Three days passed at sea, calm and uneventful.
Lin Qingzhou spent each day cultivating in his room, occasionally heading up to the deck for some fresh air before returning to his training. Zero sometimes appeared in his mind to say a few words.
Her tone was as flat as ever. Most of what she said concerned the End-of-All Divine Realm's energy recovery progress or the state of the Silver Dragon King Bloodline's integration inside him. He only half-listened, but he kept up with his training all the same.
What delighted Lin Qingzhou, however, was that after scanning the Douluo Continent's energy field, Zero had designed a cultivation method specifically for him and taught him the proper way to practice it.
She had also used the Douluo World's numerical system to make a rough assessment of Lin Qingzhou's current condition. His Soul Power was probably around level twenty-something.
His physical strength, meanwhile, had reached level thirty-four, equivalent to the realm of a three-ring Soul Elder. What was most off the charts was Lin Qingzhou's spiritual power. It had already exceeded two hundred points, reaching the Spirit Connection Realm.
According to the original story, Lin Qingzhou could now absorb a Thousand-Year Soul Spirit directly. Naturally, he was thrilled.
On the evening of the fourth day, he was sitting cross-legged on his bed, regulating his breathing, when the entire ship suddenly lurched.
It wasn't the swaying of waves. Something had rammed the ship hard from beneath the water. The hull gave a muffled creak, and the cup on the table slid off and shattered on the floor.
An alarm immediately blared through the corridors, shrill and piercing. It wasn't a fire alarm, but an emergency signal for a Soul Beast attack.
Lin Qingzhou grabbed his warhammer and ran for the deck. The corridor was already in chaos. Some people were pushing deeper into the cabins with children in their arms, while others huddled trembling in the corners. The crew were shouting themselves hoarse, telling everyone to stay calm.
As he pushed open the deck door, a briny sea wind slammed into him. The stench was so thick it made him gag. It wasn't the smell of ordinary seawater, but a reek of blood and rotting flesh that had been stewing together for who knew how long.
The sky had darkened. The sea wasn't its usual deep blue, but an unnatural grayish green, as if some enormous creature were circling beneath the water, churning the whole expanse into a frenzy.
The crew on deck were already in battle formation.
Three Soul Saints wearing Two-Word Battle Armor stood at the very front of the ship. The glowing patterns on their armor stood out sharply against the dim sky.
One was a fire-type Soul Master whose Martial Soul was a fiery bird. Lin Qingzhou, who had never learned about Martial Souls, couldn't tell what kind it was.
The other two were a wind-type and an ice-type Soul Master, both with tool-type Martial Souls.
The ice-type Soul Saint was continuously unleashing a chill over the sea. The water within dozens of meters of the ship had already frozen over with a thin layer of ice, but impacts kept booming from beneath it. Each blow smashed a spiderweb of cracks across the surface.
Lin Qingzhou looked toward the source of the impacts. More than a dozen black shadows were speeding through the water. Even the smallest was five or six meters long, while the curve of the largest one's back alone spanned more than twenty meters.
They weren't fish. They were whales.
Their skin wasn't the grayish white of ordinary whales, but a dark reddish brown, like clotted blood. Their bodies were covered in spines and bony plates. Pairs of scarlet eyes shone beneath the water, pupil-less, each one a solid mass of glowing crimson.
"Evil Spirit Orcas," a crewman beside him murmured, his voice trembling. "It's a whole pod. Their leader is a hundred-thousand-year Evil Orca King."
The crewman was middle-aged and looked as though he'd spent half his life at sea. His wrinkles were deep enough to catch matchsticks.
He gripped the railing with white knuckles. His face was deathly pale, and though he spoke quietly, his words came out in a rush.
"Those beasts have been running wild in international waters for years. Other Soul Beasts hunt to eat. They don't."
"They just like killing. Merchant ships, passenger liners, fishing fleets—once they run into them, there's no escape. They slaughter everyone and don't even eat the bodies. They just leave them floating on the sea. The Federation sent three extermination squads after them, and the beasts killed two-thirds of each one."
After he finished speaking, someone on deck threw up.
The hundred-thousand-year Evil Orca King revealed its full form. As it rose from beneath the water, the sea seemed to split open.
Its gray-black body stretched more than thirty meters, covered in crisscrossing scars and bony spikes. They weren't marks left by battle, but the bites of its own kind.
The edge of its tail fin wasn't a smooth curve. It was lined with sharp bone blades, and every swipe carved a white wake across the sea.
What made it most terrifying were its eyes. They weren't ordinary orca markings. They were truly scarlet, filled with a malice almost intelligent enough to understand.
That gaze told everyone on deck that it hadn't come to feed. It had come for fun.
The three Soul Saints didn't hesitate. They brought their Battle Armor to full power, and the fire-type Soul Saint struck first. A gigantic flaming bird roared out of his palm and skimmed across the sea toward the Evil Orca King.
The wind-type Soul Saint joined in at the same time, swinging his staff-like Martial Soul. Wind wrapped around the flames, instantly swelling the firebird to more than three meters across. Even an ordinary Ten-Thousand-Year Soul Beast would be gravely injured if it took that attack head-on.
The Evil Orca King didn't even dodge. It opened its mouth—not to bite, but to spit out a dark red blade of water that collided with the firebird.
Steam exploded. The sea within a hundred meters boiled in an instant. Scalding mist and flecks of dark red Soul Power surged into the sky together, forming a shadowy mushroom cloud. The firebird was completely snuffed out by a single breath from the beast.
"That thing's been alive in the sea for who knows how many years. Who knows how many rare herbs and Soul Beast carcasses from the deep sea it's eaten?"
The middle-aged crewman's lips trembled. "Even land-dwelling Soul Beasts of the same level have to steer clear of it in the sea."
While the Evil Orca King paused to catch its breath, the ice-type Soul Saint slammed both arms down. A blast of extreme cold erupted across the sea, freezing a hundred meters of water solid in a fraction of a second. The ship stopped rocking, trapped in the ice.
"Everyone on deck, listen up!" the ice-type Soul Saint shouted over the wind and waves as he turned around.
"Those with Soul Power, use it! Those with Soul Tools, get them ready! Ordinary people, grab weapons and stay behind the railing. The ice won't hold for long, and those dozen or so ten-thousand-year Evil Spirit Orcas have already surrounded us. If we can't drive those beasts off, none of us will survive the night!"
As soon as he finished speaking, more than a dozen smaller Evil Spirit Orcas rammed the ice from below at once.
The ice shook violently. Several weak spots were smashed open, and dark red shapes leaped through the holes and landed on the surface. Their tail fins struck the ice with a dull, cracking thud.
Their eyes were just as scarlet. Though they were nowhere near as large as their king, each one was more than eight meters long, and their dorsal spines glinted coldly in the dim light.
Some people were so terrified they dropped onto the deck and scrambled toward the cabins.
Others ran for their lives, not slowing even as they trampled broken glass. Several servers huddled in the restaurant doorway, their faces as white as corpses.
Those who didn't run were a dozen low-rank Soul Masters and several burly men dressed like mercenaries. Each held a Soul Ray Gun. Their hands were shaking, but at least they were still standing.
Lin Qingzhou drew a deep breath.
He pulled the ammunition pouch from inside his clothes and checked his rounds.
He still had more than a dozen Fixed Soul Missiles that he'd looted from the Evil Soul Masters in Aolai City. He had a few Explosive-type, Freezing-type, and Tracking-type missiles left.
He locked the launcher onto the end of his warhammer's handle, climbed over the railing, and dropped onto the ice. It was sturdier than he'd expected, with a rough grip beneath his soles.
He rested the warhammer on his shoulder and began moving quickly toward the center of the ice. If he didn't kill those beasts, there was no way he—or anyone else aboard—would escape.
Though he still had Zero to fall back on, that would be a hassle. Besides, he still didn't know what was going on over there with Lin, and the two of them weren't formally working together yet. At most, they were still feeling each other out.
The dozen or so low-rank Soul Masters had already opened fire. Beams from their Soul Tools and flashes of Soul Skills crisscrossed as they rained down on the two nearest ten-thousand-year Evil Spirit Orcas.
Most of the shots bounced off their bony plates and spines, leaving only faint scorch marks on the surface of their skin. They couldn't penetrate their defenses.
Lin Qingzhou raised his weapon and fired.
A Freezing-type Fixed Soul Missile drilled precisely into the soft flesh beside an Evil Spirit Orca's left eye, the small patch not covered by bone. When it exploded, ice crystals spread across half the eye socket in an instant.
The whale let out a piercing shriek and thrashed its tail fin against the ice, pounding out crack after crack.
A few mercenaries beside him glanced over, surprise in their eyes. The kid in ordinary clothes had a shot so accurate he looked like no stranger to the battlefield.
Lin Qingzhou ignored everyone's stares. He moved quickly across the ice, firing his Soul Tool launcher again and again. Every shot struck a weak point on an Evil Spirit Orca.
Eye sockets, gill slits, the joints at the base of their fins.
Lin Qingzhou could feel it now: his spiritual power seemed to be growing sharper and sharper. His dynamic and static vision had reached an almost unbelievable level.
He had a vague sense that the End-of-All Divine Realm was responsible. After all, his spiritual power had been repeatedly drained to nothing, then rebuilt, as he was killed over and over there. That had brought him quite a few benefits.
At the very least, there was no denying that his spiritual power had improved significantly.
But the ammunition's grade was what it was. Those Fixed Soul Missiles had been enough to deal with Soul Elder-level Evil Soul Masters in Aolai City, but against ten-thousand-year Soul Beasts, even piercing their defenses was difficult, let alone inflicting serious damage.
After firing more than a dozen rounds, he had only given three Evil Spirit Orcas injuries of varying severity. The blood welling from their wounds had been diluted by the icy water before it could even spread across the sea.
The situation on the ice deteriorated rapidly. The fire- and wind-type Soul Saints were still battling the hundred-thousand-year Evil Orca King. Together, they could barely keep from being overwhelmed, but they were clearly at a disadvantage in every exchange.
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