Book 4: Chapter 35: Ancient Underwater Temple

A powerful underwater current dyed the world in blue and both Lily and Shimizu were taken into the underwater world subsequently.

Although the blue orb allowed them to breathe underwater, the sensation wasn’t that pleasant as lots of fluid gushed into their mouths, forcing them to breathe via them. However, this bit of trouble amounted to almost nothing for samurai like them who adventured the outside world to train and walked hand in hand with death.

The underwater current inside the vortex was quite powerful, so much that even Lily failed to resist it despite using her whole strength. Thus, she decided to let the powerful underwater current take her wherever it was going despite knowing nothing about its emergence.

The lake’s surface was calm as ever except for the region where the vortex had formed, but there was a powerful undercurrent flowing below it.

Lily and Shimizu felt as if they had flipped over multiple times within the water and saw their vision spin along with their travel through the current, but they still held hands firmly.

This continued until the current threw them into the tranquil depths of the lake.

The lakebed region was dominated by silence and two ancient statues of Wisdom Kings stood diagonally in the water.

Lily and Shimizu allowed the inertia to propel them towards the statues, and even though there was a lot of other samurai floating within the water like them, they had yet to react.

An ancient, sunken, underwater temple was vaguely visible behind the two statues.

The underwater current had turned gentler now, so Lily and Shimizu stopped holding hands and swam to the temple.

The water ahead was clouded by some notes of red and there were some samurai engaged in battle in front of the underwater temple right now.

“What are they battling against?” Lily uttered via water vibrations.

Shimizu also eyed the surrounding water vigilantly.

From the looks of it, it seemed that the samurai at the forefront were engaged in battle with a ma.s.sive number of kappas that had emerged all of a sudden.

However, Lily saw no sign of that ‘lord’ and his two companions.

The samurai were at a disadvantage in the battle against the kappas in the water and the weaker ones ended up being besieged by a bunch of them, unable to even catch hold of a single one of them. Lily even saw a group of 4-5 kappas tear one samurai apart whilst he was still alive and dye the nearby water in crimson.

Nevertheless, there were too many samurai present underwater right now and the stronger ones just made for the temple while turning a blind eye to the uncatchable kappas.

Lily and Shimizu nodded at each other and swam forward faster. It seemed that the human samurai had stopped killing each other for now because of the sudden appearance of the kappas and were dealing with them instead now. It was quite unimaginable that the disorganized samurai bunch were taking such action despite a non-existent chain of command, but their actions seemed reasonable when faced with such a development.

Lily and Shimizu approached the temple gradually.

The ancient temple spanned hundreds of meters and conformed to the style of constructs from the Asuka period. The pitch-black lumber it was made from was tough as ever and even had some aquatic plants growing on it.

Lily noticed an ardent gaze from behind at this moment and turned her head back to see a bald samurai swimming just behind her.

Lily was left stunned briefly!

She was in the middle of swimming right now and was also dressed in a minidress, so she was flashing her underbody entirely as she was just wearing a single piece of white undergarment below her dress.

However, there was nothing she could do to cover her underbody at this moment.

“This perverted b̲a̲s̲t̲a̲r̲d̲! How dare he do this at such a time!” Lily cursed him in her mind.

A powerful surge of water flowed towards Lily and Shimizu from the sides at this moment as kappas swam towards them rapidly from all directions.

Lily performed a dolphin kick to swim like a mermaid and change direction to avoid a kappa’s underwater sprint. It was true that the kappas had an advantage over the humans within water, but it wasn’t like they possessed limitless mobility.

Lily drew out Crescent Moon’s blade and slashed in the kappa’s direction, generating an underwater current from the powerful energy fluctuations. A white crescent moon beamed through the water subsequently and dismembered one of the kappa’s legs.

Although it had the advantage, it was just a 3rd-stage Awakened level kappa in the end and was much weaker than Lily.

The other kappa close to Lily grabbed the skirt of Lily’s minidress at this moment, so she sent it flying with a kick. Although she was underwater, the kappa’s action had actually infuriated her so much that the rage-fueled kick made the kappa boom across the water and die in the middle of it. A considerable section of her minidress’ skirt had torn off as a result, but she had no time to care about this right now.

Shimizu was also engaged in battle with the kappas, but she fought back the moment they neared her and gave rise to a series of thin vacuum blades through her swift as ever blade movements.

A kappa charged at Lily with a pitchfork in hand at this moment, and the fact that she could barely hide her body because of the torn skirt enraged her so much that she manipulated the nearby underwater current with a powerful movement of her blade to generate a rotating underwater current.

Lily’s gaze hardened as she slashed forward at full strength, following which the water blades flowing inside the rotating underwater current shot forward and sharply minced through the kappa’s bodies while the ones that hadn’t been minced were pushed away by the powerful underwater current.

The blond dandy and a bunch of samurai women swam forward distraughtly from nearby and also got besieged by a bunch of kappas once they came close to the temple.

The dandy flailed his katana in the water, but his actions were pointless as he failed to hit the kappas even once and was subjected to the constant onslaught of the kappas’ pitchforks, fists and kicks.

The samurai women were also similarly attacked by the kappas.

The married samurai woman was beaten up and captured by a few kappas who then proceeded to disrobe her.

As the married samurai woman didn’t know how to speak underwater, all she could do was direct an imploring gaze at Yajiro the dandy and hope to receive his help, but he too was under the siege of several kappas while barely managing to hold up, so he had no leeway to save her.

“Just forget about them, Lil’ Sis. Let’s leave.”

Lily also wanted to just swim away like this, but she really couldn’t stand the sight of the kappas hara.s.sing the married woman after tearing her dress apart.

This made her execute a blade movement and generate an underwater current.

The sudden and violent slash was so fast and powerful that the impact from it created a thin crescent-shaped vacuum as it traveled towards the kappas.

The water did nothing to reduce the momentum, so the vacuum blade shot forward rapidly.

“Splotch!” The bodies, arms and legs of the kappas were dismembered by the vacuum blade!

“What?!” The wounded dandy who had been battered badly by the kappas looked at the vacuum blade that killed the kappas in shock and turned around to look at the direction it came from to see the red-dressed Lily swim towards their side while kicking her slender legs.

“T-This woman…” the dandy’s eyes were filled with incredulity.

The sakura parasol manifested in Lily’s hand, but she didn’t open it and spun it in the water to create a rotating underwater current that moved like a lash under her control along with the parasol’s movements1.

Lily swung the parasol and lashed at the kappas.

“Boom! Boom! Boom!”

The white water lash was swift and had a reach of 100 m. It caved the kappas’ bodies inwards wherever it lashed them and sent their bones jutting out of their bodies.

“Boom!” The water lash struck a stone on the lakebed and blasted it into pieces, giving rise to a dust cloud in the water.

The blonde dandy’s eyes opened wide in astonishment as he witnessed Lily manipulate the water with her incredible methods.

Lily also felt that the water lash formed by the spinning Sakura Parasol was much easier to handle underwater than using her blade.

“Boom!” A series of water lashes struck the kappas who were in the middle of tearing the married woman’s dress apart and sent them flying. Lily then swam forward and pulled the woman into her embrace.

“Huh?” The blonde dandy exposed a miserable expression that seemed to convey the following words, “T-That’s my woman…”

Lily’s water lash was very powerful and moved gently through the water at times and ferociously otherwise. The half-torn skirt had turned her into a regent within the water.

All the kappas within the range of this water lash were sent flying by it and some were bisected into two, staining the water with their green blood.

The kappas didn’t dare to instigate Lily again and went to attack the other samurai instead.

Lily remained silent in this critical situation and swam towards the temple while hugging the married woman’s supple waist. The other samurai women also felt that they would be safer by following Lily, so they followed after her and left behind the blonde dandy floating in the water dumbfoundedly.

“Just what’s… with this woman?”

Shimizu shook her head helplessly after seeing the hormone-driven Lily rescue the innocent samurai women and followed after her too.

“Hey! Hold up! You’re members of my legion! I can protect all of you, so come back to me!” The blonde dandy yelled out.

However, the blonde dandy felt a sudden chill from behind because of the kappas moving towards him and was forced to hightail out of there by catching up with the women ahead of him.

Lily swam all the way inside the temple’s courtyard along with the married samurai woman and saw the samurai who had gathered there explore the premises.

Lily noticed that a lot of the samurai were swimming into the ma.s.sive temple hall, so she and Shimizu also followed after them.

There were a lot of samurai gathered inside the hall.

A strange water wall existed inside this hall, and it seemed to possess a unique fluctuation while existing in parallel with the water surrounding it.

It was like this strange and shimmering water wall was a portal to another s.p.a.ce.

Lily saw a group of three samurai swim towards the water wall with joined hands and disappear into it.

A few of the other samurai tried to do the same, but they just swam through it and came out the end like they had pa.s.sed through a layer of oil.

Lily supposed that the samurai who disappeared into the water wall were actually emblem holders.

Lily pulled Shimizu’s hand and looked at the married samurai woman, “Do you have an emblem?”

The married samurai woman shook her head.

Lily thought that it would be hard for her brother Tenba to make it in time and since he had told her to go on without him and not miss the chance, she showed no further hesitation and swam towards the water wall while pulling Shimizu with the married woman still in her embrace.

“Hey! T-That’s my woman…2” The dandy swam into the hall from outside and flailed his limbs wildly.

But Lily turned a deaf ear to him and swam into the water wall.

“Splash!”

The trio surfaced on the other side and found themselves in a dark and damp cavern where they could breathe normally instead of surfacing underwater.

The trio had emerged out of a pond in this cavern.

1. Robinxen: Uh sorry… what.
2. Robinxen: He got NTRd lol.