In the Sea Eye, darkness reigned, like a massive swirling vortex. The deeper one went, the denser the demonic energy became.
After descending ten thousand zhang, Zhang Ling reached the area Xuan Gui had scouted. Two luminous moonstones floated in the water, emitting a cool, ethereal glow that illuminated a radius of several dozen zhang.
Suddenly, the sound of rushing water echoed in his ears. From the darkness on his left, a gaping maw emerged, its countless sharp fangs lunging towards Zhang Ling.
Zhang Ling remained still. Xuan Gui raised a hand, and a beam of blue light shot out, piercing through the mass of fangs. The gaping maw convulsed, spitting out a stream of bubbles before falling still.
Upon closer inspection, the maw was a massive two zhang wide, adorned with two black, lifeless eyes, and trailed by a five- or six-zhang-long brown body. The creature resembled a catfish.
Zhang Ling glanced at it and, with Xuan Gui, began searching the vicinity. He couldn't even be bothered to collect the corpse of the large fish. It was merely a third-order demonic beast, without a demonic core formed within its body, rendering it virtually worthless to him.
Divine sense was somewhat impaired in the water, and the surroundings were shrouded in a dense fog of demonic energy. Fortunately, both he and Xuan Gui possessed Yuan Ying-level strength, making it not too difficult to search for fifth- or sixth-order demonic beasts.
Before long, they encountered a group of massive swordfish covered in blackish-purple scales, numbering as many as a hundred.
Zhang Ling charged straight through, as two of them were high-order demonic beasts, precisely his target.
Xuan Gui's form flickered, instantly transforming into his true form, a giant tortoise over thirty zhang in size. He emitted a dragon-like roar from his mouth, instantly unleashing a dense barrage of ice spikes that surged forward.
During this period, Xuan Gui had undergone some changes after refining the essence blood of the Xuanming Turtle. Two black-blue dragon horns had steadily grown on his head. Although they had not yet fully taken the shape of true dragon horns, they were still two bumps, but the head already looked like a Jiaolong's head.
The most significant change was his originally somewhat short and thick tail, which had transformed into a scarlet serpent, exuding a peculiar bloody aura. Speaking of the tail's transformation, Zhang Ling had also studied it extensively. The Xuanming Turtle's essence blood gathered on it was the most potent and the most difficult to refine.
Currently, the snake tail was still incomplete, existing in a strange state between physical and ethereal. The snakehead also remained blurry, its eyes perpetually closed.
Zhang Ling had a feeling that once the Xuanming Turtle's essence blood was completely refined, the snake tail would solidify, and it seemed that it would also incubate some special divine abilities.
By then, Xuan Gui's strength would surely increase greatly, transforming into a true turtle-snake spirit beast.
Countless ice spikes pierced through the water, and within a short span of two or three breaths, the swordfish demonic beasts before them had been decimated. Two massive swordfish were pierced through by two dark black ice spikes, frozen into two black ice sculptures.
Immediately afterward, the Blue Sparrow beside him chirped excitedly, quickly arriving beside the two black ice blocks. The feather that had absorbed the two demonic cores earlier was released again.
With two muffled thuds, it pierced directly through the black ice, extracting two demonic cores swirling with black energy, and began to absorb the demonic energy contained within.
Standing beside, Zhang Ling mused to himself that although the Blue Sparrow appeared to be only a wisp of its original spirit, it seemed to have recovered quite a bit after more than three years of recuperation. It could even instantly break through the ice formed by the Ice Soul Poison.
Clearly, this fellow still retained some of its strength.
At this moment, the remaining low-order demonic beasts scattered and fled, showing no intention of fighting.
Now that Xuan Gui had revealed his true form, exuding the aura of a transformed demon beast, these low-order demonic beasts naturally would not dare to contend.
Zhang Ling had specifically instructed his second Yuan Shen to only release a trace of the transformed demon beast's aura, lest he scare away the demonic beasts from other areas.
Demonic beasts, like demon beasts, instinctively sought advantages and avoided disadvantages when faced with high-order strength. Unlike the desolate beasts in the Flowing Cloud Sea, which were eroded by turbid Qi, they knew not to avoid danger.
It was said that demonic beasts could also transform when their strength reached a certain level, but it seemed that it was not like ordinary demon beasts that could transform at the eighth order; there were still many differences.
Zhang Ling did not know much about this aspect, having only read about it in some ancient books. Their human realm was still dominated by the spiritual Qi of heaven and earth, and areas covered by demonic Qi like this were rare.
He knew that apart from the territories controlled by the Alien Demons, there seemed to be no other places like this.
While Zhang Ling was lost in thought, Xuan Gui's true form opened its mouth and inhaled, and the black ice on the two high-order demonic beasts instantly disintegrated, transforming back into two balls of black ice mist that were swallowed into its belly.
Zhang Ling also collected the corpses of the two swordfish. Although they no longer had demonic cores, they were, after all, high-order demonic beasts, and their materials still had some value.
Before long, the Blue Sparrow had also absorbed the demonic energy from the two demonic cores. Zhang Ling instructed the Sparrow Feather and Xuan Gui, and they separated to hunt demonic beasts.
One hundred high-order demonic beasts' demonic cores were not a small number, and he and Xuan Gui had the strength to hunt them alone, so hunting separately was naturally the best decision at the moment.
Of course, Zhang Ling did not separate too far from Xuan Gui, as the sudden appearance of a large amount of demonic energy in this sea was obviously unusual. He maintained a certain degree of vigilance at all times.
…
While Zhang Ling was hunting demonic beasts in the sea, the storm layer in this area was gradually weakening, and the clouds in the sky were also thinning.
Beyond the storm layer, there was a stretch of relatively calm, azure sea. At this time, three large ships sailed from a hundred miles away.
Each of the large ships was thirty to forty zhang high and sixty to seventy zhang long, extremely large. They were also engraved with many array patterns and patterns, and many figures could be seen gathered on the deck.
The direction of the three large ships was precisely the area where the storm was located. Before long, they approached the outermost edge of the storm layer. Following this, six cultivators flew out from the large ships, each with considerable strength, and they were all Yuan Ying cultivators.
Moreover, the auras on each of them were somewhat strange. Some possessed the aura of blood and evil, others exuded a strong Yin Demon aura. There was also one whose face was covered with purple spiritual patterns, shrouded in a layer of spiritual light, appearing somewhat mysterious.
These people, it seemed, were all practicing demonic cultivation methods.
If Zhang Ling were here, he would have noticed that these people were all Alien Demons from the Northern Plains cultivation world.
