190: South China Sea Storm

Traveling south from Qingzhou, Li Dong moved at a speed that practically shrank the earth beneath his feet.

The further south he went, the more pronounced the sticky, humid heat in the air became, as if it could be wrung out like water.

The wind carried a lingering, briny scent; blowing against his body, it wasn't as crisp and dry as the winds of the Northern Desert, but rather felt like being wrapped in a thin layer of paste.

The God Lord's mark on his forehead had started burning the moment he stepped into this region, like an activated compass, frantically pointing in a certain direction.

On the "Hunting Ground Map," the blood-red light point representing the South Sea was much brighter than the one in Qingzhou, and it was pulsing at an eerie frequency, like the heart of a living creature.

"This scent... it's truly different."

Li Dong stopped and stood on a coastal cliff.

He could "smell" that within that divinity power, besides the domineering and cold nature peculiar to the God Lord, it was mixed with a completely different aura.

A power originating from the deep sea, ancient and wild.

These two powers were not simply mixed; instead, like poison ivy and an ancient tree, they were eerily intertwined and in Fusion, forming a brand new and even more dangerous "poison."

According to common sense, the God Lord's forces should have chosen to occupy major coastal towns of the Great Xia like "Linhai City," using existing cities and populations as a hotbed.

But when Li Dong's spiritual sense swept over the nearest Linhai City, he discovered that although there was chaos within the city, it was not the core; the real eye of the storm was further out at sea.

His gaze pierced through the hazy sea mist, looking into the distance.

Where the sea met the sky, a massive island sat.

On that island, there was no city, but rather a temple so magnificent it bordered on grotesque.

The architectural style of the temple did not belong to Great Xia at all, nor did it belong to any civilization within Li Dong's knowledge.

It was grayish-white throughout, its surface covered with spiral patterns and holes, as if it had been carved from a single massive piece of coral or the skeleton of some sea beast.

The entire temple rose from the ground, piercing straight into the clouds, radiating a heart-stopping pressure.

This was the "spiritual anchor point" of the South Sea.

Using an island as a base to establish an exotic temple.

"Quite a grand gesture," Li Dong muttered to himself.

Around the temple, countless fishing boats were densely anchored.

A large number of coastal fishermen and sea dwellers gathered here like iron filings attracted to a magnet.

Their faces wore an expression of fanatical distortion; they prostrated themselves before the temple, chanting, as if performing some grand sacrificial ceremony.

On the sea surface, several massive mutant sea monsters were chained with thick iron chains and dragged onto the sacrificial altar beneath the temple.

Those sea monsters were covered in pustules and tentacles, clearly caused by the contamination of the God Lord's power.

However, the fanatics on the shore regarded them as "Divine Beast," cheering and leaping with joy, treating them as the most sacred offerings to the god they worshiped.

In their eyes, the bloody sacrificial ceremony was a supreme honor.

Li Dong's attention did not linger on these "small fry" for too long; his spiritual sense, like an invisible probe, pierced straight toward the core of the temple.

There, he sensed a powerful aura.

Golden Core Perfection.

Even, half a foot had already stepped across the threshold of the Nascent Soul.

The owner of this aura was the South Sea's divine envoy agent.

Unlike the guy in Qingzhou who only knew how to hide underground and act as a "power bank," this agent's power had established an eerie symbiotic relationship with the entire island and the entire sea area.

Li Dong could even "see" that the opponent's body was no longer purely human, but had undergone Fusion with some massive deep-sea creature, radiating a terrifying pressure from ten thousand meters deep in the sea.

"No wonder it's so domineering; turns out it found a local snake to act as a host."

This discovery made Li Dong understand that trying to use the same method to deal with this guy as he did with the Qingzhou agent probably wouldn't work.

Forcibly attacking this temple was equivalent to being an enemy of an entire contaminated sea area on the opponent's home turf.

Just as he was pondering a strategy, the [Perfect Dao Body] within his body became excited like never before.

If the core of the Qingzhou altar was a delicious dessert, then this temple in the South Sea was a seafood feast more sumptuous than one could imagine.

That unique divinity, fused with the ancient power of the ocean, was a brand new "ingredient" never seen before for the [Perfect Dao Body], full of fatal temptation.

A strong sense of "hunger" came from his limbs and bones, making Li Dong almost unable to suppress the urge to rush over and feast immediately.

"Don't rush, good things should be savored slowly," he soothed his body's instincts.

Just then, his spiritual sense captured a trace of discordant "noise" in the wider sea area.

It was in the deep sea area far from the temple island, where there were some scattered but tenacious resistance forces.

Not humans.

But some... covered in fine scales, with fish fins behind their ears, breathing and moving freely in the water... Sea Clan?

These Sea Clan tribes were small in scale, but they had not been bewitched by the God Lord's faith.

They were piloting strange boats crafted from sea beast skeletons and special coral, engaging in a difficult battle against those mutant sea monsters and the fleets controlled by the God Lord's believers.

"Heh, interesting, there are actually indigenous people resisting."

This was an unexpected surprise.

In the capital, he allied with the imperial court; in Qingzhou, he used the survivors; and in the South Sea, it seemed a group of brand new, usable "chess pieces" had appeared.

At the same time, that "divinity core" in his palm, seized from the capital and upgraded in Qingzhou, also began to heat up slightly, creating a weak resonance with the power emitted by the exotic temple in the distance.

On the surface of the core crystal, those intricate golden runes were slowly flowing, as if parsing a brand new programming language.

Traces of realization flowed into Li Dong's Sea of Consciousness along with this resonance.

He seemed... to have grasped a little bit of the way.

"So that's how it is; fused with local power, it looks powerful, but it also means... it's no longer pure."

Any Fusion will produce flaws.

Li Dong looked at the monster-like temple in the distance, then at the Sea Clan tribes fighting bloody battles in the deep sea, and a brand new plan quickly formed in his mind.

Rushing in and going head-to-head directly is the act of a brute.

Use these Sea Clan to attract attention, a feint to the east and attack in the west? Feasible, but not enough.

He needed a more perfect entry point, a way to break the situation with one fatal blow.

"Wanting to eat this big starfish, brute force alone won't work," Li Dong flexed his wrists, his joints making a series of crisp sounds, "First, I have to find where its mouth is."

He decided to first infiltrate the island where the temple was located, observe it up close, and find the true weakness of that core anchor point.

At the same time, he also had to find a way to say hello to those "neighbors" of the Sea Clan, who didn't seem easy to deal with.

After all, the enemy of an enemy, even if they can't be friends, making them a useful tool isn't bad either.

The wind of the South Sea blew, carrying a heavier briny scent.

Li Dong not only didn't feel annoyed, but instead felt an inexplicable excitement.

The positional warfare on the plains of Qingzhou was over; now, it was time to change the venue and have a good time in this more complex and vast deep-sea hunting ground.

His figure flickered, and he silently merged into the shadows below, sneaking towards the grotesque island.

The hunt had begun.