The sea no longer slept.
In the days following Shenling's victory over the Lamenting Ocean Wraith, the waters around Sea God Island stirred with unease. The tides whispered secrets. The wind carried songs of sorrow and longing. The spirits beneath the waves—normally calm and elusive—drew closer, circling the island like sharks scenting blood.
Shenling could feel them.
Not just in the way a spirit master might sense energy, but intimately. Their presences pressed against his consciousness with increasing intensity, a constant background noise of ancient grief, hunger, and yearning. The Siren within him seemed to awaken more and more with each passing day, its voice mingling with that of the ocean's. It didn't just hum anymore—it sang.
And the melody it sang was one of sorrow and longing so deep that it began to bleed into Shenling's own dreams.
He began waking drenched in sweat, heart pounding, visions of weeping sea beasts or collapsing ships swirling behind his eyelids. Some nights, he saw his parents again—faces he barely remembered—floating away in a boat of fading light. Other nights, it was Bo Saixi turning away from him as the sea swallowed him whole.
He stopped sleeping.
By day, his emotions were stretched taut like a drawn bowstring. Any sharp word from a passing disciple echoed in his mind like thunder. The water in his training pool rippled and danced when he walked by. Some noticed. Whispers started. But no one dared approach him.
Until the day the Siren lashed out.
It began like any other morning.
Shenling sat cross-legged on the worn, salt-smoothed stone at the Temple Shore. The morning tide lapped gently at his feet. The sun had just begun to rise, casting golden streaks over the ocean's surface. He was trying to meditate, to anchor himself—to breathe. Bo Saixi had reminded him again and again: "You must be water, not fire. Let yourself flow."
But this morning, the sea didn't want to flow.
It cried.
And with that cry, Shenling's control slipped.
A tremor ran through his core. His breathing hitched. The sea around him pulsed.
Then came the pulse.
A sphere of violet-blue energy erupted from his body like a bell toll. The moment it touched the nearby disciples, chaos bloomed.
One by one, they collapsed.
"Ah—my sister! No! Don't go back out there!" a boy wailed, pounding the sand with his fists.
Another disciple screamed and bolted, eyes wide with madness. "It's burning! The ship is burning!"
Two girls dropped to their knees, embracing each other and sobbing uncontrollably.
Even older disciples, those already at the Spirit King level, found themselves frozen in place, gasping as unseen forces clawed through their thoughts.
The Siren's cry had become a song. And that song dragged out everything that lurked in the heart.
The Seven Sea Douluo felt it instantly.
From the outer shrine, Sea Woman Douluo's breath caught in her throat. Her hands trembled as the ocean's sorrow flooded her senses. The scent of salt was suddenly cloying. She ran.
From the Meditation Cliffs, Sea Ghost Douluo opened his eyes slowly. Around him, shadows lengthened unnaturally. "So the boundary has broken," he murmured. "He is feeling everything."
At the southern watchtower, Sea Star Douluo collapsed to one knee, struck by a sudden pang of grief that wasn't her own. Tears fell from her eyes. "He's... he's resonating too strongly. It's not just power. It's empathy beyond reason."
Even Sea Spear Douluo, the most stoic of them all, felt his throat tighten as a memory of a fallen comrade he had buried decades ago resurfaced with brutal clarity.
Sea Dragon Douluo stood atop the temple roof, his arms folded, watching the chaos. His jaw tightened. "Too soon," he muttered. "He's grown too quickly without learning to anchor his heart."
Seahorse Douluo clutched his staff tightly, his face pale. He could sense every heartbeat within the affected range spiraling out of control—like a whirlpool drawing all emotions toward a central point.
That point... was Shenling.
And Shenling? He stood at the center of it all, trembling, eyes wide, arms hanging limp at his sides.
Violet mist spiraled around him in slow, ghostlike tendrils. His mouth hung open as though trying to scream, but no sound emerged. His body was frozen, yet his soul was ablaze.
He could feel everything.
Not just his own grief—but theirs.
Dozens of souls pouring their broken memories into him like rivers feeding a drowning sea.
He saw a boy dragged under by a wave that never returned his mother. He saw an old man watching the sea every morning, waiting for a ship that would never come. He felt the ache of unspoken love, the sting of failure, the slow, cold grief of time stealing everything precious.
Shenling's legs buckled. He dropped to his knees.
"I didn't mean to," he whispered hoarsely. "I just wanted to feel peace."
The sea thundered. The mist thickened.
And then—light.
Bo Saixi descended from the air like a falling star, her robes glowing with divine energy, her eyes fierce.
In one fluid motion, she wrapped her arms around Shenling, shielding him with her body. A radiant barrier spread outward from her heart, washing over the beach like a wave of clarity.
The illusions faded.
The mist dispersed.
The disciples stirred slowly, blinking and sobbing, returning to themselves like dreamers waking from a nightmare.
Bo Saixi said nothing at first. She just held him.
Shenling trembled in her arms. "I don't know what's happening to me. I don't know what I'm becoming."
She held him tighter.
"You are becoming what the sea always needed," she whispered. "But even the tide must learn when to rise... and when to rest."
He cried then, for the first time in years.
Not because he was weak.
But because for once, he didn't have to hold the ocean's sorrow alone.
The next morning, Bo Saixi stood before the gathered Seven Sea Douluo in the central hall.
Her voice was calm, but steeled with purpose.
"The time has come," she declared, "for each of you to shape him—not only as a warrior, but as a soul master of two divine natures."
She turned to Shenling, who stood quietly beside her.
"You will not walk alone, Ling'er. You will learn from each of them—not just how to fight, but how to live."
Sea Dragon Douluo was the first to speak. "Then let the tides remember what it means to guide the chosen."
The others bowed in agreement.
And thus began the true forging of Hai Shenling.