The view was so bizarre it felt staged. Tide Walker was closer to a spirit beast than a mere treasure. It had enough power to kill the dolphins—which Liu Xing sensed were not even spirit beasts—and even if it chose not to, it could have easily lifted the sea turtle from the water. After all, his shark was no ordinary creature. Still, as his shark shot hateful glares toward the dolphins, he knew something was preventing Tide Walker from using its full strength, forcing it to simply keep the sea turtle from drowning.

His eyes then shifted to the old man on the boat. If someone had orchestrated this bizarre scene, it was probably this old man.

As if hearing his thoughts, the old man slowly opened his eyes. At first, they were mere slits, then they opened wider and wider until they were fully revealed. His eyes were blue, like dark oceans trapped within their sockets, and they had blue rings that glowed faintly. Liu Xing knew instinctively they were not human eyes. It felt wrong to see them on a human face.

After opening his eyes, the old man looked at him with an empty expression. Then, his boat began to drift away slowly, creating a trail on the calm surface of the sea. The old man didn't paddle, the boat had no sail to be propelled by wind, and there were not even any waves. The boat just moved, as if it were a living being that had decided it was time to go. Soon, the boat had gone deeper and deeper into the mist until it vanished, the orange glow of its oil lamp swallowed completely.

Liu Xing's heart hammered inside his chest like a father knocking on a doctor's door in the dead of night. Although he could see the old man, his ears had picked up nothing. It was as if the boat, the old man, and the oil lamp were frozen in a silent film, yet he knew that wasn't true. Similarly, his nose detected no scent, and even his qi sense couldn't detect the old man.

For a moment, Liu Xing thought the old man was an illusion, but while all his senses aside from his eyes failed him, he could feel his presence, and it was… weird.

He knew the old man was no cultivator.

All signs indicated he was mortal. Yet, his presence was vast, so vast that even the giant he had killed in the Twelve Sun Empire was nothing compared to him. Although vast, it didn't feel hostile; it just existed, like the presence of a giant mountain, an ancient lake, or a vast ocean.

Liu Xing tried to decipher if this was the man Lady Oracle said he would encounter. If so, did that mean he needed to follow him? After all, Lady Oracle had said the man would further his quests. Which quest did she mean? Liu Xing didn't know, but he hoped it was, at the very least, about retrieving the Heaven Severing Pill.

He glanced behind him. Yu Yongrui was still cultivating, seemingly oblivious to what was happening, while the rest of the group stared at the spot where the old man had vanished. Their skin was pale, and beads of sweat dotted their faces.

A growl snapped him from his trance. His shark shot him an annoyed look, as if asking why Liu Xing hadn't helped. He looked back and forth between the direction the old man had gone and Tide Walker with the sea turtle, and decided to help them first.

Liu Xing summoned his gun to his left hand. When the weapon materialized, the dolphins stopped their movements and looked at him in unison. Their playful expressions turned serious instantly, and their eyes narrowed.

As he watched the dolphins, he licked his lips. The dolphins weren't emitting qi either. For all intents and purposes, they were normal dolphins. Yet, he knew that wasn't true. Since he couldn't gauge their strength, he needed to assume that these dolphins were at least comparable to cultivators at the Sun Collapsing realm.

A moment later, all the dolphins snorted, as if he were a mere ant trying to defy the heavens. But then, they turned their backs and began swimming down into the dark, deep sea. Though, one of them, a dark dolphin with a red hue, spat a jet of water from its mouth toward the sea turtle. That attack sailed through the air, and when it hit, the sea turtle sank into the sea for a moment. His shark growled underwater and held the turtle up. When the sea turtle resurfaced, the dolphin snorted once more and dived down to follow its friends.

Upon seeing the four dolphins gone, Liu Xing jumped toward the still-flapping sea turtle. Before he landed, he released some qi from his body, creating a platform atop the calm sea. As he landed, a faint crack sounded, but his makeshift foothold still held. He then crouched and grabbed the sea turtle, trying to haul it out of the water, but stumbled when its weight exceeded his expectations.

"How heavy," Liu Xing muttered, before cycling his qi and lifting the sea turtle again. This time it worked. He lifted it out of the sea, and water began cascading from its body like little waterfalls. Then, Liu Xing jumped once more toward the head of his stone turtle.

He landed and instantly placed the sea turtle on its surface. When it landed, however, the sea turtle flapped its flippers crazily, its face frantic, wanting to leap back into the sea. Realizing this, Liu Xing instantly caught it again.

"What are you doing, buddy? Have you forgotten that you almost drowned?" As he said that, the sea turtle still tried to break free. Even knowing it would likely sink, it wanted to get back to the sea.

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A moment later, Tide Walker began to resurface from the water and float into the air. On its head, though, was a tiny green sea turtle smaller than his palm. Upon seeing this little turtle, the big one flapped its flippers more energetically, its eyes following Tide Walker as it floated toward them. When Tide Walker arrived and put the little turtle on the ground, the big one began to nudge it with its head, its eyes shining with happiness, its body language shifting into a calmer one.

To think that this sea turtle, its shell full of barnacles, was protecting a little one. No wonder it wanted to jump back into the sea. "She must be her mom."

He knew very little about sea turtles, though he knew that usually baby sea turtles hatched from their eggs and swam into the sea alone, while the mother turtles left immediately after laying and burying the eggs, letting the babies fend for themselves. This clearly was not the case. Still, since this was another world, perhaps there was a special kind of sea turtle that protected its baby like a mother hen.

Tide Walker soon landed on top of his head. Liu Xing scratched the top of its head and said, "Good job, buddy."

He still didn't know why Tide Walker didn't just attack the dolphins or lift both turtles into the air. Still, considering they were surrounded by a mist-like qi, and there was an old man who was clearly a mortal but had a heavy presence, and those dolphins were nothing ordinary either, there must have been a reason for it.

Liu Xing then began to look at the barnacles that clung to the mother sea turtle, and soon furrowed his brows. These barnacles… were a little weird too.

Although they had no qi, these barnacles had a faint qi and a little bit of presence. They were not spirit beasts, though, at least not yet.

Liu Xing heard several footsteps approaching, and soon, he saw all the women coming toward him, wanting to gaze at the turtle he had just lifted from the sea. Since he knew the stone turtle's head was not large enough to hold that many people, he decided to bring the two sea turtles into their midst.

The women murmured upon seeing the sea turtles, though the comment that caught his ears was Su Nian's.

"What a pitiful sea turtle. It's sick. It seems the barnacles are too invasive and weighing the turtle down too much. It needs to spend more energy to move, and since it's slow, more and more barnacles settled on its shell."

Ji Yunsu nodded. She was the one who had told him the story about the greedy merchant. "Some barnacles on a turtle's shell are okay, but this is too much."

More and more people agreed with their assessment, and it was decided that they needed to remove the barnacles from the turtle's shell. It seemed the process would be painful for the sea turtle—he didn't know a turtle could feel pain on its shell—still, this was a small price to free the sea turtle from its burden.

As they were trying to find suitable tools to remove the barnacles, Liu Xing pinched his chin while observing them from afar.

He felt… something was wrong with this situation. And soon, he realized the source of this feeling.

Looking around, he noticed the mist began to swirl lazily around them, as if the mist qi was observing them and judging their conduct, or rather, something was using the qi mist to observe them. Though he had no proof, his gut told him so, and he was inclined to agree. And since the only other being here was the old man, then the old man was probably observing them.

Why? He didn't know, but he felt as if he was in a test where he didn't know the rules, and he had a feeling that if he was wrong, bad things would happen not only to him, but to the people under his protection.

As the gears in his head began to spin and his brain tried to discern the situation, he looked to the side, toward the direction the old man was heading, and wondered how far away he was. "Surely not far," he muttered.

Thinking about this, a little impatience began to creep into his heart. He had chosen to help the turtle first before following the old man, and since the turtle was no longer drowning, and Su Nian was trying to peel the barnacles from its shell, it was time for him to follow.

After telling the group they needed to leave, he ordered the stone turtle to head in the old man's direction. The mist swirled lazily around them as if bored observing them. Still, he sensed an intent in its movement, and while he didn't understand it, he felt a terrible unease in his heart as if he were forgetting something important.

Liu Xing inhaled deeply and tried to rein in his emotions. His stone blade and gun were ready. High in the sky, the Eye of Lightning observed the mist like a satellite. Another Eye of Lightning moved in front of them like a tiny flying firefly.

Soon, he saw a blurry shape in the distance. The orange light the lamp emitted was a little dimmer than before, and he could only see the hunched back of the old man. Upon seeing him, he licked his lips, unsure what he needed to do, until finally, he cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted, "Old man! Wait!"

The old man began turning his head slowly, until Liu Xing could see his side profile as well as his ringed blue eye. Yet, the head didn't stop turning. It turned, and turned, and turned, as if the old man was not a human, but an owl. A moment later, his head was looking straight at him, while his body… his body was still facing forward!

A profound fear surged in his heart. But before he could do anything, a huge rumble suddenly reverberated and the qi mist around him churned and moved chaotically, as if it knew of the danger behind this sound.

Soon, the tranquil water began churning. His stone turtle rocked up and down crazily. Liu Xing gripped his stone blade as hard as he could. His heart beat so fast he felt as if it would explode. He looked around, trying to find the source of the rumble, when he suddenly realized it wasn't from the surface. It was from below.

Instantly, he moved to the side of his turtle and looked down into the dark sea. When his eyes gazed into the deep, a set of eyes looked back at him, and his own widened in disbelief.

It was a whale.

A giant blue whale. Its size was gigantic; his stone turtle was like a frog in front of an elephant. Most importantly, the whale was opening its mouth, and a vortex of water swirled into its giant maw, sucking in the sea, his stone turtle, and everyone on it!

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