On the TikTok short video platform, a video capturing Yang Lin's entire dog rescue process was uploaded and quickly went viral.
However, the video's explosive popularity wasn't due to Yang Lin's act of jumping into the water to save the dog, but rather the water monster that appeared in the video.
Shortly after the video was published, the comments section exploded.
"Holy cow, this water monster looks real!"
"After careful analysis, confirmed not staged."
"Damn, talking about water monsters and water monkeys makes me angry. I watched a blogger who made hundreds of episodes, but it turned out to be fake."
"This can't be staged - just look at the zoo director's terrified expression. If he could act that well, he'd be in Hollywood by now."
"Looking at that expression, he probably got scared sh*tless."
"I calculated roughly - the director's swimming speed almost matches an Olympic champion. Maybe we should put a shark behind each swimmer in future Olympic competitions."
"Can any experts explain what that thing in the water actually is?"
"It's a water monkey, definitely a water monkey."
"Has our Dragon Country finally got its own water monster? I'm going to check it out right now."
"Wonder when we'll see a follow-up. I won't be able to sleep until I figure out what's actually in that lake."
"@Teacher Xiao Liang, is this really a water monkey or some other water monster?"
"I think it's a plesiosaur - look at its overall shape."
"Plesiosaur my foot! If it really were a plesiosaur, this zoo might as well rename itself Jurassic Park."
"This is exciting! Lucky I'm a Ningnan local, I'm buying tickets now."
"The guy above is such a dog, bragging about being a local."
"I'm buying tickets too. Watch my livestream - I'm definitely getting to the bottom of this today."
...
As the video's popularity continued to surge, more and more people learned about the water monster incident.
Yang Lin had clearly underestimated people's enthusiasm for water monsters.
Within two hours, the number of visitors to the zoo exploded from around a thousand to over five thousand.
Among these five thousand people, there were at least several hundred streamers.
Undoubtedly, these streamers were all there to capitalize on the water monster trend.
Just when Yang Lin thought things couldn't get any more ridiculous, Lin Feng, whom he had only recently met, arrived with a group of police officers.
Only with the police maintaining order did the zoo finally avoid descending into chaos.
At this point, Lin Feng found Yang Lin.
"Director Yang, didn't expect we'd meet again so soon. Your zoo has really become famous now."
"More visitors will probably flood in soon. What's your plan?"
Hearing Lin Feng's slightly teasing tone, Yang Lin was momentarily stunned before responding seriously:
"Well, I'll be looking at cars and houses!"
"I'm serious. Given your current situation, if you can't quickly clarify what's going on with the water monster in the lake, they'll probably keep coming every day."
"Why don't you drain the lake?"
As soon as Lin Feng made this suggestion, Yang Lin's eyes widened.
"You must be joking. Do you know how much water is in this artificial lake?"
"This used to be a large mine pit. The deepest part is over sixty meters deep, and the total water volume is probably about one-fifth of West Lake."
"Draining it isn't just about how many pumps we'd need - where would we even put all that water?"
"Ah... I guess that plan won't work." After hearing Yang Lin's explanation, Lin Feng couldn't help but smile wryly.
"Come on, let's go check out the situation by the lake."
After some contemplation, Yang Lin returned to the lakeside. Looking at the dark green water before him, his face showed a hint of confusion.
At this moment, a nearby visitor suddenly suggested:
"Director, why don't we get a remote-controlled underwater robot with a camera to go down and take a look?"
Hearing this visitor's suggestion, a light bulb went off in Yang Lin's head.
"Right, we could send down an animal that can dive, and I just need to share its vision to figure out what's actually in the water."
Once this occurred to him, several candidates quickly came to mind.
First were the koi fish in the lake. As long-time residents of this artificial lake, they had been there long enough and were definitely good at diving.
But after some thought, Yang Lin ruled out this option.
There were two main reasons: first, koi fish have very short lifespans, and second, their combat ability is poor - if they encountered the monster head-on, they'd probably be gone in one bite.
After ruling out the koi fish, another option quickly came to mind.
"This should work."
Having made his decision, Yang Lin immediately snuck past the crowd of visitors and headed to the crocodile pool, not far from the artificial lake.
This was currently the least visited area in the entire zoo.
After all, no one wanted to watch a bunch of lazy creatures that did nothing but sleep and sunbathe all day.
Looking at the crocodiles lazily sunbathing by the pool, Yang Lin's eyes lit up.
The West Rainbow Zoo housed three species of crocodiles: the Chinese alligator, native to Dragon Country and a small species; the imported Siamese crocodile; and the saltwater crocodile, which was once widely used for making leather bags.
The Chinese alligator was the smallest, less than two meters long, the Siamese crocodile was medium-sized at over three meters.
The most impressive was the earth-yellow saltwater crocodile, measuring over four meters from head to tail.
After just a glance, Yang Lin focused his attention on the saltwater crocodile.
If he was going to choose something with strong combat ability, he needed to choose the strongest - the Chinese alligator, which couldn't even beat a goose, wasn't even in consideration.
Having identified his target, Yang Lin immediately used his Eye of Insight on the massive saltwater crocodile.
Immediately, all the crocodile's information appeared before him.
[Camouflage (Green Talent) Activation requires 1 talent point]
[Agility (Green Talent) Activation requires 1 talent point]
[Savage Growth (Blue Talent) Activation requires 2 talent points]
[Super Bite (Gold Talent) Activation requires 5 talent points]
[Prehistoric Overlord (Legendary Talent) Activation requires 10 talent points]
Although the saltwater crocodile only had 5 talents, just the single legendary talent made Yang Lin look at it with new respect.
Of course, he knew that talents of this level were currently beyond his reach - he could only look, not activate them.
As for Super Bite and Camouflage, they weren't in his consideration either - one was too expensive, the other too weak.
So he finally locked his targets on Agility and Savage Growth.