Chapter Thirty-Seven: Setting Sail for Exploration

For Lu Chen, being chased by the black bear was merely an unexpected episode, hardly worth worrying about. After all, this creature was similar to the pack of gray wolves; its hunting territory lay mostly within the forest, posing little real threat to a saltwater crocodile.

After the typhoon, the weather turned sweltering once more.

He spent the entire morning darting back and forth along the river, covering several miles, but failed to find anything appetizing.

Since evolving to the second stage, his appetite had grown significantly again.

He could easily consume more than four pounds of food in one sitting, nearly one-ninth of his body weight.

Having experienced the benefits brought by the flesh and blood of the Burmese python, he had grown more selective about his meals.

Ordinary small fish no longer appealed to him... Unfortunately, after days of hunting, most of the large fish in the nearby waters had already been devoured.

There used to be plenty of waterbirds in the reed beds along the banks, but as more and more of their kind mysteriously disappeared around him, they gradually realized that a deadly predator lurked beneath the water and began to migrate elsewhere.

Even those waterbirds that stayed became exceptionally cautious, making them hard to catch.

Even the herbivores on land seldom came to the riverbank to drink anymore.

After two failed hunts in succession, Lu Chen decided to check the downstream estuary.

There, vast stretches of mangroves spread out, home to many more animals that hadn't yet suffered his predation, promising a fruitful harvest.

As expected, not long after entering the mangroves at the estuary, Lu Chen swallowed a plump gull, filling most of his belly.

Gazing at the endless blue waves in the distance, he suddenly felt a yearning to swim freely.

In his previous life, Lu Chen had worked somewhere along the coast and had gone out to sea several times with fishing boats.

Even then, human exploration of the ocean amounted to only five percent, with the vast remainder shrouded in mystery.

He had always harbored a sense of awe toward the sea.

When migrating a few saltwater crocodile hatchlings days ago, Lu Chen dared not venture into the shallows, sticking to the winding coastline.

Now, without the little ones in tow, he felt much bolder.

His body had reached over a meter in length, granting him some ability to protect himself.

Resolved, Lu Chen swung his tail and paddled further out.

Soon, the coastal mudflats shrank to a gray line.

The sea and sky merged, endless blue waves stretching as far as the eye could see.

A surge of pride welled up in Lu Chen’s heart.

He had intended to swim only a short distance before turning back, but lost track of time.

When he finally regained his senses, he realized the shoreline was nowhere in sight.

After the evolution, his stamina had also improved noticeably. He had swum more than ten miles in one go without feeling the least bit tired.

Since he wasn’t exhausted, he decided to explore the seabed... and test the depth his body could now withstand.

Neither in his previous life nor in this world had Lu Chen ever seen the true underwater world of the sea.

But recalling his lesson from the bottom of Lake Liu, he didn’t pursue depth recklessly, planning to surface at the first sign of discomfort.

With everything prepared, Lu Chen opened his mouth and took a deep breath. His tail propelled him downward, limbs drawn in, as he slowly sank toward the seafloor.

The sun shone brilliantly today, offering good visibility; light penetrated straight to the bottom.

After days of intense sunlight, the underwater environment was not cold, the water temperature holding above twenty degrees.

With his current adaptability, he felt no abnormal reactions.

Lu Chen recalled from his previous life that sunlight entering seawater quickly diminished, absorbed and scattered by water molecules and suspended particles.

At a certain depth, light vanished entirely.

Different colors of light penetrated seawater to varying degrees, their intensity following a negative exponential decay with depth.

Red light disappeared first at the surface, followed by orange, yellow, and green.

At about twenty meters deep, green light was completely gone.

Now submerged, Lu Chen could no longer see green light, only a faint blue. In other words, he had already descended beyond twenty meters.

Yet his extraordinary eyesight was hardly affected, allowing him to survey the seabed within a dozen meters.

The area was uneven, strewn with reefs, schools of fish occasionally passing by.

Mud crabs, cone snails, mantis shrimp, mullet, scallops, sardines... he even spotted a grouper.

There was a variety of marine life here, though most were small and few in number.

More importantly, none contained much flesh, so Lu Chen wasn’t interested in eating them.

Soon, he spotted a long, sleek creature wedged in a nearby reef crevice—its skin smooth and scaleless, covered in bean-sized brown-black spots, resembling a sea snake at first glance.

Money eel!

Lu Chen recognized it immediately.

This creature had many names along the coast in his previous life, even within the same area, fishermen called it differently—stone eel, golden eel, oil cone, and so on.

He didn’t know its scientific name, only that its price wasn’t low; at the seafood markets, a pound could fetch seventy or eighty, sometimes over a hundred.

The larger the specimen, the higher its value.

Normally, money eels weighed around two pounds, but the big ones reportedly reached over ten.

The one before him was over three pounds, worth roughly three hundred if sold to a dealer.

But for Lu Chen, it was simply a delicious meal. The gull he’d eaten earlier was mostly digested, and hunger struck again.

Money eels moved swiftly in water, making direct capture difficult.

Lu Chen opted for an ambush, burying most of his body in the seabed mud, leaving only his eyes exposed.

When the creature swam past, he lunged, biting it in half and swallowing.

Not bad—it granted him three points of energy.

With his belly full, Lu Chen surfaced again, not in a hurry to return.

The day was still young; since he’d made it out here, he might as well relax a while longer.

When tired of swimming, he stopped steering with his tail, loosened his limbs, and drifted along the waves. This was one of the saltwater crocodile’s unique skills—using ocean currents to migrate long distances.

Records from his previous life noted saltwater crocodiles drifting over a thousand kilometers from Australia to the Bay of Bengal, taking more than a month.

He didn’t know how far he’d floated, when suddenly the buzzing sound of propellers reached him from the water.

A fishing boat was nearby!

Lu Chen concentrated, using the sensory organs scattered within his scales to investigate. He soon detected unusual vibration frequencies in the waves.

Pinpointing the direction, Lu Chen sped toward it.

He had no particular purpose, just curiosity.

Normally, a saltwater crocodile couldn’t catch up to a fishing boat on the water. But fishing boats often slowed down for their operations.

After about twenty minutes, Lu Chen appeared near the vessel, his body pressed against the hull, with only half his head exposed.

Unless someone dived down for a close look, the saltwater crocodile would be nearly invisible.

Lu Chen realized this was not a fishing boat, but a sea angling vessel.

Sea angling meant hiring a boat to fish out at sea.

He’d tried it a few times in his previous life; the price wasn’t too high. A three-day trip cost about four thousand.

You kept whatever you caught—if luck was on your side, you could even make a profit. Dozens of pounds of grouper, or even a hundred-pound tuna, were possible.