Li Ling soon realized that this referred to the newly appointed Tenth Chieftain, not the one who had died before.
The Blood Shark King was iron, while the ship chieftains flowed past like water. That was the true state of the Blood Shark Bandits.
Foundation Establishment cultivators had far shorter lifespans than Core Formation adepts, and were much more likely to die prematurely. The former Three-Headed Shark, Leng Yi, for instance, had merely been ordered to attack Lucky Harbor. He had encountered Li Ling and, with one careless mistake, been killed.
Unlucky souls like him were truly active at sea for only a little over a hundred years. Those with better luck might live three to five hundred years before dying in a human tribulation. Few ever reached the natural end of their lives.
In the thousand-plus years since the great Demon King Hundred-Eyed Bloodstar Shark had risen to power, every leader besides him had already been replaced several times. For the lower-ranked positions in particular, having ten or even several dozen successive occupants was nothing unusual.
Li Ling had even vaguely heard that the Blood Shark Bandits had originally been a gang of rogue cultivators, with plenty of newly advanced Foundation Establishment cultivators who held no rank waiting to rise through the ranks.
They could also compete through brutal blood duels, slaughtering one another under specific conditions!
Hundred-Eyed Bloodstar Shark was a Demon King of another race. Cannibalistic slaughter was inherent in both his bloodline and his racial culture. By combining this ritual with his own divine abilities and spells, he could bestow authority and power upon new victors.
With the former Ninth and Tenth Chieftains gone, replacements naturally had to be found. Some poorly informed subordinates would not even know that the chieftain above them had changed, nor