The salt-laden gales howling across the western sea stacks of Sea God Island carried the sharp, metallic stench of fresh blood and scorched stone.
Two miles out from the shattered pinnacle where Tang San stood, the colossal chasm he had just carved into the ocean with a single test swing of the Asura Demon Sword projection was only now finishing its violent collapse. Billions of gallons of churning black water slammed back together from either side of the trench, throwing up a wall of white foam fifty meters high that rolled across the dark waves like a miniature tsunami.
Atop the fractured sea stack, Tang San slowly lowered his right arm, allowing the golden butt of the one-hundred-and-eight-thousand-catty Sea God Trident to sink two inches into the wet basalt rock.
His breathing was steady, yet his face remained as pale as bleached bone under the flashes of coastal lightning. The vibrant ocean-blue strands of his long, waist-length hair had been dyed a murky, sinister crimson-black by the volatile mixture of Sea God spirit power and newly comprehended Asura Divine Energy circulating through his meridians.
Right at his left heel knelt Xue Ji.
Having separated from Tang San's body after bearing ninety-nine percent of the meridian-tearing backlash from that single divine sword slash, the reshaped three-hundred-thousand-year Dark Golden Three-Headed Bat King looked ragged. Dark-golden blood trickled from the corners of her wide, split mouth and dripped off her four long, yellowed fangs onto the wet stone. The thick, worm-like veins beneath her coarse, grayish-gold leathery skin throbbed erratically as her internal organs worked to digest the residual razor-like killing intent of the Asura God.
Yet, her two bulging, slightly crooked crimson eyes did not leave Tang San's profile for a single fraction of a second. She knelt in the puddles of rainwater and her own blood, hugging Tang San's left boot with one clawed hand while panting with a twisted, masochistic euphoria.
Ten paces away on the broader ledge of the sea stack, Tang Chen, Tang Hao, Tang Xiao, and High Priestess Bo Saixi stood in heavy silence, the sea wind whipping their robes around them.
"Xiao San, calm your mind and think this through!"
Tang Hao was the first to break the silence, stepping forward over the broken gravel with a deep frown creasing his scarred, rugged face. He glanced down with barely concealed revulsion at the hideous bat-woman clinging to his son's boot before looking straight into Tang San's cold, deadened eyes.
"I know what that bastard Zhang Tian showed us through the Communication Spirit Tool just now tore your heart to pieces," Tang Hao growled, his fists clenching at his sides until the linen bandages around his chest stained red. "My blood is boiling just as much as yours! I want nothing more than to fly back to the mainland right now and smash Zhang Tian's skull into paste with my hammer! However, marching north tonight to hunt the Deep Sea Demonic Whale King without waiting ten days is far too reckless!"
Tang Hao gestured toward his own chest, and then toward Tang Chen and Bo Saixi.
"Your Great-Grandfather and I detonated our hundred-thousand-year ninth Spirit Rings to break out of Bibi Dong and Qian Daoliu's encirclement on the mainland," Tang Hao said earnestly. "Even after soaking in the sacred healing pools at the foot of the Sea God Mountain, our internal pathways have only recovered eighty percent of their stability, and our ninth ring slots are still empty! And look at that bat creature at your feet—a single swing of that crimson sword projection during your fusion just made her cough up blood! If we rush into the territory of a Spirit Beast that has lived for over nine hundred thousand years tonight, a single miscalculation could get all of us killed before you even reach the Ninth Trial!"
Beside Tang Hao, High Priestess Bo Saixi nodded gravely, her deep blue eyes filled with solemn warning as she gripped her silver staff.
"Your father speaks with wisdom, Tang San," Bo Saixi added in a low, clear voice. "You have never faced the Deep Sea Demonic Whale King in person, so you cannot imagine the suffocating terror of a creature whose physical body has already ninety-nine percent transformed into a true Divine Body. In the northern abyss, the ocean currents obey its will almost as much as they obey mine. Waiting just ten days for Tang Chen, Tang Hao, and me to restore our vitality to our peak—and for your new living sheath to recover from tonight's fusion—is the safest path."
On the shattered pinnacle, Tang San listened to his father and the High Priestess without a single flicker of emotion crossing his pale face.
Wait ten days?
The mere thought of sitting quietly on a rock in meditation for ten days made a phantom echo of wet, rhythmic slapping sounds and Xiao Wu's high-pitched, ecstatic moans ring inside Tang San's ears!
He saw that floating light screen again in his mind's eye. He saw Xiao Wu—his pure, cherished childhood sweetheart for whom he had sacrificed everything—throwing her head back against Zhang Tian's bare shoulder, her cheeks flushed scarlet and her watery pink eyes rolling back in bliss as she begged Zhang Tian to take her maidenhood and called herself Zhang Tian's obedient little slut!
Every hour he spent sitting still on this island was another hour Zhang Tian spent holding Xiao Wu and his mother Ah Yin in that lavish bedchamber in Star Luo City! If he closed his eyes to meditate in peace for ten days, the sheer, suffocating madness of those images would cause his spiritual sea to implode into a full-blown heart demon before he ever saw the northern sea!
"If I wait ten days, my heart will rot before my blade is drawn," Tang San spoke.
His voice was calm, flat, and colder than the ice at the bottom of an ocean trench.
"Father, High Priestess, you do not need to persuade me further," Tang San continued, turning his crimson-tinted blue eyes toward them. "You worry that Xue Ji is injured from bearing the backlash of the Asura Demon Sword just now? That is easily solved."
Without waiting for their reply, Tang San raised his left hand and brought his wrist toward his own mouth, biting down lightly on the skin of his forearm with one of the glistening, hundred-thousand-year Dual Poison Fangs protruding from his upper lip.
A tiny cut opened on his skin, welling up with dark red blood that shimmered with a faint golden-blue luster.
At the same time, the ninth Spirit Ring of his primary martial spirit—the blood-red, hundred-thousand-year God-Bestowed Spirit Ring of the Deathly Sea Emperor Vine—lit up silently beneath his feet. Instead of unleashing the destructive, rotting half of his Imperial Sea Death Domain, Tang San isolated the boundless, divine-tier plant vitality woven into that ring and concentrated it directly into the blood flowing from his wrist!
"Drink," Tang San commanded, lowering his bleeding wrist right in front of Xue Ji's wide, fanged mouth.
Kneeling at his boots, Xue Ji's two crooked red eyes lit up like twin lanterns in hell!
"Master's blood... Master is feeding Xue Ji his precious blood!"
With a shrill, trembling whimper of pure bliss, the hideous bat-woman raised her head, opened her wide jaw, and extended her long, forked purple tongue to lap greedily at the blood welling from Tang San's wrist!
Slurp. Gulp. Gulp.
Watching his nephew calmly hold his arm out while a grotesque, leathery, cross-eyed bat monster with four yellowed fangs loudly sucked the blood from his wrist—and even rubbed her rough, veined cheek affectionately against his forearm like a pampered concubine—Tang Xiao felt the skin on his neck crawl so violently he had to look away, while Tang Hao's jaw twitched in acute discomfort.
Yet the practical effect of Tang San's blood and ninth-ring vitality was immediate and undeniable.
Because Tang San and Xue Ji were now bound at the soul and bloodline level through the Asura Blood-Soul Sheath Covenant, Tang San's vital essence acted as the ultimate tonic for her three-hundred-thousand-year beast core. Within ten breaths of swallowing his vitality-infused blood, the pale cracks inside Xue Ji's meridians knitted back together, the dark-golden veins on her neck stopped spasming, and her Level 96 Super Douluo aura surged back to its full, ferocious peak!
Tang San withdrew his wrist, watching the tiny bite mark heal instantly under his passive regeneration.
"See?" Tang San looked at Tang Hao, Tang Chen, and Bo Saixi, his expression devoid of warmth. "As long as I use the regenerative vitality of my ninth God-Bestowed Spirit Ring to nourish her after each clash, Xue Ji can bear the backlash of the Asura Living Sheath Fusion repeatedly. And as for your eighty-percent foundations... I do not need the three of you to fight the Deep Sea Demonic Whale King head-on in close quarters."
Tang San lifted the Sea God Trident, its golden prongs reflecting the lightning flashing across the night sky.
"When we reach the Devil Whale Trench, I only need Great-Grandfather, Father, and the High Priestess—assisted by Uncle, Sea Dragon Douluo, Sea Spear Douluo, and the four elders—to deploy your domains from a safe distance and seal the surrounding waters so the beast cannot dive into the planetary crust or flee," Tang San laid out the battle plan with ruthless, surgical clarity. "I will enter the center of the trench and confront the Deep Sea Demonic Whale King myself. With the Sea God Trident in my right hand and the Asura Demon Sword projection in my left, I will carve open its ninety-nine-percent Divine Body!"
Tang Chen looked deeply into his great-grandson's eyes for a long moment.
As a man who had spent decades trapped in Slaughter City and cultivated the path of the Asura to the ninety-ninth rank, Tang Chen recognized the state Tang San was currently in. The boy was walking on the razor's edge of extreme hatred; only by venting this volcanic murderous intent in a life-or-death slaughter against an ancient titan could Tang San keep his mind from fracturing.
"Very well," Tang Chen finally nodded, his deep, resonant voice settling the dispute. "Since Xiao San has already made up his mind and possesses the means to sustain the fusion with his sheath, delaying will only dull his edge. Bo Saixi, summon Sea Dragon and Sea Spear, and have Tang Xiao bring the four elders from the eastern shore. We depart for the northern sea within the quarter-hour!"
Bo Saixi let out a quiet breath, bowing her head slightly in acceptance. "I will summon them at once."
Less than fifteen minutes later, half a mile off the northern tip of Sea God Island, twelve powerful figures hovered in a loose semicircle two hundred feet above the surging black waves.
Sea Dragon Douluo, Sea Spear Douluo, and the four surviving Titled Douluo elders of the Clear Sky Sect—led by the Seventh Elder, Tang Haien—had flown over at top speed upon receiving the urgent summons from Bo Saixi and Tang Xiao.
However, the moment the two Sacred Pillars and the four Clear Sky Sect elders arrived and saw who was hovering just half a pace behind Tang San's left shoulder, all six Titled Douluos nearly dropped out of the sky in sheer fright!
Because Tang San had ordered her not to waste her spirit power maintaining the rosy blood-mist glamour around their own allies, Xue Ji was hovering in the night air in her complete, unmasked true form.
Her torn black cloak flapped in the gale, exposing her coarse, grayish-gold leathery limbs pulsing with dark-golden veins. Her wide, lopsided head—formed from three bat skulls crushed together—was tilted at a sharp angle, her oversized hairless bat ears swiveling toward the newcomers, and her four long yellowed fangs glistened with acidic drool as her two crooked, vertical-slitted red eyes glared warily at the six elders!
"By the Sea God... what is that thing behind the Inheritor?!" Sea Spear Douluo blurted out, his hand instinctively gripping his golden Sea Lance as his scalp tingled.
"Is that a mutated sea ghoul, or an undead corpse?!" Seventh Elder Tang Haien gasped, staring in horror at Xue Ji's asymmetrical face and fangs. "Sect Leader, Clear Sky Douluo, why is such a hideous monster hovering right behind Xiao San?!"
Hearing the elders call her a hideous monster and a corpse, Xue Ji's wide mouth split open to the ears!
HIIIIISSSSSS—!
A brief, razor-sharp pulse of her Level 96 Super Douluo aura and genuine Asura Domain flashed outward from her body, accompanied by a high-pitched, triple-layered ultrasonic hiss that made the four Level 91 and Level 92 Clear Sky Sect elders groan and clutch their ears as their eardrums throbbed with stabbing pain!
"Stare at Xue Ji with those ugly eyeballs again, old dogs, and Xue Ji will pluck them out of your skulls and pop them like grapes!" Xue Ji rasped viciously, licking her yellowed fangs as one of her crooked eyes locked onto Tang Haien's throat.
Then, in the blink of an eye, she turned her lopsided head toward Tang San, her terrifying predatory snarl instantly melting into a fawning, clingy, and grotesquely coy smile as she tugged lightly on the sleeve of Tang San's robe with two clawed fingers.
"Master, these noisy old men are looking at your woman," Xue Ji whined in her grating, three-toned voice. "Nobody is allowed to look at Xue Ji's body except Master! Can Xue Ji bite just one of their arms off? Just a little nibble?"
Tang Haien and the other three Clear Sky Sect elders turned green in the face, stumbling back three yards in mid-air! Not only was this terrifyingly ugly creature a Level 96 Super Douluo possessing the Asura Domain, she had just called herself Tang San's woman?!
"Enough, Xue Ji. Save your fangs for the Deep Sea Demonic Whale King," Tang San said coldly without turning his head.
"Yes, Master! Whatever Master says!" Xue Ji giggled happily, immediately tucking her clawed hands back inside her cloak and floating docilely behind his shoulder like an obedient shadow.
"Do not ask unnecessary questions," Tang Chen's authoritative voice boomed across the night sky, silencing the bewildered whispers of the Clear Sky Sect elders and the two Sacred Pillars. "This is Xue Ji, an envoy reshaped and sent by the Asura God from Slaughter City to assist Xiao San in completing his divine foundation. Tonight, all twelve of us fly two hundred miles north to the Devil Whale Trench to assist Xiao San in hunting the nine-hundred-thousand-year Deep Sea Demonic Whale King for his final Spirit Ring! Move out!"
Hearing that they were actually marching straight to the lair of the legendary nine-hundred-thousand-year Deep Sea Demonic Whale King tonight—and seeing the chilling, ruthless aura radiating from Tang San at the head of the formation—none of the elders dared to utter another word.
Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh!
Twelve streaks of multi-colored spirit light tore into the pitch-black storm clouds, shooting northward across the boundless ocean like a volley of arrows loosed into the night.
The two-hundred-mile flight across the northern ocean took just over two hours as the group maintained a steady, high-altitude pace to conserve the spirit power of the lower-ranked elders.
Throughout the journey, the atmosphere within the flying formation was heavier than lead.
At the very front flew High Priestess Bo Saixi and Tang Chen, using their vast Limit Douluo mental forces to part the headwinds and monitor the ocean currents below. Just behind them flew Tang San, with Xue Ji clinging so closely to his left side that the hem of her tattered cloak brushed constantly against his arm, while Tang Hao and Tang Xiao flew on his right. Bringing up the rear were Sea Dragon Douluo, Sea Spear Douluo, and the four Clear Sky Sect Titled Douluos.
Halfway through the flight, as they passed over a stretch of turbulent, pitch-black water a hundred miles north of Sea God Island, Tang Hao glanced sideways at his son.
In the flashing blue light of the distant thunderclouds, Tang San's face looked as though it had been carved out of cold iron. Ever since they had left the western cliffs, Tang San had not blinked once, nor had his gaze wavered from the northern horizon. Even when Xue Ji occasionally leaned her wide, fanged head within inches of his shoulder to sniff his scent and mutter raspy, affectionate nonsense in her triple-layered voice, Tang San didn't show a single flicker of annoyance or disgust—treating her presence as naturally as the Sea God Trident in his right hand.
Feeling a deep pang of unease in his chest at how drastically his son had changed after watching Zhang Tian's live projection, Tang Hao flew half a yard closer and sent a private, compressed thread of spirit power to carry his voice solely to Tang San's ears.
"Xiao San," Tang Hao transmitted quietly, his rough voice tinged with a father's clumsy concern. "I know what you saw on that jade slab back on the island cut you to the marrow. Back when your mother fell into Zhang Tian's hands, I nearly went mad with hatred myself. But seeing you force yourself to embrace... this creature from Hell Road just to grasp the Asura God's power... Xiao San, once we kill the Deep Sea Demonic Whale King and you inherit the Sea God's throne, you don't need to keep forcing yourself to stay bound to this bat spirit beast if it disgusts you."
Hearing his father's secret voice transmission, Tang San slowly turned his head to look at Tang Hao.
The look in Tang San's crimson-blue eyes made Tang Hao's breath catch in his throat.
"Disgusts me? Why would she disgust me, Father?" Tang San replied through the mental link, his voice eerily calm and devoid of any human warmth. "Because her face is ugly? Because she used to be a three-headed bat drinking blood in Hell Road?"
A cold, mocking curve touched the corner of Tang San's lips as he looked forward into the dark storm clouds again.
"Xiao Wu had the purest, most innocent face in the world, Father," Tang San transmitted, each word dripping with freezing venom. "For nearly fifteen years, I treated her as the most precious treasure of my life. I guarded her purity, I fought life-and-death battles for her, and even an hour ago, I rejected a Godking's arrangement just to keep my heart clean for her. And what did that beautiful, innocent face give me in return? She knelt between my mortal enemy's legs on her own accord, mocked me to my face, and begged him to defile her while smiling into the lens for me to watch."
Tang San glanced sideways at Xue Ji, who immediately beamed a wide, four-fanged, cross-eyed grin back at him, her oversized bat ears wiggling happily at receiving a single glance from her Master.
"Compared to a beautiful face hiding a traitorous, slutty heart that abandoned me for Zhang Tian's bed," Tang San continued coldly in his father's mind, "Xue Ji's soul was wiped clean and stamped with my name by the Asura God himself. She cannot lie to me, she cannot betray me, and she will gladly let her own flesh be torn to shreds to bear the backlash of the Asura Demon Sword for me. In my eyes right now, Father, ugliness and beauty no longer exist. Only usefulness and loyalty exist. Anyone who helps me slaughter Zhang Tian is my companion—and anyone who stands in my way is dead meat."
Listening to his son's chillingly detached reasoning, Tang Hao opened his mouth slightly, unable to find a single word to refute him.
He realized right then that the idealistic young man who had left the mainland months ago had truly died on that western basalt cliff during Zhang Tian's broadcast. What flew beside him now was an avenging demon who had burned away every last drop of his human sentimentality to make room for two divine thrones.
Meanwhile, ten yards ahead at the vanguard of the formation, High Priestess Bo Saixi suddenly raised her silver staff, holding up her left hand to signal the entire group to halt!
Whoosh—!
All twelve figures braked simultaneously in mid-air, hovering five hundred feet above the ocean surface.
"We have crossed the boundary," Bo Saixi spoke, her melodic voice dropping to a solemn, guarded hush as her deep blue eyes looked down at the sea below. "Beneath us lies the outer rim of the Devil Whale Trench."
Hearing her announcement, Tang Xiao, Sea Dragon Douluo, Sea Spear Douluo, and the four Clear Sky Sect elders immediately looked down—and their expressions changed drastically.
Just two miles behind them, the ocean had been churning with forty-foot storm waves, filled with the normal salty scent of the sea and the faint spiritual fluctuations of deep-water fish and ordinary ten-thousand-year Sea Spirit Beasts.
Yet here, inside this two-hundred-mile-wide circular expanse of the northern ocean, the world was dead silent.
There were no waves.
Even though a violent gale was still blowing across the night sky five hundred feet above, the water surface below them was as flat, thick, and motionless as a sheet of solidified black mercury! The seawater was not blue or black—it was a deep, bruised, demonic purple-black that gave off an acrid smell of scorched iron and abyssal sulfur.
Every few breaths, a thick arc of silent, dark-purple lightning would snake across the flat surface of the water from deep below, illuminating the complete absence of life. Not a single fish, shrimp, or coral polyp existed within a hundred miles of this basin. Every living creature in the northern sea had either been devoured by the ruler of this trench or fled in primal terror centuries ago!
Even more suffocating was the invisible pressure rising from the five-thousand-meter-deep abyssal trench beneath the black water.
Thump... Thump... Thump...
A slow, rhythmic vibration—occurring only once every ten breaths—pulsed upward from the bottom of the ocean floor, resonating straight through the soles of the flying Spirit Masters' boots and into their chests!
That was not a seismic tremor. It was the sleeping heartbeat of a Spirit Beast that had lived for over nine hundred thousand years!
With every single slow heartbeat from the bottom of the trench, the four Level 91 and Level 92 Clear Sky Sect elders at the back of the formation turned paler, cold sweat breaking out across their foreheads as their Clear Sky Hammers trembled instinctively inside their spiritual seas.
"Just its sleeping heartbeat at a depth of five thousand meters carries a spiritual pressure that rivals a ninety-ninth-rank Limit Douluo..." Sea Dragon Douluo swallowed hard, his hands clenching into fists as his own Sea Dragon martial spirit let out a low whimper of draconic suppression inside his dantian. "Even my Sea Dragon spirit is being suppressed by its aura before it has even opened its eyes!"
"That is because ninety-nine percent of its physical body, its internal organs, and its energy core have already surpassed the mortal category and transformed into a half-step Divine Body," Bo Saixi explained gravely, her blue robes fluttering as eight pitch-black Spirit Rings and one blinding blood-red hundred-thousand-year Spirit Ring rose silently around her slender frame to shield the lower-ranked elders from the heartbeat's pressure. "It has accumulated nine hundred and ninety thousand years of cultivation, stopping just one step short of the million-year mark only because it fears the Divine Realm's Heavenly Tribulation."
Tang San hovered at the center of the group, his crimson-blue eyes staring straight down through the flat, mercury-like purple-black water with his Purple Demon Eye pushed to the Boundless stage.
Even with his peak ocular technique, at a depth of five thousand meters, all he could see was a vast, swirling nebula of compressed purple-black thunder and abyssal water energy coiled at the bottom of the earth's crust like a sleeping cosmic dragon!
"Spread out and form the containment perimeter immediately," Tang San ordered, his cold voice cutting through the rhythmic thumping of the abyssal heartbeat. "Great-Grandfather, take the northern position. Father, take the western position with Uncle and the four elders. High Priestess, take the eastern position with Sea Dragon Douluo and Sea Spear Douluo."
Tang San gripped the golden shaft of the Sea God Trident tightly, glancing sideways at Xue Ji.
"The moment I dive into the water and strike the trench with the Sea God Trident's divine aura, that beast's millennia of hatred for the Sea God will erupt," Tang San instructed methodically. "It will rise to the surface to tear me apart. Do not let it break out of the thirty-mile circle, and do not try to engage it in close combat until I sever its defensive thunder armor!"
"Understood! Be careful, Xiao San!" Tang Chen and Tang Hao nodded in unison.
Without delay, the eleven Titled Douluos split into three distinct formations, flying several miles apart to form a massive triangular encirclement above the flat, purple-black sea.
To the north, Tang Chen summoned his colossal Clear Sky Hammer and unleashed his full Level 99 Asura Domain, dyeing a ten-mile stretch of the northern sky in a sea of boiling crimson slaughter mist!
To the west, Tang Hao gripped his jagged God-Slaughtering Blood-Cleaver and activated his Annihilation Slaughter Domain, backed by Tang Xiao and the four Clear Sky Sect elders who summoned their Clear Sky Hammer avatars to form a heavy kinetic wall!
To the east, High Priestess Bo Saixi raised her Power of the Ocean silver staff. Her seventh black ring (Sea God Form Avatar) and her vast Sea God Domain expanded outward across the sea, joined by Sea Dragon Douluo (Level 95) and Sea Spear Douluo (Level 94), turning the eastern waters into a towering fortress of golden-blue oceanic law!
Three supreme Limit Douluo domains, reinforced by six Titled Douluos and Super Douluos, locked together around the perimeter of the Devil Whale Trench!
Standing alone in the sky at the exact center of the triangle—with only the grotesque bat-woman Xue Ji floating two paces above him—Tang San took a deep breath, raised the one-hundred-and-eight-thousand-catty Sea God Trident high above his head with both hands, and pointed its golden prongs straight down at the dead, purple-black water below.
"Eighth Spirit Ring Ability: Blood-Armored Thorn Phalanx! Ninth Spirit Ring Ability: Imperial Sea Death Domain!"
BOOM!
Nine dazzling Spirit Rings—Six Black and Three Red—erupted around Tang San as his primary martial spirit, the Deathly Sea Emperor Vine, manifested in full force. At the same time, he poured a massive torrent of his Level 96 spirit power directly into the Sea God Trident, deliberately awakening the pure, radiant golden aura of the Sea God inside the divine artifact!
"Come out and give me your ring, Deep Sea Demonic Whale King!!"
Tang San plunged straight down from the sky like a golden-and-crimson meteor, driving the tip of the Sea God Trident directly into the flat, mirror-like surface of the Devil Whale Trench!
KA-BOOOOOOOOOOM!!
A blinding column of pure golden divine light, wrapped in the rotting, pressurized coils of the Imperial Sea Death Domain, shot straight down through five thousand meters of pitch-black seawater, piercing the darkness of the abyssal basin like a heaven-splitting spear and slamming directly into the sleeping nebula of purple-black energy at the bottom of the trench!
For two full breaths after the golden pillar struck the ocean floor, there was dead silence.
The rhythmic heartbeat at the bottom of the sea stopped completely.
Then—
Deep within the five-thousand-meter abyss, where no sunlight had reached since the birth of the Douluo Planet, a single, colossal eyelid slowly rolled back.
An eye opened in the darkness.
It was a single right eye—for where its left eye should have been sat only a horrific, three-ty-meter-long jagged chasm of scarred, golden-burned flesh that had never healed in thousands of years.
Yet that single remaining right eye was over twenty meters across, burning like a miniature purple-red sun filled with nine hundred and ninety thousand years of tyrannical fury, bloodlust, and bone-deep, volcanic hatred for the aura of the Sea God!
"POSEIDON'S SCUM—YOU DARE DISTURB THIS KING'S SLUMBER WITH THAT BROKEN FORK?!!"
A voice that was not sound, but a cataclysmic mental and elemental tsunami capable of shattering the souls of ordinary Spirit Saints on the spot, exploded upward from the bottom of the Devil Whale Trench!
Before Tang San—who had just risen back to hover fifty feet above the water surface—could even retract his aura, the entire northern ocean within a fifty-mile radius went completely berserk!
ROOOOOOAAAAAAARRRRR—!!
The flat, mercury-like surface of the purple-black sea did not merely ripple; it bulged upward by three hundred meters like a rising mountain range of solid black water!
Ten thousand bolts of thick, abyssal purple-black demonic lightning erupted from the depths, tearing the storm clouds in the sky to shreds and colliding violently against the three Limit Douluo domains deployed by Tang Chen, Tang Hao, and Bo Saixi around the perimeter!
CRACK—BOOOOOOM!!
With an apocalyptic explosion of displaced seawater that sent thousand-foot-high tidal waves crashing outward in every direction, a shadow so gargantuan that it blotted out the moon and stars rose straight out of the sundered abyss!
It was the Deep Sea Demonic Whale King!
Even though Tang San, Tang Hao, and the Clear Sky Sect elders had already heard Bo Saixi describe the beast before setting out, seeing its true physical body breach the surface of the northern sea made every single person's breath freeze in their lungs!
Compared to this ancient sovereign of the abyss, the fifty-thousand-year Abyssal Leviathan and the hundred-thousand-year sea overlords Tang San had hunted over the past month looked like tiny, insignificant earthworms!
The Deep Sea Demonic Whale King's body stretched over two hundred meters in length, resembling a floating, jagged island of dark-purple divine crystal and indestructible demonic bone! Every single scale covering its colossal back was the size of a carriage door, gleaming with a metallic, dark-violet luster and etched with natural, glowing runes of nine-hundred-thousand-year abyssal thunder and devouring water law.
Across the left side of its mountain-like head ran that terrifying, thirty-meter-long golden scar where the Sea God's trident had blinded its left eye millennia ago—a wound that still crackled with residual divine friction. Meanwhile, its single, twenty-meter-wide purple-red right eye glared out over the stormy sea like the eye of an angry demon god, locking instantly onto the golden Sea God Trident held in Tang San's hand!
Around the colossal whale's body, there was no ordinary beast aura. Because ninety-nine percent of its flesh and inner core had already completed the transition into a true Divine Body, the sheer physical and elemental weight radiating from its two-hundred-meter frame warped the space of the northern ocean, causing the air within ten miles to crackle with suffocating purple-black thunder!
"A mere human ant at the ninety-sixth rank... holding that hypocritical coward Poseidon's trident?!"
The Deep Sea Demonic Whale King's booming mental voice thundered across the sky, shaking the sea so violently that the four Clear Sky Sect elders on the western flank coughed up blood just from the acoustic and spiritual shockwave!
The Whale King's single colossal purple-red eye swept disdainfully over Bo Saixi, Tang Chen, and Tang Hao hovering around the perimeter, before returning to Tang San.
"Bo Saixi, you old servant of Poseidon! For hundreds of years, you hid on your little turtle-shell island, never daring to set a single foot into This King's trench! Today, you bring two half-crippled human Limit Douluos who don't even have their ninth rings, a hideous mutated three-headed bat, and a little boy holding Poseidon's fork to invade This King's domain?! Do you truly think This King is a stepping stone that Poseidon left behind for his successor to harvest?!"
Hovering fifty feet in front of the Whale King's mountainous snout, Tang San felt his robes and skin stinging from the passive purple-black lightning arcs dancing off the beast's scales.
Yet, looking at that nearly million-year-old half-step Divine Beast, Tang San's crimson-blue eyes only burned with a crazier yet greedy murderous light!
He could feel it! The vital essence and spiritual power contained within this creature's body were so vast that once he killed it and absorbed its ring, bone, and Whale Core, his strength would leap directly to the absolute pinnacle of the mortal world!
"Whether you accept it or not, beast, your life ends tonight!" Tang San's cold voice rang out as he raised the Sea God Trident, his Six Black and Three Red Spirit Rings blazing behind him. "Your nine-hundred-thousand-year Spirit Ring, your Spirit Bone, and your Whale Core will become the final foundation for my ascension to Godhood—and the blade I use to slaughter my enemies on the mainland!"
"ARROGANT ANT!! THIS KING HAS LIVED FOR NINE HUNDRED AND NINETY THOUSAND YEARS! EVEN IF POSEIDON HIMSELF DESCENDED WITHOUT HIS TRUE DIVINE BODY, THIS KING WOULD BITE HIM IN HALF! DIE!!"
Enraged beyond measure by Tang San's declaration that it was mere ring-fodder, the Deep Sea Demonic Whale King did not wait for the human encirclement to tighten!
WHOOOOOOSH—KABOOOOOOOM!!
The two-hundred-meter-long leviathan suddenly whipped its colossal, fifty-meter-wide tail fin out of the deep water!
That single tail sweep did not look like a physical movement—it looked as though an entire submarine mountain range wrapped in nine hundred thousand years of compressed purple-black demonic thunder and ten-thousand-fathom abyssal pressure had been swung horizontally across the sky!
"Abyssal Demonic Whale — Purple Thunder World-Annihilating Sweep!!"
A crescent wave of solid, crystalline purple-black thunder-water, three miles wide and five hundred meters tall, tore outward from the Whale King's tail at a speed that broke the sound barrier ten times over!
Not only did the center of the wave smash straight toward Tang San, the sweeping flanks of the three-mile-wide thunder-tsunami slammed simultaneously into the eastern, northern, and western containment perimeters held by Bo Saixi, Tang Chen, and Tang Hao!
"Defend!! Do not let its opening wave break the perimeter!!" Bo Saixi's urgent voice echoed across the sky!
On the eastern flank, Bo Saixi slammed her Power of the Ocean staff down, activating her eighth black ring (Ocean's Roar) and her seventh ring (Sea God Form Avatar), while Sea Dragon Douluo and Sea Spear Douluo unleashed their ninth Spirit Ring abilities at full power to raise a thousand-meter-tall golden-blue wall of oceanic energy!
On the northern flank, Tang Chen roared and swung his Clear Sky Hammer with Asura's Heaven-Severing Strike, cleaving a massive red gash into the oncoming thunder-wave!
On the western flank, Tang Hao activated Slaughter God's Wrath and Annihilation Slaughter Domain, swinging his God-Slaughtering Blood-Cleaver alongside Tang Xiao's one-armed Clear Sky Hammer avatar to block the western edge of the tsunami!
However, the four Level 91 and Level 92 Clear Sky Sect elders hovering just behind Tang Hao and Tang Xiao had vastly underestimated the terrifying might of a nine-hundred-thousand-year half-step Divine Beast's enraged strike!
Even after seventy percent of the western wave's force was intercepted by Tang Hao and Tang Xiao in front, the remaining thirty percent of the purple-black demonic thunder-water slammed straight into the four elders' combined Clear Sky Shield formations!
CRACK! SHATTER! BOOM!
The defensive hammer shields of the four Titled Douluo elders shattered like thin window glass on impact!
"Aaaargh!!"
Seventh Elder Tang Haien and another Level 91 Clear Sky Sect elder let out blood-curdling screams as the nine-hundred-thousand-year purple demonic thunder blasted straight through their Clear Sky Hammer avatars! Their heavy iron hammers were sent flying out of their bleeding hands, the armor on their chests was pulverized into fragments, and dozens of ribs snapped inside their torsos as both elders were hurled backward across the sea like ragdolls, vomiting torrents of dark blood and losing more than half of their combat strength in a single exchange!
"Seventh Elder!!" Tang Xiao roared in shock, barely managing to catch the two unconscious, heavily charred elders with a sweep of his spirit power before they sank into the electrified purple sea!
And right at the very epicenter of the Deep Sea Demonic Whale King's tail sweep—where the attack was ten times denser than on the flanks—Tang San faced the full, mountain-crushing brunt of the half-step Divine Beast's wrath!
"Golden Thirteen Halberds, First Strike: No Constant Wind and Clouds! Second Strike: Thousand Years of Space!!"
Tang San did not retreat a single inch!
His eyes blazing with crimson madness, he swung the one-hundred-and-eight-thousand-catty Sea God Trident in two consecutive, heaven-shaking arcs, while simultaneously erupting his Seventh Spirit Ring Ability: Deathly Sea Emperor Avatar and his Eighth Spirit Ring Ability: Blood-Armored Thorn Phalanx!
A three-hundred-meter-wide cage of frozen golden space and chaotic oceanic law collided head-on against the center of the Whale King's purple-thunder tail sweep!
BOOOOOOOOOOM—!!
For two agonizing seconds, the golden spatial cage of Thousand Years of Space held firm against the nine-hundred-thousand-year thunder wave.
Then, under the sheer, unreasonable brute force of a ninety-nine-percent Divine Body that stood at the very ceiling of the mortal world, the golden spatial cage groaned, spider-webbed with cracks, and violently shattered!
BANG!
The residual force of the colossal tail fin slammed squarely into Tang San's Blood-Armored Thorn Phalanx and his hundred-thousand-year Blood Demon Unbreakable Carapace Torso Bone!
Even with the Torso Bone negating sixty percent of the damage and his Emperor Vine's Blood Rebirth transferring half the impact into his surrounding vines, Tang San was blasted backward through the air for a thousand yards, skidding across the purple-black water surface as a bright line of crimson blood spilled from the corner of his mouth!
Hovering above the churning abyssal crater, the two-hundred-meter-long Deep Sea Demonic Whale King raised its scarred, mountainous head toward the shattered clouds, its single purple-red eye gleaming with cruel, tyrannical mockery as purple thunderbolts danced like dragons around its body.
"Hahaha! With just this meager bit of borrowed strength from Poseidon, you want to take This King's ring and bone?! Tonight, This King will devour all twelve of you and use that golden fork to pick my teeth!!"
A thousand yards away on the surging black waves, Tang San slowly wiped the blood from his lips with the back of his hand.
He looked at the two heavily injured Clear Sky Sect elders groaning in the distance, felt the numbing demonic thunder vibrating inside his right arm, and realized instantly that against a nine-hundred-thousand-year overlord whose body was ninety-nine percent divine, standard mortal cultivation and his unawakened Sea God techniques alone could never pierce its defense before his family was wiped out.
Tang San didn't hesitate for a single breath.
Without looking back, he raised his left hand toward the grotesque bat-woman hovering faithfully above his shoulder, his voice echoing coldly across the lightning-lit sea:
"Xue Ji—fuse with me! Let us cut this overgrown fish to pieces with the Asura God's blade!"