Chapter 99: Epilogue

Yanyan came speeding in alone in the speedboat, crackling with sparks and streaked with lightning, heading straight for the giant fish and Chang Yu.

Sheets of white spray leaped across the water, like the ripples a jet leaves behind as it slices through a blue sky.

At a glance, Yanyan saw the giant fish’s tail send Chang Yu flying like a dead dog, and he instantly lost his composure.

“Big, big, big!”

He yanked the gourd from his wrist and held it in his palm; in the blink of an eye, it grew to the size of a kettle.

“You filthy fish, you even dare hit the one I’m backing? I think you’re tired of living!”

Great torrents of red flame gushed from the mouth of the gourd, dyeing half the sky a blazing crimson, like sunset clouds at dusk.

A roaring inferno spread over the river. The air around it heated up at once, and the scorching wave of heat made breathing difficult. Even the waters where Katerina stood grew hot under the blaze.

Unable to endure the rising temperature in the water, the giant fish could only twist its enormous body and leap above the surface for air.

But Yanyan had been waiting for exactly this moment. Seeing the great fish break water, a wicked smile appeared at once on his lips.

“Now that you’re out, this gets easy. If you stayed hidden underwater, you’d be harder to handle.”

“Pew!”

With a cool little flourish, Yanyan shaped his fingers like a pistol and aimed at the giant fish.

What had seemed like a child’s joke became real in the very next instant.

Fierce, blazing flames burst all at once from his fingertips, wrapping the giant fish in midair so tightly it could not escape.

Blood poured from the fish in great quantities, mixed with scales blackened by fire. The scent of roasted fish drifted through the air in thin, teasing threads, so tempting that even Yanyan’s gluttonous instincts stirred.

“Damn! That fish smells amazing!”

Involuntary tears spilled from the corners of his mouth, clear and bright, shining with a little glimmer within their translucence.

At the same time, Chang Yu, who had been launched skyward by the fish’s tail, came crashing straight down and, by an unfortunate coincidence, smashed into the giant fish, knocking it back into the river.

The flames caught Chang Yu’s sleeve as they went, then ran along his luxuriant leg hair all the way to his hair, turning him into a true man of fire.

At that moment, he looked like a human torch that had been lit like a signal beacon, with flames leaping more than a foot high from the top of his head.

“Oh no, that’s bad!”

Yanyan slapped his own thigh in alarm. “No accidental friendly fire!”

Without caring for anything else, he raised a hand. The flames that had already become a wildfire-like blaze were suddenly drawn back into the big gourd as if by a dragon sucking in water.

At last the fire was extinguished, leaving only Chang Yu and the giant fish, each blackened and scorched in patches, floating side by side on the river.

Chang Yu looked utterly miserable. His clothes had been burned to tatters, leaving only a few strips of cloth hanging from his body.

Even worse, his once glossy black hair had been singed into a bald crown, the hair around the top of his head completely burned away.

A wisp of black smoke rose from his scalp, and a heavy reek of singed flesh seemed to drift from him, pungent and acrid.

If someone handed him a clerical uniform now, he could pass for a priest!

Yanyan stuck out his tongue like a child who knew he had done wrong, looking rather mischievous.

While the giant fish thrashed in pain on the river’s surface, Yanyan hopped onto Chang Yu’s face and slapped him furiously.

As he slapped, he shouted, “Chang Yu, wake up! Wake up!”

“If you don’t wake up now, the whole village is going to your house for dinner!”

Human intervention proved most effective.

Perhaps stirred by the outside shock, Chang Yu’s strength slowly returned to his body. He rolled his eyes, his face blackened with soot, and woke up.

“Damn it!”

Looking at the pitiful state he was in, Chang Yu could only laugh bitterly.

It had all turned out this way through a series of accidents and missteps, and he had no reason to blame Yanyan.

On the contrary, Yanyan had already fled this place, yet the moment he saw Chang Yu in trouble, he rushed back to save him. Chang Yu was touched beyond words.

He had originally wanted to show off properly in front of Katerina and make himself look impressive, but instead he had made a fool of himself on such a grand scale.

He fixed the giant fish, still thrashing on the water’s surface, with a predatory glare.

So what if I can’t beat Yanyan? That doesn’t mean I can’t beat you.

With his left hand he seized the fish by the tail. Then, almost as if guided by fate, the circulation route of the Poria Fist his master had taught him in a dream flowed through every limb and bone.

He clenched his right fist. A faint, milky-white glow slowly appeared over his knuckles, and with one sudden strike, he punched the giant fish in its softer belly, knocking the struggling beast unconscious with a single blow.

“Whoa!”

Chang Yu was startled by the force of his own punch.

He had not expected the Poria Fist, with such an ordinary-sounding name, to be this powerful. It was genuinely beyond his expectations.

Earlier he had straddled the fish’s head and beaten it mercilessly, yet even after that face-to-face barrage, the fish had still seemed completely unfazed.

But when he used the Poria Fist, one punch was enough to knock it out.

The contrast before and after using the Poria Fist made the result perfectly clear. Chang Yu could see just how effective the technique was.

Yanyan stared at the giant fish with ill intent and began rolling up his sleeves. “Filthy fish! What goes around comes around. Your retribution is me.”

“Damn it, when luck goes bad, even your farts come out as crap,” Chang Yu muttered through gritted teeth, grinding his teeth over that giant fish. “This bastard nearly made me a hero in the worst possible way!”

“If it hadn’t ambushed me, how could it have beaten me up like that, leaving me not even a chance to fight back? Yanyan, today the two of us are going to give it hell!”

“Perfect. I’m hungry too. Time to see what roasted fish tastes like!” Yanyan echoed eagerly.

“Wait a second!”

Just as the two of them were cracking their knuckles, ready to finish off the giant fish, Katerina stopped them.

Chang Yu halted his fist mid-swing.

Yanyan lowered the gourd in his hand.

The two of them looked at Katerina together, their eyes full of questions, as though asking why they were not being allowed to act.

“Let that giant fish live for now. I have a feeling it isn’t a calamity,” Katerina explained to them.

“If it’s not a calamity, then what is it?” Chang Yu asked in confusion.

“Maybe it’s just a very large fish?” Yanyan said, stroking his little chin in thought. “Like some kind of genetic mutation.”

“Go play elsewhere, kid! Have you ever seen a giant fish as big as a whale?” Chang Yu said, smacking Yanyan on the head.

“My blue flame has always been effective against calamities,” Katerina said, still puzzled. “But this fish isn’t affected by it at all.”

“I’ve never encountered anything like this before. It’s far too abnormal, so I’ve decided to take it back to headquarters and let the experts there study it.”

“Let’s see why it can ignore my blue flame. Perhaps... we might discover something extraordinary.”

“All right, if you put it that way, we’ll hand it over to headquarters,” Chang Yu said regretfully, glancing at the giant fish floating on the river. He understood then that settling old scores would not be happening.

He would certainly give Katerina face. Compared with revenge, it was still more important to make a girl happy.

Leaving the giant fish behind for the moment, Chang Yu and the others drove the speedboat back to the riverbank.

“Thank you for your hard work, leaders!”

As soon as they landed, Chang Yu and Katerina were received with heroic pomp and ceremony.

A dozen logistics team members stood in a neat line, chest out and head high, waiting for their return.

They did not look aside once, did not blink even once, and even the words they shouted together rang out with such force and certainty that they seemed to strike the ground.

Honestly, that spirit could almost have rivaled a military parade.

“Good! Good! Good!”

The moment Chang Yu saw this scene, he was so delighted he could barely close his mouth.

As everyone knew, what he liked most was... being called a leader.

The instant he heard that title, he always found himself unable to stop smiling, as innocent as a twenty-year-old child.

“You’ve worked hard too, comrades.”

With great energy, he shook hands with every logistics team member here. His manner was warm with friendliness, friendly with kindness, and kind with a faint paternal warmth.

Every logistics member who shook his hand blushed with excitement, each of them looking as though they had been shown extraordinary favor.

This discovery made the smile on Chang Yu’s face even warmer, and his handshake even stronger.

“Oh my god! The leader is actually so... approachable!”

“The leader shook my hand. That is truly... an honor!”

“From today on, I’m never washing my hands again. This hand that the leader shook, I’ll never wash it for the rest of my life!”

Of course, all of the above were merely Chang Yu’s imagined thoughts about the logistics team members.

They were nothing more than his wishful fantasies.

In reality, the logistics staff were thinking something like this:

“Oh my god! Is this guy stupid? A little gesture is enough, so why is he taking it so seriously?”

“Didn’t we agree this was just a formality? Where’s the captain? Call the captain over now. We want a raise!”

“Good grief, doesn’t he get tired from shaking hands all the way through? If he isn’t tired, I am!”

Lost in his delight, Chang Yu naturally could not notice the helplessness in the logistics workers’ eyes, nor could he see that their red faces were not caused by excitement at all, but by embarrassment.

As the saying goes, if you don’t feel awkward, then it’s everyone else who does.

Whether others felt awkward or not, Chang Yu certainly did not.

Katerina did notice it, but in front of everyone, she did not have the heart to expose him.

“How is the situation on the riverbank?” she asked, beckoning the logistics leader over to her.