Lin Ye was currently inside an abandoned building. The sky outside the window was somewhat gloomy, and nearby was a deserted urban area. Within his perception range, only a few humanoid figures were moving around.

‘Huh? Is there something down there?’ 𝑓𝘳𝑒𝑒𝓌𝘦𝘣𝘯ℴ𝑣𝘦𝑙.𝘤𝑜𝑚

Lin Ye’s mental energy could only penetrate a short distance into the ground; any deeper, and it met resistance.

Without thinking too long, Lin Ye jumped directly from the window onto the road, then quickly walked toward the nearest humanoid figure.

Soon, Lin Ye approached it. It was a humanoid figure with a bull’s head. As he got closer, that bull-headed figure was sitting beside a chasm near an abandoned supermarket, fishing.

“Hey, I got here first. Find another spot.”

The bull-head spoke in stiff, halting words.

“Don’t worry, I’m not going to take your spot. I just got here and wanted to see what’s going on.”

After getting closer, Lin Ye noticed that the chasm in the ground was deeper than he had thought.

“Good. You can find another chasm, or wait until I’m done. Before, someone caught fish in a chasm like this.”

The bull-head looked at Lin Ye with some wariness. It sensed an extremely dangerous aura from him.

“Oh, then go ahead. I’ll find another chasm.”

Lin Ye wasn’t about to steal the other’s spot. He wasn’t a robber.

But after circling the city, Lin Ye discovered that all the existing chasms in the city were already occupied. Moreover, the larger chasms even had fishing enthusiasts queuing up.

The problem was that the output from these chasms was too low. If he hadn’t happened to run into a fisherman who had just caught a fish, he would have thought these chasms couldn’t catch anything at all.

‘Should I wait a bit? Or just create a new chasm outright?’

Beneath this city seemed to be something that could block mental energy, and the chasms were openings torn into that substance.

While searching for chasms earlier, Lin Ye had approached the city’s edge. Outside the city was a milky white, smooth ground. His mental energy couldn’t penetrate that surface, which sparked an idea—perhaps the area beneath the city was also this kind of smooth surface.

‘That texture feels similar to certain flesh and blood structures... Am I actually standing on the surface of some creature?’

Of course, it could also be inside one, if that creature were large enough.

Considering that possibility, Lin Ye decided not to leave the abandoned city district.

If he really was inside some kind of creature, then it was almost certainly some sort of deep-sea creature.

After all, this was a fishing competition—it had to be tied to the sea somehow.

Just as Lin Ye was planning his next move, he suddenly turned his head toward the west side of the city. In that direction, he sensed a familiar aura.

“You run into acquaintances even in a place like this?”

Lin Ye moved at full speed to the city’s edge. On the milky white ground outside the city, he saw a familiar figure.

She was currently being chased by a sea of white flesh spikes, looking utterly disheveled.

Lin Ye stared at that area and activated the power of the Instinctive State Rule Fragment. Those flesh spikes gradually subsided, returning to a smooth surface.

“Thank you for your help!”

Ayla quickly ran into the city district, collapsing to the ground without any dignity, gasping for air.

“I’m Lin Ye. How do you always end up in these bizarre places?”

Lin Ye wrapped his tail around Ayla and rapidly retreated.

A massive forest of milky white flesh spikes, dozens of meters tall, shot up from the ground and smashed into the edge of the city, leaving several wide chasms in their wake.

“It reacted that fast? This thing is pretty dangerous.”

Clearly, the colossal creature beneath their feet had sensed the power of the rules and retaliated.

“Lin Ye, what are you doing here?”

Ayla asked in surprise, reaching out to touch Lin Ye’s tail.

“I came for the fishing competition. What about you?”

Though Lin Ye couldn’t really say whether this counted as a fishing competition.

“I just picked up the invitation letter and glanced at it, and I got teleported to a coast somewhere. I thought it was some kind of fun event, but I didn’t expect it to be this dangerous.”

Ayla looked at the flesh spikes that had retracted back into the milky white surface. She had nearly been impaled by those things.

“You don’t have a way out of here? How did you get through the last round?”

Lin Ye felt that this old friend was even unluckier than he was.

“I have a teleportation item, but here, spatial teleportation is locked. I can only trigger teleportation by putting a caught item into the basket. In the last round, I was fishing on a seawall. That sea was a deep green. If I couldn’t catch something within the time limit, I would come into contact with those green creatures climbing up the seawall. I got lucky and caught a light green box. Is this the same round as yours?”

Ayla seemed very curious about his alien body, her gaze flickering uncertainly.

“My last round was different from yours. That means each person gets teleported to a different area. Maybe we can try putting the fish into the baskets together later.”

Lin Ye flicked his fishing rod toward the chasm left by the flesh spikes. The hook quickly touched that milky white smooth surface, but there was nothing to catch there.

“Alright, but we should hurry. The area I came from was already flooded by a purple corrosive liquid. A lot of people fled the city, but only I survived.”

Ayla also cast her line into the chasm. Her survival was entirely due to the power of her relic. Running into Lin Ye was probably also related to that relic.

“Could this be inside the stomach of some giant deep-sea creature? I came here to fish, not to be fish food.”

In the distance, a purple tide was approaching the abandoned city district. Some fishing enthusiasts noticed the situation and scrambled to the chasms, desperately trying to catch something that could get them out before the flood swallowed them.

“Give me your hand.”

Lin Ye used his fishhook to forcibly tear open a piece of the white epidermis, then used the flesh and blood inside to mutate into a dozen fish-shaped mutated creatures. He then coiled two of them and tossed one toward Ayla’s basket.

The other fishing enthusiasts, seeing this, frantically grabbed at the remaining mutated fish.

The two mutated fish entered the baskets simultaneously. Lin Ye pulled Ayla and triggered the teleportation.

After they left, a violent tremor shook the city’s edge. Dozens of giant eyeballs appeared on the milky white surface, but all the fishermen there had already fled.

When the teleportation ended, Lin Ye and Ayla were not separated by the teleportation. They were sent to the high platform of a lighthouse.

Below the lighthouse, the red sea churned violently. Waves crashed against the reef, leaving crimson debris scattered across its surface.

This was a lighthouse built out at sea. Beneath it was only a ring of dark red reef. Beyond that, as far as the eye could see, there was nothing but bright red sea.

The sky above their heads was also a bloody red, like another deep crimson ocean.