lu RanKong turned around as soon as the bullet hit the crystalline beast, and swam quickly ahead with the crystalline beast swinging its tail fins and chasing after him.

Lan Yu was panicked and anxious, looked around, and saw the iron bar he was just holding not far from the bottom of the water, so he rushed to dive down to grab it. He was about to chase the direction of the fish when he saw that Lu RanKong had stopped and stood upright in the water in front of the warehouse door, hands gently paddling.

The crystal-devouring beast, perhaps angered by this contemptuous and daring behavior, flung its head and accelerated towards Lu RanKong.

Lan Yu also desperately swam forward, mouth again anxiously shouted, “Be careful…”

Grrr… 

Boom! This time Lan Yu was prepared and grabbed a pillar beside him, not letting himself be swept away by the current. He tried to keep his eyes open to see Lu RanKong in front of him through those rapids, to see if he had dodged.

Through the blur of cascading waves, he saw that Lu RanKong was gone, the crystal-devouring beast was also gone, and the warehouse door had been deformed, with a large chunk dented in the half metal door.

Lan Yu turned his head, and saw Lu RanKong desperately paddling forward to swim to the right, he was obviously close to the shore, but he turned toward a direction, swimming back there in a big circle, followed closely by the crystal-devouring beast.

Lan Yu’s heart moved as looked at the sunken gate, and immediately understood his idea.

Seeing that the crystal-devouring beast was getting closer and closer to Lu RanKong, he hurriedly took a shortcut to chase it from the side. Just as it was approaching, he stabbed the iron rod in his hand with all his might and hit the crystal-devouring beast’s tail, making it deflect in pain and stop its pursuit of Lu RanKong.

Just as it turned its head to look over, Lan Yu took out all his strength to swim towards the warehouse door, like a fish breaking the water. He felt the rapids surging behind him, and the hissing sound from the crystal-devouring beast was carried to his ears by the current.

The light through the surface of the water, he and the huge black shadow of the crystal-devouring beast was projected under the water, but he didn’t stop to see if the black shadow was getting closer and closer to him, and didn’t care because of the closed air made them feel like their lungs would explode, and used all his strength to swim towards the warehouse door.

Ten meters… 

Five meters… 

Three meters… 

When his finger was about to touch the metal door recessed piece, he suddenly felt a force pull him up, and he sharply swung his legs to the surface.

Just floating high away from the door the moment he felt the water was like an air pump, pushing him heavily and vigorously above.

In front of him was a bright light, as he had been propelled out of the water and into the air, surrounded by several small yellow groups that were swept up into the sky by the water column.

Just then, there was a loud boom under the water, the water under his feet backed up, like it was flooding in one direction.

Lan Yu leapt forward in the air and landed firmly on the roof of the warehouse, choking and coughing loudly while looking into the water, trying to find Lu RanKong.

The door of the warehouse had been completely smashed open by the crystal-devouring beast, and the water gushed into it wildly. He heard a startled call from inside the warehouse, and a guard blowing a whistle, which stopped after two short blasts, supposedly swept up by the current.

“Well done…” Someone suddenly patted him on the back and whispered in his ear.

Lan Yu abruptly turned his head to look and saw Lu RanKong standing wetly next to him, a hand smoothly resting on his shoulder.

“Are you okay?” Both of them asked at the same time.

“I’m fine…” Another simultaneous answer.

Lan Yu then asked, “Where is the crystal-devouring beast?”

He had just been swept up into the air by the upwelling water, and he didn’t know how the crystal-thirsty beast was doing, if it had rushed into the warehouse and crashed into the warehouse, it would have been a disaster.

“It has knocked itself out, no problem for now.” Lu RanKong panted slightly.

After a few more minutes, the warehouse had almost filled with water. The water began to calm down, and a group of prisoners swam out of the gate. These prisoners weren’t idle people, they handled this water very well, and didn’t panic when encountering such a situation, but orderly swam to the door. The few who couldn’t swim were dragged by others, where they choked loudly and coughed, paddled haphazardly, looking like they were drowned by the rapids just now.

Some of the ducks that were washed in together were also mixed in with the crowd and swam out together.

Lan Yu saw a prison guard lying on the back of a prisoner, his stomach bulging and his eyes were half-open, spitting out water from the corners of his mouth from time to time, resting on the chest of the hand also showed half a copper whistle.

He calmed down, then felt weak, and simply sat down on the roof, hanging his two feet down in the water. Lu RanKong also sat down next to him, and they looked down as they were sitting side by side.

The surrounding area was really noisy, and Lan Yu suddenly felt something prop up against his side and touched his right fingers, itchy and tingly. He looked down and saw three wet ducklings huddled beside him, one of which was pecking at his finger.

Lan Yu nudged their little heads with his left hand and asked in a low voice, “Were you the ones who rushed out of the water with me just now?”

“What?” Lu RanKong, who was on the left side, thought he was talking to him and turned his head to ask.

Lan Yu smiled and said, “Nothing…”

“What the fuck is this thing under the water?” The inmates were swimming out and couldn’t help but ask when they saw the huge black shadow under the water at the entrance.

“Forget about it, swim out first. It’s probably a big dead fish.”

“Holy shit! Look, it’s not dead! Its tail just twitched a little! This thing was hitting the door just now, right?”

“Quick, quick swim…”

“Brother Qiao, Brother Bao, why are you two on the roof?” Liu Junjie’s voice came from the water.

The two looked toward the voice, only to see Liu Junjie and Qiao Fei floating in the water, Lin Lin was one of them to set up an arm, the glasses on the bridge of his nose were gone, so he was squinting his eyes to look at them.

Qiao Fei also asked, “Just now we were saying, fortunately Brother Qiao had stomach pain, so you two didn’t get trapped inside. How did you climb up here?”

Lu RanKong didn’t answer, only asked, “Qiu Dao, Chen Zheng and the others?”

“Here they are, here they are.” Qiu Dao followed the crowd and swam out of the doorway, paddling with his right hand and holding Wang Jin’s chest with his left.

Wang Jin obviously didn’t know how to swim, but paddled his arms vigorously, his two stout little legs slapped up the water all the way.

Chen Zheng swam behind them in silence, but the splashing from Wang Jin made it so he couldn’t open his eyes.

The prisoner at the back couldn’t help but complain, “The one in front, do you think those two legs are oars? Are you trying to make us die or what?”

“Even if it’s a propeller, you have to endure.” Qiu Dao replied to the prisoner roughly, and turned to comfort Wang Jin, “Spray them, continue to spray them.”

Wang Jin silently stopped his feet and just paddled with his hands.