Uncle Grey’s warning felt like an icicle being nailed into his heart. Why? What’s going on? Most of the other ships had also run aground, so none of them would be coming after him and the others anytime soon. Once the white-haired woman regained control over her inner energies, he could just order her to fly him and his friends the rest of the way across the lake.

Before Nolan could sort out his thoughts, a loud voice permeated across the entire area. “Enough of this, May! There’s still a chance for you to keep your life. If you agree to come back to the sect and receive a compulsion marker, then we’ll simply lock up your accomplices and have you spend the rest of your days serving the sect!”

Nolan traced the source of the voice to a conspicuously large ship with distinctive azure sails and plenty of golden gilding. He recognized the speaker as the Sect Master of the Falling Rain Sect himself, and was disheartened to sense the cultivation levels of those around him. Of the 134 people on his ship, twenty-one were at the Genesis stage and the rest were all at the peak of Integration. It quickly became apparent why Uncle Grey had sounded so alarmed. Even with May and the other woman’s help, there was no way that they could successfully fend off the core force of such a powerful organization.

Still, they should have to wait a while for their cultivations to return to normal. Until then, they can’t do anything to us, right?

Trust me when I say this, Nolan. If you don’t leave now, you and your friends will probably die.

May ignored the sect master’s words and rushed over to the edge of the ship to peer down at the massive outcropping of rock, which seemed like a sizeable island that had been submerged. A rare look of horror crossed over her face as she wheeled around just in time to see Sean throw an explosive barrel at the nearest ship that had also run aground.

“Sean, don’t throw it!”

The wooden container had already left his hand by the time that she finished her sentence, the lean man looking over with confusion as a loud and reverberating percussion rang out across the eerily silent, mist-encircled expanse of lake. At least twenty people died in the blast, the barrel having landed at a particular area of the deck where a large number of disciples had gathered. The survivors didn’t hesitate to leap overboard as the ship tilted to one side, though the sudden movement seemed unrelated to the explosion.

It’s that shallow?

Nolan wouldn’t have guessed that some areas of this random outcropping were shallow enough for the sect members to stand chest-deep in. They were lucky, he figured, since they still hadn’t recovered their cultivations from the effects of the sect’s formation, and thus couldn’t operate their flying swords.

He hesitated to take Uncle Grey’s advice, since the Millennial Ring would most likely eject them from Nia within a day or two considering that they had only just returned to Venara from that realm a short while ago. That would mean that they would appear at this spot within a matter of hours in real time, at which point their ship might have been boarded or destroyed. Still, the old ghost wouldn’t have said something like that for nothing, and not in such an urgent tone.

“Guys,” he said, coming to a decision, “get over here, quick!”

His friends recognized his tone and rushed to the helm area, all of them following him over to where May stood by the portside railing. Nolan began to panic when there was no reaction from the ring, feeling as if his gut had been frozen through. Apparently he had used up all of the ring’s energy when he’d teleported to Nia in the midst of his heavenly tribulation.

What the hell? I’ve been pouring energy into it, though!

“You noticed it too?” said May, whose normally pale but alluring pallor had taken on a nauseous tinge.

“Noticed what?” he asked, though he fell forward and caught himself against the railing as the boat began to shake, the entire outcrop seeming to suffer from a sudden earthquake.

About one square kilometre of space sat within the rough encirclement of ships that had gathered to capture Nolan and his friends, with more showing up by the minute. Glancing down at the lake’s surface, he was shocked silly to see that two large masses of rock were moving away from one another like a pair of magnets with the same charge. This caused a significant disturbance, creating violent currents and forming a large valley about five metres deep that was constantly widening.

It took a few minutes for the water to settle, at which time the surface of the lake returned to an eerie stillness that seemed to have set in all too quickly. Illuminated by the morning sun, a vast expanse of jade-like rock was now exposed beneath the crystal clear waters, with an elliptical-shaped hole at the centre that looked like a black, bottomless pit. Or at least this was the initial impression given. It only took a lazy movement of this massive, spherical stretch of minerals for Nolan to realize that he was staring at a gigantic, olive-green eye, and that another one had just opened up in the distance nearby the ship that the Falling Rain Sect’s sect master was currently on.

Why is it looking at me? No matter how he saw it, that massive, alien eye was staring directly at him. Not only that, but how big was this creature? It turned out that the entire outcrop was just its eyelids and the space in between its eyes.

“H—how can this be?” stammered May. “It wasn’t nearly this big at that time…”

While everyone, including the sect’s forces, began to panic, Nolan noticed that the white-haired woman was attempting to escape, though she only managed to take a few steps before she fell to one knee and began to choke as if she had unexpectedly been punched in the gut. Seeing the black ring that abruptly appeared around her neck, Nolan recalled that he had ordered her never to try to slip away from him under threat of self-suffocation.

“Come back here and breathe normally,” he commanded, his eyes never leaving the gigantic one that was currently staring at their ship.

“Are you crazy?” she said as soon as she caught her breath. “This isn’t some simple-minded beast, boy! It clearly recognized me!” Her eyes darted around, betraying her quick thoughts. “I’ll go off on my own and lure it away from you all. That works for you, right?”

“You think I’m simple? As long as our contract exists, you live and die with us.”

Chills ran down Nolan’s spine as he realized that she was right, that the odd, elliptical pupil was staring straight at her, and that the eyelids had stopped moving in a way that looked almost like a glare. The movement of its eyelids—which more resembled a human’s than an alligator or crocodile’s—had pushed many ships back into the boundary of the sect’s formation, including half of their ship. He had been a bit too distracted to notice, and his cultivation was fully sealed for a second time as a result of this. As soon as he noticed, he followed the others to the other end of the ship, his friends having called out to him so that he, the nearest to the captain’s cabin, didn’t lag behind.

“Why are its eyes so freaky?” asked Sean, who could think of nothing else to say after letting out a loud and definition gulp. “They should be on the sides of its head, right? But they’re both in the middle, right up against each other.”

“Do you guys hear that?” said Esteban, his voice shaking as he fidgeted with his vest-like robes.

Nolan focused on the intensifying sound of rushing water that seemed to be coming from the opposing wall of fog, which didn’t have any sealing effects and so was presumably the product of the spirit of the lake. This noise was punctuated by a frightening crescendo, made all the more eerie as the distant mass of mist hid whatever it was that had been the source of the sound. Nolan was only left wondering for a split second, for the distant shroud of precipitation parted like a biblical sea as a gargantuan object suddenly shot out of the water from far, far away.

Nolan ignored the fact that countless sect members were diving overboard out of desperation no matter which direction he looked in, for he was truly shocked into stillness as he witnessed an incredible alligator-like tail rising up into the sky as if a scaly skyscraper had just risen from the depths of the massive lake. Only, this tail was much larger than any building that he had ever seen, easily ten or eleven kilometres long. It carried with it an immense amount of water that was white from the violent displacement, as if the king of all bombs had been detonated from within the distant currents.