Chapter Seventy-Two: The Rising Sea

The vegetables required to make the LS Road Stew were all common ingredients. Qin Fei took them out of his pack, spread them on the recipe in the specified quantities, and finally placed a bowl of water on top. A few seconds later, a flash of white light swept over the LS Road Stew recipe, and the bowl of water gradually transformed into a bowl of thick, grayish-white soup.

The soup looked quite appetizing, and there was a creamy aroma wafting from it.

[LS Road Stew: This creamy dish enhances bodily functions. After drinking, your oxygen consumption while underwater is reduced, and you won’t expend stamina while swimming. The effect lasts for one hour.]

Qin Fei picked up the bowl of LS Road Stew and downed it in one gulp.

Hmm... the flavor was rather mild.

Glancing down, he saw that the water in the cave had already risen above the legs of the group of five below. He quickly put on a pair of flippers and leapt from the artifact chamber into the water below.

As he plunged into the water, Qin Fei immediately dove deeper into the pool. He did this to prevent the desperate group of five from trying to kill him before they drowned.

None of them had oxygen tanks or a potion like the LS Road Stew. As long as Qin Fei could dive deep enough, they would have no way to reach him.

A few seconds after he entered the water, gunshots rang out behind him. The group of five, seeing Qin Fei drop from the artifact chamber above, immediately fired at his location in the water.

The artifact cave was pitch dark, and visibility in the water was even worse. Besides, Qin Fei’s body had long been strengthened, so he swam down at great speed and soon reached the depths of the pool.

None of the bullets hit him.

Ignoring their shouts and curses, Qin Fei continued to dive toward the bottom. As he descended, he even saw several ancient millipedes drifting nearby.

Of course, since he had already applied insect repellent, the ancient millipedes left him alone.

The pool was extremely deep.

Qin Fei swam downward for nearly a minute before finally touching the bottom. To his surprise, he found a blue treasure chest there.

He touched the chest and took out its contents one by one.

[Military Canteen: A canteen made of composite materials. Lightweight and sturdy. Can be placed directly on a fire for heating.]

[Explosion-Proof Chest Armor (Common): Offers excellent defense, even against blunt force. However, it provides little resistance to heat or cold.]

[Suppressor Attachment: The lubricating material inside slows the gas as it exits the barrel, reducing the firearm’s firing noise.]

All three items were quite practical, especially the explosion-proof chest armor.

Its defensive properties far surpassed the military armor Qin Fei had been wearing up to now.

Qin Fei stayed at the bottom of the pool for nearly ten minutes before finally swimming upward.

As Qin Fei had expected, the group of five, including the Parasaurolophus, had all drowned by now.

Their bodies floated in the middle of the water, their bellies bloated. A heap of items had fallen from their corpses.

Qin Fei’s backpack had already been crammed full after raiding the red supply drop, and now there were even more items from the fallen five. He could only choose a few to take with him.

Materials and food—anything unimportant—had to be left behind.

He gathered the scattered guns and ammunition into his backpack, since his current supply was running low.

The bullets were all waterproof.

Shotgun shells weren’t waterproof, but after drying them out, they could still be used with little issue.

He also picked out a few valuable items to stow away.

[Argentavis Saddle: Equip on an Argentavis to ride it.]

[Bottle of Cloud Mist: Harness the mystical power of clouds to double jump in the air. The second jump reaches half the height of a normal jump.]

Bottle of Cloud Mist?

That looked familiar.

It was a transparent bottle filled with white mist, about the size of an egg. Qin Fei remembered seeing this item in a game he’d played called “Terraria.”

A very practical piece of equipment.

Since most of the items were food and materials, and everything was scattered in the water, not to mention the cave’s poor lighting, it was already impressive that Qin Fei could find these few things with his night vision goggles.

Worried he might run out of oxygen and die here, Qin Fei decided not to search any longer and swam out of the Unity Mine.

By now, the outside of the cave had also been submerged by seawater.

Fortunately, the water outside was not very deep—barely up to Qin Fei’s waist.

The Argentavis tamed by the group of five was still circling in the sky overhead.

In the Ark, once a creature was tamed, it would never betray its owner, even if the owner died unexpectedly.

When the Argentavis spotted Qin Fei below, it immediately dove down from the sky, clearly intent on attacking him.

Bang!

Qin Fei deftly pulled out his shotgun and fired twice at the giant eagle.

Flying creatures in the Ark were terrified of ranged weapons, and after taking two shotgun blasts, the Argentavis was instantly killed, dropping into the water.

With the eagle taken care of, Qin Fei decided to return to his shelter.

After all, Eggy and his two dodos were still in the stone house.

Strangely, although the seawater had risen and submerged most of the island, Qin Fei hadn’t seen any dinosaur corpses floating on the surface.

He guessed that before the seawater flooded the island, the Ark had teleported the dinosaurs away.

It wasn’t impossible. The three different-colored Arks floating above the island all had the ability to teleport creatures and items, so it wasn’t surprising that they could evacuate the island’s wildlife.

With the help of his flippers and the buff from the LS Road Stew, Qin Fei soon swam to his stone shelter.

Since he’d chosen a high spot to build, his stone house had yet to be inundated by the rising sea.

Qin Fei hurriedly gathered all the valuables inside the house.

He then took out the cryo-chamber, released Big Nose, and put Eggy inside.

It took two or three hours before Big Nose gradually revived from cryosleep.

By then, the sea had already started flooding the stone house.

Qin Fei loaded some of the excess supplies onto Big Nose’s back and, together, they set off toward the island’s volcano.

The two dodos paddled through the water, following right behind him.

The highest point on the island was that volcano ahead.

As the water level continued to rise, the summit would likely be the last place left above water—and the final battleground for the remaining survivors.

Drifting on flotsam or a raft could help avoid combat for a while, but once the water grew deep enough, sharks and other carnivores from the depths would arrive.

These were no ordinary sharks, but megalodons larger than cars.

A raft would be nothing more than a mouthful to them.

So staying on the water’s surface was as good as waiting to die.

By the time Qin Fei reached the base of the volcano, night had fallen.

He climbed out of the water, found a concealed spot, and prepared to spend the night there.

After laying out his sleeping bag and setting up some basic precautions, Qin Fei, who hadn’t slept in two days, finally succumbed to exhaustion and drifted into a deep sleep.