In the depths of the endlessly profound abyss, the silence that should have reigned was shattered by a sudden anomaly. In the territory ruled by the Deep Sea Devil Whale Queen, the "Demon Empress," the water pressure was like a crushing burden of thousands of pounds; ordinary life forms would be mercilessly crushed just by approaching. However, right at this moment...
Boom—
A pillar of light pierced the heavens, shocking the sea domain.
At this exact moment, the celestial phenomena abruptly changed. The calm sea surface instantly saw wind and clouds shift in color. The originally clear sky seemed as if it were being wantonly smeared by an invisible giant hand, as inky-black tribulation clouds surged and gathered from the horizon. They churned and boiled like a dark tide of anger, layer upon layer, rapidly obscuring the firmament until it was airtight. Sunlight was completely swallowed, and day instantly plunged into night. The oppressive atmosphere pressed down heavily upon all creation as if it had physical substance.
At this moment, everything around was trembling slightly. Any life form near this sea area or living within it fled in panic without looking back.
Rumble—
Thunder roared, and the entire sky turned gloomy. At this moment, bolts of lightning crisscrossed in the air. Escaping now was already too late. A massive pressure descended from the heavens, forcing countless sea creatures to prostrate within the ocean.
Meanwhile, in another part of the sea.
A seemingly young man standing before a statue—namely, the contemporary Patriarch of the Sea God's Family and the Great Elder of the Sea God, Chen Juntao—suddenly seemed to sense something, abruptly opening his eyes.
Before the Sea God statue, the "Sea God Helmet"—a divine artifact passed down for ten thousand years—unexpectedly emitted a burst of blue-gold radiance. The blue-gold light shone, bathing Chen Juntao's brow.
At this moment, Chen Juntao's deep eyes seemed to pierce through the layers of ocean waves, seeing something. After the blue-gold light gradually dimmed, he suddenly sighed, "Lord Sea God, your servant is guilty. In the end, I still allowed that scourge to grow into a threat."
With hands clasped together, he prostrated himself fully on the ground... After doing all this, Chen Juntao piously activated the Sea God Helmet. In an instant, a message, centered on the Sea God Family's location, spread out across the entire ocean, entering the minds of every Titled Douluo in the Sea God Family.
And the meaning of this message was only one:
Everyone return; there is no need to search for the remnant anymore. That remnant has grown into a threat, and he will personally take action to deal with it. To put it bluntly, he was afraid his clansmen would die outside.
...
Boom—
The Demon Empress transformed into her original form, leaving the abyss. Her massive body, the size of an island, broke through the water's surface. With a single swipe of her whale tail, she brought up mountain-like giant waves. She emitted a gloomy, cold purple light from her body, like a mysterious lighthouse in the deep sea.
The Demon Empress's body was nearly a hundred metres in length. Her streamlined physique manifested unparalleled power; just a gentle flap of her pectoral fins could cause violent tremors in the seawater, forming whirlpools. At this moment, she raised her head to look at the sky, her deep eyes flashing with dauntless light, directly facing the terrifying heavenly tribulation that was about to arrive.
Rumble—
The first bolt of thunder, carrying a world-destroying momentum, tore through the thick tribulation clouds like a sword that could split the heavens, descending upon the mortal realm! The silver-white electric light instantly illuminated the darkened world. Wherever the thunder passed, the space emitted an overloaded "sizzling" sound, as if it would collapse at any moment. The Demon Empress, however, did not retreat in the slightest. She raised her head and let out a whale's cry that shook the sea and sky. Her majestic dark-purple soul power spurted out from within her body like a surging flood, condensing into a solid protective shield on her body's surface.
Boom—
The thunder ruthlessly smashed into the shield! In an instant, blinding light erupted, piercing to the point of causing eye pain. The shockwave spread crazily in a ring shape with the explosion point as the center. The massive waves it stirred up were dozens of meters high, like prehistoric giant beasts breaking free from their restraints, rampaging in all directions. The seawater was instantly vaporized by the high temperature, turning into vast expanses of white mist, shrouding the surrounding sea area.
Immediately after, the power of the heavenly tribulation abruptly increased. The second and third bolts of thunder, like a dense rain of arrows, bombarded the Demon Empress one after another. Electric flashes crisscrossed within the tribulation clouds, as if countless ferocious thunder dragons were overturning the seas and rivers. That layer of shield flickered rapidly under this storm-like attack, emitting a heart-rending "crack-crack" sound—a sign that it was about to shatter.
The next second, Bang— The Demon Empress's shield finally could not withstand this super-strong attack. With a loud bang, the shield shattered like glass. At the exact same time, these thousands of thunderbolts, like a rain of descending arrows, instantly plunged into the sea, leaving silver dots of light on the vast surface of the ocean.
Boom— Countless silver dots suddenly erupted from the sea surface. The light of the thunder set off just how terrifying the Demon Empress's body was.
Her icy eyes gazed at the sky above, and on her broad back, the silver dots were gradually disappearing. This move seemed to have enraged the heavenly tribulation. Terrifying lightning brewed in the dark clouds. The next second, a massive pillar of thunder descended from the sky. Like the greatest sounds being silent, there was no thunderclap.
Seeing this, the Demon Empress's massive body violently churned in the sea. Her enormous tail instantly whipped up, fanning toward the pillar of thunder in the air. A burst of dark-purple light shot out, sweeping across in a fan shape. Wherever this massive energy passed, the atmosphere was forcefully torn apart, and spatial cracks emerged one after another. The dark-purple fan-shaped light was even accompanied by a layer of tiny black lightning bolts.
At this moment, the energy whipped out by the whale tail violently collided with the thunder. Instantly, the light in mid-air abruptly dimmed. Similarly, not a single sound erupted. The sky was terrifyingly quiet now; the previous energy had almost silently disappeared at the exact same time, without leaving a single trace behind. It was like the prelude before the arrival of a violent storm. The celestial phenomena changed, and the heavenly tribulation descended again.
But the main force descending this time was no longer thunder.
For a soul beast breaking through to seven hundred thousand years, it was equivalent to a human taking a step forward from level ninety-nine, getting even closer to godhood. However, for soul beasts, this was absolutely not allowed. Therefore, the heavenly tribulation for seven hundred thousand years would be even more perilous!
A dark-red color brewed within the heavenly tribulation. While the thunder was similarly striking down, the Demon Empress's Inner Demon Tribulation quietly sneaked in. Her consciousness space seemed to have a door leading to the past forced open, and countless dust-laden memories flooded in like a tidal wave.
In the depths of her consciousness, the Demon Empress saw the various events of her long years. From her initial ignorance, to the later law of the jungle, then meeting and getting to know her husband, conceiving their child, and then Poseidon conquering the seas, ascending to godhood... Everything had its bitterness and its joys, until ten thousand years ago...
"Deep Sea Devil Whale King, you have brought this death upon yourself!"
From the Demon Empress's perspective, Tang San, with righteous words under the banner of justice for the ocean, killed her husband, killed the father of her child, and then stepped on her husband's corpse to inherit the divine throne. Since then, her life was either fleeing or bloody slaughter scenes. Relying on her powerful strength, she ruthlessly devoured her own kind, just to make herself stronger.
She never regretted it. These sea creatures were all believers of the Sea God. With a simple conversion, they were all accomplices of the Sea God. They deserved to die!
But under the Inner Demon Tribulation, everything from the past seemed to turn into resentment. Everything the enemies—no, accurately speaking, the food—did before and after their deaths, was like a sharp knife, crazily attacking her heart.
Those enemies, no! To be precise, the food. Their hideous faces constantly surfaced before the Demon Empress's eyes, wrapping around her soul like venomous snakes, trying to drag her into the endless dark abyss.
But similarly, the flames of hatred burned fiercely in her memories.
Hatred overcame the resentment brought by the Heavenly Demon Tribulation. Perhaps it could be said that the Demon Empress never believed she was wrong. No matter how much it was intensified or changed, it couldn't compare to her hatred!
"Sea God! Tang San!"
The Demon Empress's will was like lighting a bright lamp in the dark abyss, directly breaking through under the torture of the Inner Demon Tribulation!
At the same time, the heavenly thunder tribulation in the outside world became even more frenzied. The tribulation clouds in the sky, as if injected with infinite energy, rolled and surged madly, taking on a bizarre and terrifying form. Bolts of thunder, as thick as water buckets, poured down on the Demon Empress incessantly like dense artillery shells. Each bolt of thunder contained enough power to destroy a small city. The seawater was boiled time and time again, and steam shot into the sky, forming massive mushroom clouds.
The moment the Inner Demon Tribulation was passed, Boom— The thunder struck her body once again. The Demon Empress, whose body was already heavily injured from being constantly ravaged by the thunder, had all the pain sweep over her in one breath the moment she regained consciousness. A shrill, miserable scream rang out. The Demon Empress's massive body twitched violently on the sea surface. The surrounding seawater had long been dyed completely red by her blood, and the surrounding marine life had already sensed this terrifying aura, fleeing in panic once more.
Let alone this sea area, they couldn't even stay in the surrounding waters!
Amidst her cries of pain, the Demon Empress endured the agony. Terrifying energy converged as she prepared to strike at the heavenly tribulation again. The heavenly tribulation seemed to be enraged by the Demon Empress's actions. An unprecedented purple thunderbolt howled down from the depths of the tribulation clouds. This bolt of thunder was like the light of judgment between heaven and earth. Its diameter was dozens of meters. Wherever it passed, the space was forcibly torn open with black crevices, and even time seemed to stop at this moment.
And this was the strongest strike, and also the final strike. The Demon Empress knew deeply that this was the moment of life and death for her. She desperately stimulated the energy within her body, then converged it into a massive dark-purple light sphere. This sphere shone with dazzling brilliance; just by its appearance, it gave the feeling that it was not at all inferior to that purple thunder.
The purple thunder heavily collided with the dark-purple light sphere. In an instant, the entire ocean fell into chaos.
The terrifying energy fluctuations spread across the entire ocean with the explosion point as the center. The abyss trembled, the underwater mountains were shaken into collapse, and massive reefs splashed in all directions like dust.
Until the light gradually dissipated, the sea surface recovered a brief calm, and the dark clouds in the sky also gradually dispersed at this time. Sunlight pierced through the clouds and sprinkled onto the sea surface, sparkling.
At this moment, the Demon Empress, still in her original form, floated exhaustedly on the water. Her body was riddled with a thousand holes.
Scales—yes, she had scales. Because after stepping onto the path of the Ferocious Beast, the main path for all sea soul beasts to become gods was to molt into a Sea God Dragon. And scales were one of the characteristics of this transformation.
At this very moment, the Demon Empress's scales had almost completely fallen off, and blood was still continuously seeping out. But at this moment, she suddenly sensed something. A fierce intent flashed in her eyes as she locked dead onto a direction. The next second, she slowly dove into the deep sea.
As for resting after the tribulation? Heh, a little dish to replenish her body had delivered itself to her door.
Meanwhile, in a sea area far away from the Demon Empress, two sea soul masters with cultivations close to Super Douluo stood quietly on the sea surface, looking at the dissipating dark clouds in the distance.
"What a powerful heavenly tribulation!" A sigh of emotion made the other person's eyes turn serious. "Hai Xiang, we should also go. The Patriarch told us a quarter of an hour ago to hurry back to the family."
"True, let's go then."
The Patriarch was majestic and unchallengeable in their eyes. If it weren't for the fact that the location they were searching was extremely far, and on their way back to the family they encountered such a rare event of a powerful sea soul beast undergoing its heavenly tribulation... just taking a quick glance shouldn't be a problem.
However, right at this moment, a chill suddenly ran down both their spines!
"Not good!"
"Oh no!"
The two sea soul masters abruptly turned their heads, but before they could even see what was behind them, or even clearly sense the information...
"We are members of the Sea God's Family, believers of Lord Sea God!" The moment the voice fell, a giant mouth swallowed them into its belly. The culprit was precisely the Deep Sea Devil Whale Queen, the Demon Empress.
Swallowed in one bite, refined in an instant. In less than a single breath, her injuries began to repair.
"Sea God's Family? Sea God believers? Tch—"
The Demon Empress let out a cold sneer, "I'm eating you precisely because of that!"
Her huge eyes looked deeply in a certain direction—that was the original location of Sea God Island before it was destroyed.
"I will settle this debt one by one. Now..."
Saying this, the Demon Empress dove her massive body underwater. She planned to take advantage of these sea soul masters rushing back to the Sea God Family to catch a few more. Or perhaps catch a few and let "Zhongli Wu" and his gang "make the best of a bad bargain," so they could have a "kill each other" moment later to vent her hatred. As for the Sea God Family's main base, she wouldn't be so stubborn as to throw herself into a snare.
The Sea God's faith resided there permanently. To a certain extent, he could personally take action. Just like last time!
"Heir of the Sea God... I'm waiting for you!"
...
At the same time, in the Great Star Dou Forest.
Looking at the vast, lush, and vibrant green forest before him, Chen Junting stepped into the area, bringing Dugu Xin and Huo Yuhao with him.
Obviously, after leaving the Star Luo Empire's military camp, Chen Junting's first decision was to come to the Great Star Dou Forest to check on Di Tian. Even though he knew that neither Di Tian nor the Great Star Dou Forest would be in any danger. After all, Di Tian's strength was unquestionable, and even if Di Tian wasn't around, those Ferocious Beasts were no pushovers.
But no matter what, it was because he had called upon the beast that he gave those bastards an opportunity to make a move against the Great Star Dou Forest. Emotionally and logically, he had to come and see for himself.
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