Ye Qin was the first among the outer perimeter to detect the anomaly, as the attack occurred within such close proximity without any prior warning. He feared the squad's Golden Core cultivators would suffer a disastrous ambush.
The Golden Core cultivators, spotting the fierce glare of the water blade bearing down on them, were instantly aghast, their faces changing color as they hastily manipulated their magical artifacts to defend.
Bang. Bang. Bang.
The water blade that had been aimed at Ye Qin tore through the water, instantly forging a ten-foot-long water dragon, and continued its relentless slash towards him, now barely ten feet away. An overwhelmingly violent killing intent chilled the soul.
Ye Qin inwardly gasped at the ferocity of the attack launched by this sea beast.
He had no time to utilize the Sea Shell Spirit Pearl to conjure more water dragons to intercept the blade light; he couldn't even manage to control the Yellow Heaven Thick Dust Sword hovering by his side.
He stomped his foot violently, transforming into a faint shadow, and rapidly sidestepped the incredibly sharp blade light, while simultaneously controlling and urging the Yellow Heaven Thick Dust Sword to cleave fiercely toward the water blade.
However, maneuvering in this underwater domain was far less agile and unimpeded than on land.
Ye Qin’s evasion speed was a fraction slower than anticipated, slower even than the water blade itself. He had only managed to evade by half a zhang before the blade struck, slamming hard against the blue protective shield at his flank.
Struck by the blade's ferocious power, Ye Qin’s water-attribute protective shield emitted a harsh, grating screech. Its blue light rapidly dimmed, appearing on the verge of shattering. Following this, he was hurled by the nearly irresistible force, crashing into a nearby coral formation.
The water blade pursued relentlessly.
Ye Qin finally managed to free a hand and hastily brought the Yellow Heaven Thick Dust Sword up to block.
Clang!
The water blade slammed into the highly defensive earth-attribute Wu Shen artifact, failing to inflict any damage on Ye Qin before finally dissipating.
Ye Qin finally regained his composure and released his spiritual power, stabilizing the water-attribute shield that had been on the brink of collapse.
He dared not relax in the slightest. His eyes were covered with a thin layer of spiritual light as he activated the Spirit Eye Technique, sweeping across the surrounding hundred zhang of the seabed, while his powerful divine sense simultaneously scanned the area; nothing was found.
A profound, unbelievable sense of dread surfaced in Ye Qin's heart.
This was the most perilous situation he had encountered in the decades since he embarked on the path of cultivation and adventured through various experiences.
Neither the Spirit Eye Technique nor his divine sense could pinpoint the enemy's location.
He didn't even know what kind of deep-sea beast was attacking him.
The only certainty was that the deep-sea beast manifested a ripple-like sign just an instant before an attack. But the sign appeared too late; once it appeared, the brutal assault was already within a few zhang, making timely reaction extremely difficult.
Soon, another ripple appeared about ten zhang ahead.
A chill shot through Ye Qin. Without thinking, he flung his hand, and the Yellow Heaven Thick Dust Sword shot out, slashing towards the location of the ripple.
But the strike cut through empty air. The unseen sea beast had already shifted its position and launched a supremely domineering water blade assault toward Ye Qin.
Ye Qin’s heart sank.
From the impact he had just endured, he discerned that it should be a water-attribute spell attack released by a water-attribute sea beast at the early stage of the Golden Core realm. If he could confront it head-on, he could certainly eliminate it.
But he could not locate where it was hiding. He possessed the means, yet could not deploy them in the slightest.
Forced into this corner, Ye Qin had no option but to focus entirely on evasion, continuously summoning water dragons with the Sea Shell Spirit Pearl to block the water blade while keeping the Yellow Heaven Thick Dust Sword close to guard his sides just in case.
With the earth-attribute Wu Shen flying sword protecting him, Ye Qin was comparatively slightly at ease. The other four Golden Core cultivators in the squad were faring much worse than him.
The big fellow, Jin, had no time to dig for those Blood Deer Horn Corals, having been targeted by the water blade.
"What kind of sea beast is this?!"
He roared anxiously, summoning his Fire Gourd, a top-tier artifact.
The Fire Gourd shook violently above his head and spat out a large cluster of crimson flames that transformed into numerous Fire Feather Eagles, swooping toward the empty areas of the surrounding sea. These Fire Feather Eagles were extinguished within a hundred zhang of travel through the water, the surrounding seawater boiling violently under the intense heat. As for whether they struck the invisible, shadowy sea beast, he had no idea.
The flames released by the Fire Gourd artifact were constrained by the aquatic environment and could not exert sufficient lethality.
Jin the Fatty, abandoning restraint, pulled out a stack of over ten colorful, high-grade talismans from his storage pouch and madly flung them out. "Damn it! To think that the price of one five-hundred-year Blood Coral isn't worth this stack of high-grade talismans!" This caused Jin the Fatty immense pain.
Massive Ice Arrows and Crimson Arc Wind Blades churned the surrounding waters into chaos.
He spared no expense throwing out over ten high-grade talismans toward his surroundings, but the effect was minimal. All the chaotic attacks struck empty air, failing to harm the sea beast. The only benefit of this frenzy of random attacks was that the sea beast could no longer approach him easily to launch an assault.
"Could it be a Deep Sea Wraith? Other cultivators died in this coral forest, this abyssal gloom, over time becoming Wraiths. Only Wraiths would be formless, silent, invisible, and untraceable, and powerful Wraiths can evade divine sense probing."
After his barrage of attacks, Jin Zhongshan’s face was pale, still unable to find what was attacking him. A chill ran down his spine as he considered a terrifying possibility, gripping the bulging large storage pouch at his waist tightly.
"Impossible! How can a Wraith release water-attribute magic like the Water Blade Slash? We must find a way to expose their forms and slay them, or we won't last long!" Zhou Yao, not far away, couldn't help but shout. With a wave of her sleeves, five top-tier flying sword artifacts spun rapidly around her, preventing the sea beast from closing in.
"But there is absolutely no way to find their location or attack them!" Jin Zhongshan cried out anxiously, backing away with the Fire Gourd in his grasp, darting frantically through the coral forest. A sea beast materialized and vanished unpredictably in the water around him, constantly attacking, preventing him from stopping.
"How can we find their location?"
Liao Xiao's complexion was flushed as her soft lips parted slightly, asking the other Golden Core cultivators.
She stood motionlessly in the seawater at this moment, the Primordial Chaos Silk swaying casually around her, emitting no aura that differentiated her from the surrounding seabed coral and sand.
The cultivators of the Guangyu Palace mastered many strange magical techniques.
The Deadwood Art was one of them, allowing one to evade the detection of demonic beasts in emergencies by making them mistake the user for an ordinary piece of deadwood. However, the utility of this technique was severely limited; transformed into a piece of deadwood, she could only temporarily evade the beast's attack, not fight back.
Perhaps the most wretched was Pan Shuang, a Golden Core cultivator from the Huaning Palace. Since the moment those sea beasts appeared, he had been desperately fleeing. He lacked the financial means like Jin the Fatty to squander talismans, lacked the powerful Grand Five Elements Sword Array Zhou Yao possessed, and lacked Liao Xiao's strange self-preservation arts. His only recourse was to run and avoid being targeted by the sea beasts.
Zhou Yao was speechless.
She had already deployed the Grand Five Elements Sword Array, attempting to attack the sea beasts. Her array possessed extremely potent destructive power, but without being able to locate the forms of the sea beasts, even the strongest attack was useless.
The Grand Five Elements Sword Array now served only a defensive function, a mass of five-colored sword light enveloping and protecting her, making her the most secure and least burdened cultivator in the squad.
This outcome made Zhou Yao feel deeply frustrated.
However, Zhou Yao felt somewhat relieved seeing that the other Golden Core cultivators—Jin Zhongshan, Pan Shuang, and others—were far more harassed than she was. At least this proved that her own capabilities were formidable.
Ye Qin, controlling the Sea Shell Spirit Pearl artifact and the Yellow Heaven Thick Dust Sword Wu Shen artifact while leaning against a giant coral, possessed sufficient means for self-protection, but like Zhou Yao, he could only stare helplessly at the invisible sea beasts, unable to initiate an attack.
Jin Zhongshan was rapidly rummaging through his large storage pouch, trying to find a method among dozens of various artifacts that could counter the formless sea beasts.
Suddenly, Jin Zhongshan spotted a low-grade artifact in his pouch, and a flash of inspiration struck him. He roared with laughter, "Behold my Heaven's Net! I want to see where you can hide!"
He slapped his storage pouch violently, and a massive, dozens of zhang wide Heaven's Net, shimmering with blue light, was cast out, covering a hundred zhang radius of the surrounding sea. Now, the formless sea beast furiously attacking him could not escape.
Indeed, a water ripple immediately appeared within the giant net.
The formless sea beast was trapped inside the net, struggling wildly.
Jin Zhongshan captured a formless sea beast with the Heaven's Net and shouted excitedly.
Even Ye Qin and Zhou Yao were invigorated upon seeing this, feeling that there was hope of slaying the formless beasts.
But before the Golden Core cultivators could rejoice, they heard a crack as the Heaven's Net artifact was torn open by a large hole courtesy of an incomparably sharp and dazzling blade light.
A low-grade artifact could not withstand a single strike from the formless sea beast.
That water ripple zipped out of the Heaven's Net and vanished into the sea.
Jin the Fatty’s expression changed instantly. He was immediately struck again by the water blade released by that formless sea beast, screaming repeatedly as he frantically fled, all the while rummaging through his storage pouch for an artifact to deal with the pursuing beast.
Ye Qin observed coldly for a long time, leaning against the side of a giant coral tree, using the Sea Shell Spirit Pearl to summon water dragons to guard him, while rapidly considering countermeasures in his mind.
Simply holding a defensive line was unsustainable.
Their spiritual power would be exhausted by the few ferocious, formless sea beasts before long, and the entire squad of five Golden Core cultivators might perish here.
They had to attack proactively.
Relying only on the Sea Shell Spirit Pearl and the Yellow Heaven Thick Dust Sword wouldn't suffice; the Golden Core Skeleton Demon needed to be deployed. The Golden Core Skeleton Demon was a spectral entity—a ghost. Ghosts possessed a different kind of awareness; they could sense the vital energy of living beings. Even if the formless sea beasts could conceal their forms, surely they couldn't completely conceal their life force, could they?
Ye Qin thought to himself.
He wasn't certain if the Golden Core Skeleton Demon could handle the formless sea beasts, but it was certainly worth a try.
With this thought, he immediately tossed out a spirit beast pouch and released the Golden Core Skeleton Demon.
The Golden Core Skeleton Demon shook its head and tail, appearing under Ye Qin's divine sense control. It sniffed the surrounding sea, then suddenly its black eyes flashed. It opened its large mouth and spewed a stream of arrow-like corpse fluid toward the left side of Ye Qin.
Splatter!
A mass of black corpse fluid, intensely pungent and corrosive, dyed the water in the surrounding dozens of zhang into a pool of thick ink.
The corrosive power of the Golden Core Skeleton Demon's corpse fluid was terrifyingly potent.
Instantly, a harsh, piercing shriek rang out, and a sea beast, already reduced to a faint gray shadow by the corpse fluid, lunged furiously toward Ye Qin from within the blackened area. (To be continued)