Slap! A Big Slap.

"Alright, gather round." Du Busi, who had brought Long Aotian over, shouted toward the beach.

The girls lined up instinctively, and Lin Yuan walked over to join them.

Du Busi looked at Ning Tian and asked, "You want to try as well?"

"Senior, this is a rare opportunity. I don't know if the Body Sect's method of secondary awakening could help me break through."

Du Busi nodded slightly; he had seen how hard Ning Tian had been working lately.

"And you?" Du Busi turned his gaze to Nan Qiuqiu.

"I was this close to beating him, really, just a hair's breadth away." Nan Qiuqiu looked at Lin Yuan, pinching her fingers together to illustrate.

Du Busi knew exactly how vast the gap was between Lin Yuan and Nan Qiuqiu, but keeping her in the dark was good for a youngster; at the very least, Nan Qiuqiu always had the motivation to cultivate.

After nodding at Nan Qiuqiu, he looked at Wei Na. "Since everyone else is going into the water, you don't have any complaints, do you?"

"No, Master." Wei Na was crying on the inside.

Among this group of overachievers, she was the only one who wanted an easy life; even Long Aotian possessed the pride of a sect heir.

As soon as Wei Na finished answering, Lin Yuan's vision suddenly went black.

Seawater rushed into his mouth and nose, forcing him to gulp down several mouthfuls.

He had forgotten that when performing a secondary awakening for a Body Martial Soul, the success rate was much higher if the awakening was triggered by a surprise attack.

By now, they were all beneath the surface, and everyone around him was thrashing about, drowning in a panic.

Even the usually reserved Wei Na and the composed Long Aotian had lost all their former decorum.

They flailed their arms wildly, behaving no differently than 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.

His soul power had been sealed by Du Busi.

"...Truly worthy of the destruction attribute." Watching the performance of Lin Yuan and the others, Du Busi couldn't help but sigh.

Among those sealed, Lin Yuan's soul power clashed the most violently with his own seal.

The effort required to suppress Lin Yuan's soul power was already equivalent to sealing the power of a Soul King.

At the same time, Du Busi saw Lin Yuan slowly stabilize his state and begin swimming toward the surface.

"Oh? He can actually swim? That's truly rare."

Inhabitants of the Douluo Continent's interior were basically landlubbers; most soul masters who could "swim" simply used their soul power to buoy themselves.

The swimming skills possessed by Lin Yuan, this transmigrator, seemed particularly unique, but Du Busi was in no rush.

"Hah..." The moment he took his first breath of oxygen, Lin Yuan felt as if he had come back to life.

Suddenly, a massive force struck him, blasting him straight back into the depths of the sea.

Faced with such an unexpected and overwhelming situation, Lin Yuan naturally began flailing wildly again, which only served to increase his oxygen consumption.

Even more tragically, his limbs refused to move.

He felt like a stone statue, slowly sinking toward the seabed.

Above him, Ning Tian and the others had lost consciousness one after another, and a dark shadow flashed by, grabbing them one by one.

Seeing this, Wei Na immediately tried to be clever, suppressing her struggle and pretending she had also lost consciousness from drowning.

But how could Du Busi fail to see through Wei Na's little trick?

Before long, the oxygen-deprived and uncomfortable Wei Na began thrashing again.

It wasn't until she truly fainted from drowning that she was scooped up by Du Busi.

Long Aotian, having observed Lin Yuan's performance, understood that the more one panicked in this situation, the worse their condition would become.

He fought the oxygen deprivation until his face turned purple, only being picked up by Du Busi after he finally lost consciousness.

Seeing that Lin Yuan's condition was stable and that he could likely hold out for another twenty or thirty seconds, Du Busi took the opportunity to pull the unconscious juniors back to the shore, ordering the remaining Cao Xin to provide emergency treatment.

In that brief interval, a pair of lanterns as large as carriage wheels appeared in the darkness beneath Lin Yuan.

It was a whale of immense size.

It opened its mouth and swallowed Lin Yuan whole...

Smack!

A loud, crisp slap echoed, audible even to Lin Yuan inside the whale's mouth; it was Du Busi who had struck.

"I'll count to three. Spit out my disciple, or it won't just be a slap next time." Du Busi said with an angry expression to the giant whale, which now sported a red palm print on its face.

He wasn't a soul master who enjoyed wanton killing, and in recent years, he had tempered his temper.

Ten years ago—no, even three years ago—if this whale had dared to think about eating his disciple, he would already be gambling on the probability of this whale dropping a soul bone.

Not to mention that for a whale-type soul beast, Whale Glue was a precious treasure.

This whale clearly had over ten thousand years of cultivation; it should have the intelligence to understand his words.

Yet, in the very next moment, a scene unfolded that left both Du Busi and Lin Yuan utterly stunned.

"I-I'm sorry. But he seems to be drowning. Can I bring him to the surface and let him out?"

The mental transmission poured directly into their minds, the voice sounding like that of a little girl who had been wronged.

A single term simultaneously appeared in the minds of Du Busi and the immobilized Lin Yuan.

A hundred-thousand-year soul beast!

Du Busi's heart tightened; if it were truly a hundred-thousand-year soul beast, he might not be able to intervene while she was chewing on Lin Yuan.

To avoid the outcome where Lin Yuan would end up fertilizing the nearby aquatic plants to increase their yield by eighteen hundred mu next year, Du Busi had no choice but to suppress his fury and play along with what this hundred-thousand-year whale said.

"Fine, then take your time. But if anything happens to my disciple, I will turn you into a hundred-thousand-year soul bone right here and now," Du Busi said with a grim face.

"Mm." The hundred-thousand-year whale agreed in an extremely aggrieved tone and began swimming toward the surface of the sea.

Her massive mouth opened wide.

Regaining access to oxygen and the sunlight on the sea surface, Lin Yuan coughed a few times, then vomited out the seawater that had filled his stomach.

"Please don't throw up in my mouth!" The voice was filled with shame and anger, and the soft flesh inside the oral cavity began to squirm.

Du Busi grabbed Lin Yuan and pulled him onto the whale's back.

"Are you alright? This hundred-thousand-year soul beast didn't do anything to you, did she?" Du Busi asked with anxious concern.

Looking at Du Busi, Lin Yuan said helplessly and weakly, "Master, is the Body Sect's awakening method always this stimulating?"

Seeing that Lin Yuan was unharmed, Du Busi finally breathed a sigh of relief.

"This is only the beginning; you'll have more opportunities in the future."

Hearing Du Busi's words, Lin Yuan couldn't help but recall the chapter from the Peerless Tang Sect era where Lao Huo gave his younger brother Dai Luoli some military-style training.

With the expectation of such near-death experiences, what awaited him in the future would surely be even more terrifying near-death training.

"Let's not talk about that for now." Du Busi's expression turned greedy.

"If the part doesn't overlap with the soul bones I already possess, would you like a hundred-thousand-year soul bone?"

Du Busi's intentions were clear: he wanted the hundred-thousand-year sea soul beast that had suddenly appeared below.

This was a hundred-thousand-year soul bone, after all; if he absorbed it, breaking through to become a Limit Douluo was not out of the question.