Chapter 622: Section 409: Cang Xu’s Limit
deep sea.
A large group of groupers, seething with anger, relentlessly pursued the enemy ahead.
Their enemy was only one, likewise a grouper.
However, this Silver Level grouper was bizarre, with only a fish head and no body or tail to be seen.
Not only that, this grouper head emitted a strong undead aura.
It was such unshielded negative energy that incited the furor and pursuit of the grouper shoal.
The grouper head surged forward, plunging into a white undersea jungle.
This place was the White Hair Trench.
In the White Hair Trench, a unique type of coral insect thrived, parasitizing on the surfaces of living beings to grow and proliferate. Their excrements accumulated, forming a soft-bodied white coral.
The soft-bodied white coral stretched out in long strips, swaying with the water waves, like white strands of hair.
White hair coral insects generally parasitized sea beasts. But if a massive sea beast ended up buried at the sea bottom, a large number of white hair coral insects would still draw nutrients from the corpse.
And in the undersea graveyard, where numerous sea beasts met their demise, a large population of coral insects resided.
These coral insects created soft-bodied corals, which clustered together to form white hair jungles.
Generally speaking, these white hair jungles, or coral bushes, posed no danger to the marine creatures that entered them.
But, the grouper head that emitted an undead aura was an exception.
The white coral, being the excrement of coral insects, was still under their control, possessing a certain attacking capability.
Coral insects, being bona fide living creatures, naturally abhorred the grouper head suffused with negative energy.
Even though this grouper head was of the Silver Level, as soon as it crashed into the white hair jungle, it immediately triggered a riot among countless coral insects.
White hair coral lashed out from all directions, overwhelmingly thrashing about.
The grouper head couldn’t withstand even two seconds and was explosively whipped apart on the spot.
Yet, the grouper shoal drawn there by the grouper head, far from placated, stormed into the white hair jungle.
The riot of the white hair coral insects wasn’t subsided. Guided by their biological instincts, they couldn’t be ordered to stop.
Strands of white soft-bodied coral violently whipped at the groupers, promptly provoking a counterattack from the grouper shoal.
Thus, a fierce battle erupted.
The white hair jungle, treating the groupers as foes, furiously whipped and annihilated numerous groupers.
The grouper shoal was large and retaliated using Magic-like spells.
Their Magic-like spells were primarily Petrification Techniques.
Strands of white hair coral were petrified into hard stones, and during the riot, they were either broken by other strands of white hair or smashed by the groupers.
The intense battle lasted for over ten minutes.
In the end, the grouper shoal was annihilated, and the white hair jungle also suffered devastating losses—the once lush expanse was no more, and the white hair became sparse, with some areas completely bare.
Though the white hair coral insects won, it was clearly a Pyrrhic victory.
A Ghost Ship quietly emerged.
It was the ship ghosts, Cang Xu, and the like.
The grouper head before was the Death Skull controlled by Cang Xu’s grouper.
Relying on the hatred and anger of the living toward the Undead, he successfully lured a group of groupers into the White Hair Trench, igniting a clash between the two tribes.
Then came the time to clean up the aftermath.
More than a dozen ghosts rushed out from the ship, most of them at the Golden Level!
They charged directly into the White Hair Trench.
The White Hair Trench erupted in turmoil again, attempting to lash out at these ghosts.
The White Hair Coral dealt physical blows, but these ghosts were immune to physical attacks and remained unscathed.
What truly harmed these ghosts were Magic-like abilities.
However, the coral insects of the White Hair Coral did not possess such talents. Their greatest combat ability was to manipulate the White Hair Coral to whip.
More experienced coral insects could also manipulate soft corals to perform actions like entangling and strangling enemies.
Considering that the white soft corals were actually the excretions of the coral insects, in a sense, these coral insects were fighting with their own feces.
They were a group of “shit-manipulating” experts.
Apart from that, the White Hair Coral insects had no other combat abilities.
The coral insects were a type of insect and possessed no Magic-like abilities.
This was not a disadvantage for them but rather an advantage.
Because these coral insects were parasites, meant to live and reproduce on other organisms.
And the sea beasts they parasitized were often huge in size and possessed Magic-like abilities. These creatures could passively absorb elements from nature, form Demon Crystals, and use various Magic-like abilities to dominate in the food chain.
If the White Hair Coral insects could perform Magic-like abilities, it would mean they had Demon Crystals inside. No matter the quantity, it would cause conflict and Magic Power confusion, Magic Power rejection, and other disadvantages with their host sea beast.
In such cases, the host sea beast would prioritize getting rid of the parasitic coral insects to ensure its own safety and survival.
Thus, the coral insects would lose their primary habitat for survival.
Hence, possessing Magic-like abilities would be a disaster for these White Hair Coral insects.
Watching ghosts easily kill the last strand of White Hair, the Undead Samurai Ku Feng stood at the bow of the Ghost Ship and couldn’t help but reflect, “If it were the groupers’ Petrification Technique, it would have been difficult to handle. Ghosts or skeletons hit by the Petrification Technique almost never escape. But these White Hair Corals just let us slaughter them, offering no resistance at all.”
This wasn’t to say that the ship ghosts and their gang didn’t have a way to counter the Petrification Technique.
There was the Petrification Technique, naturally, there was also the “Petrification Removal” Spell.
Even though almost everyone was an Undead Mage, they would still carry some general Magic Scrolls with them to prevent any unforeseen circumstances.
Cang Xu was poor and naturally did not have it, but the ship ghost likely had Magic Scrolls to remove Petrification. He even had a spare Magic Book!
However, the reality was: for the vast majority of skeletons and ghosts that were petrified, the Undead Mages would not bother to save them.
The reason was simple—cost.
Although the cost of performing spells like Petrification Removal was not high, and the Mana and Spirit consumed were renewable resources, for the Undead Mages, they could create more skeletons and ghosts at a much lower cost.
Only if there were high-quality skeletons or ghosts petrified, would they consider intervening.
The Little Prince was standing next to the Undead Samurai Ku Feng at this moment and spoke with a tone full of regret, “This flat seabed terrain is so suitable for my Heavy Cavalry to charge. Unfortunately, in this battle, Lord Ship Ghost did not let me participate.”
The Little Prince, having annihilated the ramming turtle group, had acquired a large number of their skeletons. These skeletons were naturally Heavy Cavalry. The Little Prince particularly loved this small cavalry troop, eagerly anticipating their deployment every day.
However, the deep sea environment was complex and unique, rarely providing a stage for the ramming turtle skeletons to demonstrate their strength.
Cang Xu consoled from the side, “Little Prince, when we go to rescue the Fin Spirit, we will likely battle the pirates. Then, won’t your ramming turtle group have a chance to be utilized?”
“Before that, we should take advantage of our strengths and collect resources as much as possible to increase our combat power and the success rate of our rescue mission,” he continued.
“Xu Jia is entirely right,” the ship ghost also emerged.
These days, a group of Undead Mages had launched multiple strikes in the White Hair Trench, significantly enhancing their own strength.
Initially, they needed the ship ghost and the Ghost Ship to merge to control the battle.
Now, the frequency of the ship ghost using this method had noticeably decreased. Relying on the many ghosts and skeletons under its command, they could confront most of the deep sea beast groups directly.
In fact, many real battles did not require face-to-face confrontation.
Take this recent battle, for instance. They only needed to deploy one of Cang Xu’s Silver Level Death Skulls to establish a tremendous advantage.
Most sea beasts did not possess much intelligence.
In this regard, the advantage of intelligent species was very clear.
The Undead Mages had only made brief exchanges before they began to clean up.
Although numerous, the skeletons and ghosts were of low intelligence and unsuitable for this task. Hence, the meticulous task of cleaning up the battlefield had to be personally attended to by the Undead Mages.
A few Soul Summoning Techniques later, a large batch of grouper spirits condensed on the battlefield, as well as countless, tens of thousands of tiny ghost spirits of coral insects.
These tiny ghost spirits were so weak that many dissipated just after forming. They vanished quietly, like bubbles bursting.
The souls of insects were inherently weak, and after death, the success rate of Soul Summoning Techniques was much lower than for other lives.
However, soon the ship ghost personally intervened, carefully preserving these insect ghost spirits and collecting them.
“I want all these coral insect ghost spirits,” said the ship ghost.
This request puzzled Cang Xu. But soon, he heard the Little Prince explain, “In high-level Soul Vein inheritances, there’s a specialized Ghost Transformation Skill for insect spirits that transforms insect swarms into ghost swarms. This type of ghost swarm, like an elemental aggregate, can converge and disperse, making it much more troublesome than the usual transformed ghosts.”
“High-level Soul Vein inheritance…” Cang Xu sighed internally.
He longed for such inherited knowledge. However, this caliber of inheritance was always guarded by the Undead Orthodoxy.
Cang Xu, with his lowly lineage, had no chance of earning the ship ghost’s recognition to receive such an inheritance.
He could only drool with envy.
However, in this hunt, the loot Cang Xu acquired was second only to that of the ship ghost.
Mainly because he had sacrificed a Silver Level grouper head.
After cleaning the battlefield, the Undead Mages cooperated once again to properly handle all the undead essence in the area.
Eventually, they boarded the Ghost Ship, quietly disappearing into the dark depths of the sea.
On the Ghost Ship, Cang Xu returned to his cabin and began processing the newly acquired grouper head.
He didn’t perform the Reduction Technique to create a Death Skull directly but did some preliminary processing. Then, he placed these processed grouper heads in the corner of his cabin.
The corner of the cabin was already piled with a lot of Undead Materials.
A common feature of these Undead Materials was that they were all heads of some marine creature.
They had not yet been refined.
Cang Xu picked several heads and placed them in front of himself.
After taking a moment to regulate his breath, Cang Xu used the Head Creation Technique on them.
Several applications of the Head Creation Technique exhausted all the Silver Level Undead Materials, leaving Cang Xu empty-handed.
No matter, there were still plenty of Silver Skulls in the corner of the cabin.
After two rounds, Cang Xu finally obtained a brand new Silver Level Death Skull.
The higher the level of the Death Skull, the lower the success rate.
However, Cang Xu had many, and by persistently trying, he was bound to succeed eventually.
There were so many sea beasts and schools of fish in the White Hair Trench that Cang Xu’s haul was meager. The Little Prince and the ship ghosts’ hauls were much larger.
Thus, Cang Xu’s number of Silver Level Death Skulls returned to its peak, reaching five.
Besides, he had forty-eight Black Iron Level Death Skulls and one hundred twenty-two Bronze Level ones.
This was the maximum number Cang Xu was currently able to control.
For this, he had taken on a tremendous spiritual strain.
The strain brought about by the Death Skulls was smaller than that of ghosts or skeletons. But do not forget, Cang Xu was only a Black Iron Level Mage.
His spiritual value was weaker than that of a Silver Level Mage.
The Reduction Technique and the Reduction of Negative Energy Technique were of little help to him now.
Since obtaining these two techniques, Cang Xu had used them almost daily.
The benefits he gained from them were diminishing.
The Reduction of Negative Energy Technique could reduce the erosion of negative energy, preventing his humanity from being obliterated. This technique, when used periodically, had the best effect because the erosion of negative energy accumulates.
The Reduction Technique helped reduce the spiritual burden the Undead Mage had from his subordinates. It was the fundamental cornerstone of an Undead Mage’s ability to fight as a one-man army.
Without the Reduction Technique, the number of Death Skulls Cang Xu could control would have to be cut by two-thirds.
But now, the effect of the Reduction Technique on him had become imperceptible.
During his days deep in the sea, Cang Xu’s personal combat ability had expanded drastically. But he had reached his limit today.
His bloodline firmly restricted him.
“I have reached the ceiling unless my bloodline improves.”
Although his bloodline mutation was still ongoing, Cang Xu had already discarded his expectations for his bloodline.
He could clearly feel that the bloodline mutation was in its final stage.
His training efficiency had not changed significantly; it had even weakened slightly.
The trend of his bloodline mutation was very clear, and Cang Xu had already foreseen the outcome of this bloodline mutation—not good nor bad, maintaining the status quo. Strictly speaking, it slightly lowered his aptitude, but the reduction was extremely limited, almost imperceptible. It could be considered as being on par with before.
For this result, Cang Xu accepted it very quickly.
Because the outcome of bloodline mutation was unpredictable. Most mutations result in deterioration, with only a tiny fraction improving.
This was different from a Bloodline Awakening.
The outcome of a Bloodline Awakening was generally positive. As it fundamentally involved the concentration of the bloodline reaching a critical mass, resulting in a qualitative change from the quantitative accumulation.