Sea God Island, Sacred Mountain, the plaza before Sea God Hall.
The solemnity and tranquility of days past had been replaced by an oppression so heavy it was suffocating. The air seemed to have congealed, and even the sea wind had fallen silent. At the center of the plaza, the enormous statue of the Sea God still held its trident, gazing majestically into the distance. Yet now, even that gaze seemed tinged with an indescribable gravity.
Nearly all of Sea God Island's current senior figures had gathered in the plaza. Bo Saixi had not appeared, but her will hung over the place like an invisible canopy. Of the Seven Sacred Pillar Guardians, all were present except those who could not readily leave their posts at their respective Sacred Pillars, and... those who had already been gravely wounded.
Sea Dragon Douluo, Sea Witch Douluo, and Sea Illusion Douluo stood at the forefront, their expressions grim. Their eyes were fixed on the area at the center of the plaza, shrouded in gentle blue light.
Within that blue light stood two enormous makeshift "beds," fashioned from deep sea black ice and a kind of warm jade.
On one lay a pure-white behemoth covered in sinister dark-purple and ashen markings. Her scales were dull, cracked in many places, and her breath was so faint that she was little more than a dying candle in the wind—the Demon Soul Great White Shark King, Xiao Bai. Her eyes were tightly shut. Her aura, once as vast as the sea, pure and sacred, now held only a heart-chilling decay, stillness, and waves of pain as she was relentlessly eroded. A ring of pale-gold divine light struggled to circulate over her body, attempting to suppress the ever-spreading poison markings. Yet its effect was negligible, like a cup of