Purgatory River, Liu Biao's Forward Blockade Line.
The river was boiling.
No, to be precise, it was evaporating under the stomping kicks of a man running across its surface.
Sizzle—!!!
Every time Sun Ce took a step, the pitch-black polluted water exploded into steam.
He was sprinting across the water, riding the momentary layer of high-pressure steam generated beneath his feet.
"If there is no path, I will burn one open!"
A tunnel of white steam bored through the air in his wake, and the formations of Liu Biao's army parted left and right, like a colossal tsunami being cleaved in two.
His target was singular.
The heart of the enemy formation, where Liu Biao, the culprit spewing this vile filth, resided.
However, on the opposite side of that reckless charge, another lunatic was rushing in.
"Move!! I'll smash anything that blocks my path!"
"Damn it, a fireball?! Move, you lunatic!"
In the middle of the enemy fleet.
Sun Ce, who had pierced through the polluted water, and Gan Ning, who was breaking out of the enemy lines, collided face-to-face on a narrow path.
The distance between the two closed in an instant.
Gan Ning felt his eyebrows singing from the immense heat boiling right before his eyes.
The thing wasn't a living creature; it was closer to a calamity.
A walking volcano draped in molten lava.
Conversely, Gan Ning appeared far from ordinary in Sun Ce's eyes as well.
Carrying a soldier under one arm like a piece of luggage, swinging a single chain to defy gravity—he looked every inch a mad dog.
"You won't move?! I said move!"
Boom!
As the shoulders of the two monsters grazed against each other, the shockwave alone sent water spraying upwards and scattered rotting wood splinters in all directions.
Sparks flew from Sun Ce's eyes.
An enemy general? Then he would simply incinerate him.
Just as Sun Ce's fist heated up like a sun, the soldier sandwiched under Gan Ning's arm snapped his eyes open.
"L-Little Conqueror?! It's me! The messenger!!"
"...!"
Sun Ce's fist paused.
The predators of the water did not miss that brief gap.
Splash! Swoosh!
Water pillars shot up from all sides as dozens of Water Ghosts swarmed over them.
And behind them, a shadow laden with blue electricity leaped up.
"Rats... have gathered in one place...!!"
It was the Commander of Liu Biao's Navy, Zhang Yun.
Zzzzt—!!!
High-voltage current discharged from Zhang Yun's entire body.
"Kiiiieeeek-!!"
Responding to Zhang Yun's electricity, the Water Ghosts clinging to Sun Ce's limbs tightened their grip.
Even as their flesh burned away with a sizzling sound upon touching his body, they did not let go. Instead, with suicidal determination, they dragged Sun Ce deeper into the water.
"These, persistent things...!"
Sun Ce twisted his body, but as dozens of them hung on with their full weight, his balance collapsed.
Taking advantage of that opening, Zhang Yun smiled fishily and explosively increased the output of the current flowing through his body.
"Yes... become fodder for the lightning, obediently."
Gan Ning cursed as he wrapped his chain around a mast, escaping to the top where the current couldn't reach.
But Sun Ce, held by the Water Ghosts, had nowhere to flee.
Zzzzt—!!!
As his superheated body was submerged in the cold river water and struck by high-voltage electricity, the worst possible chemical reaction occurred.
Hiss! Tick, tick!
Flash Cooling.
His red skin, which had been boiling, instantly turned into pitch-black rock, and his flexible magma muscles hardened.
Sun Ce, now a helpless stone statue, began to sink into the abyss.
"Get lost. Into the cold abyss!"
Just as Zhang Yun let out a sneering laugh and was about to increase the current's output even further.
"Ah, this fireball is so high maintenance, seriously!"
Gan Ning hesitated for a moment.
Whether that fireball died or not was none of his business.
But if that guy cooled down here, the icebreaker needed to pierce this hellish encirclement would disappear.
"To hell with it! You owe me a meal for this later!"
Ping-!
The hook leaving Gan Ning's hand cut through the air.
The chain danced like a living serpent and flew, piercing exactly through Zhang Yun's gills.
Thwack!
"Aaaargh!!"
With a scream, Zhang Yun's concentration shattered, and the current binding Sun Ce was cut off.
It was Gan Ning, who had thrown the messenger onto the deck and swung his chain.
He glared at Zhang Yun as if looking at a repulsive bug.
"You eel bastard, how dare you shock my body? Don't you know I hate that tingling feeling?!"
Gan Ning tightened his grip on the chain and shouted towards Sun Ce, who was sinking into the water.
"Hey! Pebble! How long are you going to stay stiff? Explode already!"
Was that shout the trigger?
Deep underwater, a red light began to leak again from the chest of the pitch-black, hardened Sun Ce.
"How dare you... cool me down?!"
Kwaaang-!!!
Sun Ce shattered the rock shell covering his body and shot up like an explosion.
Without hesitation, he rammed his fist straight into the face of Zhang Yun, who was flailing in Gan Ning's chains.
Wham!!
"Get lost."
Through the contact, Sun Ce's superheat was instantly injected into Zhang Yun's water-soaked body.
Bang-!!!
The moisture inside Zhang Yun's body boiled instantly, and his head, unable to withstand the steam pressure, exploded.
Hot steam mixed with blood and flesh scattered in all directions.
But there was no time to catch their breath.
Rumble-!
A massive shadow covering the sky descended upon the two.
It was Cai Mao, holding a house-sized carapace shield.
"You extinguished flame!!"
Clang!!
Sun Ce instinctively threw a punch to defend, but his fist, weakened by the earlier cooling, cracked.
On the other hand, Cai Mao's carapace was harder than diamond.
"Ugh...!"
Cai Mao swung his carapace shield with brute force, sending Gan Ning, who was next to him, flying.
Splash!
"Damn it—!!"
Gan Ning crashed into the dark river water with a short scream.
With the nuisance gone, Cai Mao's giant pincer claw tightened around the remaining Sun Ce's waist.
Crunch-!
Bones harder than armor screamed.
Cai Mao's grip strength was beyond imagination.
If he were an ordinary demon, he would have been snapped in half, spilling his entrails instantly.
But Sun Ce let out a growling sound between his teeth instead of a scream.
"Grrr... Save your strength... for the bedroom."
Pain became anger, and anger soon became fuel.
His cooling heart, the 'Fragment Core', began to beat madly again.
Instead of breaking the shell, he burned his life force to raise his temperature to the limit.
"The inside... must be soft...!!"
Sun Ce shoved his fingers into the gaps of Cai Mao's joints and poured in the heat.
Sizzle—!!!
"H-Hot!! My body... from the inside...!!"
Cai Mao screamed.
The inside of the hard carapace had begun to boil like a pressure cooker.
Cai Mao, unable to withstand the pain, stepped back, trying to flee.
But then, the clinking sound of chains was heard.
"Where do you think you're going! Stay put until you're fully cooked!"
Gan Ning, who had climbed back up, embedded his chain into Cai Mao's protruding eye and dangled from it.
"L-Let go of this! You rats!!"
"Cook! Cook!!"
Sun Ce's overloaded heat and Gan Ning's tenacious restraint.
Finally, the internal pressure exceeded its limit and exploded.
Boom-!!!
With a cataclysmic boom, Cai Mao's carapace shattered like shrapnel.
On the hideously exposed red flesh, Sun Ce's fiery fist exploded.
Crack-!!
He couldn't even scream.
With tremendous impact and heat, Cai Mao's upper body was crushed, collapsing into a heap of black charcoal.
As the two monsters were dealt with, the surroundings became eerily quiet.
Sun Ce, having exhausted his energy, had turned into a crumbling black stone block, with only faint smoke rising from his body.
Gan Ning was also scorched and covered in wounds.
"Huff... Huff... You alive, pirate scum?"
"Thanks to you, I almost got cooked Well-Done... you charcoal block."
Gan Ning grumbled, brushing off his singed hair.
Sun Ce grabbed the trembling messenger from the corner and looked back at the path he had broken through.
But his expression hardened.
"..."
The path was already gone.
The endlessly surging green sludge and water weeds of Liu Biao's army had filled up the steam tunnel Sun Ce had created.
Perfect isolation.
Then, Gan Ning smirked and pointed somewhere with his chin.
It was not the Sun clan's base, but the deepest part of Liu Biao's camp.
"Look at that. The path you broke through is already blocked. If you try to break through that again now, you'll run out of energy and die, right?"
"..."
"If the retreat is blocked, there's only one way. Block the hole spewing this filth."
Sun Ce's gaze turned to where Gan Ning pointed.
There, dozens of Turtle Ships wrapped in damp moss and rotten seaweed floated like ghosts.
And in the center of that fleet.
Looking like a giant island floating on the river, a bizarre Flagship covered in hideous barnacles and writhing tentacles was spewing green miasma endlessly from its open maw.
"...You mean to strike Liu Biao."
"Yeah. We have to kill that old man to make this tedious swamp disappear. If you want to live, let's just run forward."
Charging into the enemy's heart in this situation.
It was madness.
But right now, it was the only way out for the two of them.
A bloodthirsty smile spread across Sun Ce's lips.
Small sparks flew again from his hardening body.
"I like it because it's simple. Let's go."
The two men started running again towards the same destination without hesitation.
Target: The Ruler of the Purgatory River, Liu Biao.