Centered on the Gray Qi, lightning radiated outward across the surrounding sea in symmetrical arcs. Bolts plunged into the water, and the intense heat generated by the extreme voltage instantly vaporized the seawater nearby. Steam several hundred degrees hot formed a deadly exclusion zone within a kilometer of Mo Lin, where both visibility and conditions were utterly atrocious.
Phoenix reacted swiftly, snatching Qilin up in one claw and taking off at once, leaving the platform behind. Just one second after they rose into the air, a stray heavenly bolt shot out from the mist and struck the platform, blasting it into fragments in an instant. The seawater around the platform was then vaporized by the heavenly lightning, expanding the deadly exclusion zone once more.
Below the surface, the Sea Soul Beasts that had happened to pass through what they thought was a safe area suffered a terrible misfortune as well. Bolts of heavenly lightning pierced through a thousand meters of seawater as though equipped with navigation systems, striking one unlucky Sea Soul Beast after another with perfect accuracy. Sea Soul Beasts below ten thousand years were reduced directly to ash in the sea, while among those above ten thousand years, even those with ten or twenty thousand years of cultivation could only manage to leave behind an intact corpse.
Calamity. That was the only word in the minds of the Sea Soul Beasts still alive nearby—if they could read, that was. Then, snapping out of their shock and terror, they scattered and fled.
Yet one expert felt neither fear nor dread. He remained floating where he was. The only Sea Soul Beast that had not fled was Jin Buhuan, the 580,000-year Golden-Ringed Octopus who had swum up from below. He had endured a complete 500,000-year heavenly tribulation, so naturally he