After a while Riven spoke.
"The creatures aren't the problem."
Shen Chu blinked.
"Immortal Master?"
Riven narrowed his eyes slightly.
"There is something else."
His gaze pierced the endless sea beyond the range of ordinary spiritual senses.
Riven's eyes remained calm, but a faint smile appeared on his face.
"Interesting."
Seeing that expression, Shen Chu instinctively became alert because ever since following Riven, he had discovered something.
Whenever the Immortal Master smiled like that, something extraordinary was about to happen.
However, Riven simply looked away from the sea and said calmly.
"Anyways, we will be traveling through the sky, so we won't be meeting any sea creatures."
Hearing this, Shen Chu nodded, but he felt that there was something missing, but he decided to ignore that for now, and even if there was something, he could take it on, as the one who could face him, whether cultivator or beast, can only be counted on one hand.
Soon, the two left the Sea City.
Once they had reached a deserted region outside the city, the Skylance Roc appeared once more.
The giant beast let out a low cry and lowered itself. Riven and Shen Chu stepped onto its back, and with a flap of its wing, the Roc shot into the sky and headed toward the endless ocean.
Half an hour later.
Sea City had long disappeared from sight, and there was nothing around them except an endless expanse of blue.
The sea stretched endlessly beneath them. Above, only white clouds accompanied their journey.
Occasionally, Shen Chu's spiritual sense would sweep through the ocean. He discovered quite a few sea creatures swimming below.
Some were several dozen meters long, while others resembled gigantic sharks, but none of them were particularly strong, just as he remembered.
Nothing unusual.
The only difference was that there seemed to be slightly more of them.
As they continued flying, Riven suddenly spoke.
"Have you traveled to the other continents?"
"What are they like?"
Shen Chu thought for a moment.
"Yes, Immortal Master. I have traveled through all four continents."
Hearing this, Riven became somewhat interested.
Shen Chu continued,
"Among the four continents, Solaryx possesses the richest qi, and the difference is rather large."
Riven asked,
"How large?"
Shen Chu pondered before answering.
"In the Thaloryn Continent, the concentration of qi is only about half that of Solaryx."
"As for Vulkareth and Umbraxis, there is almost no qi, and only certain special regions possess traces of spiritual energy."
"And that information is already over a hundred years old. I do not know whether things have improved or worsened since then."
Riven nodded.
Shen Chu smiled and gently stroked the feathers of the Skylance Roc.
"Rocky accompanied me during those travels."
"It took me nearly ten years to visit all four continents, even with Rocky's speed."
Riven raised an eyebrow.
"Ten years?"
Shen Chu nodded.
"The oceans separating the continents are simply too vast."
"Traveling from Solaryx to Thaloryn takes around a month of uninterrupted flight, but reaching the other continents is an entirely different matter."
"It might take one year, sometimes even two or three years, and that is assuming one isn't attacked by high-grade sea beasts."
Riven silently listened.
Shen Chu's eyes became nostalgic.
"Among the four continents, Vulkareth is perhaps the strangest. There are almost no cultivators there."
"Occasionally, someone fortunate enough to obtain an cultivation manual might step onto the path of cultivation."
"But even then, their limit is Qi gathering. No one has ever surpassed that."
"To them, cultivation is little more than legends."
"But the Umbraxis is completely different from Vulkareth. There are no cultivators on the continent, but unlike Vulkareth, they have developed martial arts to an astonishing degree."
"So instead of qi, they cultivate their bodies and rely on powerful blood force."
"However, compared to cultivators, they are still lacking. The strongest martial artist I encountered possessed strength comparable to a mortal core formation cultivator."
Riven nodded thoughtfully.
"When I visited those continents, I discovered something amusing."
"Although both continents are weak, they trade extensively with one another."
"Rare metals from Vulkareth, medical herbs from Umbraxis."
"However, because of the sea creatures, such trade remains limited."
"The martial artists of Umbraxis rely solely on their physical bodies, and against sea beasts, they naturally suffer a disadvantage."
He sighed.
"In truth, most people living on those continents have never even seen cultivators."
"To them, cultivators of even elemental core or golden core are no different from myths."
For some time, neither of them spoke, and only the sound of the wind accompanied them.
Suddenly, Riven took out the map.
Slowly, he traced the route from Solaryx toward Thaloryn. His finger moved across the sea before stopping somewhere several thousand miles away from the continent itself.
Still within the ocean.
Seeing this scene, Shen Chu smiled helplessly. He had already become accustomed to it.
Without saying anything, he quietly prepared himself, and just as expected, space around them began to fluctuate.
Invisible ripples spread outward.
The surrounding clouds distorted, and the enormous body of the Skylance Roc disappeared along with them.
...
Several breaths later, the group reappeared above another section of the ocean.
The scenery around them remained largely unchanged.
Blue sea.
However, just as he was about to continue speaking, his expression suddenly changed.
His spiritual sense swept through the ocean.
Below them, thousands of sea creatures were gathered.
It appeared that they were going somewhere.
Shen Chu frowned.
"Immortal Master, something is wrong."
Riven merely glanced below.
"It seems like they are following something."
Shen Chu extended his spiritual sense to its limit, and soon, his face changed.
Because he discovered that the creatures were attacking a ship that was badly damaged.
And in the ship there were many cultivators, including some golden core cultivators.
Yet now, they were stuck in a hopeless situation.
It seemed like they were returning from Thaloryn after recruiting some disciples.
And their flying ship was damaged, losing its ability to fly. But it was still functional enough to travel through the sea.
Still, it wasn't enough, as the ship was getting constantly attacked by the sea creatures; some were attacking the ship, while others climbed on the ship and attacked those cultivators aboard.
Those mortals who had been newly recruited were stuck in the ship and looking around in fear.
They would have never thought that before they could even step into their cultivation journey, their life would be in peril.
Shen Chu noticed that there was no sea creature with the strength of a golden core; he knew that those sea creatures couldn't harm those cultivators on the ship.
So he decided to leave them on their own and motioned the Roc to continue flying.