I was born a god, the son of the Demon Lord.

Xu Nanyi delivered a roundhouse kick, striking the flaming bow with the back of her foot.

The bow detached from its hovering position, its spinning golden flame blade tracing an arc like a boomerang—

puff.

They neatly severed the last intact head of the sea monster.

The enormous head tumbled and crashed into the mud and sand, creating a cloud of turbid water.

Xu Nanyi looked down at it.

I don't know if it's just my imagination, but I felt liquid seeping out of the still-lit vertical pupil.

Is it like crying?

"...What does this have to do with me?"

Xu Nanyi withdrew her gaze, her voice so soft it was almost inaudible, "If you hurt Xiaozhou, you should go down and pay with your life."

The body of Hai Tai Sui gradually dissolved in the ashes of the Emperor God Flame. Its flesh, bones, and countless eyes all turned to ashes and merged into the seawater. In the end, only one thing remained.

A stone tablet about half a person's height.

It is entirely black with words engraved on its surface.

Xu Nanyi pulled Fen Chao back, propped the spear tip on the ground, and took a couple of breaths before walking over. The demonic power in her body was almost completely drained, her golden hair was fading back to black strand by strand, and the red in her pupils was also fading.

She crouched down to look at the words.

It wasn't the script of the demon race, nor was it the script of the human race, the demon race... She couldn't recognize the script of any race, but she could understand it nonetheless.

"With the ruler dead, what use is there for his subject?"

Xu Nanyi: ………

No way.

Did I rummage through someone's ancestral grave? Or did I kick down their tombstone?

What does this tragic story of a loyal minister sacrificing himself for his lord have to do with me, a passerby?

Those calligraphic strokes seemed to come alive as they peeled away from the surface of the stone tablet, twisting and wriggling like tiny worms.

Xu Nanyi: "?"

They floated up, drifted towards her face, and circled between her eyebrows.

"Wait—what are you doing—don't—"

Xu Nanyi's vision went black.

Losing all strength, Fen Chao slipped from her grasp, and she fell backward, her head slamming into the soft seabed mud.

My last thought before losing consciousness was: Why did you put a sleeping spell on me?

*Splat*

……

Shen.

Xu Nanyi's consciousness felt as if it had been pushed underwater, surrounded by thick darkness that made it impossible for her to even turn over.

Suddenly, a mournful cry filled my ears.

It was both far away and very close, as if separated by a film of water, where all the sounds were broken up and then pieced back together.

The suppressed sobs made Xu Nanyi's chest ache with each contraction.

Strangely, she didn't recognize the voice, but the sadness seemed to have grown hands and feet, drilling straight into her heart.

Interspersed between the cries were the sounds of metal colliding with stones.

Ding—click—ding—it sounded like someone was chiseling stone with something sharp.

Who's crying like that?

Why... does she want to cry too?

The sound gradually became clearer, and fragmented words rose from the mist.

"Your Majesty... your subject... has come to die for you..."

"If there must be a villain in this world... then let it be me... I've already suffered enough."

"The world will remember you... I promise, even if we are reincarnated countless times... it will not be forgotten."

Xu Nanyi sprang up from the bottom of the water with a "plop".

The moment I opened my eyes, my field of vision was filled with a bunch of heads... five.

Like those mischievous friends who crowd around you in a karaoke room to see if you're drunk.

"Yi Yi?!"

Xu Yuan's voice rang out first, his phoenix eyes bloodshot. He reached out to touch her forehead, cheeks, and neck, "Are you alright? Is anything bothering you? Does your head hurt? Is your dantian—"

"daughter."

Xu Yuan felt a lump in her throat, and her eyes immediately welled up with tears.

Good heavens, the whole family is in tears.

Before she could say anything, a small, dark thing flew over and hit her directly.

Shen Xizhou's large, vertical pupils were filled with tears, his tail was wrapped around her clothes, and he was crying so hard that snot bubbles were almost coming out of his nose.

"Sister—!!! I thought you'd never come back... You scared me to death..."

Xu Nanyi: "..."

She looked down at the little dragon, who was lying on her chest crying, and gently pinched the tip of its tail.

"If I shrink to the size of a palm, you shrink to the size of a palm too. Is there some kind of agreement between us?"

"Waaaaah, you still have the mood to joke—" The little black dragon cried even harder, its claws gripping her collar tightly.

Shen Jiuyuan couldn't stand it any longer.

"Smack."

He reached out and flicked Xiaolong's butt.

Shen Xizhou jumped up with a yell: "What are you doing?!"

"What nonsense are you spouting? Saying they'll never come back is just asking for bad luck!"

The little dragon flipped over and charged at him, its scales bristling. It put its two tiny paws on its hips, its vertical pupils wide and glaring: "You've never lost your older sister, what do you know!"

The air seemed to freeze for a moment.

Shen Jiuyuan's expression changed slightly.

Xu Yuan coughed softly.

Xu Nanyi quickly changed the subject: "Okay, okay, I'm perfectly fine—"

"sorry."

A very soft sound came from the side of the bed.

Wu Qiyue sat there, twisting the hem of her clothes with her fingers, her face tense, her lips pressed into a line.

"The shaman's duty is to protect the Lord of the Nine Netherworlds... but I failed." She lowered her head, her voice trailing off, "If only I had reacted faster—"

"Yueyue," Xu Nanyi interrupted her.

Wu Qiyue raised her head.

"You're just a little girl in the early stages of the Nascent Soul realm. How do you think you can quickly defeat a monster in the Integration realm? By verbally attacking it to death with your mental power?"

"..."

"I'm not missing any arms or legs,"

Xu Nanyi bent her arm and made a muscle-flexing gesture. Although her whole body was sore and weak like noodles, she couldn't lose her momentum.

"A Nascent Soul cultivator killed a Nascent Soul cultivator! Aren't I awesome?"

Little Stone, who was also standing nearby with red eyes, couldn't help but burst out laughing upon hearing this.

Shen Xizhou said sullenly, "But you yourself don't even know how you won..."

Xu Nanyi said confidently, "That's called talent! Do you understand combat instinct? The body is faster than the brain."

In reality, she didn't really know the specific details; she only remembered that the moment she saw Shen Xizhou being sent flying, a single spark exploded.

The three thousand divine flames surged outwards uncontrollably, while the Nine Netherworld Ghostly Cleansing frantically converted spiritual energy within his dantian—the sheer power of that output...

"Alright, alright, stop thinking about it." Xu Yuan pulled the blanket up a bit more for her. "Let her rest for now, the rest—"

Knock knock knock.

knocking.

Everyone's eyes turned to the doorway at the same time.

A light blue head peeked in through the crack in the door; it was Hailey.

Hai Zhaoyue: "I apologize for bothering you. I wonder how you are feeling, young friend?"

Shen Xizhou instantly bristled, crawled out from under the covers, and was nearly driven mad with anger.

"More comfortable? You said the highest level sea beast in your hunting grounds is only the Nascent Soul stage, and then a Nascent Soul stage beast suddenly appears? The deep sea abyss is guarded 24/7, right? You're all blind that such a huge Nascent Soul stage beast slipped out right under your noses?"

Hai Zhaoyue: "..."

Hailey shrank her neck.

"Xizhou," Shen Jiuyuan whispered.

I didn't stop him, I just reminded him to watch his wording.

But when he looked over there, there was no warmth in his eyes either.

Xu Yuan leaned against the headboard, her phoenix eyes half-closed and a smile on her lips. Shen Jiuyuan could tell at a glance that she was up to some wicked scheme.

Hai Zhaoyue took a deep breath and bowed.

"The person in charge of guarding our tribe...does indeed bear an inescapable responsibility for this matter."

She paused for a moment, then took out a few items from her storage space.

A palm-sized bead, shimmering with light and radiating inner radiance—the Sea-Stabilizing Bead.

A coral with a completely silvery-white body, its branches covered with transparent crystals the size of rice grains—a thousand-year-old cold marrow coral.

There was also a token engraved with the royal totem of the Merfolk.

"This is our tribe's sincerity."

Hai Zhaoyue placed the items on the bedside table and then looked directly at Xu Nanyi.

"Furthermore... the Dreamland Temple will open the Dream Water Realm in three days. I suspect... what you all truly need on this trip is this."