New Crisis for the Soul Beast Herd

Three days passed at sea, calm and peaceful.

Lin Qingzhou spent his days cultivating in his room, occasionally going up to the deck for a breath of fresh air before returning to continue his practice. Zero would pop up in his mind every now and then to say a few words.

Her tone remained as flat as ever, and the content was mostly about the energy recovery progress of the End-of-All Divine Realm or the fusion status of the Silver Dragon King bloodline within his body. He listened to half and let the rest slide, sticking to his training regardless.

However, what pleasantly surprised Lin Qingzhou was that after Zero scanned the energy field of the Douluo Continent, she specifically designed a set of cultivation techniques for him and taught him the correct methods.

Using the numerical system of the Douluo world, she roughly analyzed Lin Qingzhou's current situation. She discovered that his soul power was at approximately level 20.

His physical strength, however, had reached level 34, equivalent to the realm of a three-ring Soul Elder. The most off-the-charts metric was Lin Qingzhou's mental power, which had already reached over 200 points, hitting the Spirit Connection Realm.

According to the original lore, the current Lin Qingzhou could directly absorb a thousand-year Soul Spirit, which naturally left him incredibly excited.

On the evening of the fourth day, as he sat cross-legged on his bed regulating his breath, the entire ship jolted violently.

It wasn't the swaying caused by ocean waves; it was as if something had slammed into the hull from deep underwater. The ship emitted a muffled, creaking groan, and the water glass on the table slid off and shattered on the floor.

Immediately after, an alarm blared through the corridor, sharp and piercing. It wasn't a fire alarm, but the emergency signal for a Soul Beast attack.

Lin Qingzhou grabbed his war hammer and sprinted toward the deck. The corridor was already in total chaos; some people were clutching their children and squeezing into the depths of the cabin, others were slumped in corners shivering, and the attendants were screaming at the top of their lungs for everyone to stay calm.

Pushing open the door to the deck, a fishy, salty sea breeze rushed in to meet him. The stench was thick and suffocating—not the smell of ordinary seawater, but the rot of blood and decaying flesh that had been soaking for who knows how long.

The sky had already darkened, and the sea surface was no longer its usual deep blue, but an unnatural gray-green, as if some colossal entity were circling beneath the water, churning the entire area into a frenzy.

The crew on deck had already entered combat mode.

Three Soul Saints wearing two-word Battle Armor stood at the very front of the ship's rail, the light patterns of their armor standing out vividly in the dim light.

One was a fire-type soul master whose Martial Soul was a fire-attribute bird; having never studied Martial Soul theory, Lin Qingzhou couldn't identify what it was.

The remaining two were a wind-type and an ice-type, both wielding tool-type Martial Souls.

The ice-type Soul Saint was continuously outputting cold air toward the sea surface. A thin layer of ice had already formed on the water for dozens of meters around the ship, but constant thuds echoed from beneath the ice, each impact spiderwebbing the frozen surface with cracks.

Lin Qingzhou looked in the direction of the impacts. More than a dozen pitch-black shadows were swimming at high speed beneath the water; the smallest was at least five or six meters long, and the largest had a dorsal arc exceeding twenty meters.

They weren't fish; they were whales.

Their skin wasn't the grayish-white of ordinary whales, but a dull, reddish-brown, like congealed blood, covered in barbs and bone plates. Pairs of scarlet eyes glowed beneath the water—no pupils, just solid, luminous blood-red orbs.

"Evil Orca King," a crew member muttered nearby, his voice trembling. "It's a pod of Evil Orca Kings. The one leading them is a hundred-thousand-year Evil Orca King."

The crew member was a middle-aged man who looked like he had spent half his life at sea; the wrinkles on his face were deep enough to hold a matchstick.

He gripped the ship's railing tightly, his face deathly pale, his voice low but his speech rapid.

"These beasts have been running rampant on the high seas for years. Other Soul Beasts hunt to eat, but not them."

"They just love to kill. Merchant ships, passenger liners, fishing fleets—once they hit you, there's no escaping. They kill everything and don't even eat; the corpses just float on the surface. The Federation has sent three suppression teams, and two-thirds were slaughtered by them."

After he finished speaking, someone on the deck vomited.

The hundred-thousand-year Evil Orca King revealed its full form. As it rose from beneath the water, the sea surface seemed to be split open.

Its thirty-meter-long, grayish-black body was covered in crisscrossing scars and bone spurs—not from battle, but marks of cannibalistic biting among its own kind.

The edges of its tail fin weren't smooth curves, but rows of sharp bone blades, each stroke carving a white wake across the ocean.

The most chilling part was its eyes. They weren't the eye patches of ordinary orcas, but truly scarlet, carrying a kind of malice that felt almost sentient.

That gaze told everyone on deck that it wasn't here to hunt; it was here for sport.

The three Soul Saints didn't hesitate, pushing their Battle Armor to the limit. The fire-type Soul Saint struck first, a giant flame bird roaring from his palm, skimming the surface of the sea straight toward the Evil Orca King.

The wind-type Soul Saint coordinated simultaneously, waving his staff-like Martial Soul. The wind wrapped around the flames, instantly expanding the fire dragon to over three meters in diameter. The power of this strike was enough to severely injure even an average ten-thousand-year Soul Beast if it took the hit head-on.

The Evil Orca King didn't even dodge. It opened its mouth, not to bite, but to spit out a blade of dark red water that collided with the fire dragon.

Steam exploded, and the sea within a hundred-meter radius instantly boiled. Scalding water mist mixed with dark red soul power debris surged into the sky like a dark mushroom cloud. The fire dragon was forcibly neutralized by its breath.

"This thing has lived at sea for who knows how many years. Who knows how many spirit herbs and Soul Beast corpses it's devoured in the deep sea."

The middle-aged crewman's lips were trembling. "Even land-based Soul Beasts of the same level would have to take a detour if they ran into it in the ocean."

Taking advantage of the gap in its breath, the ice-type Soul Saint slammed his arms downward. A blast of extreme cold exploded along the surface, and within a fraction of a second, the seawater for a hundred meters around froze into a solid, thick sheet of ice. The ship stopped swaying, locked firmly within the ice layer.

"Everyone on deck, listen up!" the ice-type Soul Saint roared, his voice drowning out the wind and waves.

"If you have soul power, use it! If you have Soul Tools, get them out! Civilians, grab weapons and stand behind the railing. The ice won't hold for long; those dozen ten-thousand-year Evil Orcas are flanking us. If we don't beat these beasts back, no one is making it out alive tonight!"

No sooner had he finished speaking than a dozen smaller Evil Orcas slammed into the ice from below.

The ice layer shook violently, and several weak spots were shattered instantly. Dark red figures leaped out of the holes, landing on the ice with their tail fins slapping the surface, creating dull, cracking sounds.

Their eyes were equally scarlet. Although their bodies were more than a size smaller than their king, each was over eight meters long, their dorsal bone spurs glinting coldly in the dim light.

Some people were so terrified they collapsed to the ground, scrambling and crawling toward the cabins.

Others turned and ran, not even stopping as they crunched over broken glass. A few waiters huddled by the restaurant entrance, their faces as white as corpses.

Those who remained were a dozen low-level soul masters and a few burly men dressed as mercenaries, each gripping a Soul Ray Gun. Their hands were shaking, but at least they were still standing.

Lin Qingzhou took a deep breath.

He reached into his chest pocket and checked his ammunition.

He still had over a dozen Fixed Soul Missiles he'd scavenged from the Evil Soul Master in Proud Arrival City, with a few left each of the explosive, freezing, and tracking types.

He locked the launcher onto the end of his warhammer's grip, vaulted over the ship's railing, and landed on the ice. The surface was sturdier than he had anticipated, providing a rough friction against the soles of his boots.

He hoisted the warhammer onto his shoulder and began moving rapidly toward the center of the ice. If he didn't kill these beasts, he—just like everyone else on that ship—would certainly not escape.

Although he still had Zero as a fallback, that would be troublesome, and Lin Qingzhou had no idea what the situation was like on her end; the two of them weren't even in a formal partnership yet, at best they were just observing each other.

Over a dozen low-level Soul Masters had already opened fire. More than a dozen soul-guided rays and the light of soul skills intertwined, pouring toward the two nearest ten-thousand-year Evil Orca Kings.

The beams struck the bone plates and barbs on their bodies, but most were deflected, leaving only shallow scorch marks on the surface of their skin. They couldn't break the defense.

Lin Qingzhou raised his hand and fired a single shot.

A Freezing-type Fixed Soul Missile precisely drilled into the soft flesh just outside the left eye of an Evil Orca, the small area uncovered by bone plates, and upon detonating, ice crystals instantly spread across a small portion of the eye socket.

The orca let out a sharp hiss, its tail fin thrashing wildly against the ice and smashing out a series of cracks.

Several mercenaries nearby glanced at him, their eyes filled with surprise. This kid, dressed in ordinary cloth, had marksmanship so precise it didn't look like his first time on the battlefield.

Lin Qingzhou ignored everyone's gaze. He moved rapidly across the ice, his finger pulling the trigger of the soul-guided launcher in quick succession, each shot landing precisely on the weak points of the Evil Orcas.

Eye sockets, gill slits, fin joints.

Lin Qingzhou could feel it now; his spiritual power seemed to be growing increasingly sharp, and his dynamic and static vision had reached an incredible level.

This made Lin Qingzhou vaguely sense that it was likely the credit of the End-of-All Divine Realm; after all, the spiritual power that had been constantly killed, drained, and reshaped there had indeed brought him quite a few benefits.

At the very least, regardless of anything else, his spiritual power now appeared to have significantly improved.

However, the grade of the ammunition was what it was; these fixed soul missiles were fine for dealing with Soul Elder-level Evil Soul Masters in Proud Arrival City, but against ten-thousand-year Soul Beasts, breaking their defense was already difficult, let alone inflicting lethal damage.

After firing a dozen rounds, he had only caused varying degrees of minor injuries to three Evil Orcas, and the blood seeping from the wounds was diluted by the icy water before it could even disperse on the sea surface.

The situation on the ice was deteriorating rapidly. The Fire-type and Wind-type Soul Saints were still locked in combat with the hundred-thousand-year Evil Orca King, the two of them barely holding on together to prevent a collapse, but they were clearly at a disadvantage in every exchange.