Three days felt both long and fleeting in the endless gloom of the deep sea.
Jingtian lay hidden in a newly discovered hydrothermal fissure at the edge of the Storm Sea Abyss. Scalding water, rich in minerals and faint soul power, gushed out, forming a natural field of chaotic energy that could disrupt detection while replenishing some of his energy. He had dismantled and devoured the abandoned, damaged soul-powered ship completely. He wrapped the useful materials—mainly certain rare metals and fragments of soul tool cores—in mucus and attached them to his body, discarding the rest into the depths of an ocean trench.
He had recovered to ninety percent of his full condition. After devouring the remnants of those soul masters' life essence, meager though they were, along with the soul tools' energy, his poison source had actually grown a little more condensed. His new tentacle had long since regrown. Having absorbed special metal materials, it was even tougher than his other tentacles and shimmered with a faint dark-gold sheen.
Yet he felt no relief at all. Instead, alarm bells kept ringing in his mind.
Three days had passed.
What had become of that Quasi-Soul Saint afflicted with Dan-Devour?
Jingtian could not sense his condition precisely. Once Dan-Devour took root, it would continue its erosion until the target's life origin was completely exhausted, unless the target died or Jingtian actively removed it—which was practically impossible. But the speed of that erosion depended on the target's strength and resistance. That Quasi-Soul Saint was no weakling. Perhaps he could hold on a little longer. Perhaps... he had already found a way to suppress it, or even expel it?
He did not know. That uncertainty was like a sharp sword hanging over his head.
More importantly, given the efficiency of human soul master organizations, three days were enough for those fleeing ships to bring back reinforcements, or even... draw the attention of truly powerful figures.
"A Soul Emperor facing me is already doomed. Whoever comes next will only be stronger," Jingtian judged coldly. "Soul Saints? Or even... Soul Douluos?"
Against a Soul Saint, he was confident that Dan-Devour and his many poison techniques would still give him a fighting chance, perhaps even an opportunity to kill through cunning. But a Soul Douluo... that would be a qualitative gulf. A Titled Douluo? He could forget about it. Encountering one meant certain death; he might not even be able to escape.
He could not gamble on them sending only Soul Saints. He had to plan for the worst—a Soul Douluo-level expert leading a force to hunt him down.
He could no longer remain in the Storm Sea Abyss.
Although its treacherous environment favored concealment, it also restricted his room to maneuver. Once the human soul masters committed themselves and deployed higher-grade detection soul tools, or even containment soul tools, for a dragnet search, he might not be able to hide forever. Moreover, he needed broader hunting grounds and richer resources to rapidly increase his strength and face future threats.
I have to leave, right now, this instant! Head deeper and farther, toward forbidden reaches of the open ocean where human soul masters rarely venture—perhaps where they have never set foot!
His destination was on the other side of the Storm Sea Abyss: the waters known as the "Eternal Silence Return Ruins," shrouded in chaotic currents, suspected spatial rifts, and ancient legends. Supposedly, it was a forbidden zone for life, where even powerful sea soul beasts rarely ventured. Yet that often also meant immense, unexplored dangers and... possible opportunities.
Without hesitation, Jingtian immediately took action.
First, using the hydrothermal eruptions and the special mucus he secreted, he carefully cleared away and masked every trace of his lingering presence, especially his toxicity and soul power fluctuations. Then he chose a deep-sea passage with the best concealment and the most complex, chaotic currents, and began moving stealthily at full speed toward the Eternal Silence Return Ruins.
He abandoned the shortest route, deliberately choosing the most treacherous paths, the hardest ones to track. He slipped through the shadows of undersea mountain ranges, hugged the edges of undercurrents capable of shearing through soul power, and even briefly descended to the bottom of a ten-thousand-meter trench, where even he felt crushing pressure... all to erase his traces and disrupt pursuit.
Along the way, he encountered several powerful sea soul beasts: a giant deep-sea eel nearly ten thousand years old, packs of Void-Splitting Magic Sound Sharks capable of launching sonic attacks, and even, far in the distance, the terrifying aura of that forty-thousand-year-old Deep Sea Demon Octopus King, which made his heart shudder. He had no desire to linger and fight. He avoided whatever he could and detoured wherever possible, placing concealment and speed above all else.
Like the shrewdest fugitive, he left no clues pointing toward his destination, blending completely into the vast, peril-ridden deep sea.
What he did not know was that roughly a day after he left the Storm Sea Abyss, events unfolded elsewhere.
The three ships carrying the surviving remnants of the Raging Waves Team finally limped back to a base on the outskirts of Sea God Island. When they carried Captain Mo Lin ashore—his life hanging by a thread, his soul power dispersing, and his consciousness clouded—the entire base was shaken.
Sea God Island took the matter extremely seriously and immediately dispatched healing-type Soul Douluo experts to examine him. Yet even Soul Douluos found the bizarre, inscrutable poison of "Dan-Devour," which constantly eroded Mo Lin's life origin and soul, extraordinarily troublesome. They tried all manner of high-level healing soul skills and sacred antidotes, even resorting to special methods imbued with the Sea God's power. None could eradicate the poison that clung to him like maggots burrowing into bone; they could only barely slow its spread.
Three days.
For three full days, despite the all-out efforts of a Soul Douluo and several Soul Saints, Mo Lin's vitality remained a guttering candle in the wind, steadily "devoured" by that invisible poisonous force. In the end, amid unbearable agony and bitter unwillingness, this Quasi-Soul Saint—the captain of the Raging Waves Team, who had stood a chance of reaching the true Soul Saint realm—met his tragic end.
When the news spread, Sea God Island's senior leadership flew into a rage!
An elite underwater team consisting of one Soul Emperor and four Soul Kings, plus a Quasi-Soul Saint captain, equipped with advanced soul tools, had nearly been wiped out while hunting a soul beast that was "only ten thousand years old." Even its captain had died from an unheard-of, bizarre poison that a Soul Douluo could scarcely remedy!
This was no longer a simple mission failure. It was a provocation, a brazen trampling of Sea God Island's authority! The unknown ten-thousand-year poison beast's threat rating was urgently reassessed as S+: extremely dangerous, with a recommendation that a Titled Douluo lead its extermination!
But Titled Douluos held exalted positions and each had duties of their own. Deploying one against a ten-thousand-year soul beast, however unusual, seemed like using a sledgehammer to crack a nut and would diminish their prestige. After emergency deliberations, Sea God Island decided to dispatch a level eighty-nine Peak Soul Douluo, leading two Soul Saints and an elite hunting squad of ten Soul Emperors. Carrying specially selected soul tools and sacred antidote items, they would depart immediately for the Storm Sea Abyss and capture this fiend alive if possible—or kill it!
At the same time, they issued the highest-level wanted notice to every force in nearby waters affiliated with or friendly toward Sea God Island. It included detailed intelligence and a likeness drawn from survivor accounts of an "unknown octopus-type sea soul beast, suspected to be over ten thousand years old, highly venomous, extraordinarily intelligent, adept at concealment, and possessing a bizarre attack capable of bypassing conventional defenses." An enormous bounty in contribution points and treasures encouraged anyone who found its trail to report it.
At Sea God Island's command, a net spanning heaven and earth rapidly began closing around Jingtian.
Yet when their formidable hunting force arrived at the Storm Sea Abyss two days after Jingtian's departure and launched an all-encompassing search, they discovered that their target had long since vanished like a wild goose into the boundless sky. Only faint, nearly untraceable signs remained, almost entirely destroyed by the natural environment.
The hunting force conducted a dragnet search of the Storm Sea Abyss and its surrounding waters for half a month, even briefly clashing with the forty-thousand-year-old Deep Sea Demon Octopus King, but found nothing. The terrifying poison beast responsible for such tremendous losses seemed to have evaporated into thin air.
"It escaped, and it was clever enough to know we would retaliate. It fled into deeper waters." The Peak Soul Douluo leading the force delivered his judgment with a grim expression. "Issue a permanent wanted notice and raise the bounty. Also warn every fleet and soul master heading into the open ocean to beware of this beast. It... will certainly not disappear without a trace forever."
For the moment, the storm over the Storm Sea Abyss subsided.
But everyone knew that still greater undercurrents were already surging through the wider deep sea.
By then, Jingtian had completed a long and dangerous journey. From afar, he sensed the edge of those eerie waters known as the Eternal Silence Return Ruins, filled with chaotic energy and an aura of destruction.
He "looked" back once along the route he had taken. Powerful pursuers might well have been searching for his trail in that direction.
But he no longer cared.
Ahead lay an unknown forbidden zone and its dangers, but also opportunities and possibilities for growing stronger.
He swept his thick tentacles through the water, the dark-blue rings with their purple-gold sheen flickering in the faint light at the outskirts of Guixu, and plunged headfirst into that true death zone of the deep sea, where even light itself seemed about to be devoured.
The game of hunting and pursuit had entered a new, far broader arena.
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