Nezha smashed through the East Sea Dragon Palace with a single strike of his ruler.
The Sea-Suppressing Water Curtain split open for a thousand feet, and black-and-red demonic fire poured through the breach into the depths.
Half the Crystal Palace's dome collapsed on the spot.
Countless luminous pearls fell, shattering the jade steps.
Cries of terror swept through the aquatic folk inside. Before the Shrimp Soldiers and Crab Generals could form a defense, the surging seawater hurled them away.
Upon the dragon throne.
Ao Guang abruptly rose.
The sigil of his divine position was burning hot.
Just moments ago, the East Sea's water veins had shuddered without warning, and even the emperor's might in the Thirty-Three Heavens had fallen into disorder.
Something momentous seemed to have happened near Peach Mountain.
Yet a veil of mist concealed every thread of cause and effect. He could uncover nothing of the truth.
This left Ao Guang deeply uneasy.
"Report!"
A shrimp general scrambled into the hall, his shell trembling.
"Dragon King! A child riding demonic fire has smashed through the Sea-Suppressing Water Curtain!"
Ao Guang's gaze turned cold.
"Insolence!"
He seized the trident beside his desk, and his draconic pressure erupted.
The shrimp general was crushed flat against the floor, unable even to lift his head.
The next instant.
Boom!
The space above the Crystal Palace exploded again.
Black-and-red demonic fire pierced down through the dome, burning a straight fissure through the Sea-Suppressing Water Curtain.
The water veins throughout the dragon palace surged backward.
Ao Guang rushed out of the hall.
Countless dragon sons and grandsons, along with Shrimp Soldiers and Crab Generals, gathered around him with weapons in hand.
Everyone looked up.
Beyond the shattered dome, a youth hovered motionlessly in the seawater.
He still wore his red bellyband, his hair tied in an upright topknot.
But a pitch-black demonic mark lay between his brows, like a wound branded onto his soul.
The Wind-Fire Wheels beneath his feet burned with black-and-red Demon Flame. Any seawater that came within three feet boiled.
In his right hand, he held the Fire-Tipped Spear.
Demon Flame flickered along its point.
His left hand supported a golden jade ruler.
Black energy wound tightly around the ruler, which still hummed in defiance.
The instant Ao Guang recognized that face, his pupils contracted.
"Nezha?"
Even his voice changed.
"Impossible!"
"After you scraped away your bones to return them to your father and cut away your flesh to return it to your mother, your remnant soul should have scattered long ago! How can you still be alive?"
Nezha slowly lowered his head.
Those eyes held none of the clarity the spirit child had once possessed.
Only coldness remained.
Only old debts.
"Ao Guang."
His voice was quiet, yet it drowned out every sound of water in the dragon palace.
"Your memory isn't too bad."
Nezha grinned.
His smile was chilling.
"Back then, you led the Four Seas Dragon Clan to flood Chentang Pass."
"You forced me to slit my own throat."
"I've remembered that debt all this time."
Ao Guang's heart sank.
But after glancing at the water-element array patterns lighting up beneath his feet, he forced his expression back into composure.
This was the East Sea.
This was the dragon palace.
As long as the Sea-Locking Water Array remained, he had something to rely on.
Ao Guang shouted harshly, "Nezha! You no longer have the Chan Sect's protection, nor Li Jing to shoulder your karmic burden. A mere remnant soul returned through wicked arts, and you dare invade my East Sea?"
"You died once back then. Today, this king can make you die again!"
He abruptly raised his trident.
"Form the array!"
"Seize this fiend!"
As his words fell.
Countless Shrimp Soldiers and Crab Generals channeled their magical power at once.
Deep-blue water-element array patterns lit up all around the dragon palace.
Ten thousand expanses of blue waves were drawn from the East Sea, forming an enormous net that blotted out the sky and descended upon Nezha.
The Sea-Locking Water Array.
One of the dragon palace's great defensive arrays.
Even a True Immortal caught within it would have their flesh ground to dust by the East Sea's water veins and their primordial spirit crushed apart.
Cruelty surfaced in Ao Guang's eyes.
"Nezha!"
"This is no Chentang Pass!"
And yet.
Nezha merely watched the enormous net descend.
He did not dodge.
Nor did he retreat.
Only when the net came within three feet of his head did he raise the hand holding the Qiankun Ruler.
"Noisy."
He had not yet fully refined the Qiankun Ruler.
Nor could he unleash its true mysteries.
But what of it?
Black-and-red Demon Flame coiled around the ruler.
Nezha pressed down with one hand, wielding this Quasi-Saint spirit treasure as a heavy weapon and smashing it down.
Boom!
The entire dragon palace shuddered violently.
The instant the deep-blue net collided with the Qiankun Ruler, it burst apart.
The array patterns shattered.
The water veins surged backward.
Hundreds of aquatic folk stationed at the Array Core turned directly into blood mist.
The remaining Shrimp Soldiers and Crab Generals had their shells cracked by the shock. They toppled in swathes, no longer able to maintain the formation.
One strike.
The Sea-Locking Water Array was broken!
The cruelty froze on Ao Guang's face.
He stared fixedly at the golden jade ruler in Nezha's hand, a chill shooting up his spine to the crown of his head.
"The Qiankun Ruler..."
"That is Daoist Randeng's Qiankun Ruler!"
"How did it end up in your hands?"
Nezha did not answer.
He merely tilted his head, his gaze sweeping over the deathly pale dragon sons and grandsons.
"Back then, were these the things you brought to Chentang Pass to force my hand?"
Ao Guang instinctively retreated half a step.
"Nezha, what are you going to do?"
"This king is a rightful god appointed by the Heavenly Court to summon clouds and bring rain!"
"If you dare lay a hand on me, the Heavenly Court will never spare you!"
"The Heavenly Court?"
Nezha looked as though he had heard a joke.
"My senior brother just shattered the Heavenly Emperor's Edict and routed a hundred thousand troops of the Heavenly River Navy."
"And you think you can frighten me with the Heavenly Court?"
Ao Guang's mind rang.
He knew only that the Heavenly Court's forces near Peach Mountain had fallen into chaos. He had not known that the hundred thousand troops of the Heavenly River Navy had already been defeated.
Still less did he know who the senior brother Nezha spoke of actually was.
But the words "shattered the Heavenly Emperor's Edict" alone were enough to break his composure.
At that very instant.
Nezha moved.
Behind him, a Self-Transforming Demonic Shadow towering ten thousand feet flashed into existence and vanished.
The next instant, he stood before Ao Guang.
Too fast.
So fast that Ao Guang had not even had time to raise his trident.
Nezha did not kill him immediately.
His gaze passed over Ao Guang and settled on a young dragon prince behind him.
That dragon prince held an array flag.
He was the Array-Commanding Dragon Prince whom Ao Guang had personally trained over the years, and, apart from the old affair involving Ao Bing, the descendant Ao Guang prized most in the East Sea.
"No!"
Ao Guang's eyes strained as though they would split.
But it was already too late.
Nezha raised the Fire-Tipped Spear.
The black-and-red Demon Flame at its tip brushed lightly over him.
"Aah!"
The dragon prince screamed in agony.
Great patches of his scales charred black. A stream of pure dragon clan origin was forcibly extracted by the Demon Flame and merged into Nezha's demonic body.
He did not die.
Nezha deliberately left him a breath of life.
He had come to the East Sea today to kill.
And to make the Dragon Race witness the price of resistance with their own eyes.
The dragon prince collapsed to the ground, ninety percent of his cultivation destroyed.
Ao Guang's eyes instantly turned blood-red.
"Fiend!"
"This king will kill you!"
With a furious roar, he swung his trident, gathering seawater of crushing weight and smashing it toward Nezha.
Nezha did not so much as lift his eyelids.
He met it with a backhand strike of the ruler.
Clang!
The trident collided with the Qiankun Ruler.
Ao Guang felt an irresistible force blast along the trident's shaft and into his arms.
The webs between his thumbs and forefingers split on the spot.
Dragon blood splashed across the jade steps.
The palace-guarding trident, ritually refined in the East Sea for so many years, actually developed a distinct crack beneath the Qiankun Ruler's blow.
As though struck by lightning, Ao Guang spat out a mouthful of dragon blood and flew backward.
Boom!
He crashed through a stretch of coral palace wall and slammed into the rubble in a wretched heap.
The entire dragon palace fell deathly silent.
All the aquatic creatures stood stunned.
The East Sea Dragon King they revered, a true god ordained by the Heavenly Court, had actually been sent flying by a single blow from Nezha's ruler.
Spear in hand, Nezha strode over the shattered jade strewn across the floor.
Black-and-red Demon Flame burned beneath his feet, scorching a long, charred trail through the magnificent palace.
He walked up to Ao Guang and looked down at him.
"Ao Guang."
"My master has given an order."
"The Four Seas Water Veins will follow a new set of rules starting today."
Nezha slowly lowered the Fire-Tipped Spear, pressing its point between Ao Guang's brows.
"Kneel and submit, and the dragon race can still live."
"Keep defying the order..."
The corners of his mouth lifted.
"And the Four Seas will have a new master."
A chill ran through Ao Guang's entire body.
Looking at the youth before him, who seemed like a demonic god, he finally understood that Nezha was now beyond his control.
His East Sea alone could not stop him.
But the dragon race's legacy stretched back through countless ages, and the East Sea lineage was far from its only branch.
Ao Guang abruptly bit through the tip of his tongue and spat a mouthful of dragon blood onto the ancient dragon scale in his palm.
"Nezha!"
"You want the Four Seas to have a new master? Fine!"
"Today, this king will show you just how much strength the dragon race still holds in reserve after lying dormant for countless ages!"
The ancient dragon scale burst apart.
Three blood-red dragon phantoms tore through the seawater, speeding toward the South Sea, the West Sea, and the North Sea.
Another streak of bloodlight, the deepest of them all, sank straight into the East Sea Eye.
Nezha watched the Blood Signal fly away without stopping it.
Instead, he smiled.
"One East Sea is too slow."
"If all Four Seas come together, that'll save me the trouble of knocking on each door."
Ao Guang lay slumped amid the ruins, his face covered in blood, yet he too began to laugh bitterly.
"Nezha, you have indeed grown stronger."
"But do you think this is all there is to the dragon race's legacy of countless ages?"
"Today, if you cannot subdue the Four Seas, you will be sealed in the sea eye forever, never to escape through ten thousand calamities!"
His words had barely fallen.
Deep within the South Sea, the West Sea, and the North Sea, three ancient, furious dragon roars erupted at once.
Three surges of dragon king power tore across ten thousand miles of ocean, hurtling straight toward the East Sea.
At the same time.
Beneath the East Sea Eye.
A pair of golden, slit-pupiled eyes, dormant for untold years, slowly opened.