Villain: Manipulating the Heroines into hating the Protagonist

At dawn on the third day after the deep-sea buoys first detected the westward march of Iron-Pincer General’s legion, a thick gray mist rolled across the southern breakwaters of Abyssal Pearl City. Inside the sheltered waters of the inner bay, over forty foreign merchant convoys and twelve battered patrol ships from the eastern island sects floated at anchor, their crews nervously watching the horizon for any sign of the Grand Beast Tide that had already swallowed six human outposts.

Standing discreetly at the southern sluice gate of the outer harbor wall, Chen Ying and Liu Ruyan waited until the morning tide began to pull outward toward the southern reef chain. At a hand signal from Liu Ruyan, four trusted mute servants tipped three heavy wooden barrels over the stone parapet.

Thirty gallons of thick, iridescent purple-green liquid splashed into the outgoing current. It was the boiled, diluted dregs left over from refining five-thousand-year Purple-Gold Marrow Ginseng and Blood-Dragon Grass inside the deep-earth Alchemical Hall. To a human cultivator, the diluted waste water held no usable Spiritual Energy; yet to the lower-grade Demon Beasts roaming the outer reefs, the lingering scent of five-thousand-year herbal essence drifted across thirty leagues of seawater like an irresistible drop of sweet nectar.

It took less than six days for the bait to draw blood.

On the ninth morning of the first month, the seventy-two water beacons along the southern reef chain flashed crimson in unison. Two hours later, the calm blue waters three leagues south of Abyssal Pearl City’s main harbor boiled into white foam.

A ravenous pack of three thousand Grade 1 to Grade 4 Barbed Reef-Sharks and Iron-Jaw Barracudas—driven into a frenzy by the herbal scent trail and commanded by eight Grade 5 Saw-Tooth Manta Rays and a single Grade 6 Three-Horned Sea Wyrm—charged straight toward the southern harbor mouth!

”Beast tide! A pack of three thousand Demon Beasts has broken off from the southern front!”

Alarm bells tolled frantically across the watchtowers of the forty foreign merchant ships anchored inside the bay. Spymasters embedded aboard the supply vessels of the Myriad Ocean Palace and the Holy Nether Sea Organization immediately flew up to their mainmasts, holding recording jade slips to observe how the neutral commercial hub would survive the assault.

High atop the southern sea-wall bastion, Yue Lingshan and Lin Wanyue stood side by side beneath the flapping deep-blue banners of the City Lord’s estate.

Yue Lingshan wore her immaculate white Thousand-Year Spirit-Silk robes, her black hair pinned neatly with a jade lotus ornament as she held the master control plate of the outer breakwater formation. Beside her, Lin Wanyue wore a suit of ceremonial deep-blue spirit armor over her silk robes, projecting the stern, unyielding aura of a Peak Late-Stage Core Formation ruler defending her home. Thirty paces behind them along the battlements stood Shangguan Wan’er, Hua Yimei, Shen Mengqi, and Bing Yun, each dressed in formal sect attire and keeping their auras strictly suppressed to standard Core Formation levels.

”Sister Lingshan, the foreign spies on those eastern barges have their spiritual senses locked onto our sea wall,” Lin Wanyue said in a low, composed voice as the sixty-foot-long Grade 6 Three-Horned Sea Wyrm reared out of the surf half a league away. ”Remember Advisor Wang’s instructions: we must make this defense look like a grueling, hard-fought Core Formation struggle. Do not activate the fourth-tier spatial reflection runes—use only the third-tier water-crushing nodes.”

”I understand, City Lord Lin!” Yue Lingshan nodded earnestly, completely believing that holding back the fourth-tier runes was simply to conserve the city’s High-Grade Spirit Stone reserves for future sieges.

Raising her glowing Zenith-Lotus jade plate with both hands, Yue Lingshan channeled her Mid-Stage Core Formation True Essence into the stone parapet beneath her boots.

”Southern Breakwater Array: Rising Azure Rampart!”

HUMMMMM—SPLASH!

Twelve massive pillars of condensed azure water rose from the seabed outside the harbor mouth, linking together to form a thirty-foot-thick curtain of spinning water currents just as the three thousand Barbed Reef-Sharks and the eight Grade 5 Saw-Tooth Manta Rays slammed headfirst into the barrier!

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

The impact shook the granite blocks of the sea wall. Hundreds of Grade 2 and Grade 3 sharks had their snouts crushed against the spinning water curtain, staining the surf crimson, while the eight Grade 5 Saw-Tooth Manta Rays flapped their metallic wings and spat volleys of three-foot bone spikes that punched halfway through the azure water wall.

At the center of the wave, the sixty-foot Grade 6 Three-Horned Sea Wyrm let out a deafening hiss, coiling its scaled tail to launch a concentrated sphere of corrosive green acid straight at the central array node below Yue Lingshan’s tower!

”I will intercept the wyrm! Sister Mengqi, Sect Leader Hua—strike its flanks!” Lin Wanyue called out, leaping fifty feet off the battlements into the salty gale.

Drawing a curved sapphire spirit saber, Lin Wanyue unleashed a wave of her Crimson Sun-Marrow Flame—deliberately restraining ninety percent of the Heavenly Flame’s true might so it resembled ordinary Late-Stage Core Fire. A thirty-foot crescent of red fire collided with the sphere of green acid in mid-air, detonating into a blinding cloud of hissing steam that rained hot saltwater across the outer docks!

To the left and right of the tower, Shen Mengqi and Hua Yimei rose into the air. Shen Mengqi swung her Gale-Severing Frostblade, sending three arcs of freezing wind to slash shallow, bleeding cuts across the wyrm’s neck scales, while Hua Yimei plucked the strings of her Crimson Phoenix Zither atop the parapet, firing invisible blades of sonic force that shattered the wings of two Grade 5 Saw-Tooth Manta Rays.

For fourteen continuous days and nights, the battle at the southern harbor mouth raged in full view of every merchant captain and foreign spy in Abyssal Pearl City.

Rather than slaughtering the three thousand Demon Beasts in a single afternoon, Lin Wanyue, Shen Mengqi, Hua Yimei, and Bing Yun rotated in six-hour combat shifts alongside the municipal guard squadrons, while Yue Lingshan tirelessly operated the breakwater formations until her face grew pale and damp with sweat. They allowed the Grade 6 Three-Horned Sea Wyrm to crack three outer stone jetties and smash two empty municipal patrol boats before Lin Wanyue and Shen Mengqi finally combined their saber and sword strikes on the fourteenth afternoon to sever the wyrm’s central horn and pierce its Grade 6 Beast Core.

As the headless carcass of the sixty-foot sea wyrm sank into the blood-red surf and the surviving reef-sharks fled back toward the south, a deafening cheer erupted from the forty foreign merchant convoys inside the bay!

Aboard a disguised courier ship anchored near the eastern wharf, a spy belonging to Heavenly Tide True Monarch lowered his recording jade slip with a look of relief.

”Send this record scroll to Black-Scale Strait immediately,” the spy whispered to his subordinate. ”City Lord Lin Wanyue, Shen Mengqi, and that old woman Bing Yun have indeed reached the Late and Peak Stages of Core Formation, and their formation master Yue Lingshan is quite skilled with third-tier water arrays. However, it took their entire core leadership two full weeks of desperate fighting just to kill a single Grade 6 Three-Horned Sea Wyrm and a minor shark pack! There is not a single Nascent Soul expert stationed in Abyssal Pearl City—our suspicions were unfounded.”

High atop the scorched southern sea wall, Yue Lingshan leaned against the stone balustrade, wiping the sweat from her brow with a bright, triumphant smile as the municipal guards below began hauling the valuable Grade 5 and Grade 6 Demon Beast carcasses onto the skinning docks.

Wang Jian stepped up the stone stairs of the watchtower, dressed in his clean azure advisor robes, and draped a warm fur-lined cloak over Yue Lingshan’s shoulders.

”You held the southern gate brilliantly for two weeks, Lingshan,” Wang Jian said warmly, slipping a restorative Rank 3 spirit pill between her rosy lips. ”Even the spies on the eastern barges are applauding your formation skill.”

”Three of the outer breakwater array bases were cracked by the wyrm’s acid, Husband,” Yue Lingshan said earnestly, leaning against his solid shoulder. ”Now that the first wave is repelled, I will need to stay here at the southern sea-wall tower for the next two months with the masonry guilds to rebuild the three stone jetties and re-carve the protective runes before another pack arrives.”

”Take all the time and Spirit Stones you need from Wan’er’s treasury,” Wang Jian said, kissing her temple gently. ”While you repair the southern harbor walls, I am taking Senior Su, Senior Mu, Sister Mengqi, and the others out on the submerged survey vessel to check the deep-earth mineral seams along the western continental shelf. We will return in two or three months once the seabed stabilization is complete.”

”Safe travels, Husband! Leave the city walls to me!” Yue Lingshan waved happily from the watchtower parapet as Wang Jian descended the inner stairs—her pure heart bursting with pride that she was holding the fortress down while her husband handled the tedious deep-sea surveying work.

Three hours after midnight, three thousand fathoms beneath the dark western sea lanes, the flagship Abyssal Stealth Galleon glided westward away from the four outer islands, cloaked beneath a soundless veil of dark water-qi.

Because the main column of fifty thousand armored crabs and twelve Grade 6 to Grade 7 demon commanders under Iron-Pincer General marched slowly along the rugged ocean floor—stopping every few leagues to devour undersea mineral outcrops—it would take the beast legion another three months to cover the remaining distance to Abyssal Pearl City.

Wang Jian intended to use the next two months of that window to travel fifty miles west to the Dead-Kelp Basin and turn the sunken depression into an inescapable tomb.

While a skeleton crew of twelve mute Dao Soldiers steered the submerged dreadnought along the deep-sea trench at a leisurely cruise, the sprawling, heated pleasure cabin at the rear of the flagship became Wang Jian’s private floating palace for the entire two-month voyage.

Inside the cedar-paneled stateroom—lit by warm amber spirit-pearls and carpeted wall-to-wall with thick crimson velvet cushions—the women who had just spent two weeks acting as stern, righteous defenders on the public city walls were finally free to drop their exhausting masks.

Knowing how much Wang Jian enjoyed seeing them shedding their dignified public identities the instant Yue Lingshan was left behind, Lin Wanyue, Shen Mengqi, Shangguan Wan’er, Bing Yun, and the mother-and-daughter duo Hua Yimei and Hua Ling’er had prepared a special celebration to reward him for his strategic triumph.

Wang Jian sat across the wide central cushioned platform, his muscular torso bare and gleaming in the warm amber light, his long legs stretched out before him.

Stepping out from the side dressing alcove in a single line came all six women—and instead of silk gowns, they were wearing custom-modified versions of their own official sect and municipal uniforms that had been cut into shameless, erotic parodies!

Leading the line was City Lord Lin Wanyue. She still wore her tall sapphire City Lord crown and her high-collared, gold-embroidered deep-blue shoulder cape; yet everything beneath her collarbone had been scissored away so that her colossal, heavy white breasts hung completely bare and unsupported, swaying heavily with every step, while her lower body was clad only in a pair of sheer blue silk stockings and an official municipal sash tied in a bow directly over her plump, bare backside, leaving her soaking wet core completely exposed in front.

Behind her walked Shen Mengqi and Bing Yun. Shen Mengqi wore the snowy white outer robe of a Silver Gale Sect Elder—except the front panels had been replaced with transparent black spider-gauze, and she wore a tight silver leather harness around her chest and waist that squeezed her full, porcelain breasts together until her stiff pink nipples jutted out through two silver rings. Beside her, the silver-haired High Elder Bing Yun wore her formal Ice Heart Palace ceremonial collar attached to nothing but two vertical strips of sheer white satin that barely covered the tips of her massive breasts before parting at her navel to expose her wide, pale hips and glistening lower lips.

And bringing up the rear were Shangguan Wan’er alongside the mother-and-daughter pair Hua Yimei and Hua Ling’er.

Hua Yimei and Hua Ling’er wore matching crimson Fragrance Melody Sect performance veils across their lower faces and sheer red silk harem vests that ended three inches above their stiff, gold-pierced nipples—pushing their four massive, oil-rubbed breasts upward like four gleaming ivory melons while their low-slung, slit dancing skirts left their wide, juicy hips and round buttocks completely bare whenever they swayed their waists!

”Master,” Lin Wanyue spoke first, sinking to her knees between Wang Jian’s spread feet and lifting his right boot to kiss his ankle before pressing the sole of his bare foot flat against the warm, sweaty valley between her huge breasts. ”For fourteen days on that freezing sea wall, I had to stand beside Lingshan in heavy armor, barking righteous orders at a Grade 6 worm while my womb was throbbing for your rod! Every time Lingshan praised my ’noble composure,’ my stockings got wetter... Please, Master, strip away this City Lord’s dignity tonight!”

”Sister Wanyue wasn’t the only one suffering on that wall,” Shen Mengqi breathed huskily, crawling onto the platform on Wang Jian’s right side and pressing her harness-bound, porcelain breasts against his muscular ribs while her slender hand reached down to grasp the base of his thick, rock-hard shaft. ”When those foreign spies down on the barges looked up at me and called me the ’untouchable Sword Fairy Shen,’ all I could think about was how you bent me over the flood-dragon altar in front of Ye Fan! Master, my Nine-Turn Profound Yin Scripture is aching—let me show you how your Sword Fairy begs when the doors are locked!”

”Wait your turn, Mengqi!” Hua Ling’er giggled through her sheer crimson face-veil, scrambling onto the cushions on Wang Jian’s left side right alongside her mother Hua Yimei.

Without waiting for permission, the mother-and-daughter duo pressed their four massive, oil-slicked breasts against Wang Jian’s left arm and thigh. Hua Yimei reached down and pulled her daughter’s sheer red veil aside so both of their glossy red mouths could descend upon Wang Jian’s pulsing manhood together!

”Mmmph...” Hua Yimei moaned deeply around the swollen purple crown of his shaft, taking the top four inches into her hot, wet mouth while her daughter Hua Ling’er turned her head sideways to lick furiously up and down the thick, heavily veined underside, her pierced nipples rubbing against her mother’s bare forearm.

After sucking hard until a string of glistening saliva connected her lips to the tip of his rod, Hua Yimei pulled back half an inch, looking up at Wang Jian with dark, lust-hazy eyes while her hand guided Hua Ling’er’s mouth down onto the wet shaft.

”Look at my good daughter, Master,” Hua Yimei purred shamelessly, her fingers tangling in Hua Ling’er’s long black hair to push the young woman’s head deeper down Wang Jian’s lap until the tip hit the back of Hua Ling’er’s throat with a wet gluck. ”On the city wall today, Ling’er stood behind Lingshan acting like a shy, obedient little sister—and now she’s gagging on her husband’s giant rod right in front of her own mother! Come on, Ling’er, open your throat wider like Mother taught you, or Sister Mengqi is going to steal Master’s first load!”

”Guh—mmph!” Hua Ling’er’s eyes watered with blissful tears as she swallowed around the thick head, her curvy, bare backside wiggling in the air while her hands reached back to spread her own wet cheeks toward Wang Jian’s reach.

Wang Jian let out a low, rumbling groan, the aggressive Yang fire of his Initial Stage Nascent Soul Realm surging through his veins at the sight of the six revered women debasing themselves in their modified uniforms.

He reached out with his left hand and slapped Hua Ling’er’s plump, upturned backside hard enough to make the flesh ripple, then slid two thick fingers straight into the daughter’s soaking wet core—feeling her inner walls clamp down tightly around his knuckles while her mouth worked on his shaft!

At the same time, Wang Jian’s right hand grabbed Shen Mengqi by the front cross-strap of her silver leather chest harness, yanking the former Sword Fairy across his chest so he could capture her mouth in a brutal, tongue-invading kiss while his fingers roughly pinched and twisted her ring-framed nipple.

”Enough warming up,” Wang Jian growled after ten minutes of the mother-and-daughter duo’s relentless oral service.

He lifted Hua Ling’er’s head off his glistening, rock-hard shaft by her hair and looked down at Hua Yimei and Hua Ling’er.

”Since the two of you spent two weeks standing in the back row on the sea wall,” Wang Jian commanded, his dark eyes gleaming with predatory heat, ”get on your backs in the center of the cushions, side by side, and hook your legs together. I’m going to take the Sect Leader and her daughter at the same time before I move on to the City Lord and the Sword Fairy.”

”Yes, Master! Thank you, Master!” Hua Yimei and Hua Ling’er cried out in ecstatic unison.

Scrambling onto the center of the velvet platform, mother and daughter lay flat on their backs with their hips pressed flush against each other. Hua Yimei threw her left leg over Hua Ling’er’s right thigh, locking their lower bodies together so that their two soaking wet, pink cores lay less than three inches apart beneath a shared canopy of four massive, heaving, gold-pierced breasts!

Wang Jian knelt before the joined pair. Grabbing Hua Yimei’s wide, mature hip with his left hand and Hua Ling’er’s curvy thigh with his right, he lined his thick, scorching manhood up with Hua Yimei’s dripping entrance first and slammed his hips forward to the hilt in a single, savage stroke!

”AAAAAH! MASTER!” Hua Yimei screamed, her neck arching back against the velvet pillows as Wang Jian’s Nascent-Soul-empowered shaft stretched her velvety inner passage wide open, hitting the mouth of her womb with crushing physical momentum.

Wang Jian hammered into the mature Sect Leader for fifteen brutal, rapid-fire strokes—slap, slap, slap, slap—making her huge breasts bounce so violently that the gold rings in her nipples chimed against her collarbones. Then, without slowing his pace for even half a breath, Wang Jian pulled his glistening rod out of the mother’s spasming hole, shifted his hips three inches to the right, and plunged straight to the base inside her daughter Hua Ling’er’s tight, scorching passage!

”EEEYAAAH! IT’S SO BIG, MOTHER!” Hua Ling’er wailed in mind-melting pleasure, throwing both arms around her mother’s neck and burying her flushed face against Hua Yimei’s sweaty cheek as Wang Jian pounded her down into the cushions with relentless, piston-like force.

”Squeeze him with your lower abdomen, Ling’er!” Hua Yimei gasped, wrapping one arm around her daughter’s waist while her other hand reached down between their joined hips to rub her own swollen clitoris against the side of Wang Jian’s wet scrotum every time he slammed into her daughter. ”Don’t let your pelvis go limp—show Master how the women of the Fragrance Melody Sect serve him!”

Around the writhing mother-and-daughter duo, Lin Wanyue, Shen Mengqi, Shangguan Wan’er, and Bing Yun crowded in with feverish hunger.

City Lord Lin Wanyue knelt behind Wang Jian’s back, wrapping her arms around his broad shoulders and pressing her colossal, bare breasts against his shoulder blades while her hot tongue licked the sweat from his neck. On the left and right, Shen Mengqi and Elder Bing Yun leaned over the bodies of Hua Yimei and Hua Ling’er—kissing the mother and daughter on the lips and fondling their bouncing, pierced breasts while positioning their own wide, curvy hips right beside Wang Jian’s knees, begging to be impaled next.

For the entire sixty-day voyage and patrol loop through the deep western trenches, the rear pleasure cabin of the Abyssal Stealth Galleon never grew cold.

Wang Jian rotated aggressively through all six women day after day—bending City Lord Lin Wanyue and Commercial Queen Shangguan Wan’er over the navigation chart table in their torn uniforms, folding the silver-haired High Elder Bing Yun and Sword Fairy Shen Mengqi together upon the velvet furs until their Peak Core Formation Yin essences flooded the cabin like freezing mist, and finishing his nights buried balls-deep inside Hua Yimei and Hua Ling’er until his surging Nascent Soul vitality was thoroughly honed and every woman’s foundation was polished to a mirror sheen.

At the start of thefourth month, fifty miles due west of Abyssal Pearl City’s outer reefs, the three Abyssal Stealth Galleons descended four thousand feet into a lightless, bowl-shaped depression on the ocean floor known as the Dead-Kelp Basin.

The basin measured three leagues across, surrounded on three sides by steep, jagged cliffs of black volcanic basalt that rose eight hundred feet above the silt floor. Only a single, four-hundred-yard-wide canyon mouth on the western rim provided a flat entrance along the seabed. Across the floor of the basin grew dense, petrified forests of black Thousand-Year Iron-Kelp—ancient sea-plants whose calcified stalks were as hard as refined steel, swaying sluggishly in the freezing bottom currents and creating a natural labyrinth that muffled spiritual scans.

Leaving Lin Wanyue, Shangguan Wan’er, Hua Yimei, Hua Ling’er, and Bing Yun aboard the cloaked command ships perched high atop the northern cliff rim, Wang Jian stepped out into the four-thousand-foot water alongside his two Early-Stage Nascent Soul Grandmasters, Su Binglan and Mu Lianhua, as well as Shen Mengqi.

For the next thirty days, the four of them worked in silent, methodical unison to turn the Dead-Kelp Basin into a high-tier Nascent Soul killing ground.

Because Yue Lingshan had remained back at Abyssal Pearl City’s harbor tower, Wang Jian personally executed the heavy array engineering using the insights he had gained from his Celestial-Tide Abacus and his Nascent Soul mastery.

Walking across the black silt floor at the four-hundred-yard western entrance and along the base of the three surrounding basalt cliffs, Wang Jian summoned forty-eight six-foot-long Profound Iron Array Anchors from his Storage Ring. Each heavy spike had been pre-inscribed in the volcanic forge with dual spatial-locking and acoustic-severing formation lines.

Rather than using a noisy hammer that might send vibrations through the seabed toward the approaching crab legion twenty leagues away, Wang Jian utilized the vast, silent gravitational pressure of his Stellar Demonic Qi.

Positioning eight Profound Iron Array Anchors at a time above the deep-earth fault intersections along the basin rim, Wang Jian pressed his bare right palm downward.

HUMMMMM—THUD.

Wrapped in a silent sheath of black-gold starlight, the six-foot iron spikes sank five feet deep into the solid basalt bedrock as smoothly as hot needles piercing cold butter.

Once all forty-eight anchors were embedded in a three-league ring around the basin, Shen Mengqi and Su Binglan swam along the perimeter holding spools of thumb-thick chain forged from Abyssal Star-Iron. Working step by step over two weeks, the two frost-aligned beauties threaded the heavy spatial-metal chains through the eye-rings of the forty-eight anchors, burying the chains beneath six inches of black silt and weaving frost-inversion runes at every thirty-yard interval so that once activated, the basin floor would turn into an inescapable skating rink of absolute-zero ice.

At the same time, Mu Lianhua swam to the twelve dormant hydrothermal vents scattered across the center of the petrified Iron-Kelp forest. Using a cold-jade boring rod, she widened the twelve volcanic vents down into the lower magma crust and planted twelve sealed Crimson-Fire Compression Beads inside the stone throats—ready to erupt into pillars of Azure Sky Heart Phoenix Flame the instant the spatial cage closed.

On the twenty-eighth day of the fourth month, with the forty-eight Profound Iron Array Anchors and the twelve fire vents fully linked, Wang Jian stood at the exact center of the Dead-Kelp Basin and placed the final piece of the trap: the bait.

He reached into his Storage Ring and withdrew a three-foot-tall hollow cylinder carved from porous white Spirit-Breathing Coral. Inside the cylinder sat fifty gallons of raw, unrefined liquid earth-marrow drawn directly from the dual Fourth-Grade Spiritual Veins beneath his islands, mixed with three drops of his own Verdant Eternal Spring Essence.

Wang Jian wedged the coral cylinder between two boulders at the rear eastern wall of the basin and pulled out the upper wax plug by half an inch.

A thin, concentrated thread of milky-white Fourth-Grade Spiritual Vein essence—laced with the intoxicating, primordial wood-life fragrance of the Verdant Eternal Spring Essence—began leaking out of the cylinder, carried straight westward through the four-hundred-yard canyon mouth by the natural bottom current.

”To an Early Grade 8 Armored Crab Demon King who feeds on earth-minerals and primordial vitality to harden his shell,” Wang Jian transmitted calmly to Su Binglan and Mu Lianhua as the three of them rose toward the overhanging basalt ledges above the basin floor, ”this scent is ten times richer than the diluted aura leaking from Abyssal Pearl City fifty miles away. He won’t waste his strength marching to the city walls when he thinks an unguarded Fourth-Grade vein spring has ruptured right here in this basin.”

Twelve days into the fifth month, the freezing bottom water ten leagues west of the Dead-Kelp Basin began to tremble with a heavy, rhythmic vibration—like fifty thousand iron hammers striking an anvil in unison.

CLACK-THUD! CLACK-THUD! CLACK-THUD!

A rolling wall of black silt, three hundred feet high and two miles wide, advanced steadily across the abyssal plain.

Marching through the murk at the front of the dust cloud was a terrifying tide of fifty thousand Grade 1 to Grade 5 Deep-Sea Armored Crabs and Spiked Spider-Crabs. Their overlapping shells of dark-iron and bronze chitin gleamed dully in the dark water as their scissor-like claws sheared through stray boulders and coral reefs alike, leaving a flattened, barren highway of crushed stone in their wake.

Flanking the main crab host swam twelve monstrous Grade 6 and Grade 7 Demon Beast commanders: four eighty-foot Grade 6 Three-Horned Sea Wyrms, five Grade 6 Saw-Backed Devil Rays, and three ferocious Grade 7 Iron-Shell Mantis Shrimp—each fifty feet long, with folded raptorial forelimbs capable of punching straight through the hull of a human dreadnought in a single strike.

And striding at the absolute center of the three Grade 7 commanders was the sovereign of the western vanguard: Iron-Pincer General.

Having refined his body through the Early Grade 8 transformation, Iron-Pincer General walked upright on two tree-trunk-thick legs encased in natural, interlocking plates of dark-gold carapace that shone like burnished immortal gold. He stood ten feet tall and six feet wide across the shoulders, his chest covered in a natural breastplate of three-inch-thick golden shell etched with innate earth-and-water defensive patterns. His face was rough and angular like carved granite, with dark-gold plates framing his jaw, two short bronze antennae sweeping the current from his brow, and eyes that burned like molten brass.

Resting across his massive armored shoulders were his twin life-bound weapons—a pair of eight-thousand-catty crescent Deep-Gold Pincer-Halberds forged from his own shed Grade 8 molting claws.

Suddenly, two leagues west of the Dead-Kelp Basin entrance, Iron-Pincer General halted his stride.

His heavy golden boot sank six inches into the seabed rock as he raised his armored chin, his two bronze antennae quivering rapidly in the dark current.

”Halt the march!” Iron-Pincer General’s voice boomed through the water like two boulders grinding together.

Behind him, the fifty thousand armored crabs froze in place with military precision, and the biggest of the three Grade 7 Iron-Shell Mantis Shrimp swam forward, clicking its mandibles respectfully.

”General?” the Grade 7 Mantis Shrimp transmitted through a spiritual pulse. ”The human port of Abyssal Pearl City lies another fifteen leagues to the east. Why have we stopped?”

Iron-Pincer General inhaled a long stream of seawater through the armored gill-slits along his neck, filtering the faint, milky-white current drifting out from the canyon mouth two leagues ahead. His molten-brass eyes widened with greedy delight.

”The human port fifty miles east is shielded behind shallow reef barriers, and the vein scent coming from that direction is thin and scattered,” Iron-Pincer General rumbled, pointing the blade of his right eight-thousand-catty pincer-halberd straight toward the dark entrance of the Dead-Kelp Basin. ”Smell the current coming out of that sunken valley! That is uncorrupted, liquid Fourth-Grade Spiritual Vein marrow—and mixed inside it is a trace of ten-thousand-year primordial wood-life essence!”

The three Grade 7 Iron-Shell Mantis Shrimp tasted the current, their compound eyes flashing crimson with instant bloodlust. ”It’s true, General! A subterranean earth-vein pocket must have cracked open inside the Dead-Kelp Basin during the recent earthquakes! If you swallow that pool of primordial vein-marrow, your dark-gold carapace will shed its fourth layer and push you straight toward the Mid Stage of Grade 8!”

”And why haven’t the humans from Abyssal Pearl City claimed it?” one of the Grade 6 Three-Horned Sea Wyrms hissed cautiously, scanning the dark basalt cliffs of the basin in the distance. ”Could there be a human patrol hiding inside the petrified kelp?”

Iron-Pincer General let out a booming, contemptuous laugh that sent shockwaves rippling through the silt.

”A human patrol?” the ten-foot Demon King sneered, hefting both of his eight-thousand-catty pincer-halberds effortlessly. ”Two weeks ago, my scouts watched the entire Core Formation leadership of Abyssal Pearl City spend fourteen days struggling at their harbor wall just to kill a single stray Grade 6 wyrm! Heavenly Tide True Monarch and Blood-Bone True Monarch have all their Nascent Soul forces tied down in the east at Black-Scale Strait. In this barren western sea, This General’s Grade 8 golden carapace is invincible! Even if a few human Core Formation scouts are mining that vein pocket, we will crush their bones into paste and swallow both the vein and their city before the full moon!”

”Forward march! Enter the basin and secure the vein spring for the General!”

CLACK-THUD! CLACK-THUD! CLACK-THUD!

Driven by greed for the primordial life-essence drifting on the current, the fifty thousand armored crabs surged forward at double speed.

Like a dark-gold avalanche pouring through a funnel, the vanguard column streamed straight through the four-hundred-yard western canyon mouth into the three-league bowl of the Dead-Kelp Basin. The twelve Grade 6 and Grade 7 commanders fanned out through the petrified black Iron-Kelp forest, while Iron-Pincer General strode heavily down the central aisle, his eyes locked onto the glowing white mist rising from the Spirit-Breathing Coral cylinder wedged against the rear eastern cliff wall.

Within a quarter of an hour, the last of the fifty thousand crabs and all twelve demon commanders had crossed the western canyon threshold into the basin floor.

Iron-Pincer General reached the center of the petrified kelp forest, forty rods away from the leaking coral cylinder. Only then did his keen Grade 8 instincts notice that the glowing white essence wasn’t rising from a natural fissure in the floor—it was leaking from a carved coral vessel!

His bronze antennae stiffened. ”Wait—!”

Eight hundred feet above the floor, perched upon the northern basalt cliff rim, a tall silhouette in black, gold-trimmed robes stepped out to the edge of the precipice.

Wang Jian looked down into the dark bowl packed with fifty thousand Demon Beasts and raised his right hand, clenching his fingers into a fist.

”Lock the cage.”

CLANG—HUMMMMMMM!

Around the entire three-league perimeter of the Dead-Kelp Basin, the forty-eight buried Profound Iron Array Anchors and the twelve Abyssal Star-Iron chains ignited simultaneously!

Forty-eight pillars of blinding silver-black spatial light shot eight hundred feet straight up from the silt floor to the top of the surrounding cliffs, linking overhead to form an unbroken, six-layered hexagonal dome that sealed the four-hundred-yard western canyon mouth tighter than a welded iron vault. All sound, water movement, and spiritual fluctuations inside the Dead-Kelp Basin were instantly severed from the outside ocean!

At the same heartbeat, to the left and right of Wang Jian’s cliff spire, the dark water of the basin erupted with two vast, suffocating Nascent Soul domains!

On the northern flank, Su Binglan descended like a goddess of eternal winter, her translucent glacial-silk robes billowing as a three-hundred-yard lotus of silver-white Grand Yin Ice Flame bloomed beneath her feet—instantly freezing the outer twenty thousand armored crabs and four Grade 6 Three-Horned Sea Wyrms into solid blocks of blue abyssal ice!

On the southern flank, Mu Lianhua struck her palm downward. The twelve Crimson-Fire Compression Beads buried inside the volcanic floor vents detonated in unison, sending twelve roaring pillars of blue Azure Sky Heart Phoenix Flame shooting up from beneath the bellies of the beast host, turning the water in the southern half of the basin into a superheated cauldron that boiled thousands of lower-grade crabs red inside their own shells!

And at the eastern cliff face directly ahead of Iron-Pincer General, Wang Jian stepped off the basalt precipice, descending silently through the dark water until he hovered thirty feet in front of the stunned Grade 8 Demon King.

Wang Jian gripped the hilt of his saber Blood’s Thirst in his right hand, drawing the dark crimson blade from its scabbard with a clear, ringing chime as the vast, tyrannical pressure of his Initial Stage Nascent Soul Realm—backed by the revolving dark stars of his Stellar Demonic Nascent Infant—slammed straight down onto Iron-Pincer General’s armored shoulders!

”Three... three human Nascent Soul Grandmasters?!” Iron-Pincer General gasped, his molten-brass eyes widening in disbelief as he braced both eight-thousand-catty pincer-halberds in front of his golden chest plate, feeling the crushing spatial gravity of Wang Jian’s aura locking onto his heart.

Wang Jian raised the dark edge of Blood’s Thirst, his calm, starlit eyes looking at the ten-foot armored giant not as a terrifying overlord of the deep, but as a walking mountain of top-grade forging materials.

”Binglan, Lianhua, Mengqi—slaughter the twelve commanders and clear the floor,” Wang Jian said, his voice echoing coldly through the sealed basin. ”The Grade 8 shell and the core in his chest belong to me.”