"All right, gather up." Du Busi, who had brought Long Aotian over, called out to the group on the beach.
The girls lined up of their own accord, and Lin Yuan walked over to join them.
Du Busi looked at Ning Tian. "You want to give it a try too?"
"Senior, this is a rare opportunity. I wonder if the Body Sect's Second Awakening method might help me break through."
Du Busi nodded slightly. He had seen how hard Ning Tian had been working lately.
"And you?" Du Busi asked, turning to Nan Qiuqiu.
"I was this close to beating him. Really, just this close." Nan Qiuqiu looked at Lin Yuan and held up her fingers to show how little the gap was.
Du Busi knew just how large the gap between Lin Yuan and Nan Qiuqiu was. Keeping the truth from the young was a good thing; at least Nan Qiuqiu had stayed motivated to cultivate.
After nodding to Nan Qiuqiu as well, he turned to Wei Na. "Since everyone else is going into the water, you don't have any objections, do you?"
"None, Master." Wei Na was crying inside.
Of all these cultivation maniacs, she was the only one who wanted an easier time. Long Aotian at least had the pride of being the sect master's heir.
As soon as Wei Na finished answering, Lin Yuan's vision suddenly went black.
Seawater poured straight into his nose and mouth, and he swallowed several huge gulps.
He'd forgotten that when a Body Martial Soul underwent its Second Awakening, a surprise attack greatly increased the chance of awakening.
By then, they were all underwater, and everyone around him was thrashing about and drowning.
Even the usually reserved Wei Na and the usually composed Long Aotian had completely lost their usual dignity.
They flailed wildly, no different from ordinary people.
Just as Lin Yuan instinctively tried to use his Soul Power to lift himself up, he immediately understood why everyone was in such a sorry state.
Du Busi had sealed off his Soul Power.
"...No wonder it's a destruction attribute." Watching Lin Yuan and the others, Du Busi couldn't help but marvel.
Among those whose Soul Power had been sealed, Lin Yuan's had clashed most fiercely with Du Busi's seal.
The effort it took to seal Lin Yuan's Soul Power was already nearly equal to what it took to seal a Soul King's.
At the same time, Du Busi watched Lin Yuan gradually steady himself and swim toward the surface.
"Oh? You can actually swim? Now that's a rarity."
The inland residents of Douluo Continent were mostly poor swimmers. Most Soul Masters who could swim simply used their Soul Power to keep themselves afloat.
The swimming skills Lin Yuan had acquired in his previous life as a transmigrator made him especially unusual, but Du Busi wasn't in a hurry.
"Haah..." The instant he drew in his first breath of oxygen, Lin Yuan felt alive again.
A tremendous force suddenly struck him, blasting him straight back into the seawater.
Faced with this sudden, extraordinary turn of events, Lin Yuan began flailing wildly again, undoubtedly burning through his oxygen even faster.
To make matters worse, he could no longer move his limbs.
Like a stone statue, he slowly sank toward the seabed.
Ning Tian and the others above him had already lost consciousness one after another. A shadow swept past, grabbing them up one by one.
Seeing this, Wei Na immediately tried a clever little trick of her own. She suppressed her movements and pretended to have lost consciousness from drowning.
But how could Du Busi fail to see through Wei Na's little scheme?
Before long, the discomfort of oxygen deprivation made Wei Na start thrashing again.
Only after she had truly passed out from drowning did Du Busi scoop her up.
Watching Lin Yuan, Long Aotian had realized that the more panicked you were in this situation, the worse off you became.
He stubbornly endured the lack of oxygen until his face turned purple, and Du Busi only picked him up after he passed out.
Seeing that Lin Yuan was in no serious danger and should be able to hold out another twenty or thirty seconds, Du Busi took the opportunity to haul the unconscious youngsters back to shore and instructed Cao Xin, who had stayed behind, to resuscitate and treat them.
In that brief moment, a pair of lanterns as large as carriage wheels appeared in the darkness beneath Lin Yuan.
It was an enormous whale.
It opened its mouth and took Lin Yuan inside...
Smack!
Even inside the whale's mouth, Lin Yuan could hear the loud slap. Du Busi had struck.
"On the count of three, spit out my disciple. Otherwise, you'll get more than a slap." Du Busi glared furiously at the enormous whale, which now bore a red handprint on its face.
He wasn't the sort of Soul Master who enjoyed killing indiscriminately, and he'd mellowed out a little in recent years.
Forget ten years ago—even just three years ago, if this whale had thought about eating one of his disciples, Du Busi would already be betting on its chances of producing a Soul Bone.
Besides, whale-type Soul Beasts produced Whale Rubber, and that was good stuff.
The whale looked to have cultivated for at least ten thousand years. It should be intelligent enough to understand him.
But in the next instant, something happened that left both Du Busi and Lin Yuan utterly stunned.
"I-I'm sorry. But he seems to be drowning. Could I take him to shore and let him out there?"
The mental transmission poured directly into their minds. The voice sounded like that of a little girl who'd been wronged.
A single term rang in the ears of both Du Busi and the immobile Lin Yuan.
Hundred-Thousand-Year Soul Beast!
Du Busi's heart tightened. Since this was a Hundred-Thousand-Year Soul Beast, he might not be able to intervene while she was chewing on Lin Yuan.
To keep Lin Yuan from ending up as fertilizer that boosted the nearby seagrass's yield by eighteen hundred percent next year, Du Busi had no choice but to suppress his anger and go along with the Hundred-Thousand-Year whale's suggestion.
"Fine, take your time. But if anything happens to my disciple, I'll turn you into a Hundred Thousand Year Soul Bone right here and now," Du Busi said darkly.
"Mm." The Hundred-Thousand-Year whale replied in an extremely aggrieved voice, then swam toward the surface.
Its great mouth opened.
Feeling the oxygen and sunlight from the surface again, Lin Yuan coughed a few times, then vomited up the seawater that had gone down his stomach.
"Please don't throw up in my mouth!" The voice was filled with mortified indignation, and the soft flesh inside its mouth began to writhe.
Du Busi grabbed Lin Yuan and pulled him onto the whale's back.
"Are you all right? That Hundred-Thousand-Year Soul Beast didn't do anything to you, did it?" Du Busi asked anxiously.
Lin Yuan looked at Du Busi and replied feebly, "Master, is the Body Sect's awakening method always this intense?"
Seeing that Lin Yuan was unharmed, Du Busi finally let out a sigh of relief.
"This is only the beginning. You'll have plenty more chances in the future."
Hearing Du Busi's words, Lin Yuan couldn't help thinking of the chapter in Peerless Tang Sect where Lao Huo put his little brother Dai Luoli through military training.
Now that he knew to expect near-death experiences, the training waiting for him in the future would definitely be even more terrifying.
"Let's put that aside for now." Du Busi's expression turned greedy.
"If its Soul Bone overlaps with a part of your body where I already have one, would you like a Hundred Thousand Year Soul Bone?"
Du Busi's intentions were obvious. He wanted the Sea Soul Beast that had suddenly appeared beneath them.
This was a Hundred Thousand Year Soul Bone. If he absorbed it, breaking through to Limit Douluo might not be impossible.