The Supreme Great White Shark Baek Sang-ah 3
In truth, even those so-called Qi Condensation cultivators were not all that different from ordinary folk.
At best, they had only just managed to stumble over the threshold of true cultivation.
Their techniques? A few shenxi gongfa for regulating the mind and breath.
Even their sense for guiding spiritual energy was so faint that it was hard to use in real combat, and what little they could do, they often performed so poorly that their qi tangled into knots.
At most, they were the sort of people who might swagger around claiming to belong to a sect, or, if they were merely loose cultivators wandering on their own, puff themselves up as if that made them special.
They called themselves cultivators with their mouths, but in truth they were a pitiful lot.
“Heave the anchor!”
The method those seven worthless cultivators chose to capture the strange shark was a sailing ship.
“So long as we don’t kill it, wounds are acceptable.”
Among those seven Qi Condensation cultivators, the one who was at least somewhat capable was Hyeongeuk, who had reached the middle stage of Qi Condensation and, being a double spiritual-root talent, was leading his juniors.
In his hand was a dharma artifact shaped like a harpoon.
Man-Eating Ghostslaughter Ultimate Annihilation Spear.
A weapon with the absurdly grand name of utterly annihilating all fish and ghosts.
Unfortunately, despite the impressive title, it was nothing more than a dharma artifact that injected the user’s spiritual energy and fired an ordinary harpoon.
“The plan is simple.”
Hyeongeuk stood at the prow of the ship with his arms folded, acting all important.
His tone was weighty, but what he actually said was crude and flimsy.
“Three of you will each set up the Net-Corral Formation to block that strange thing’s escape route, and I’ll fire the Man-Eating Ghostslaughter Ultimate Annihilation Spear to subdue it.”
“Yes, Senior Brother!”
Then one of the disciples raised a question for Hyeongeuk.
“But can you really stop it with just two nets? I heard sharks are really fast....”
“Sss. Didn’t I say it’s the Net-Corral Formation, not some net?”
“Still, won’t it be difficult?”
Hyeongeuk waved a hand in exasperation, and the disciples fell silent.
“Keep your mouths shut. If the plan goes wrong, I’ll personally use a spell to completely suppress it, so there’s no problem!”
Contrary to Hyeongeuk’s confident voice, all six disciples knew the truth.
There was no spell among his arts that could suppress a swift shark.
Still, his momentum did look convincing enough.
Hyeongeuk lifted the Man-Eating Ghostslaughter Ultimate Annihilation Spear high and shouted, “Your hands carry the fate of our Ungyu Sect! Failure will not be tolerated!”
“Senior Brother.”
“What is it?”
“Why does the fate of the sect rest on this…?”
Once again, a disciple tried to ask a question, but when Hyeongeuk shot him a glare, he clamped his mouth shut at once.
Before long, the anchor bloomed with power, and the ship slowly pushed forward, parting the heavy waves.
The disciples preparing to spread the nets—or rather, the Net-Corral Formation—gripped the mesh sacks with faces taut in nervous tension.
“Left side ready!”
“Right side ready as well, Senior Brother!”
“Good. Then begin the hunt!”
Under the command of Hyeongeuk, the middle-stage Qi Condensation cultivator and double spiritual-root talent, the sailing ship rushed toward the strange shark.
With each passing moment as they drew closer, the vermilion glow grew fiercer, and the peculiar aura became ever more intense.
And before long, their blustering confidence was crushed into utter ruin.
“Set up the Net-Corral Formation…?”
Hyeongeuk’s mouth, which had been about to shout something, slowly fell open.
No sound came out between his lips.
The ship they had prepared was fairly large, but a shadow settled over it from above—because the shark was bigger than the vessel itself.
More precisely, the shark’s shadow was larger than the ship.
It didn’t look this huge when we first saw it from far away, did it?
While Hyeongeuk stood frozen with his mouth hanging open, the shark moved, and the waves split violently apart.
It showed no sign of panic at the sight of humans and harpoons. It simply swished its tail with elegant ease.
Then its white belly and silvery-blue back were laid bare as the waters churned violently around it, revealing the form of a great white shark.
Not merely a white shark, either, but one so enormous that both eyes could scarcely take it all in at once.
And when the eyes of that great white shark met Hyeongeuk’s, he understood.
“Ah.”
He ought to have been worrying about his own fate first—not the fate of the Ungyu Sect.
…….
…….
…….
[Still, they are cultivators in name, so one never knows what they might be hiding.]
What is this?
Until the seven Qi Condensation cultivators arrived, Baek Sang-ah had been a little tense.
Even without knowing their identities exactly, she had instinctively realized they were chasing her.
But once she actually faced those so-called cultivators, she became oddly puzzled.
Why are they so small?
As far as Sang-ah remembered, ships were supposed to be fairly big things, but the one floating before her now didn’t look big enough to be more than a single bite.
As for humans, they were so tiny she could have tucked them between her sharp, dignified teeth and carried them around.
But what kind of creature was a shark?
A beast that, if even a shred of curiosity took hold, would bite first and think later.
“Chomp.”
Baek Sang-ah might have been the supreme great white shark, but in the end she was still a shark.
Just as she had once swallowed that vermilion bead in a single gulp, she bit into the ship with a crunch.
At that instant, the vessel split cleanly in half.
The only fortunate thing for the cultivators was that their bodies did not split in two along with it.
“Graaah.”
Ah. So this is what a ship feels like.
Satisfied by her curiosity, Sang-ah spat out the half of the ship that had entered her mouth rather than swallowing it along with the cultivators.
“Puh-heh.”
All seven cultivators were blown out of Baek Sang-ah’s mouth at once and began bobbing on the sea’s surface.
“W-we’re alive…?”
The cultivators, who had shut their eyes tight inside her mouth and then opened them again, finally realized they were not in a shark’s belly but floating on the water, and exhaled shakily.
Baek Sang-ah had no desire to kill humans.
Compared with her staple food, they offered less nourishment, and not eating them would not threaten her life in the slightest.
So, as the cultivators began to sink slowly into the sea, she snagged them with her tail and lifted them up.
When the cultivators looked up at Baek Sang-ah in confusion, Hyeongeuk, who was quick on the uptake, stepped forward.
“P-please spare us!”
“Kraang?”
Spare you?
Come to think of it, that makes me their benefactor, doesn’t it? Drowning is supposed to be painful. I saved them from falling into the sea.
Sharks had almost no facial expressions and could not smile, but if Baek Sang-ah had been human, she would surely have lifted the corners of her mouth right then.
For a moment longer, Hyeongeuk kept pleading, and then doubt rose within Sang-ah.
But why do they want to live so badly?
Of course, when she had been human, she had wanted desperately to live when the terminal illness took hold of her.
She would have done anything to survive.
But back then, she had only wanted to live; she had never stopped to think about why.
Baek Sang-ah hesitated for a moment, then thought, I want to ask them why they want to live.
What a pity, but I have become fully assimilated into you and can no longer interfere with the outside world.
Then how am I supposed to ask?
Baek Sang-ah looked down at the seven people awkwardly perched on her tail.
They were a little crumpled, but otherwise still breathing, and they were managing to spit water out of their mouths in a way that was almost annoyingly normal.
“Kraang, kraaang.”
“A-apologies, but are you unable to speak?”
And then Hyeongeuk, quick as ever, asked cautiously.
Though he cared more about saving face in front of his juniors than anything else and was soaked in vanity, he was still a cultivator who knew the value of his own life.
In other words, once he realized that the shark he had treated as nothing more than a single meal was far beyond them, he could still lower his head when necessary.
Can’t speak?
Baek Sang-ah tested her throat for a moment.
A throat with no swim bladder and no vocal cords. A tongue that existed, yet was not used like a human’s.
“Kra, kraaah.”
In the end, the only sound she could make was a cry.
Please! Could you save these unworthy juniors? We’ll never—never go near the sea again.
She understood every word. She understood all of it.
But she still couldn’t answer.
She had a question, but she couldn’t ask it.
And that was frustrating.
I can talk too…. I want to ask why they want to live.
That was when it happened.
A brilliant idea flashed through the supreme shark brain of Baek Sang-ah.
Let’s think. Muyeonja can talk with me even though he has no mouth. Maybe it’s thanks to spiritual energy? If I use this spiritual energy, maybe I can speak too?
Even Muyeonja was startled.
[Why, this beast is thinking deeply for once!]
By accepting Muyeonja into herself, Baek Sang-ah had gained at least a faint ability to sense the flow of the world.
And so she could also clearly feel the mysterious energy flowing through her.
How do I do it?
Since she had never learned how to use spiritual energy, she relied on instinct and focused inward.
Vermilion streams, a vista where sky and sea had flipped over and lost all boundary.
It was vermilion, definitely.
Baek Sang-ah withdrew her gaze.
Her vision blurred and spread beyond the watery world.
Instinct severed her senses. It was as though, instead of closing her eyes, she had draped the whole world in haze.
Somewhere, the cries of the cultivators rang out.
It was because of Baek Sang-ah.
The vermilion energy that had begun flowing from her spread outward and gradually dyed the sea red.
The vermilion light rode the waves far into the distance, merging with the light that stained both sea and sky.
Yet Baek Sang-ah, at the very center of that energy, still could not speak.
I want to ask. I want to say it.
It was desperate.
Those conversations from her days as a human—the ones where she had only listened by borrowing someone else’s mouth.
She missed them.
Speaking her own thoughts with her own words.
Nothing was more frustrating than not being able to voice her own opinion directly.
Could this perhaps be…?
Muyeonja’s voice resounded like a single ripple inside Baek Sang-ah’s consciousness.
But Sang-ah herself could not hear it.
I want to talk.
Even if it was trivial and insignificant, that had been Baek Sang-ah’s first purpose.
Her desire.
The spiritual energy flowing within her stirred.
That was when it happened.
The vermilion light condensed toward Baek Sang-ah.
As though a bolt of lightning had struck down into the sea.
The principle is this: the alleviation of lack.
In an instant, a blood-red vortex surged up and wrapped around Baek Sang-ah completely.
At the center of that vortex, Baek Sang-ah’s enormous body twitched.
Her fins trembled, and her scales quivered faintly.
The form of the great white shark gradually shrank.
At first, to the size of a shattered ship.
Then to about half a ship’s length.
Then to the size of a human.
Great Immortal…!
Her silhouette changed.
The fins vanished, and her limbs became hazy. In place of silver skin, pale human flesh flickered into view.
Her tail remained, yet trembled quietly in the water’s current.
Her teeth were still sharp, but hidden behind delicate lips.
And then, at last—
The red vortex scattered completely, and in its place stood a woman who lifted her head with quiet grace.
A girl so lovely she could steal one’s breath away at a single glance.
Silvery hair with a wash of blue water in it, and the shape of a human standing on two feet with a shark’s tail.
She opened her eyes.
“Kraa?”
As the water that had surged upward flowed back down again like rain, the woman standing serenely there was none other than Baek Sang-ah.
She had entered the initial threshold of the Qi Condensation Realm.
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