As those words fell, the Sea Princess stared at the guard before her, her face full of bewilderment.
Her slit pupils, blue as the deep sea, narrowed slightly in the dim palace. Her gaze stayed fixed on the guard kneeling on the floor, trying to find even the faintest trace of a joke on her face.
But she was disappointed.
The guard knelt respectfully on the coral floor before her, her hands folded against her forehead, her fish tail lightly slapping the floor in agitation.
There was not a hint of amusement on that pale face, only the same bewilderment and disbelief.
"Y-Your Highness..."
The guard's trembling voice squeezed out between her fingers, carrying an urgency that said, "I know this sounds absurd, but I really am not lying."
"I don't know what's happening either... but that's what my spiritual perception detected..."
She raised her head, her azure eyes, which bore some resemblance to her clan leader's, filled with fear and confusion.
"There really is a strange True Dragon heading toward our clan grounds..."
At those words, the Sea Princess fell silent for a moment.
A faint trace of contemplation crossed her noble, coldly beautiful face. Her gilded fish tail swayed gently, scattering flecks of gold that drifted slowly through the dark seawater.
She lowered her lashes slightly, her deep-blue eyes slowly closing and concealing those clear, fathomless slit pupils.
Then, drawing on her five hundred and eighty thousand years of cultivation and spiritual power that, in the sea, approached humanity's pinnacle of Level 99, she swept her perception in the direction the guard had described.
That spiritual power surged from the coral palace like an invisible tide, passing through layers of seawater, through the jagged reefs of the Ocean Abyss, through the scattered azure buildings, and spreading into the