Chapter 439 - 408: A Glimmer of Life

Chapter 439: Chapter 408: A Glimmer of Life

As they felt the shadow, everyone’s heart lurched, and they mechanically raised their heads.

Then, the air seemed to freeze.

Deep within everyone’s pupils, a colossal, flood dragon-like Demon Beast gradually came into focus. Its body was two full sizes larger than the Mudskipper Shrimp from before, and was no less imposing than Wangxian Monarch.

What was most terrifying wasn’t that it had three heads.

But that on either side of each enormous Flood Dragon Head grew bone spurs like fish gills, which fanned slightly with every breath. Saliva constantly dripped from its fangs, and the throat behind its interlocking teeth was like a bottomless abyss, its end nowhere in sight.

Under everyone’s gaze, its massive form seemed to detach from illusion, gradually materializing before their eyes.

"Ancient Fierce Beast!"

The same thought surfaced in everyone’s mind simultaneously.

"Quick, run!"

Suddenly, someone in the crowd shouted.

At almost the same instant, Chen Che pushed his Divine Sense to its absolute limit.

The Sword Pill flew out, and countless Sword Leaves rapidly shed from it, sweeping out like a whirlwind as they fell. In an instant, countless dazzling rainbow lights erupted over the Undersea Ruins, and with a sweep of Chen Che’s hand...

...the Flying Swords connected head-to-tail, circling rapidly to form a multi-layered Sword Shield in mid-air.

The dazzling sword light was like a great sun.

"SWOOSH!" "SWOOSH!" "SWOOSH!"

The cultivators, who had been picking Spirit Herbs in the gardens just a moment before, didn’t dare to delay for even a second. They all transformed into streaks of Escape Light and shot toward the Spiritual Boat.

None who could cultivate to the Golden Core realm was a fool.

Even the most arrogant Cultivator would be as humble as a mortal before such a Fierce Beast.

At this moment, the Three-headed Flood Dragon had finished its transition from ethereal to real. With a slight movement, a mere flick of its colossal tail, its massive body lunged forward with the ferocity of lightning striking down from the clouds.

The sun-like Sword Shield, activated by Chen Che with the full force of his Golden Core Sixth Layer Divine Sense, was the strongest defense he had ever mustered.

But in the face of this Fierce Beast, it was utterly useless. With a deafening BOOM, half of the thirty-six thousand Flying Swords shattered, turning into a sky full of glittering fragments that were instantly blasted away by the ensuing gale.

"BANG!"

Chen Che, who had always held an advantage due to his Divine Sense Level, felt his five senses vanish for the first time as the Sword Shield broke.

It was as if the creature hadn’t struck his Sword Shield, but his sea of consciousness.

*SPURT—*

Spraying a mouthful of blood, Chen Che was sent flying backward.

Horrified, Yu Yunko instantly erupted with her Qi and Blood. Amid a fiery glow that surrounded her, a towering figure holding a massive blade materialized in mid-air. Clad in black armor with its long hair tied up high, it brandished its Ring-Headed Saber like a peerless valkyrie.

An unprecedented pressure weighed down on everyone’s hearts.

This was a phantom image formed from Qi and Blood, similar in principle to how High Tier Cultivators appear immense in the eyes of Low Realm Cultivators when they unleash their True Essence. This phantom was so large it was nearly a match for the Three-headed Flood Dragon.

"BOOM!"

As the towering figure formed, it swung its blade. With a speed that seemed both slow and fast, with an air of invincibility, and carrying the hopes of the crowd, it met the beast head-on, cleaving upward toward one of its heads.

But the result—

—did not change.

The massive phantom couldn’t stop the beast at all.

With a single CRACK, it shattered like a flower’s reflection in water or the moon in a well.

At the same time, Yu Yunko’s body shuddered, and her aura instantly weakened to its lowest point. Her face turned pale, as if she had just recovered from a severe illness.

However, the successive attacks from the two experts had managed to stall the Fierce Beast for half a finger-snap. And half a finger-snap was all the time they needed. As they scrambled back to the Spiritual Boat, it had already taken to the ’wind’ and was rapidly fleeing the ruins.

"SWOOSH!"

Having failed to catch the cultivators, the giant beast didn’t crash into the ground like a comet hitting the Earth, as everyone had expected.

Instead, its body twisted sharply, its great tail lashing out like a long whip. They had all witnessed the terrifying agility of the Mudskipper Shrimp, which completely defied its bulky frame, but compared to this Three-Headed Fierce Flood Dragon, it was as clumsy as a pig.

"BANG!"

The Spiritual Boat’s Shield, which had withstood a full-force strike from the Mudskipper Shrimp’s Claw Clamp, instantly became like a piece of cracked porcelain under the blow from this tail.

Lu Qinglian and her husband, who were piloting the Spiritual Boat, were struck by the force of the blow. Feeling as if their organs were about to shatter, they coughed up a mist of blood and passed out on the spot.

Although the blow was blocked, the Spiritual Boat was sent spinning away like a batted baseball. The entire hull groaned with sounds of CREAK, CREAK, as if it couldn’t bear the immense force and would fall apart at any moment.

The people on the boat clung desperately to the masts, terrified of being thrown off.

Their helplessness was like that of mortals in a tiny boat caught in a violent storm.

"Go!"

Though his five senses were still gone, Chen Che knew the extreme danger they were in and shouted immediately.

In truth, he didn’t need to say anything; everyone present was scared out of their wits. A Fierce Beast of this caliber was something that perhaps not even the combined Golden Core cultivators of the Star-Picking Sect and the Primordial Sect could fight.

To hesitate for even a fraction of a second would be to disrespect the very meaning of the words ’Fierce Beast’.

Fortunately, several Golden Core cultivators from the Yu Family still had strength to spare. They took control of the Spiritual Boat from the unconscious Lu Qinglian and her husband. Pushing their Divine Sense to activate the Array and circulating their True Essence to the limit, they quickly righted the chaotic Spiritual Boat. Seizing the opportunity, they fled from the Three-Headed Fierce Flood Dragon’s side and, with a BANG, smashed through the watery firmament above.

*SPLASH—*

As soon as the Spiritual Boat entered the water, it was immediately caught in a whirlpool, spiraling rapidly toward the surface.

Going against the current is hard; going with it is easy.

In a single moment, they had left the Sea Ruins and escaped the deep sea trench.

"What was that Fierce Beast?"

By now, Chen Che had recovered from the loss of his five senses. He glanced back at the Sea Ruins, his heart still pounding with fear as he spoke.

"It must have the bloodline of Xiangliu... Demon Beasts that inherit Xiangliu’s bloodline are mostly flood dragons with multiple heads. That Three-Headed Fierce Flood Dragon must be one of them. But I’ve never seen, or even heard of, such a Fierce Beast before."

Leaning on her saber, Yu Yunko was also drenched in sweat. That scene had lasted only a few breaths, but in that short time, everyone present had experienced several near-death escapes.

"Did we... did we get away?"

The crowd stood at the ship’s rail, looking back with lingering fear.

The glance revealed something terrifying. The invisible ’bowl’ of the Sea Ruins seemed to have developed several holes, and the surrounding seawater was pouring in madly. The balance of the upwelling Spiritual Qi had been broken, allowing the sea to find an entry point.

This was ten thousand fathoms deep.

Once the upwelling Spiritual Qi lost its balance, it triggered a chain reaction, and the undersea ’firmament’ began to collapse wildly. The upward spiral of the water gradually slowed, replaced by a downward spiral...

At the same time, the Spiritual Boat’s ascent slowed, and it even showed signs of being dragged back into the Sea Ruins by the whirlpool.

"The Sea Ruins are finished."

Yu Yunko slowly shook her head.

Setting aside the pressure of the deep sea, the sheer weight of the pouring water was enough to inundate the ruins once more. Any Arrays that might have luckily survived would be completely obliterated in this new cataclysm.

"Mm."

Chen Che nodded.

From now on, this Undersea Palace would exist only in historical records.

SPLASH!

Just as everyone was either lamenting the second destruction of the Sea Ruins or just beginning to calm down from their near-death escape, a sudden change occurred. A colossal shadow shot out from the center of the whirlpool, and three massive Flood Dragon Heads instantly filled their vision.

’We’re done for!’

This thought couldn’t help but spring into everyone’s mind.

This Fierce Beast was an aquatic Demon Beast to begin with. In the waterless Sea Ruins, it had only been able to display sixty or seventy percent of its power. Now, in the open ocean, it could unleash one hundred and twenty percent. With this shift, the already terrifying Three-headed Flood Dragon was now almost comparable to a Nascent Soul True Monarch.

The downward-spiraling seawater slowed the Spiritual Boat.

However, it didn’t slow the Fierce Beast; on the contrary, it made it even faster. In just four or five breaths, it had caught up to them, its three massive, fang-filled maws snapping down fiercely on the Spiritual Boat’s Shield.

"CRACK! CRACK!"

The friction of its sharp teeth grinding against the Shield produced a piercing screech.

A few fangs had even pierced through. If everyone on board hadn’t pushed their Cultivation to the absolute limit to maintain the Array the instant the Three-Headed Fierce Flood Dragon appeared, the entire Spiritual Boat would have been bitten to pieces.

Though they had survived the bite, the Three-Headed Fierce Flood Dragon wasn’t finished. Its enormous body coiled around the Spiritual Boat, binding it tightly and beginning to constrict as it dragged them toward the seafloor.

The Spiritual Boat, a full three to four hundred zhang long, was like a mere toy in its grasp.

"CRACK! CRACK!"

A terrifying cracking sound followed.

The people on the ship could no longer even speak, pouring all their energy into maintaining the Array. But the Three-Headed Fierce Flood Dragon’s power was pressing down on each of them through the Grand Array.

"CRACK, CRACK!"

Worse still, Chen Che felt the creature’s constricting force transfer completely to his own body. His bones and tendons felt like they were being dislocated, on the verge of twisting and shattering.

As for the others on the boat, blood streamed from their eyes, ears, noses, and mouths, and despair was etched onto every face.

The strength of this Three-Headed Fierce Flood Dragon was far beyond their imagination. It was simply not something mortals could contend with; only a Nascent Soul True Monarch could suppress it. But the combined Cultivation of everyone on the boat didn’t even reach the Golden Core Great Perfection realm.

But just then, an even larger shadow surged out from the Sea Ruins.

"What’s that?"

Chen Che looked up to see a dark cloud of Bone-eating Fish swarming up from the seafloor, their bodies turning the water black. The Three-Headed Fierce Flood Dragon, which had been madly constricting the Spiritual Boat, noticed them at the same time, and its movements came to a distinct halt.

"Now! Go!"

Chen Che roared.

Sensing a sliver of hope, the others pushed their True Essence to the limit, and the Spiritual Boat shot out from the Fierce Flood Dragon’s coils. By the time the Three-Headed Fierce Flood Dragon reacted, the Spiritual Boat was already dozens of li away.

By then, the countless Bone-eating Fish had already swarmed over it, like an even greater Fierce Beast, completely engulfing the Three-Headed Fierce Flood Dragon.