Ye Liuyun looked at the sheer number of fighters he’d lost and couldn’t help feeling a stab of regret—this battle had been a terrible bargain.

Meanwhile the blue whale, seeing that every last Black-Shark expert was dead, cruised excitedly around the battlefield, keening in triumph, as though to make sure none of the sharks slipped away.

Ye Liuyun had no time to deal with it for the moment, but he’d already made up his mind: if the sharks’ territory didn’t hold enough loot to cover his losses, he would roast the creature on the spot and hand the meat out to his people.

When the fighting ended, no one under his personal protection—human or clone—had been killed, though several were wounded. He gave each injured fighter a drop of Life Spring Water, including the twenty-two mercenary experts, to speed their recovery.

Only five of those experts had died—those whose techniques were too one-note. The rest were merely hurt.

“Five gone, just like that...” Ye Liuyun sighed. “Even top fighters don’t count for much in this Wild Sea world.”

After settling the wounded, he set the survivors to stripping the shark corpses for cores and valuables. The surface still bobbed with belly-up black sharks.

Half his Ancient Demon guards were dead. Half his magical beasts were dead. Every last alien hybrid had fallen. Every ordinary mercenary was gone. Five of the women were injured; Tang Xinyao’s team had five wounded as well; and five of the elite experts were corpses.

He thanked his luck he’d captured extra muscle beforehand; without them he’d have had to roll out the firepower chariots.

Ye Liuyun had Longnv ask the whale where the resources were.

Still circling and trilling, the whale heard the call, swung around, and led them onward.

“It says the sharks’ lair has the goods,” Longnv relayed. “And it wants a cut.”

Ye Liuyun almost spat blood. “Sea beasts are this shameless now? We lost people; if the haul isn’t enough I’ll barbecue it on the spot!”

Longnv only smiled, recognizing temper-talk, and followed the whale. She didn’t know the details either; they’d have to see for themselves.

She knew the losses had been heavy; if the treasure didn’t measure up, the expedition would end deep in the red.

Ye Liuyun stowed everyone else in his inner world to heal, keeping only his two clones with him.

They hadn’t gone far when the whale began to dive. Ye Liuyun and the clones followed Longnv down, descending until even he felt the weight of the abyss. At last they touched a sandy seabed. The depths were pitch-black, but his golden pupils caught a vast spread of primal energy, multicolored crystals, and sea-beast cores.

The whale gave another low triumphant call and circled the trove, obediently waiting for its share instead of lunging forward.

Ye Liuyun scanned the pile: plenty of stuff, but not enough to cover his losses; some of the primal energy had already been half-drained. With a wave he swept the top layer of crystals and energy into his spatial ring.

To his surprise, another layer lay underneath—he’d only taken the surface.

“Oh? There’s more?” Interest piqued, he kept collecting.

Layer after layer came up; the energy was so dense his golden eyes couldn’t see through it. He simply harvested and checked again.

After a long stretch he realized the layout was funnel-shaped, narrowing as it descended. By his reckoning the total hoard rivaled the treasuries of two or three major trading houses.

“Now we’re talking,” he muttered, finally satisfied.

That satisfaction flipped to delight when the next stratum turned out to be liquefied crystal marrow and primal essence of far higher purity—an entire grade above ordinary loot.

“Ha! This is a real payoff!” He couldn’t help laughing aloud.

Alas, after only a few more layers he hit bottom: a bowl-shaped basin with curved, sloping sides.

Still, the haul was enormous, and Ye Liuyun was more than content.“Wuuu!”

Seeing that all the resources were gone, the blue whale beside them grew agitated.

“Haha, tell the big guy to chill—I’ll sort everything out and give him his share.”

Ye Liuyun had Longnu pass the message to the whale so it wouldn’t get the wrong idea.

Then he scouted the surrounding abyss, collecting a haul of deep-sea herbs unique to these depths, before the three of them—whale, dragon-girl, and human—rose to the surface.

Longnu explained: the whale needed only primal essence, sea-beast cores, and water-attribute crystals; everything else was useless to it.

Ye Liuyun agreed at once. The women in his spatial realm had already sorted the loot: spent primal essence, half-drained cores, and used water crystals were all separated into a Interspatial Ring and handed to the whale.

The pile was big enough to carpet a floor. Though the energy had been tapped once, the sheer volume made up for it. The whale wasn’t picky. It sang its thanks, gulped the lot in one swallow, and slammed the sea with its tail, booming like thunder.

“It says that’s enough to push it up a whole realm,” Longnu translated.

“Keep hunting. Whatever we find, he gets his cut.”

Ye Liuyun gave the promise on the spot.

When Longnu relayed it, the whale immediately set off in one direction, swimming faster than before.

“Between what that thieving cat stole and what we just scavenged from the Desolate Sea, I’ve got enough to push me—and everyone with me—to the fifth or sixth level of Unity,” Ye Liuyun calculated silently.

He and his two avatars rotated back to the spatial realm to refill their yuan stones and restore their profound energy, readying for the next fight.

His golden pupils spotted a few scattered black sharks fleeing in the distance, but he let them go; exterminating the whole race wasn’t his goal.

Before they’d even left the sharks’ territory, both Longnu and the whale heard the shrieks of a merfolk pod.

“They’re probing the shark clan—sensed we wiped them out and want to loot what’s left,” Longnu said.

Mermaid voices carry underwater; Ye Liuyun hadn’t caught a sound.

“So the merfolk are neighbors to the sharks? And this whale is leading us straight into their turf?” he asked.

Longnu got instant confirmation from the whale.