American Comics: Tales of Cultivator

# Chapter 62: Sea Monster, Sea Monster?

Under the night sky, waves crashed against the hull, stirring up spray under the moonlight.

Singing and dancing were in full swing on the ship. In the banquet hall of this super cruise ship, after the orchestra finished performing, a group of night owls moved on to the super cruise ship's bar.

Explosive music filled the air. The DJ on the cruise ship was also an electronic music fanatic from the Top 100 DJ ranking.

Amidst the noisy, lively, and crazy heavy metal music, deep beneath the sea, a huge black shadow floated up towards this super cruise ship.

In a corner of the super cruise ship's deck, under the dim ship lights, a pair of hungry and thirsty individuals were embracing and making out.

He looked up and saw that the woman was looking behind him with a face full of terror.

The man turned his head back. An octopus tentacle as thick as a truck came slapping straight towards him. The huge suction cups wriggled, immediately slapping the pair onto the deck.

The super cruise ship jolted. In the captain's cabin, the cruise ship captain, who was holding a wine glass and flirting with a good-looking lady, stumbled. The wine glass in his hand fell to the ground, shattering into pieces.

"What's going on?"

The captain, over fifty years old, comforted the lady while looking outside the captain's cabin. Upon seeing this, his eyes went wide.

"My God, what the hell is this thing!"

From the perspective of the captain's cabin, one could see a giant octopus, about half the size of the cruise ship, extending its tentacles from the sea. The huge suction cups firmly gripped the hull. Waving two huge tentacles, it reached into the cruise ship's rooms, searching for prey.

The huge tentacles broke through the walls of the cruise ship's rooms, coiling around the people inside, scooping them up like melon seeds and stuffing them into its huge mouthparts deep underwater.

The captain frantically pushed away the lady in his arms, reached out and slapped the nearby alarm bell. Simultaneously, he grabbed the radio communicator nearby and sent out distress signals to surrounding ships.

...

At this time, dozens of nautical miles away from this luxury cruise ship, a Federation warship was cruising at a speed of 16 knots.

On the warship, two people who clearly didn't belong to the Navy were sitting in the captain's cabin, staring intently at the red dot on the radar signal.

"Are you sure? That's Magneto. Although I hate these Mutant scum, it's undeniable that their strength is still very powerful!"

A white elderly man wearing a Federation Army Colonel's uniform looked hatefully at the red dot on the radar.

William Stryker, a very traditional American soldier, always poker-faced, with cold eyes, solemn and taciturn, strictly adhering to military discipline and dogma. His body, which had gone out of shape with age, did not detract from his tough guy demeanor in the slightest.

This elderly man with slightly graying temples was the person in charge of the Weapon X Project.

"Colonel Stryker, have you heard of the 'Argo'?"

Standing next to the white officer was a Black man. Looking at his rank, he was surprisingly an Army Major General.

Facing his colleague's questioning, he retorted.

"The Argo? Are you talking about the super cruise ship that mysteriously disappeared two years ago?" William Stryker looked puzzled. "What does this have to do with your mission?"

The Black Major General mysteriously leaned closer to William Stryker. "That Argo didn't disappear, but encountered a Sea Monster!"

"A group of our Marine Corps good lads killed that Sea Monster and found that wooden box inside its belly!"

"According to the findings of those scientists, the smell of that wooden box can attract Sea Monsters!"

"What was in the box?" William Stryker asked curiously.

The Black Major General shrugged his shoulders. "Empty, there was nothing inside. It was the wooden box that emitted the smell. When Sea Monsters smell this scent, they will pounce like dogs in heat."

"This time, the Department of Defense wants to test whether this wooden box can be used as a secret weapon!"

"Secret weapon?!" William Stryker looked skeptical. "Even if it can really attract Sea Monsters, how would the Navy transport this wooden box onto an enemy warship? Using artillery?"

The Black Major General looked at William Stryker with a strange expression. "Colonel, surely you know why you're involved in this top-secret experiment, don't you?"

He was startled at first, then realized. "You want to use the abilities of Mutants!"

Although William Stryker's rank was only Colonel, he was in charge of the military's experimental projects targeting Mutants.

This kind of human experimentation naturally couldn't be done openly, otherwise, the hurdle of public opinion couldn't be passed. So the military specifically established a covert department to handle this matter.

William Stryker was the person in charge of this Project.

This time's plan targeting Magneto, the so-called research data of the Black King Sebastian Shaw, actually came from the Laboratory under his Subordinates.

The gene samples in the safe were real, and the gene research data were also real.

The experiment could indeed use special equipment to convert a part of the genes within the bodies of ordinary people into the X-Gene.

However, this Project ultimately failed. All the test subjects died due to genetic collapse.

The Black Major General clapped his hands. "According to the concept of the Department of Defense Operations Staff, if the experiment could succeed, the special abilities of Mutants could be used to send the wooden box directly onto an enemy warship! Colonel, you've been researching Mutants for so long, you should have test subjects with this kind of ability among your Subordinates, right!"

William Stryker's eyes flickered, thinking about the implications this matter had for him.

William Stryker indeed had Mutants among his Subordinates with this kind of ability – the ability to silently send objects from one place to another – and not just one.

However, what William Stryker cared about was, as a bargaining chip, what kind of benefits he could gain from the higher-ups in the Department of Defense by relying on this matter.

...

The sky was already faintly bright at this time. The sea surface was calm and uneventful, with a light fog.

At this time, this large passenger ship was at least a hundred nautical miles away from the Costa super cruise ship.

Under the devastation of that ridiculously large octopus, the Costa super cruise ship was already on the verge of collapse, barely swaying back and forth on the sea surface, supported by its huge hull.

The octopus was coiled around the cruise ship's deck and upper decks, extending tentacles dozens of meters long, searching the interior. Occasionally reaching into a room, as if opening a can of food, it grabbed out a few people and stuffed them into its huge mouthparts.

In a corner of this super cruise ship, a skull that seemed like a decoration hung on the cruise ship's railing. In the eye socket of the skull, a miniature camera was recording everything happening on the cruise ship.

Every time the octopus's huge tentacles swept past, this skull, as if alive, flexibly maneuvered to avoid the octopus tentacles.

"What a huge octopus!"

In the restaurant of the large passenger ship, Tang Song sat by the window. On the dining table in front of him was filled with a sumptuous Chinese breakfast: Xiaolongbao, pumpkin porridge, crab dumplings.

The Xiaolongbao were made with top-grade Jinhua ham and crab roe, simmered and sealed.

The ingredients for the pumpkin porridge were also carefully selected. Even the millet for the porridge was premium golden rice costing hundreds of US Dollars per pound.

As for the crab meat inside the crab dumplings, it was king crab leg meat from Alaska, produced in the Bering Strait.

He never tired of fine food, nor of finely prepared dishes.

Tang Song had breakfast while looking at the notebook computer open in front of him, where a real-time scene comparable to a Federation monster movie was playing out before his eyes.

"What a huge octopus!"

Tang Song tasted a Xiaolongbao, looked at the giant octopus, and let out a sigh of amazement.

This octopus's size was indeed large. Tang Song, having lived three lives, had only seen octopuses of this size in movies.

Specifically in the *Pirates of the Caribbean* series, the big guy named Paul that Captain Davy Jones kept on the Flying Dutchman.

That octopus could wrap its tentacles around a wooden sailing ship and drag it into the sea using brute force.

The octopus in the current scene was clearly not much smaller than that octopus.

But that's not right! Looking at the scene on the computer, Tang Song put down the chopsticks in his hand. Although encountering this kind of Sea Monster on the vast sea is indeed very dangerous,

Tang Song felt that this Sea Monster couldn't pose much of a threat to him.

An octopus without sentience, as long as he wasn't dragged into the deep sea by it, Tang Song was still confident he could escape.

This Sea Monster didn't match the sense of crisis Tang Song perceived with his Autumn Cicada Sense.

Also, where is Magneto? Why hasn't there been any movement? Could it be that his warning had an effect? If Magneto was on the ship, with a ten-thousand-ton steel cruise ship present, this octopus might really not be his opponent.

If Tang Song remembered correctly, the strength Magneto displayed in the movies was capable of lifting an entire steel bridge from the ground.

...

"Have you considered a problem? There is only one of these wooden boxes? What if it's swallowed by that Sea Monster?"

On the bridge of the Navy warship, William Stryker and the Black Major General stood by the ship's edge, overlooking the sea.

The sun rose in the east, the sea fog dissipated, and the sea surface under the illumination of the sunlight appeared sparkling.

The Black Major General gripped the bridge railing tightly with both hands, and tilted his head. "The people from the Science Division want to investigate the experimental data on the Sea Monster and population status. We also need this data. The box contains a deep-pressure resistant positioning device. As long as we want to recover it, this box won't be lost!"

"If you ask me, Sea Monsters and such can only be used as a surprise force. If sufficient preparations are made in advance, a thermobaric bomb is enough to annihilate any silicon-based creature!"

The Black Major General looked at the blue sea spiritedly. William Stryker, standing beside him, had flickering eyes.

Suddenly, both their gazes froze.

On the calm sea surface not far from them, a huge black shadow swam forward from the seabed.

The black shadow was so huge that from their perspective, it was surprisingly even larger than the warship they were standing on.

"Is that direction towards the target cruise ship?"

Sweat beads seeped out on his forehead, William Stryker asked uncertainly.

The Black Major General swallowed a mouthful of saliva and nodded affirmatively.

"How many Sea Monsters can that black box of yours summon?"

"Theoretically, it's one. And according to the analysis of those people from the Science Division, the number of this type of Sea Monster shouldn't be numerous. The current oxygen concentration simply cannot support creatures of such a large size!"

(End of Chapter)