Holding Xai Lin in a princess carry, An Mo drifted above the ocean waters. His bare feet occasionally skim the surface of the water, kick up droplets that soaked his pant legs, but he didn't mind and instead focus on carrying Xai Lin.
After a while, Xai Lin patted his puffed-up ponytail and said.
"Alright, this should be far enough."
Hearing this, An Mo looked back and saw that they were indeed far away from the ship—it was only a dot on the horizon.
An Mo stopped and let Xai Lin down.
Xai Lin coated the soles of her feet with Spiritual Qi so that she could stand on the surface of the water.
Like An Mo, she too wasn't wearing any shoes. This made her snow-white feet particularly eye-catching while it was covered in her Spiritual Energy, which was a shade lighter than the ocean waters.
An Mo immediately caught sight of this scene, and his gaze couldn't help but linger on Xai Lin's feet—especially on those small, delicate toes which had a faint pinkish hue on them. A thought crossed his mind, he wonder how it would feel to nibble on them.
However, An Mo immediately shook his head and cast those messy thoughts from his head. This was no time to let his mind wander; he had to focus on protecting his Xai-xai if anything happened!
Maybe he would try nibbling on them later…
Meanwhile, Xai Lin sighed in relief when she successfully steadied herself on the surface of the water. This was the first time she had tried doing something so delicate with her Spiritual Energy, but thankfully her soul was stronger than normal, which gave her greater, and precise control over her Internal Qi.
Holding up her pant legs, Xai Lin stared down at her bare feet as she lifted and lowered her legs repeatedly to make a final confirmation that she could maintain this level of control even when she wasn't consciously thinking about it.
As a result, those pant legs got a bit soaked.
Currently, Xai Lin was wearing slightly baggy white pants, and a simple long sleeve blue shirt that had buttons all the way up to her neck. Although the outfit was simple, with only a few simple embroider designs on the shirt's hem and sleeves, when it was on her it made her look like exquisite little doll that was dressed up.
Besides those other clothes that were for disguise, all of Xai Lin's clothes were similar to this outfit, which looked somewhat gender neutral.
She also had a one-piece upper robe like the one An Mo was currently wearing, as well as others that extended to her ankles in the form of a simple dress, but she only wore those when she was going to bed.
As for the reason, Xai Lin found it troublesome to wear this world's clothes. Especially female clothes, which had several layers. So, she designed these clothes herself, which were a mix between this world and her past life's aesthetics.
Not minding her pant legs getting wet, Xai Lin lowered them before looking up at An Mo and saying.
"I'm ready to make a breakthrough."
An Mo paused for moment before he nodded solemnly and began drifting backward—his toes grazed along the surface of the water and stirred up countless ripples that spread out in all directions.
An Mo's gaze remained firmly locked onto Xai Lin as he retreated to around three hundred meters away from her.
At this distance, the lightning tribulation might still attack him, but An Mo didn't care; this distance was the bare minimum he could bring himself to remain away from Xai Lin.
With a thought, An Mo reverted to his Divine Monkey King form, while at the same time two pitch black wings tore through the robes on his back and spread out.
An Mo apologized internally to Xai Lin for damaging her clothes, since these ones could not repair themselves. Afterward he continued.
On each feather of those pitch-black wings, golden runic symbols from his Divine Black Tortoise bloodline appeared and began pulsating faintly.
With three of his four Divine Beast bloodlines activated at the same time, An Mo began feeling a bit of strain on his soul. But this was normal, even though he was a Divine Beast with four Divine Beast bloodlines, he was still considered to be a beast youngling that hadn't yet matured, so he could not bring out the full potential of his bloodlines, much less use more than one at the same time.
However, unlike the previous times, where he empowered his Three-legged Divine Crow's teleportation ability using his other bloodlines and even draw on them to the point of sucking his dantian dry and injuring his soul, this time he merely combined them to use the passive abilities each bloodline had.
After thinking for a moment, An Mo ignore the headache that was coming on and call upon his Qilin bloodline.
Unlike the other forms that manifest on his body rather quickly, his Qilin bloodline trait emerged rather slowly.
On his forehead, just beneath the head band made up of golden runes, golden horns slowly grew out, which went on to curl towards the back of his head. On these horns were golden symbols that slowly moved along their surface—although they gave off no aura, their movements seem to coincide with the movements of the surrounding Spiritual Qi and perhaps even the unseen laws of the Heavenly Dao between heaven and earth.
Xai Lin observed An Mo somewhat reckless actions, but she did not stop him. Though, for some reason, seeming him in this form caused a bit of suspicion to form in her heart. As for who or what this suspicion was related, she did not know.
After thinking and thinking as to why she was suddenly feeling this way, but coming to no conclusion, Xai Lin decided to put it aside for now and focus on her breakthrough. It might be the cause of her sudden unease, so she would just focus on that.
Xai Lin glanced up at the vast blue sky, and after calming her mind, she finally stopped suppressing her breakthrough.
Immediately, the Spiritual Qi in her dantian began boiling like water under a fire, while at the same time dark clouds abruptly appeared in the sky above, dyeing the once clear blue sky with a dark and gloomy atmosphere.
Crackle! Boom!
Suddenly, a bolt of lightning flashed within those dark clouds that were still spreading out in all directions.
In the blink of an eye, those dark clouds reached An Mo's position and spread out to another five hundred meters.
Su Jin, who hadn't moved from his position since An Mo and Xai Lin left, grip the edge of the ship when he saw the dark clouds on the horizon.
"That—That should be a normal lightning tribulation right? I read that the lightning tribulations that occur on rare occasions for those breaking through to the Foundation Establishment Realm doesn't exceed one thousand meters."
"Hm. It's around nine hundred meters."
Little Bai's voice suddenly sounded before he appeared next to Su Jin.