"It's nothing, just asking around," I said. Shen Xingyue didn't know Lu Qianxun's true strength, only that she had inherited the abilities of the crocodile demon Lu Qianyu.
In fact, according to Yao Yao, Lu Qianxun's complexion was much deeper than Lu Qianyu's, already reaching the deepest shade describable as "purple." Any deeper, it would probably be called "black." Going from red to purple, then from purple to black, seemed to align with the color changes of certain skin areas—but my knowledge was shallow, and I had never witnessed such a transformation.
I also asked about Shen Xingyue's recovery. Shabiya's medical and logistical conditions were top-notch, so there were no issues.
Just as I was about to tease my "little fiancée" a couple of times, a WeChat video call from "Ya Nan" popped up.
"Xingyue, someone's looking for me. I have to hang up. Rest well and heal."
"Mm, you go ahead and do your thing." Shen Xingyue knew I had a lot of business and hung up proactively.
I answered the eagle demon's video call, and the screen displayed a cool, aloof eagle head.
"What's up?" I asked.
The eagle demon extended a large claw, using the fleshy pad beneath its talons instead of a finger to press the video camera switch. It then picked up the phone and showed me what it wanted to display.
Moonlight, like water, enveloped a vast lake. It wasn't as bright as day, but close. Above the lake was an "island," but it was moving at high speed, leaving a long wake behind it.
"What is that?" I asked.
A very faint voice came from off-screen: "A whale."
I recognized it; it was Lin Xi's delicate voice. It seemed she and the eagle demon had joined forces, forming a temporary reconnaissance duo.
"A whale... how could it be in Changbai Mountain?" I wondered. Although I hadn't been to Tianchi Lake in Changbai Mountain, I had seen it online and yearned to visit. It was a crater lake at an altitude of over two thousand meters, with a river flowing out of it that eventually joined the ocean. But that river wasn't large; a person could wade across it. How could a large whale have traveled upstream from the sea into Tianchi Lake?
"I don't know, I'm puzzled too," Lin Xi said. "It just swallowed a purple-qi expert from the Mohe tribe, and its body seems a bit uncomfortable. I'm looking for you because I want Mu Jige to use the Qi Reading technique to see what kind of whale demon this is."
"Can you read qi through a screen?" I turned to look at Yao Yao, who was attempting to eat a crisp. Without her needing to verify, I already knew. I couldn't see any qi. Qi Reading was a spell, not magic. It required a certain physical basis; one definitely had to observe directly, to see the real object, before reading its qi.
"No," Yao Yao said after trying, confirming. "But I recognize this one. The North Sea Whale God."
"The North Sea Whale God?" Lin Xi sounded startled. "She really exists!"
"Of course," Yao Yao crunched on the crisp in her mouth. "In my era, she was already a purple-qi great demon. She must be a remnant demon from the ancient times. She doesn't often return to land; most of her time is spent in the deep sea, so there are very few records of her. Records of her in your Central Plains are even fewer, with only someone from the Jin Dynasty having seen her, describing her as 'raising waves into thunder, spitting foam into rain, water creatures feared her and fled, no fish dared to oppose her'."
"What kind of whale?" I asked.
The large whale demon seemed to want to answer me. Suddenly, it leaped out of the lake. Its movement appeared clumsy but was filled with immense power as it somersaulted in the air before falling back into the water. Because it was so enormous, the entire action resembled a slow-motion shot. By my estimation, it was at least a hundred meters long from head to tail. The splash it created was as high as a seven-story building. As the waves crashed down, countless smaller waves splashed up again, causing the entire lake surface to tremble.
In the moonlight, I could see clearly. It was a humpback whale with a pair of enormous pectoral fins. Its back was dark, its belly gray-white, and it had many longitudinal stripes. It was beautiful.
Undoubtedly, a whale demon of this caliber could transform into a human. I wondered what such a colossal creature, shrunk a million times to human form, would look like...