A single sweep of his divine sense told Ye Liuyun the truth: the blue whale hadn’t been after the Dragon Girl at all—it wanted the Myriad-God Token inside her sea of consciousness.

The whale had originally been lured by the Dragon Girl’s aura, but the instant it moved to kill her it sensed an overwhelming power inside Ye Liuyun’s mind. It didn’t know the name “Myriad-God Token,” yet it recognized a treasure of terrifying might.

Unwilling to risk a direct attack, it tried to borrow a knife: let the Mer-folk and Demonic Flood Dragons wipe Ye Liuyun out. The two mighty sea clans failed; they never even caught a glimpse of the treasure.

So it ordered every sea beast to stand down—no more pointless deaths—then spread Ye Liuyun’s description through the ocean, hoping human cultivators would finish the job. That failed too.

Finally it lured Ye Liuyun into its own lair, counting on formations and lethal traps to kill him. Cornered at last, it fled into Ye Liuyun’s inner world, planning to drag him into an even deadlier array and slay him there.

It had been confident its spatial and soul strength would let it break free at any moment. The instant it entered, however, Ye Liuyun struck to kill. From that point on it could only fight with its life on the line.

Ye Liuyun rifled through its memories: the route to the lair, the location of its hoard—everything.

He even learned that the vault the Star-Old Kidnapper Gang had found really did contain treasures tempting enough to make the whale covet them—but without the key even it couldn’t enter.

Still, the whale knew the place intimately. It had hidden a trigger-formation there: the moment someone opened the vault it would sense it and rush over to seize the loot.

Only after recording every scrap did Ye Liuyun devour the whale’s soul completely.

He absorbed every wisp of soul power himself, desperate to strengthen his own spirit. Had his soul reached this level earlier, perhaps he could have saved Phantom Hand and Black Tiger.

Vespera and Xenocide stood before the whale’s corpse, raking it with claws again and again to vent their hatred, then called Lei Ming and the other demons to share the feast.

The Thieving-Cat Devil Lion popped out of the whale’s inner world and dropped several storage rings at Ye Liuyun’s feet. The whale had carried a hefty stash of cultivation resources; the cat hadn’t wasted a single one.

Ye Liuyun had the cat lead him inside—he wanted to test whether he could now break into its spatial world.

He passed through easily; with the whale dead there was no active defense. The cat had already emptied the place bare.

He didn’t linger. One successful test was enough; he had no heart for drills right now.

The women saw his mood and came to comfort him.

A little later Lei Ming and the others returned, the whale’s carcass divided among them.

“Big bro, these sea beasts are rotten—let’s wipe them all out,” Lei Ming proposed.

Every demon agreed; the beasts had first wounded the Dragon Girl, then killed Phantom Hand and Black Tiger—vengeance burned in every heart.

Ye Liuyun thought a full-scale war might be the best distraction.

“Fine,” he said, “but first we raid the whale’s lair and stockpile its resources; we train there.

Once the human experts lose our trail we’ll hunt the sea beasts. If we fight while those top cultivators are stalking us, we’ll be caught in a pincer—and that’s suicide.”

The demons accepted, scattering to cultivate and prepare.

Ye Liuyun sent his clone to lead the human experts back to the deep trench—the only route the whale had used to return home. He now knew every formation and peril along the way; the only remaining threats were roaming sea beasts.

They reached the place where the Yin ghosts had once swarmed. Ye Liuyun released both clones; the three of them abandoned spatial shields and used the crushing depth to temper their bodies.

Beyond the ghost zone, demonic serpents buried in the sand shot out, bit once, and fled.

Ye Liuyun and his clones flooded the seafloor with Buddhist radiance, cloaking the human cultivators; the serpents dared not surface.From here on, the only spots that could still pose a threat were the two Eighth-Order sea beasts the blue whale had subjugated.

One was an Eighth-Order green-armored crab whose shell turned blades and spears aside like toys.

The other was a painted conch that specialized in soul attacks.

Yet as Ye Liuyun and his two avatars pressed deeper, the pressure of the abyss kept climbing. For now his flesh could still bear it without slowing the pace.

The five Unity-Seven, Unity-Eight experts tagging along felt nothing; their cultivation and abundant true essence let them shrug off the weight with a flick of power.

After skirting several arrays they had Qiong Qi dismantle another. These formations didn’t target sea beasts, so wherever the barriers overlapped the humans had to break through themselves.

The moment the last pattern shattered, a low “woo-woo” drifted through the water. Not far off, a fist-sized painted conch lay half-buried on the seafloor, easy to miss. Its soul force was formidable; the sound seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere.

Woven into the note was a powerful illusion. The five cultivators behind Ye Liuyun instantly braced their own souls against it.

Ye Liuyun didn’t hesitate. He and both avatars released their souls and lunged straight at the conch.

On the way to the trench he had already split the blue whale’s soul three ways with his clones. According to the Book Spirit, had the whale’s full soul been intact even it would have been outmatched.

That single whale soul not only repaid the cost of the black-light technique but also raised the trio’s soul strength by a hefty margin.

The conch’s soul was no weakling—almost equal to one of theirs—but the three of them yanked it effortlessly into Ye Liuyun’s sea of consciousness.

“This trip to the Desolate Sea has fattened my soul quite nicely.”

He was more than pleased with the haul.