Divine Punishment Island.
More than twenty days had passed since the Heaven-Bearing Ceremony ended.
Not a single Tai Sui Gate Fiend could be seen on the island anymore.
Only scattered ocean Demon Beasts remained. Seemingly frightened by something, they were gathering from the waters around the island and coming ashore one after another.
The vast majority of these ocean Demon Beasts were only at the middle or lower stages of the ninth rank, equivalent to human cultivators at middle or early Qi Refining. They posed no threat whatsoever to Lin Mo.
Yet this situation was decidedly abnormal.
Ever since the Primordial Era ended, ocean Demon Beasts had almost stopped entering human territory, and human cultivators rarely hunted them either.
Even when cultivators occasionally hunted them, they never ventured deep into the sea. Instead, they stayed on land or along the edges of islands, usually hunting only a handful of Demon Beasts below the seventh rank. To the vast populations of sea beasts, such losses were hardly worth mentioning.
"Something doesn't seem quite right..."
Standing on his Flying Sword, Lin Mo surveyed Divine Punishment Island from high above, his brows drawing into a slight frown.
On his return from the unnamed island to Divine Punishment Island, he had passed several other islands. The larger ones spanned thousands of li, while even the smaller ones measured seven or eight hundred li across.
Ocean Demon Beasts could be seen around all of those islands, though nowhere in such numbers as around Divine Punishment Island.
Divine Punishment Island lay at the Eastern Extremity of the Eastern Isles, while human cultivators collectively called the vast seas between the islands and beyond all the continents the Endless Marshlands.
Although the waters between those islands also belonged to the ocean Demon Beasts' territory, cultivators traveled through them