Chapter 94: Like a Phoenix, Like an Eagle (5000 words)

After a while, amidst the falling rain, Xu Qing’s figure appeared on the beach, braving the curtain of rain.

He walked past the skeletons buried in the sand that had been washed clean by the rain, gazing out at the sea from the shore.

The sea within the rain curtain surged with wind and waves, as if hiding infinite danger.

Xu Qing thought of the boat from the Departing Path Sect, which was no longer visible.

He knew that no Foundation Establishment cultivator would dare to land on this island, nor would they dare linger in the nearby waters, but Xu Qing felt that if there truly were a Foundation Establishment cultivator with malicious intent, the greatest possibility was that they were lying in wait further out.

Waiting for Qi Condensation cultivators returning fully loaded from Sea Lizard Island to hunt them and seize their lizard skins, or perhaps waiting for the return of their own dispatched personnel.

Xu Qing was not certain if the Sea Ghost organization and the Departing Path Sect people who arrived this time had Foundation Establishment cultivators following them, but if they did, they had likely already received the information by now; after all, he could not have blocked all news during the chaotic battle just now.

Therefore, after pondering, Xu Qing did not leave immediately, but sat cross-legged to meditate in silence, regulating his cultivation base and recovering his strength.

Until he had recovered more than half, he opened his eyes in the rain and looked toward the distant sea, a thick cold glint in his eyes.

"If there truly is a Foundation Establishment..." After weighing it in his heart, Xu Qing suppressed his killing intent.

He was not sure how many Foundation Establishment cultivators the other side had, so he did not want to continue a bloody battle unless absolutely necessary.

After thinking it over, Xu Qing walked to the seaside and took out his magic boat. With a wave of his right hand, the boat emitted a clicking sound; while its exterior remained the same, a very small flying boat detached from underneath.

This flying boat had been set up by Zhang San inside, intended for escape in case of a crisis after the main magic boat collapsed.

It was not a standard sect magic boat, its internal structure was different, and it could not be compared in terms of defense or attack, but under Zhang San’s refinement, it was heavily reinforced for speed, capable of bursting into a speed more than double that of the original magic boat for a certain period when pushed to the limit.

It was just that using it for long-term sea travel was very dangerous.

Xu Qing stared for a moment, his eyes showing decisiveness. He removed the control jade slip of the magic boat to make adjustments, and after ensuring the boat could sail on its own, he set its return route, activated all its defenses, and watched it sail away.

Watching the departing magic boat, Xu Qing suppressed his heartache, turned around, and stepped into the flying boat to the side.

Standing on the flying boat, the moment he prepared to leave Sea Lizard Island, Xu Qing looked back at the island.

The island in the rain curtain was dim, and the vegetation within it made sounds in the blowing wind and rain, like whispers, as if discussing this blood-stained battle.

The rainy night wind rose, the mountains moved, and the people were still.

Xu Qing looked at all of this, and after a long while, he lowered his head and bowed deeply toward the island.

"Disturbing you, Senior."

After speaking, he turned around and, without any hesitation, steered the flying boat to sink beneath the sea.

The moment the flying boat submerged into the sea, Xu Qing restrained all his aura, and a Dragon Whale arrived to shroud him.

Subsequently, amidst the night rain outside, Xu Qing rode the boat under the sea, speeding forward.

This was the method Xu Qing could think of: two boats, one visible and one hidden, moving away from different directions to maximize the avoidance of potential Foundation Establishment tracking.

And at this moment, as he moved away, this island, relatively silent in the rain, suddenly shook and slowly sank... the seawater churned, instantly washing away the bloodstains that the rain could not quickly clear.

Until a moment later, when the island surfaced again, not a single trace of blood remained on it, and the collapsed trees and shattered rocks were eerily restored to their original state.

Only in the deep seabed beneath the island did a pair of huge eyes slowly open, indifferently gazing at the departing flying boat, for a long time... before closing again.

Half an hour later.

Inside the flying boat, which was moving at an astonishing speed under the sea, Xu Qing, who was sitting there regulating his cultivation, suddenly opened his eyes, took out the control jade slip for the magic boat, and narrowed his eyes.

The jade slip had shattered.

This meant that the magic boat, which was sailing on its own in the direction he had come from, had collapsed.

"There really is a Foundation Establishment."

"Then, should I dive deeper and stay hidden, waiting for the Foundation Establishment cultivator to search in vain and leave, or should I accelerate and escape at this time?"

Xu Qing pondered and chose the latter.

He did not want to stay here and wait for death; after all, the dangers under the sea were equally terrifying, and if the other party did not leave for a long time, he would become extremely passive.

He did not want to place his life on the option of when the other party would leave.

Thus, while steering the flying boat to increase speed, he also restrained his own aura to a greater degree.

Fortunately, with the seawater as a barrier, his aura would naturally be masked significantly, and coupled with the fact that Xu Qing did not fear the strange substances, he could dive deeper, allowing his aura to be blocked to a greater extent.

The only thing to consider was whether the flying boat itself could withstand it.

But Xu Qing knew this was not the time to ponder that question. Under his control, his flying boat moved rapidly along the seabed. Before long, Xu Qing’s pupils shrank.

He felt a sense of crisis coming from the direction of the sea surface, as if it were probing and searching.

Xu Qing silently sank a bit more and continued forward.

But that sense of crisis remained, and the flying boat was now struggling to withstand the pressure and the erosion of strange substances under the sea. Seeing that it would be unusable if he continued, Xu Qing frowned and simply put away the flying boat, immersing himself within the body of the Forbidden Sea Dragon Whale to continue forward.

Just like that, time passed, and a night went by.

The sense of crisis from the sea gradually diminished, but a few wisps still remained, as if they had used some method to lock onto Xu Qing.

This made Xu Qing not dare to be the slightest bit careless. Gritting his teeth, he was about to rush deeper into the seabed to avoid the lock.

And just at this moment, Xu Qing’s mind suddenly shook. An indescribable pressure suddenly descended from the sky, shrouding the vast sea in all directions.

Xu Qing could not see the situation on the sea surface from underwater, but he could strongly feel the terror of this pressure.

This was not something a Foundation Establishment cultivator could form; it was more like some colossal entity releasing its aura in the sky. At the same time this pressure appeared, those auras that seemed to have locked onto him also fell into chaos in an instant, as if fleeing in panic.

Xu Qing was startled and took this opportunity to accelerate. After rushing a long distance and no longer feeling the aura lock, he hesitated for a moment before continuing to move forward under the sea.

But he knew he could not keep this up for long. The dangers under the sea might not have appeared just now, but long-term deep-sea travel was bound to be even more dangerous.

So, after a while, having confirmed multiple times that there was no sense of danger from the sea, Xu Qing cautiously ascended. The moment a small part of his head broke the surface, he quickly looked around, but the next instant, his entire attention was drawn by a scene in the sky.

The sky at this moment should have been early morning, but it had turned pitch black.

The reason for the sky being pitch black was a massive black cloud.

The range of this black cloud was too vast, spanning hundreds of miles, blotting out the sun.

The sea area where Xu Qing was located was currently shrouded in its shadow.

The sounds of wind and thunder rumbled continuously from within this black cloud, and streaks of lightning roamed inside, earth-shaking, as if it were a heavenly tribulation.

Wherever it passed, the sea stirred up storms, as if bowing to this existence in the sky!

If it were just that, it would be one thing, but what horrified Xu Qing was that within this moving black cloud, there was an unimaginable existence. A part of its body was exposed, seemingly possessing a suppression of life levels that caused all of Xu Qing’s flesh and blood to stiffen, his soul to roar, and his mind to go blank.

Only his eyes could move, allowing him to see the blurry shape of that terrifying existence in the black cloud.

It was a huge creature, burning with black flames all over its body, resembling both a phoenix and an eagle!

Phoenix head, snake neck, swallow chin, tortoise back, fish tail!

Within the black flames, the color of its actual body was five-colored and dazzling to the extreme, as if even the black flames could not obscure it in the slightest. It soared in the black clouds of the sky, filled with a sense of divinity.

Even faintly, it actually had some similarity in spirit to the God’s Remnant Face.

Clearly, it was its appearance that forced those unknown cultivators with malicious intent toward Xu Qing to give up their pursuit at this moment and flee in succession.

At this moment, the heavens and earth roared. As the black cloud sped away, it slowly moved away from the sky, revealing the bright sky behind the clouds. Xu Qing’s body also gradually recovered, and he instinctively took a breath.

But the instant that breath entered his mouth, within the black cloud in the distant sky, that terrifying existence suddenly turned its head and glanced at the distant sea surface.

With this glance, a large area of the sea tens of miles away from Xu Qing instantly surged, waves towered, storms were whipped up, and the strange substances suddenly became concentrated, as if drawn and gathered together.

Even though Xu Qing was far away and could not see clearly, his body still swayed with the waves, and his mind roared.

And that phoenix-eagle soon withdrew its gaze, hid in the black clouds, and amidst rolling thunder, disappeared into the distant horizon.

A long time later, when the waves of the sea calmed down, Xu Qing finally let out a long breath. His face was pale, and he looked at the distant sky and earth, his mind in turmoil.

The feeling this divine bird gave him was unprecedented before this sea voyage; even the giant pulling the bronze dragon chariot in the deep seabed, in Xu Qing’s perception, did not seem to be as powerful as this divine bird.

"What is it? The direction it flew in is Nanhuangzhou..." Xu Qing muttered, suddenly realizing a point.

"The 'Huang' in Nanhuangzhou..."

Within Seven Blood Eyes, Xu Qing had read many classics and files at the Homicide Department. He thought of the name Seven Blood Eyes had for the forbidden zone on the other side of the Truth Mountain Range, which was vast and occupied seventy percent of the entire Nanhuangzhou region.

"The largest forbidden zone in Nanhuangzhou, the Huang Forbidden Zone..."

Xu Qing’s heart was shaken, and he had a faint guess. A moment later, he took a deep breath, suppressed this guess, and prepared to ask and look up information to confirm it after returning.

With this thought, Xu Qing sank back under the sea. After speeding for several hours and noticing no pursuit, he returned to the sea surface, took out the flying boat, leaped onto it, and steered it to accelerate and escape.

Soon, three days passed. Xu Qing was extremely careful along the way, probing many times, and finally confirmed that the aura locking onto him had truly disappeared, only then letting out a long sigh of relief.

He guessed in his heart that it must have been the appearance of the Huang that invisibly gave him some help, causing those malicious cultivators to be unable to clearly probe him and lose his trail.

But Xu Qing did not dare to let his guard down. Although he no longer sank into the sea, his speed remained extremely fast, not sparing even the consumption of spirit stones.

And during these three days, his injuries finally healed by more than half, his face was no longer pale, and the fatigue brought by the slaughter had dissipated.

Recalling the previous slaughter, even with his impressive cultivation and combat power, he had felt a fatigue he hadn't experienced in a long time that day. Fortunately, the gains this time were astonishing, which made Xu Qing’s expression reveal satisfaction.

His harvest, besides those three divine lizard skins, included over a dozen lizard skins from the eighth and ninth levels of Qi Condensation; as for lower-tier lizard skins, there were even more.

Besides that, there were several heavy treasures and other items.

He even obtained three talisman treasures; although the writing on them was blurry and they could not be used many times, their value was still not small.

As for spirit stones... Xu Qing calculated that there were about four thousand or so.

Rogue cultivators were mostly poor. The reason Xu Qing harvested so much was that he had killed everyone on the island and taken them from the corpses; the main contributor to the value was the Sea Ghost organization.

As for the Departing Path Sect, Xu Qing had checked their pockets, and for some reason, they all seemed very poor, which made Xu Qing feel a bit regretful.

However, once he thought of his gains this time, Xu Qing did not care about the poverty of the Departing Path Sect.

"Excluding the divine lizard skins, I have a harvest of nearly twenty thousand spirit stones." Xu Qing sat on the deck, finished counting the spoils, and steered the flying boat to cut through the waves toward the direction of Seven Blood Eyes.

The improvement in his cultivation and the gains from this sea voyage allowed Xu Qing not to care about the consumption of spirit stones for the flying boat on this return journey.

And the many days of sea travel also made Xu Qing’s awe of this sea even deeper.

Now that his pockets were full, he only had one thought, and that was to return as soon as possible.

Therefore, with the support of a large number of spirit stones, his flying boat operated to its limit, its speed more than double what it was when he came. According to Xu Qing’s judgment, he could return to the sect in at most three more days.

And for the rest of the journey, because he was approaching the coastal waters of Nanhuangzhou, Xu Qing did not encounter any major danger. Until he was half a day’s sea journey away from returning to the Seven Blood Eyes port, he saw a boat from the same sect.

It was a warship, speeding toward him.

Although this warship appeared to belong to the Maritime Defense Division of the Seventh Peak, Xu Qing was still on guard in his heart. The snake-necked dragon roamed beneath the sea, ready to fight at any moment, while he also noticed that there were five Dragon Whales beneath the Maritime Defense Division warship.

Among them, one head looked a bit different; it appeared to be a dragon-whale, but in reality, it resembled a great white shark.

This made Xu Qing’s heart tighten, and he became increasingly vigilant.

Not long after, as the waves on the sea surface rolled, that warship gradually drew near, clearly reflecting into Xu Qing’s eyes.

The massive hull was carved with magic arrays radiating terrifying fluctuations, and around the ship’s body were over eighty magic spikes that seemed capable of unleashing astonishing power; as for the deck, over thirty disciples of the Seventh Peak could be seen.

All of this gave this warship formidable combat strength.

"Seventh Peak of Seven Blood Eyes, Sea Defense Division on duty. Vessel ahead, state your identity." A majestic voice, as they drew closer, emanated from within the Sea Defense Division warship.

"Seventh Peak, Arresting Division, Xu Qing." Xu Qing looked at the Sea Defense Division warship and spoke calmly.

The thirty-plus cultivators on the Sea Defense Division warship were clearly clustered around one person; the one they surrounded was a young man. A gray Daoist robe fluttered in the wind on him, his gaze was like lightning, carrying intense pressure, and the fluctuations of his Qi Condensation Great Perfection cultivation base were quite extraordinary.

At this moment, he looked at Xu Qing inside the flying boat, and a sharp glint flashed through his eyes.

"Xu Qing?" After Xu Qing reported his name, a familiar voice came from behind those thirty-plus people on the Sea Defense Division warship, and soon a person walked out from behind the crowd; it was none other than Zhou Qingpeng.

His expression carried pleasant surprise, and after greeting Xu Qing, he turned and respectfully whispered a few words to that young man at Qi Condensation Great Perfection.

The young man nodded expressionlessly.

Zhou Qingpeng cupped his fists, leaped up from the warship with joy, landed on Xu Qing’s flying boat, and laughed.

"Xu Qing, I didn't expect us to meet on the sea. Are you returning from a voyage?"

"I've been out for some time, preparing to return to the sect." Xu Qing looked at the young man on the Sea Defense Division warship.

"That is my boss, Ding Xiaohai of the Sea Defense Division." Zhou Qingpeng spoke with great pride, then swept a glance at Xu Qing’s flying boat.

"What happened to you to make your boat look so shabby... Originally, the Sea Defense Division has the right to inspect all vessels, but we'll let yours slide." Zhou Qingpeng smiled, exchanged a few more pleasantries with Xu Qing, and amidst Xu Qing’s congratulations, he cupped his fists, preparing to return.

Before leaving, he seemed to remember something and spoke to Xu Qing in a low voice.

"By the way, Xu Qing, don't go out to sea for a while after you return. Our Sea Defense Division received a notice that the seabed has been somewhat unsettled recently. I heard from my boss that it seems some terrifying existences have appeared for unknown reasons."

When Zhou Qingpeng said this, his expression carried lingering fear; he said no more, turned, flickered, and returned to the warship.

"Terrifying existences?" Xu Qing’s eyes narrowed, his expression solemn, and he cupped his fists to thank Zhou Qingpeng, who had returned to the warship.

Soon, the Sea Defense Division warship emitted a low hum, turned, and gradually drifted away.

And as Xu Qing watched them go, on the Sea Defense Division warship, the Qi Condensation Great Perfection Ding Xiaohai tilted his head to look at Xu Qing’s flying boat in the distance, then looked at the plesiosaur looming in the sea beneath the flying boat, and spoke indifferently to the reporting Zhou Qingpeng beside him.

"Zhou Qingpeng, this peer of yours is not simple."

Zhou Qingpeng was stunned and said in a low voice.

"Senior Brother Ding, during the previous Night Owl operation of the Arresting Division, it was rumored that one person, not holding the rank of captain, killed the enemy chieftain..."

"It is this person." Ding Xiaohai’s eyes held some deep meaning.

Hearing this, Zhou Qingpeng’s expression couldn't help but drift, and he turned to look at Xu Qing’s flying boat in the distance.

Faintly, he could see the young man’s figure on the flying boat, standing there, wind and waves rising and falling, yet unable to shake him in the slightest.

Large portions and filling~~