Chapter 59: High-Pressure Water Cutter
A particularly massive Deep One, its scales the color of deep-sea volcanic rock and adorned with glowing bioluminescent runes, broke from its assault on a nearby building. It fixed its bulbous, black eyes on Su Yao.
The creature raised a webbed hand and the moisture in the air coalesced into a shimmering, hyper-pressurized blade of water that shot toward her with the force of an industrial laser cutter.
Su Yao met the water cutter with the palm of her hand. A shield of condensed cursed energy erupted to meet it. The collision sent a mist of vaporized saltwater exploding outward, scalding several lesser Deep Ones nearby.
The large Deep One let out a gurgling roar of recognition. “Die, servant of Nuwa!”
Su Yao’s eyebrow twitched. “Nuwa?” Her voice cut through the chaos. “What does the Goddess who patched the sky and created the first humans have to do with you, fishsticks?”
The Deep One swelled with indignation. Its gills flared. “Since Nuwa created your kind from the clay of the surface, we have lived in a state of involuntary banishment!” it bellowed. The sound waves physically shook the ground.
“She gave you the dry land, the sun, the dominion over all you see! What was left for us? The crushing, lightless depths! We were the first, the true children of this world, and we were cast aside for her new, fragile creations!”
It was a cosmic grievance, a tantrum thrown on a geological timescale. Su Yao felt almost impressed by the sheer longevity of the grudge.
“So you're jealous,” Su Yao summarized. Her tone was utterly bored. She flicked her wrist. Spiritual energy lashed out at the water blade, severing its connection and causing it to splash harmlessly to the ground.
“Nuwa liked mud monkeys more than she liked you. Now, after millennia of sulking at the bottom of the ocean, you've decided to throw a pool party on land.”
“It is reclamation!” the Deep One thundered, summoning spheres of churning water around its fists.
“You're interrupting my very busy schedule. I have a moon to investigate and a family to babysit. I don't have time for your primordial temper tantrum.”
Her form blurred. The motions became a storm of piercing strikes to disarm and dismantle. She severed tendons, punctured pressure points, and shattered the glowing runes on its scales. Each strike was accompanied by a burst of cursed energy.
The massive Deep One stumbled. Its powerful attacks faltered as its body began to break down into sea foam from the inside out. “The Tide will rise,” it gurgled, collapsing.
“Tell it to bring a better appetizer next time,” Su Yao said, stepping over its dissolving form. “The last one tasted like frogs.”
She pushed forward. Her senses scanned the chaotic battlefield. Most humans were fighting for their lives, but one figure stood out. He looked perfectly normal, wearing a sodden business suit, his hair neatly combed back despite the rain and sea spray.
But he was moving among the Deep Ones. They were parting for him, bowing their heads in a gesture of clear reverence.
Then he smiled at a panicked soldier. Su Yao saw rows of needle-sharp, triangular shark teeth.
Her every instinct went on high alert. This was something else entirely.
She strode toward him. “You,” she called out. Her voice cut through the din. “Who are you? Why are you siding with these invaders?”
The man turned. His eyes fixed on her. He gave a slight, mocking bow. “I am the Deep Prince. A herald of the rising tide. As for why,” he smiled, that horrifying dental display fully visible, “I am coming home.”
He looked at her and said, “Die.”
There was a strange, internal pressure. A sudden, violent tugging sensation emerged from within every cell in her body. Then, with a sickening pop and a burst of mist, the body of Su Yao exploded from the inside out, torn apart as the water within it was violently manipulated all at once.
It was a good thing that was just a clone.
The real Su Yao, observing from the shadow of a shattered overpass a block away, felt the connection to her duplicate sever. A cold, clinical assessment ran through her mind.
He can manipulate the water inside other people’s bodies. That’s dangerous.
The human body was, after all, roughly 70% water.
Against an opponent like this, most cultivators and even many powerful spirits would be walking bombs waiting for his command. It was an ability that bypassed conventional durability and spiritual defenses, attacking the most fundamental building block of life itself.
This is a problem, she acknowledged. A grim respect for the threat warred with her irritation. She needed a new strategy.
The Deep Prince looked momentarily pleased at the space where her clone had been before his head tilted, sensing the lack of a true death. He began to scan the area, his black eyes searching for the real her.
Su Yao melted back deeper into the shadows. A direct confrontation was off the table for now. She needed to understand the limits of his power. If she was in her true form which was more spiritual energy than biological matter, could he affect her? Could he manipulate cursed energy-saturated water?
One thing was clear. The invasion had just gotten a lot more complicated. She was fighting a commander with a truly terrifying weapon. The threat-level was off the charts.
From the shadows, Su Yao assessed the situation with cold precision. Ranged attacks it is, she decided. I'll melt him from a distance.
She focused her will, drawing upon the consecrated energy she had cultivated over millennia into a pure, searing light that could purge corruption and unravel dark spirits. With a flick of her wrist, she unleashed a brilliant beam of golden energy straight at the Deep Prince’s chest.
The beam struck true, but it passed through his body as if he were made of water. His form rippled like a pond disturbed by a stone. Behind him, the energy dissipated harmlessly into the air. The Deep Prince turned his head slowly. Those solid black eyes locked onto her position with unnerving accuracy.
“Foolish servant of Nuwa,” he hissed. His voice was a low, bubbling mockery. “Your attacks are meaningless against the essence of the deep. I am the ocean itself. You can’t harm me with such trivialities. All you do is delay the inevitable.”
Su Yao’s eyes narrowed. Intangibility? Or perhaps he’s phase-shifting into a liquid state. This changed things. She needed to understand the mechanics of his power.
Was he always in this state, or did he shift only when attacked? If he was water-based, what could disrupt that?
The Deep Prince began moving toward her. The Deep Ones parted around him like a living tide. “Hiding from the sea is futile,” he called out. “Every drop of water in this city is my eyes and ears.”
Su Yao retreated further into the ruined streets, keeping cover. She needed another plan, and fast.
Where is Vritra when you need him? The thought surfaced with a spike of pure, petty irritation.
Vritra was the great serpent, the personification of drought and adversary of Indra. His very presence could wither rivers and bake the earth to dust.
A being whose domain was the absolute negation of water would be the perfect hard counter to this aqueous prince. The Deep Prince’s power would evaporate around him.
But Vritra was dormant, sealed, or simply absent. He was one of those primordial forces too vast to be concerned with a single-city invasion, no matter how dramatic.
Useless, she mentally chided the absent serpent. Sleeping through the one party you'd actually be useful for.
The tactical problem remained. Her spiritual energy was ineffective. Physical confrontation was suicide. She needed something that could affect the state of water itself.
Her eyes darted around the ruined street, landing on a ruptured gas main spewing flammable gas into the air and a shattered industrial freezer unit, its coolant leaking out.
Heat. Or cold. Extreme temperatures could change water’s state. Boil him away or flash-freeze him solid. But which would be more effective? Boiling might just create steam he could still control. But ice was brittle. It could be shattered.
Seal him. The thought was a lazy, brilliant spark in the midst of the tactical calculations. Why bother with the messy, energy-intensive work of freezing or vaporizing him when she could just put him away? She had been an attendant of Nuwa. She understood the principles of containment and binding.
A gourd, a vase, even a specially prepared spiritual tag was all it would take. The classics were classics for a reason.
It was the ultimate expression of her current philosophy of minimum effort for maximum results. Let the Deep Ones have their tantrum. She'd just stuff their prince into a container and get back to her actual problems.
Su Yao focused her will on shaping. Spiritual energy swirled around her hand, drawing in ambient moisture and dust, compressing and refining it. In moments, she held a simple, unadorned ceramic gourd. Its surface hummed with a subtle sealing array she'd copied from Li Xuan’s tomb traps.
A temporary measure, but it would do.
The Deep Prince emerged from behind a collapsed wall. His form solidifying. A confident sneer was on his face. “Have you accepted the inevitable, land-walker?”
“Something like that,” Su Yao said, holding up the gourd. “I'm just tidying up.” She channeled energy into the seal. The gourd’s opening glowed with a voracious light.
A look of confusion, then alarm, crossed the Deep Prince’s features as he felt an irresistible pull. “What is this? This is not—” His form began to distort, stretching like taffy toward the gourd’s mouth.
The water comprising his body lost cohesion, streaming into the vessel in a silvery ribbon. He fought it, trying to solidify, but the seal was designed to bind the very essence of what he was. With a final, outraged gurgle, the last of him was sucked inside.
Su Yao casually stoppered the gourd with a plug of solidified cursed energy. She gave it a shake. A furious, sloshing sound echoed from within.
“Much quieter,” she remarked, tucking the now-heavy gourd into her spiritual storage. The remaining Deep Ones, who had been watching in stunned horror, let out a collective wail of despair and began to retreat. Their cohesion was broken without their leader.
See? Su Yao thought, brushing a bit of dust from her sleeve. Sometimes all you need is some old-fashioned imprisonment. It was quick, clean, and it meant she could get back to the more pressing mysteries of the moon and the rising price of rice.
Now, to find Jian Feng and see if he'd managed to get himself killed yet. The Kaiju was still stomping around in the bay. But the military could probably handle it without the Deep Ones supporting it. Probably.
Su Yao gave the now-quiet gourd in her spiritual storage a final, satisfied mental poke. Just as I thought, she mused, stepping over the dissolving remains of a lesser Deep One. All that offensive power, and his defense was essentially a parlor trick.
Phasing into water to avoid spiritual attacks was no small feat, but once she bypassed that gimmick with a direct counter, he had no fallback. He was a glass cannon, or more accurately, a water balloon.
It was a common flaw in beings who relied on a single, overwhelming gimmick. They never planned for someone who could simply refuse to play their game.
I would have had real trouble if he were a little more powerful, she acknowledged. A being who could manipulate internal body fluids and had the raw spiritual density to resist a quick seal? That would have been a problem. She might have actually had to break a sweat.
Her mind drifted to the hypothetical. For a truly top-tier aquatic threat, one where sealing wasn't an option and direct confrontation was suicide, she'd need a specialist. Someone whose very existence was anathema to the concept of water.
Someone like Jinse.
The Goddess of Contracts, currently trapped in a celestial audit was, in her prime, the ultimate problem-solver for such dilemmas. Her power was about terms and conditions.
Jinse could have written a contract that legally forbade the Deep Prince from existing within a hundred miles of the coastline. The goddess could have bound his power to the tide cycle, rendering him helpless at low tide. She could have probably invoiced him for emotional damages.
Yes, Su Yao thought. Jinse would have had him wrapped in red tape and drowning in paperwork before he could say ‘high-pressure water cutter.’ A shame she was currently unavailable.
But the thought was a useful benchmark. The Deep Prince had been a nuisance. He was a symptom. The real question was who had unleashed him and the Kaiju, and why now?
Shaking her head, she refocused on the immediate, stomping problem in the bay. The Kaiju was still there. And Jian Feng was presumably still embedded in a Ferris wheel. The Deep Ones were in retreat, leaderless. The immediate crisis was contained.
One problem at a time, she reminded herself. The gourd felt comfortably heavy in her storage. Seal the annoying ones, stab the big ones, and figure out the moon conspiracy later.
It was a simple, effective workflow. If a bigger, wetter threat ever did show up, well, maybe she'd finally have a reason to spring Jinse from celestial accounting. But for now, the gourd would do just fine as a paperweight.
Su Yao arrived at the ravaged coastline just in time to see the finale. The Kaiju, a towering behemoth of crystalline spines and reptilian flesh, was thrashing. Its movements grew sluggish. A complex, glowing array of paper talismans and shimmering energy threads had materialized around it, tightening like a net.
Standing serenely on a makeshift platform of levitating debris was the false Seimei. His posture was still too rigid, his movements those of a general. But the power he wielded was undeniably immense.
With a final, echoing chant that sounded like a command, he thrust his hands forward. The binding array flared with blinding light. The Kaiju let out a ground-shaking roar that abruptly cut off as its massive form dissolved into motes of light and a fine, sparkling dust that fell like snow into the churning waves.
Silence fell, broken only by the crackle of fires and the distant cries of the retreating Deep Ones. Then, a wave of cheers and relieved sobs rose from the surviving soldiers and civilians.
The false Seimei turned. His mask-like face arranged in an expression of benevolent triumph, basking in the adulation. He raised a hand, a gesture meant to be magnanimous.
Su Yao watched. Her arms were crossed. One eyebrow was raised in utter disdain.
How convenient, she thought. Her mind was cold and sharp. How theatrically perfect.
He hadn't been here during the messy street fighting, when the Deep Ones were swarming and their prince was turning people into mist. That nuisance was absent when Jian Feng was getting swatted aside. No, he'd arrived for the main event to fight the big monster for maximum visibility and impact.
It was a PR move.
His technique, while powerful, had been lacking the subtle, fluid artistry the real Seimei was famed for. It was a sledgehammer where a scalpel would have sufficed. All brute force and dramatic flair.
He’s a director, she mused. And he just staged a very convincing hero scene.
As the cheers continued, he turned. His gaze landed directly on her, calculating and utterly devoid of the warmth he was projecting. He gave a slight, almost imperceptible nod, a silent acknowledgment that she saw through the performance.
Su Yao stored the image of the false savior, vanquished monster, and grateful crowd away. It was all part of the script. She was now certain that the Kaiju and the Deep Ones’ invasion had been the opening act in his play.
Fine, she thought, turning away from the celebration. Let him have his moment in the spotlight. She had a gourd with a prince in it, a moon with no name, and a growing conviction that the fake Seimei’s next act was going to be far, far worse.
Su Yao watched the retreating Deep Ones melt back into the churning sea. Their dispersal was too coordinated for a truly broken force. The cheers around her for the false Seimei’s victory felt hollow, premature.
Her instincts were screaming. A race that held a millennia-long grudge that launched a full-scale invasion with a Kaiju vanguard and a prince who could pop people from the inside out wouldn't just surrender because their flashy monster got exorcised and their leader was bottled.
This was a tactical withdrawal, a regrouping.
Her eyes scanned the horizon, her spiritual sense pushing out over the waves past the celebratory aura of the false Seimei. Then she felt a pressure building in the depths, a spiritual mass so vast it made the first Kaiju feel like a minnow.
The water in the bay began to bulge, then part. A head emerged, larger than a city block. Its skin was a deep, abyssal black that seemed to absorb the light. Then a torso, arms. Each limb ended in claws that could carve canyons. This one was easily twice the size of the first.
Its very presence warped the space around it. The air grew heavy and cold.
A second Kaiju? An Alpha?
The cheers from the shore died in a collective gasp, turning into screams of fresh terror. The false Seimei who had been preening moments before stiffened. His confident posture faltered for a fraction of a second. This was outside his prepared script.
Su Yao almost smiled. There it is.
The first wave was a probe, a test of their defenses. This was the real hammer.
She watched as the new Kaiju opened its maw to release a low, resonant frequency that made the very ground liquefy into slurry and caused buildings to crumble into dust. The attack was one of fundamental destabilization.
Of course, Su Yao mused, already calculating the new variables. The Deep Ones adapted. They saw his binding array and sent something that breaks the ground you stand on. No platform? No array.
The false Seimei was already launching a volley of talismans, but they fizzled against the Kaiju’s reality-warping aura. Their spiritual structure unraveled before they could take effect. He was being hard-countered.
Su Yao sighed. The gourd in her storage felt woefully inadequate. “Looks like the director’s losing control of his narrative.”
She cracked her neck. Ethereal tails began to materialize behind her. It seemed her lazy afternoon of sealing things was well and truly over. Time to see if this bigger model was still susceptible to being poked full of holes.