“Kill!”

Ye Liuyun was the first to move. A single slash—long-range, lightning-fast—cut the fastest merman clean in half.

For an instant he’d pinned the ten Unity-Four mermen in place with spatial force, just long enough for the blade to land.

Everyone else’s ranged volleys followed, shredding the front rank.

But the moment a corpse hit the current the next wave of mermen swarmed, stripping bones bare in a blink.

The barrage thundered again—Ye Liuyun’s whole crew firing as one—yet before the school was wiped out Long Nu warned him: two separate shark packs were homing in, lured by the blood-cloud.

“These things can smell a drop a mile away. We just got here!”

Ye Liuyun cursed under his breath; if they kept this up the fight would never end.

“Qiong Qi, take the blue whale and cruise ahead—wait for us far off. Everyone else, pull back. Let the sharks thin the mermen for us.”

The whale slid away at once. One pack did notice the retreating mountain of blubber, but a full-grown blue whale was more trouble than lunch; they veered toward the battlefield instead, where the blood was thickest and the bite-sized mermen easier prey.

First the tiger-sharks plunged in, then the blacktips—thirty or forty apiece. Four sides, no uniforms: anything that wasn’t your own species was fair game.

After that no more sea-beasts dared approach; the violence and reek were loud warnings to weaker tribes.

Ye Liuyun stopped swinging his sword and started cherry-picking dead tiger- or black-shark carcasses; Long Nu had warned that merman flesh was foul and toxic, not worth bagging.

The rest of the team drifted rearward, killing only mermen, ignoring the sharks. Every shark they left standing would be skeletonized by the little piranha-like horrors within minutes.

“Time to go,” Long Nu said, voice tight. “This much blood in the water will pull something big—something even I might not sense in time.”

“Then we’re gone.”

Ye Liuyun waved the squad after the blue whale without a second thought.

They hadn’t yet caught up when a fresh shock-wave slammed the current behind them.

He spun, golden pupils flaring: a midnight sea-serpent and a ghost-white shark were tearing each other apart in the crimson cloud—Unity Seven or Eight at least.

The ripples still slapped their legs though they’d already put kilometers behind them.

Everyone paused to gawk.

“Move!” Long Nu snapped. “This isn’t far enough.”

Ye Liuyun herded them into a sprint.

The instant they overtook the whale Long Nu hissed, “The serpent’s coming—straight for us!”

“What, all those sharks and mermen weren’t enough?”

Ye Liuyun groaned, picturing the monster finishing off the great white, hoovering the leftovers, and still hunting dessert.The Dragon Princess told Ye Liuyun, “It lost the fight, so it risked everything to chase the blue whale. The white shark won—everything on the battlefield now belongs to it.”

Ye Liuyun pictured the black sea-serpent’s colossal body and asked, “Can your bloodline pressure hold it down?”

“Its realm is too high,” the princess answered. “Even if I can suppress it, its strength would still be on par with mine.”

“No problem—Zhan Kong and Wu Ying will back you up!”

The moment he finished, Ye Liuyun ordered Zhan Kong and Wu Ying to intercept the black serpent.

He and his avatar also slashed from afar, forcing the snake to slow.

The instant its speed dropped, the Dragon Princess unleashed her bloodline might. At the same time, Nine-Head Demon Dragon and Lei Ming pressed down from the sky with their own ancestral pressures.

The serpent felt the princess’s aura strongest—and most terrifying—so it shot to the surface, planning to take out Lei Ming and the Demon Dragon first.

But the second its head breached, Zhan Kong and Wu Ying’s strikes caught it off guard; both blows smashed dead-center into its skull.

The massive head whipped side to side. Under the princess’s pressure its realm plummeted to Second-Step Unity—now lower than hers.

Yet its titanic body still held the advantage. Though cracks webbed its head from the twin assault, it wasn’t dying; shrieking, it lunged at Zhan Kong and Wu Ying again.

The piercing screech carried a sonic blast that left Ye Liuyun’s people and beasts ringing-eared.

Afraid more screams would injure the others, Lei Ming and the Demon Dragon held nothing back: twin white beams lanced out, boring two gaping holes through the serpent’s skull.

Simultaneously, Lei Ming released a true-yuan clone—this one even larger—that sprang forward, jaws wide. One bite clamped the serpent’s head, a few savage shakes and a rake of claws tore the whole thing off.

The clone immediately grew translucent and was recalled.

Ye Liuyun swooped in, whisking the headless carcass into his spatial world. The severed head he left floating; he waved the group onward.

Soon the white shark that had contested the serpent earlier arrived, scooping up the free head in a single gulp.

Already gorged, it hesitated, judged the humans too risky, and drifted away.

Ye Liuyun’s party had finally escaped the sea-beast melee.

From a safe distance they watched smaller tribes investigate the battlefield, sparking fresh scraps.

“Scent of beasts, blood, battle-ripples, roars—all travel far in the sea; some reach ten thousand li.

Sea-beast territories dwarf those of land beasts.”

The Dragon Princess lectured them on oceanic rules so they would know what to expect.