The five survivors remained locked in their own private worlds of shock, awe, and terror. No one moved for a much too long period of time.
It was Li Yu who finally broke the silence. His voice, when it came, was quiet, cutting through the stillness with a calm but undeniable authority. He took a slow, deliberate step towards his fallen retainer, his new, sovereign presence a comforting anchor in the sea of devastation.
"Spine," he said, his gaze falling upon the massive, broken form of the great beast. " What did that man's presence make you lose control? Would you be willing to share that story with us?"
The question was not an accusation. It was a simple, genuine request for understanding.
Spine, who had been lying in a state of stunned, awed silence, flinched. The question seemed to rekindle the dying embers of the furious rage that had consumed him. He pushed himself up with a monumental effort, his massive, stone-scaled body trembling with a mixture of weakness and a fresh surge of adrenaline. His eyes, burning once more with that ancient, sorrowful fire, locked onto the broken, terrified form of Elder Tian Long a short distance away.
When Spine spoke, his voice was a low, gravelly rumble, the sound of mountains grinding together, and it was filled with a grief so profound it seemed to make the very air grow cold.
"My story… is not a short one, Master," he began, his gaze never leaving his mortal enemy. "Before I was your retainer, before I was the leader of the Riptide Legion, I was simply… a beast of the deep sea. My life was one of solitude, of instinct, of the endless, silent darkness of the ocean floor. I was powerful and content in my ignorance of the world above the waves."
He took a ragged, shuddering breath. "But with time, and with a breakthrough in my cultivation, came a new awareness, and with it, the ability to take human form. Curiosity, a thing I had never truly known, took hold of me. I wanted to see the world of humans, the world of light and air and warmth that I had only ever glimpsed from the depths."
"So I went ashore. I was a stranger in a strange land, a being of immense power but with the naivety of a child. For a few months, I wandered, exploring the human world with a sense of wonder and adventure. And then… I found her."
A deep, painful softness entered his voice, a vulnerability no one in the group had ever heard from the stoic, silent leviathan before.
"She lived in a small town by the sea. A human woman. Her cultivation was low, her life a fleeting, fragile thing compared to my own. But her heart… her heart was as bright and as warm as the sun I had just discovered. We met, and something unthinkable happened. Something I had believed impossible for a creature like me. I fell in love."
"We spent ten years together in that small, peaceful town. They were the happiest years of my long life. I was no longer a solitary beast of the deep; I was a husband. And then, we were blessed with a son. A boy, with my strength and her kindness, a perfect fusion of our two worlds."
"My wife passed away from old age twenty-five years later. It was a peaceful end to a happy, mortal life. It was a sadness, but a natural one, a part of the world I had chosen to join. She left me with our son, and with a final wish: that I would take her ashes back out into the sea, so a part of her could visit where I was from."
Spine's massive form trembled, the memory a fresh, open wound.
"I honored her wish. I took her ashes and traveled for weeks, deep into the Endless Sea, to the place of my birth. I laid her to rest in the eternal silence. When I returned to the world of humans… my world was gone."
His voice broke, a sound of pure, unadulterated agony. "The town… it was destroyed. Razed to the ground. There was nothing left but smoking ruins and the ghosts of the people I had known. And in the air, in the very earth, was a lingering aura. An aura of power, of a unique, cold, and cruel spiritual energy. An aura that burned itself into my very soul. I would remember it for a lifetime."
"My son…" he choked out the word. "He had been training at a small, local sect a day's journey inland. I raced there, a desperate, mad hope warring with a terrifying dread in my heart. But I found only the same scene. The sect was gone. Annihilated. Not a single soul left alive. And everywhere, that same, hateful, lingering aura."
"I never found his body," Spine whispered, the sound a heartbroken admission of failure. "I searched for years. I never found him. The only thing I had left of my wife, of my life, was gone. And the only clue was that aura."
His story hung in the heavy air, a tale of idyllic happiness brutally, senselessly destroyed. Kui and Jian Xuan were silent, their expressions a mixture of shock and deep, profound sympathy.
"From that day forward," Spine continued, the sorrow in his voice now hardening, solidifying into a cold, diamond-hard rage, "I had only one purpose. To find the one who carried that aura. To find the one who had destroyed my world. I began looking. I created the Riptide Legion, not for power, not for conquest, but as a tool. A way to gather the resources I needed to grow strong enough for my revenge, and a way to build an intelligence network, to place my eyes and ears throughout the human world. Every piece of information they gathered, every rumor, was all for a single purpose: to find that aura."
He finally, slowly, lifted his massive, draconic head. His eyes, burning with a rage that had festered for over a century, fixed on the broken, terrified form of Elder Tian Long.
"I have been looking for him ever since," Spine snarled, his voice a low, murderous growl. "And that man, over there… he is the one. His aura… it is the one that has haunted my every waking moment, my every dream, for more than one hundred and fifty years."
The rage that had been momentarily quelled by Li Yu's power now returned with the force of a tsunami. Spine struggled, pushing himself up on his wounded limbs, his massive form trembling with a singular, all-consuming need.
He looked at Li Yu, his eyes pleading, desperate.
"Master… I must kill him," he said, his voice a raw, broken plea. "Even if you kill me afterwards for my insubordination, even if my actions bring ruin upon us all, I must kill this man today. Or my soul will never, ever rest."
The declaration, an ultimatum born from a century of grief, hung in the silent, devastated crater, an undeniable, absolute demand for vengeance.
Li Yu saw the conviction in Spine's massive eyes. This was something he had to do and wouldn't be held back in. Even if Li Yu said no, Spine would still attack, no matter the cost. Li Yu had no intention of saying no however. There was no reason for him to stop Spine's revenge, even if there were 100 great reasons to stop it, he wouldn't, not when he could see the look in Spine's eyes.