Gu Ning’s outer docks shook as the Cangwu River burst like a split boiling cooking pot.
A boiling pillar of yellow river foam and shredded waterweeds blew up thirty paces into the gray morning sky, raining scalding spray over the outer docks of Gu Ning.
Through the curtain of blinding white vapor, a nine-foot nightmare breached the surface.
It tore free from the churning depths with a sound like ripping ox hide, landing heavily upon the floating timber rafts.
The raft buckled wildly.
Dozens of massive cedar logs, bound together by iron chains and tarred hemp cables, plunged four feet into the brown river water before surging upward on a violent crest.
The Catfish Patriarch clawed at the sodden wood. He exhaled a ragged, whistling roar of pure agony.
The beast was hideously scalded.
