Thunder and the Nine-Headed Demon Dragon saw the ice-cold look on Ye Liuyun’s face, felt the murderous aura rolling off him, and knew he was about to start a massacre. They hurriedly answered, not daring to waste another word.

The blue whale, catching sight of that long string of demon-jiao heads, was also given a fright. Then it saw the Nine-Headed Demon Dragon rise into the air, the severed heads streaming like grisly pennants in the wind, and seemed to grasp that Ye Liuyun was marching straight on the jiao stronghold; it immediately followed.

In truth, it had stayed put only because it had seen the dragon girl wounded and caught the reek of jiao blood—yet in the next instant both the girl and the jiao had vanished. It couldn’t puzzle out what had happened.

Worried about the dragon girl’s injuries, it had waited on the chance she might reappear.

But once it saw Ye Liuyun heading for the jiao lair, it reasoned that staying with him was the surest way to find her, so it set off again.

Swift as it was in the water, it could not match the demon dragon’s flight; in moments the dragon left it far behind.

The journey proved uneventful: those fifty jiao heads were warning enough—no sea beast dared attack.

Every creature could see this was an open declaration of war on the jiao clan, and none wanted any part of it.

Sea beasts kept their distance, but human cultivators, intrigued by the bizarre spectacle, drifted closer. Sensing Ye Liuyun’s and the dragon’s cultivations, a few began to entertain ideas.

A cultivator at the seventh level of Unity blocked Ye Liuyun’s path. “Kid, hand over your tamed beast and those jiao carcasses—”

Before he could finish, a white beam lanced from Ye Liuyun’s fingertip and punched through his heart.

“Swallow him.” Ye Liuyun’s order was flat cold.

Free food? The Nine-Headed Demon Dragon wasn’t about to decline; it swooped, snapped, and gulped the man down.

“You two are supposed to be ferocious beasts—where’s your ferocity? From now on, whoever bars our way dies. Don’t ask me, and spare me their rubbish.” Ye Liuyun lectured Thunder and the dragon.

“Grrr—”

The dragon gave a low answering growl. Thunder merely stuck out her tongue; she knew Ye Liuyun’s temper was a live coal—touch it and you burned.

Henceforth, whenever anyone approached to stop them, she and the dragon vied to blast the intruder with white light.

Sometimes they didn’t even let the poor fool finish a sentence. Anyone who intercepted them meant to bully the “low-level” party and rob them, after all.

The dragon never slackened pace and soon crossed into jiao territory.

“Ao—” A lone jiao rose from the sea the instant they entered. Seeing the string of its kinsmen’s heads, it went berserk, lunging claws-first at the grisly banner.

“Roar!”

The Nine-Headed Demon Dragon dipped its heads, hit it with a soul-shaking roar, then speared a white beam that cored a fist-sized hole through the jiao’s skull.

Ye Liuyun leapt from the dragon’s back, flickered through space to the wounded jiao, and lopped off its head in one clean stroke. The body went into his spatial world; the head he tossed to Thunder to string onto the tendon rope.

Next he released both clones, Black Tiger, and the three Xuanwu turtles, ordering full battle readiness.

The three Xuanwu vanished into stealth; Thunder and Black Tiger shifted to human shape. Only the Nine-Headed Demon Dragon kept its true form, towing the necklace of heads through the sky.

Three fire-carts Ye Liuyun submerged in the surrounding sea, ready to mow down jiao in numbers.

“I need a few alive first—exact territory limits and the location of their nest.”

He spoke up before any more jiao could be killed outright. Without the blue whale to guide them, they would have to find the lair themselves.

Suddenly a clone’s golden pupils caught several dark shapes knifing through the deep water.

The jiao were moving too fast beneath the surface; the fire-cart crews hadn’t even identified the blurs before the pack burst clean through their encirclement.He was ready the instant the first demon flood-dragons broke the surface. Time froze; he struck, yanking every one of their souls straight into his sea of consciousness and rifling through them one by one—territory, head-count, lair coordinates, even what treasures lay stacked inside the nest. He mapped it all.

And he learned exactly why they had set their sights on Long-Nü. That sealed their fate—he wouldn’t spare a single scale.

The souls were devoured on the spot; controlling the corpses never crossed his mind. The bodies were simply flung into his spatial world.

Inside, the women knew the slaughter had begun the moment the first flood-dragon carcasses rained down. Long-Nü, already healed, wanted out—to learn why the dragons had ambushed her.

She sent a silent plea to Ye Liuyun: “Let me out. I need to see what’s happening.”

“What’s to see? Wipe them out and be done.”

He found her hesitation maddening. She’d been half-killed, almost hauled off—yet still wanted answers. He had no breath to waste on explanations; underwater the flood-dragons were lightning, and he needed every shred of focus.

He severed the mental link, locked the spatial world; she couldn’t even step outside.

A pack of colossal tiger-sharks cruised in. Without a word he ordered the fire-chariot batteries to pulp them.

“Anything that swims into range—blow it apart. No exceptions.”

The order rang in every gunner’s mind; no one would pause to ask whether a fin belonged to a flood-dragon.

Then he pointed the fire-chariot and the nine-headed demon dragon straight toward the flood-dragons’ nest.

The gunners obeyed on sight—sea-beast shadows meant instant salvo. Several flood-dragons died before they knew they’d been spotted. The barrage drove the rest to the surface, where Ye Liuyun and his avatar took turns freezing time, reaping souls and sweeping corpses into storage. Flood-dragon, shark, or passing leviathan—nothing was spared.

The scent of blood tore the entire clan from the depths. More than flood-dragons answered; vassal breeds that owed them fealty came racing to the fight. The fire-chariot answered with indisc at every silhouette.

To Lei Ming, watching from inside, Ye Liuyun looked as if he’d gone berserk.