Chapter 1 The Dead Sea

A deathly silence hung over the sea, the water murky and turbid.

The team responsible for breaking the ice and expanding shipping lanes for the offshore oil extraction base felt a surge of fear rising from the depths of their hearts.

They vaguely sensed a cataclysmic change on this ocean, seemingly the same as the cataclysm that struck the land a month ago!

"A new disaster has arrived..." the captain stammered.

"Captain, our radar detectors are back online!"

A mate ran over to report that after the clouds and fog covering the sea had dissipated, their ship's electronic detection system had returned to normal.

"Beep beep beep!"

Just then, the electronic detection system began to frantically sound alarms. A red dot on the scanner screen was rapidly approaching the icebreaker at a speed of a hundred meters per second, its target extremely clear and definitely filled with malice!

"What is that? A torpedo?" someone screamed.

"It's a heat source reaction!"

"That's... a creature!"

"God! What kind of creature could cause such a huge heat source reaction?"

Chaos erupted on the deck. The captain, his face pale, forced himself to remain calm and ordered, "Prepare to launch torpedoes!"

The icebreaker was slow. Even at full speed, it could only reach about fifteen kilometers per hour. At most, it would be overtaken by the creature causing the huge heat source reaction in two minutes.

Striking first was the best course of action.

"Ready!"

"Fire!"

Boom!

Seven or eight cylindrical torpedoes streaked through the deep sea toward the target, leaving long trails.

The captain stared nervously at the electronic detection screen.

He didn't have much confidence, because the icebreaker he was on was a work vessel, not a warship. The weapons it carried were only light torpedoes, enough to deal with ordinary small boats and marine life. But the huge heat source reaction that had been scanned indicated that its body was over sixty meters long, based on the response of the infrasound waves, making it twice the size of the largest known creature today, the blue whale!

What kind of creature was this?

Could these few torpedoes kill it?

Boom!

Boom!

Boom!

The huge underwater explosion shockwaves traveled to the surface, shattering a hundred meters of ice. The icebreaker swayed with the waves.

The detection screen showed that the red dot's heat source reaction was gradually disappearing. The huge corpse floated towards the icebreaker along with the drifting seawater.

The captain breathed a sigh of relief. He strained his eyes, trying to see the appearance of the giant creature under the sea.

It was an incredibly large sea serpent, its body thick and strong, almost resembling a dragon from mythology. Two sharp horns protruded from its forehead towards the sky. Its scales were tattered, wounds caused by the torpedoes!

Blood stained the sea red, and a fishy stench filled the air.

"God... it's just like the mythical serpent Jörmungandr!" The captain exclaimed in astonishment. "Such a huge sea beast is enough to be recorded in the world's biological records!"

Without a doubt, this was a mutated beast king.

Many people on the deck were witnessing this spectacle. Since the world changed, many had heard of the existence of mutated beast kings, but very few had actually seen one with their own eyes. Most encounters and battles were carried out by the military.

"Click!"

"Click!"

Someone pressed the shutter, using a camera to record the shocking biological remains...

"Captain... look at this photo. Its eyes... are they looking in our direction?" Suddenly, the sailor who took the photo shouted in terror, handing his camera to the captain.

In the photo, the huge sea serpent's corpse floated on the sea, motionless, but its bright yellow eyes were filled with resentment and mockery, as if staring directly at the camera lens!

And most importantly, in several different photos, the giant serpent's eyes were focused on different positions!

Its eyes were moving!

It wasn't dead!

"Beep beep beep!"

The electronic detector suddenly emitted a piercing warning sound. The heat source reaction that had previously subsided reappeared, and the reaction was even stronger, as red as fresh blood on the electronic screen!

The sea churned again, and the giant serpent suddenly twisted its body again, its huge head rising high, like a demon reborn!

The captain was stunned. He instantly seemed to understand everything, and roared, "It's not dead... it just lowered its body temperature to a level undetectable by the detectors! It was feigning death! Using this method to deceive the detectors and get close to our ship! We were misled!"

The entire icebreaker was plunged into utter panic, as if falling into an ice cellar.

Clearly, this giant serpent was also afraid of the destructive power of torpedoes. It used this feigned death to deceive the people on the ship, causing them to lower their guard.

Now it was less than ten meters away from the icebreaker. What use were torpedoes?

A huge scream pierced the sky, and a terrifying shadow loomed over them.

What frightened the people on the icebreaker was not just death, but also the cunning and intelligence displayed by this giant serpent.

In just a few dozen seconds, it had demonstrated a cunning far surpassing that of beasts, and even intelligence not inferior to humans. This was extremely terrifying!

The only advantages humans have over beasts are their intelligence and centuries of technological development.

But if one day, beasts also develop intelligence not inferior to humans, and rapidly make up for the gap between themselves and human technology with their powerful bodies, will the dominant race on the Blue Star change in the future?

No one could answer this question.

The huge serpent's body clung to the icebreaker, and the ship tilted violently as turbid seawater poured in.

The steel-hulled icebreaker slowly sank to the bottom of the sea. In the distance, more hideous mutated sea beasts surfaced, frantically surging towards this place.

They were not perfectly mutated beast kings and would die soon, but during the time they were alive, they would also pose a terrible threat to the people on the sea.

After a long time, the gray sea returned to calm.

This sea was dead.

This was the change that the second destruction epoch brought to the world.

It did not eliminate the "source of life" substance from the Blue Star, but let it die in the human world in another form.

Its water quality changed, and like the land irradiated in the first destruction epoch, it produced a V-shaped virus that could cause death and mutation in organisms.

If the sea were compared to a life, then from this day on, it would no longer be active, no longer flowing.

From this day on, the ocean, which occupies 71% of the Blue Star's area and provides abundant resources for Blue Star's creatures, was no longer a cradle for nurturing life and miracles, but a hotbed for breeding monsters! The ocean giant was dead, and its corpse bred countless maggots...

...

"Groundwater Containing Violent Toxins"

"After drinking, there is a 98% chance of experiencing negative states such as dehydration and organ failure."

"There is a 2% chance of breaking the gene sequence!"

Li Hao squatted in front of the water pump, looking at the turbid water flowing out continuously, his expression extremely solemn.

He never expected that the second destruction epoch would arrive in this way. The system was playing word games!

This situation was even worse than he had imagined.

Even if 90% of the water sources on the Blue Star disappeared in an instant, it probably wouldn't have such a huge impact on humanity as this.