Chapter 63: Bubble

The bone ball was instantly enveloped by the boiling lake water. Countless bone spikes once again protruded from its surface and began to spin, but while spikes could slice through thick ice, how could they possibly slice through formless boiling water?

The high heat failed to dissipate; instead, the rotation of the bone ball ensured it was heated evenly. Cracks began to appear on its outer shell, and it looked on the verge of falling apart.

Watching that flustered, thoroughly scorched bone ball, Lu Qingyu knew in his heart that the outcome was already decided. Barring any unexpected accidents, the person inside the bone ball had already been cooked to a crisp.

The high temperature generated by the Night-Wandering Monkey's "Six Teas: Red" was no trivial matter. All of its abilities depended on the amount of surrounding water available for brewing tea. At the bottom of this lake, the temperature generated by the black tea could even melt steel, let alone a shell made of bone.

The bone ball was still putting up a cornered beast's struggle, once again firing bone spikes wildly and darting everywhere. Lu Qingyu was not going to give it a chance to escape; the generated boiling water constantly orbited the bone ball.

The enemy's only path to survival was to eliminate Lu Qingyu, the mastermind, before being burned to death. However, the speed of high-temperature cooking far exceeded that persistence. The bone ball had no vision; trying to find Lu Qingyu in this underwater realm was nothing short of wishful thinking.

Seeing the bone ball darting about, Lu Qingyu feared being scalded by the high heat he had released and prudently retreated a few steps. With the end almost in sight, he had no desire to stumble here.

Yet at the very instant he moved, a spike on the bone ball suddenly pointed directly at him.

Lu Qingyu suddenly realized that his movement had exposed his position. He had assumed that an enemy surrounded by boiling water would be unable to perceive him, but it appeared he was mistaken.

Even so, it mattered little. According to his calculations, the enemy was about to be boiled to death. At most, it would release a single bone spike, and everything would be over.

A mere single spike was something he could still dodge.

Lu Qingyu poised himself, preparing to give his opponent a swift and painless end at the very last moment.

Yet at that exact moment, he suddenly saw countless bubbles erupt from the bone ball, much like Mentos dropped into soda. The entire bone ball was abruptly enveloped in bubbles.

This sudden bubbling left Lu Qingyu momentarily stunned. He had no idea what trick the opponent was pulling this time, but this phenomenon was by no means normal; something was slipping out of his control.

Anxiety stirred in Lu Qingyu's heart. Victory was clearly within his grasp, but he felt as though he had miscalculated a step.

Surely not? After coming this far, could he really be counterkilled by someone?

The more one feared something, the more likely it was to come true.

Lu Qingyu's apprehension was quickly confirmed by the reality unfolding before his eyes.

The bubbles surged for a fraction of a second before beginning to dissipate. When they cleared, what stood before Lu Qingyu was no longer a giant bone ball, but a humanoid suit of bone armor.

Strictly speaking, the enemy himself was standing right in front of him!

Lu Qingyu was stunned. All his tactical thinking up to that point had been constrained by the assumption that the enemy could only operate within a spherical body that blocked the outside view; he had never imagined that this form could be altered.

That simply defied reason. If the bone ball was transformed into armor, logically speaking, its thickness would decrease, making it even easier to be cooked through. Why would the enemy pull such a stunt at a time like this?

Lu Qingyu believed the opponent could not possibly be a madman capable of committing suicide at this juncture. Turning the bone ball into bone armor must have a reason, but where did that logic stem from?

Could it be from that massive cloud of bubbles that had just erupted?

The next second, the bone armor moved. The high temperature generated by the red tea around it proved entirely useless; its movements were completely unhindered, and its speed underwater was terrifyingly fast, instantly lunging before Lu Qingyu.

Lu Qingyu seemed to have been frightened out of his wits, standing frozen in place without moving in the face of the suddenly charging enemy.

Qin Changsheng, watching from afar, also noticed this scene and anxiously issued a warning: "What are you doing? Dodge quickly!"

"It's useless. I can't dodge it."

Unexpectedly, Lu Qingyu actually uttered such disheartened words, as if he had completely surrendered to despair, resignedly moving his hands away from his front and exposing himself entirely to the enemy.

Faced with the enemy rushing right up to him, Lu Qingyu was forced to dispel his boiling water ability; otherwise, it would immediately engulf him as well.

The bone armor—transformed into humanoid gear—flailed its fists, smashing fiercely toward Lu Qingyu's head. This was sheer brute force, something the Night-Wandering Monkey's abilities simply could not block.

Lu Qingyu was undeniably doomed.

Just as Qin Changsheng thought the same, he suddenly saw the corners of Lu Qingyu's mouth curl into a strange smile.

That was not the smile of someone resigned to death, but a triumphant sneer—mocking his opponent, mocking death.

A burst of white mist surged violently, enveloping Lu Qingyu and the enemy together. For a moment, Qin Changsheng could no longer see what was happening specifically, and could only perceive through Momo that the two figures were still standing in place.

Daring not approach rashly, he could only watch quietly from afar.

Moments later, the white mist dissipated, once again revealing the figures of Lu Qingyu and the bone armor. Qin Changsheng thought everything had been settled, but when he looked closely, what he saw was not Lu Qingyu's tragic corpse.

Lu Qingyu was floating unharmed right where he was, while the heavy punch thrown by the bone armor hung frozen right in front of his face, never striking down.

What was going on here?

Qin Changsheng could no longer comprehend everything happening before his eyes, but Lu Qingyu understood it all too well.

Just a moment ago, he had completed a miraculous reversal.

Time turned back to right before the bone armor charged at him. At the exact moment the enemy's form was revealed, Lu Qingyu silently activated the Night-Wandering Monkey's ability in his mind.

"Six Teas: White."

White tea surged into his throat, and in an instant, time seemed to freeze before him.

It was not that the world had slowed down, but that Lu Qingyu's thought processes had accelerated to the absolute extreme within that fraction of a second. This was the ability of the Night-Wandering Monkey's white tea, which allowed him to accelerate his cognition for a brief period.

Within the expanded realm of thought, Lu Qingyu was finally able to carefully observe the enemy that had continually brought him all sorts of unexpected trouble. A bone ball that ignored all attacks had instantly transformed into bone armor; despite its reduced thickness, it could withstand intense high heat. To turn the tide of battle, he had to figure out the reason behind all of this.

The reason lay within that layer of suddenly erupted bubbles.

Lu Qingyu's vision expanded a countless number of times at that moment, allowing him to clearly examine every detail of the opponent's armor at this close range. And it was precisely then that he finally discovered the enemy's secret.

The answer lay upon the bone armor itself. That was not ordinary armor; its surface was covered in numerous uneven undulations, resembling empty cavities formed by bubbles.

The instant he saw those undulations, a light flashed in Lu Qingyu's eyes, and everything became completely clear!