Chapter 139: The Thunder Demon Ray

Ye Mo could not help smiling. “Let it eat on its own.”

The Fire Crow opened its beak and swallowed the snake gall in one gulp.

The gall of a demon serpent was also a spiritual medicine used in alchemy. For spirit beasts, however, consuming it was equally beneficial—a powerful tonic.

Ye Mo naturally would not deprive the Fire Crow of its spoils.

“Search the surrounding area and see whether there are any other sea demon beasts.”

He patted the feathers on the Fire Crow’s back.

The Fire Crow nodded, spread its wings, and shot into the sky. It began searching the waters for food while also taking on the duty of keeping watch.

The Earth Slave Five Guards were also sparring as they trained their combat arts.

Since they had no idea when the enemy might arrive, Ye Mo had no intention of waiting idly. He began cultivating as well.

He swallowed a Qi Essence Pill and refined the energy within it.

The Scarlet Fire Ore Island brought in a handsome daily income of spirit stones through its mining operations, and the Little Azure Fox could now refine first-grade Qi Essence Pills. Ye Mo was therefore not lacking in pills and took three every day.

His primordial spirit cultivation was advancing rapidly. In just a few days, he had already broken through to the fifth level of the Qi Refining stage.

This was the greatest advantage of being an Immortal City Lord: he could draw upon the vast resources of the entire city to strengthen himself, allowing his cultivation to progress far more quickly than that of ordinary cultivators.

Of course, the other cultivators in the Ye Clan Immortal Village were advancing quickly as well. By completing the village’s various missions, they could receive generous rewards of spirit stones and Qi Essence Pills. Some of them had already reached the third or fourth level of the Qi Refining stage.

Ye Mo then plunged into the sea beside the reef, which was more than ten yards deep, and began cultivating the Wave-Cleaving Art underwater.

Although he had already cultivated the Wave-Cleaving Art to the pinnacle during his time as a martial artist, transforming the ordinary into the miraculous, it was not completely useless after he became a Qi Refining cultivator.

The martial combat arts of cultivators had also evolved from martial techniques. But with the tempering and strengthening of a cultivator’s body, and with spiritual power infused into a spiritual weapon, martial techniques became far more terrifying combat arts. Their power increased tenfold, even a hundredfold.

With a muffled rush, Ye Mo sank more than ten yards beneath the surface, reaching the bottom of the shallow sea. He swung the Scarlet Fire Spirit Sword, and a blazing arc of flame several feet long burst forth.

“Vortex Slash!”

The searing light of flame erupting from the Scarlet Fire Spirit Sword instantly vaporized the surrounding seawater, raising a billowing cloud of mist.

As Ye Mo unleashed the Vortex Slash, a vortex of air more than ten yards wide surged toward the sky.

He rotated his body and cleaved with the sword. The Scarlet Fire Spirit Sword encountered almost no resistance in the water.

With his current cultivation, a swing of the Scarlet Fire Sword carried at least two thousand pounds of killing force. Combined with its fiery radiance, its power was terrifying. If a low-grade demon beast were caught in the vortex, it would likely be shredded in an instant.

Several hundred yards away, the Earth Slave Five Guards were training one by one in combat atop another reef. Seeing the might Ye Mo stirred up as he practiced his combat art in the sea, they could not help feeling astonished.

In only a short while, the vortex on the surface dispersed with a crash, sending up a spray of water. Ye Mo emerged from the seabed and broke through the surface, drawing several deep breaths. He climbed onto the shore, sat on a rock, and began regulating his breathing to recover his magical power.

The greatest cost of practicing combat arts beneath the sea was not physical strength, but the rapid depletion of magical power.

With all his magical power, he could remain on the seabed for only a brief while.

He had surfaced so soon precisely to avoid exhausting himself, using up less than forty percent of his reserves.

Several enemies from rival Immortal Villages were watching him. How could Ye Mo dare to let his magical power run dry?

High in the sky, a small blue-feathered bird darted across the vast expanse above the sea. At last, it flew toward three large ships sailing for the Sea Demon Reef Island.

These little birds, known as messenger birds, were used to transmit messages over short distances at sea. They were swift and keen-eyed, able to locate a target hundreds of miles away with precision. Even if the target changed position constantly, it would not affect them.

However, blue-feathered messenger birds possessed little intelligence and were ordinary beasts without any scouting ability. They could only be used to deliver messages. Many noble clans raised them for this purpose.

The bird flapped its wings and alighted on the shoulder of Lord Gong aboard one of the ships, chirping incessantly.

Lord Gong removed a slip of paper from the bamboo tube tied to its leg, then gave the blue-feathered bird several coarse beans. The little bird ate them happily. A cultivator then caught it and placed it inside a cage.

“What does it say?” Lord Chen asked anxiously.

Lord Gong unfolded the note, read it, and handed it to him.

“Ye Mo has already reached the Sea Demon Reef Island. There has been no movement from the Ye Clan Immortal Village or the other outlying islands. We should hurry there and surround the entire reef island.”

“With so many of us going after him, I refuse to believe he can escape alive.”

The three men exchanged glances and burst into laughter.

The three ships increased their speed and sailed toward the Sea Demon Reef Island.

Ye Mo dove into the water once more. Just as he was preparing to swing the Scarlet Fire Spirit Sword, his movements suddenly halted. He tilted his head and listened carefully.

There was a disturbance in the seawater.

Ye Mo immediately surfaced, and the sight before him left him stunned.

A small shoal of several dozen sea knife fish was charging wildly in his direction.

Sea knife fish.

Ye Mo was startled and immediately gripped the Scarlet Fire Spirit Sword tightly, preparing to unleash a large-scale Vortex Slash.

This was one of the most common schools of fish in the Eastern Sea. They were numerous and savage beyond compare, tearing their prey apart with their razor-sharp beaks and bodies as thin as blades. Even a Qi Refining cultivator could not survive being besieged by hundreds or thousands of sea knife fish.

“No.”

“They aren’t coming for me.”

Ye Mo was already very familiar with sea knife fish. If they were charging toward him, they would certainly have formed an arrowhead aimed directly at him.

But these sea knife fish were scattered widely. They were clearly fleeing in terror and paid no attention to him at all.

With a splash, a hideously strange giant demon fish rose from the sea and glided just above the surface. Its two wings were shaped like diamond fans.

With a crack, it opened its mouth and spat out a gigantic web of lightning. In an instant, the web covered dozens of yards of sea where the fleeing fish were gathered, black lightning and fiery sparks bursting everywhere.

The several dozen sea knife fish fleeing frantically across the water were instantly trapped beneath the lightning net. One after another, they were struck by thunder and fire, their bellies turning upward as they floated dazedly on the surface.

Only a few fish at the edges managed to escape by sheer luck. Terrified, they fled even more wildly.

The strange demon fish opened its enormous mouth and lunged toward the sea knife fish floating belly-up. At the pointed end of its diamond-shaped body, a mouth split open, revealing rows of fine, closely packed teeth. With one bite, it severed a fish’s head, chewed a few times, and swallowed it.

In the space of a few breaths, more than a dozen sea knife fish had disappeared into its belly.

Only then did the remaining fish gradually awaken from their paralysis and regain the ability to move. They scattered in terror, fleeing in every direction without a trace of their former ferocity.

“What… what kind of sea demon beast is that?”

Ye Mo inhaled sharply, his scalp prickling as he watched.

The savagery of sea knife fish was enough to give every Qi Refining cultivator a headache. Even ordinary low-grade sea demon beasts were unwilling to provoke them. Yet this strange demon fish devoured sea knife fish as effortlessly as crushing ants.

Behind the strange demon fish extended a long tail. Strangely, it did not resemble a fish’s tail at all. It was thin and elongated, like the tail of a rat.

“With that shape, could it be a Thunder Demon Ray?”

A thought struck Ye Mo, and he cried out inwardly.

He had never imagined that after coming to the Sea Demon Reef Island to lay an ambush and lure in cultivators from the enemy villages, he would encounter a Thunder Demon Ray.

The Thunder Demon Ray was an extremely rare lightning-element demon beast.

More precisely, it was an overlord among sea demon beasts.

It was a species of demon fish capable of diving into the deep sea. Yet because it possessed a pair of thin, fleshy wings, it could also leap above the surface and glide briefly at an altitude of several dozen yards. It was far more powerful than a Golden-Winged Giant Eagle.

Its strength was formidable. It was a naturally born lightning-element demon beast.

Ordinary lightning-element demon beasts could cast, at most, spells such as Lightning Strike or Black Thunder, each attacking only a single target.

The Thunder Demon Ray, however, was extraordinarily peculiar. It could cast Lightning Net. The spell spread across a vast area in an instant, increasing its combat power dozens of times over. The school of sea knife fish had just been struck by the Lightning Net and rendered completely immobile.

“It must be a Thunder Demon Ray. Nothing else could be so savage.”

This Thunder Demon Ray appeared to possess only second- or third-grade strength and had not yet matured completely. Otherwise, ordinary beasts like the sea knife fish would have been killed outright by the lightning, leaving them no chance to recover.

“Lightning Net… I possess a lightning spiritual root. If I can obtain the rune imprint for Lightning Net, I’ll never have to fear group battles again. One cast can deal with an entire horde of enemies. This is a true supreme demon art. I cannot let it slip away.”

Ye Mo was overjoyed. His gaze became burning as he stared at the Thunder Demon Ray.

He had never intended to capture it alive. A sea beast this savage had almost no precedent for being domesticated. If he could kill it and seize the Lightning Net technique, that would already be an excellent outcome.

Before Ye Mo could make a move, the Thunder Demon Ray’s oily black eyes suddenly fixed upon him in the distance.

“It has noticed me. I can’t remain in the water.”

The hair all over Ye Mo’s body stood on end. He abruptly kicked through the water and shot toward a nearby reef.

With a whoosh, the Thunder Demon Ray plunged into the sea and sped toward him.

Ye Mo was alarmed and fled with all his strength.

The lightning arts of a cultivator equivalent to the eighth or ninth level of Qi Refining were more than he could possibly withstand.

Ye Mo knew perfectly well that if he fought the Thunder Demon Ray at close quarters, he had no reason to fear this third-grade demon beast.

But once the Thunder Demon Ray began casting spells, he would have to flee as far as possible.

He had not yet found an effective way to counter lightning spells. All he could do was evade them.

Ye Mo fled at astonishing speed, but compared with the Thunder Demon Ray, he was still a little slower. After all, it was a winged sea demon beast.

He was about to be overtaken.

Without caring that he was underwater, Ye Mo let out an angry roar and kicked violently with both feet. A hard rock on the seabed instantly cracked with a sharp snap.

Using the force of the rebound, Ye Mo shot forward like an arrow loosed from a bow, rushing directly toward a reef above the surface.

The instant he broke through the water, he was struck by a bolt of lightning that had been following close behind.

In an instant, lightning coiled around his entire body, violently paralyzing him.

Ye Mo fell onto the reef.

“Caw!”

A crimson shadow plunged down from the sky. It spat out a roaring fireball that smashed head-on into the Thunder Demon Ray, which was preparing to leap from the sea onto the reef.

The Fire Crow seized Ye Mo with its talons and rose into the air.

“Escape!”

Unable to control his own body, Ye Mo could only issue the command urgently through his consciousness.

The Fire Crow beat its wings fiercely and took flight. Although its body was not large enough to serve as a mount, as a second-grade demon beast, it possessed enough strength to carry Ye Mo into the sky.

The one-yard-long Thunder Demon Ray was blasted back into the sea by the fireball. It leapt from the surface again in fury, rising ten yards into the air. Spreading its broad demon body like a seabird, it glided at low altitude and let out repeated enraged shrieks at the Fire Crow in the sky.

It did not think that Ye Mo and the Fire Crow were working together. It merely believed that the Fire Crow was trying to steal its food.

When it saw the Fire Crow carrying Ye Mo away, it gave an unwilling, furious cry and splashed back into the sea. It continued floating across the surface, pursuing the direction in which the Fire Crow and Ye Mo had disappeared.