Gen stood up from his seated position. He did not say anything about what had happened on the rocks. Lorel did not speak of it either. A silent, comfortable understanding hung between them as they dusted off their clothes and walked back to where the others waited.
In the clearing, Chubbs, Liang, and Kang Mao were in a heated, whispered argument. The moment they saw Lorel and Gen return, their expressions eased, the tension draining away.
Chubbs looked warily at Gen, then at Lorel. "My lady, did this rascal do something to you?"
Gen smirked. "Get out of my face, fatty."
Liang laughed, a genuine sound of relief. "That is indeed Gen." He turned to Kang Mao. "What's the plan now?"
They all fell silent for a moment, the question hanging in the air. Then, as one, their eyes were drawn to a specific point in the golden haze. In the past, being so far from the center of the Sky Ocean, they could not see it. But now, after moving closer for over two months, the distant shape had finally resolved into something solid.
A castle.
It was a massive, sprawling structure of dark stone that occupied an entire floating island at the very heart of the liquid sky. Spires pierced the golden atmosphere, and vast, shadowed archways promised labyrinthine depths.
Gen pointed. "Without a doubt, the last chess piece of Master Yujin's puzzle should be found there."
"We have the Zenith Sky Root, technically," Kang Mao noted, his voice pragmatic. "But there is still the Sky Demon venom we need for Liang. Until that is done, we cannot leave the Sky Ocean."
Liang smiled from the side, a flash of gratitude in his eyes. He understood Gen was thinking of him, prioritizing his cure. "Definitely."
"Then let's get to the castle!" Chubbs said, his voice a cheerful boom meant to rally everyone. He was trying, though the new streaks of white in his hair made the effort seem more poignant.
Gen took a step forward, then ascended into the sky. Lorel followed without a word. Then Liang, then Chubbs, and lastly Kang Mao. Without further discussion, they flew as a group toward the heart of the Sky Ocean.
Gen's reasoning was simple. The three-tailed Sky Demon was intelligent. It had learned their techniques, used their Wheels. If it wanted to continue its evolution by studying human cultivators, it would logically converge on the place every ambitious cultivator was ultimately drawn: the center, the greatest treasure site, the castle.
***
After flying for about five hours, the group finally arrived in the vicinity of the building. At close range, it felt even more magnificent, and more imposing. Massive, rounded pillars were ornamented with dragon-like carvings. Grand entrances yawned on all sides. A sprawling staircase of white, fossilized bone led up to the main towers.
Gen also noticed something strange: very few cultivators could be seen around the exterior. The place was eerily quiet.
From the opposite direction, another figure arrived. A young male cultivator, his fine robes covered in dried, flaking blood. His expression was sharp, etched with raw anger and frustration. He glanced at Gen and the others, his eyes narrowing. Then, he pointed a finger in their general direction.
"Singing Mercy," he echoed, his voice flat.
From the depths of his core, a blade of blood-red Qi materialized. It zipped through the space with such savage speed it passed *through* Gen and his group before they could even flinch. However, the blade wasn't destined for them.
It struck a creature fleeing in the opposite direction—a sleek, scaled form that looked like a Greedy Shark, but without the seven signature fins. In a blink, the creature was obliterated, not by a cut, but by a miniature, blood-red star that ignited at the point of impact. The searing *SCREECH* of annihilated energy made their ears ring.
Gen rose to the newcomer's level, his face tight. "What was the meaning of that?"
The man looked vaguely at them, his eyes showing more interest in Lorel's figure. With a dismissive hump, he said, "You were on my path. Nothing more."
Lorel flew up to Gen's level, her voice firm. "You could have harmed one of us. Are you not going to apologize?"
The man, called Kai, let his eyes return to a more normal, if still intense, state, revealing a strikingly handsome face beneath the grime and fury. "Excuse my manner, my flower. I have been very irritated these days." He spat to the side. "Camui has been a real jerk. After entering the Sky Ocean, he abandoned all of us juniors to navigate this death trap and fled with the other elders to hoard all the treasure."
Lorel's face darkened at the way he addressed her. She instinctively took another step back. "We are not familiar. Do not call me that."
But Gen stayed more pragmatic, reading between the lines. *Camui.* It was indeed the case. From his own calculation, it had taken them about two months, perhaps more, to reach this place. Where, according to this man, Camui and the other powerful elders had been here for a very long time already. They had likely collected the lion's share of the Golden Touch's treasures.
Kai then turned his back to them, moving towards a grand archway of the castle. "Even if there is probably nothing left for us inside, I still want to see what is in there. Are you coming, my flower?"
A Supremacy Sword flickered into existence, a line of furious pink light slicing straight through the space where Kai had been standing a heartbeat before. He was already gone, having dove into the castle's shadowed interior. His laugh echoed back, tinged with a satisfied malice. "I will be waiting for you inside!"
"Why are you so angry?" Gen asked, turning to Lorel, genuinely perplexed. "A flower is a beautiful thing. You should be happy."
Liang slapped his own forehead, then shoved Gen forward. "Let's move before you blurt another thing that gets your head chopped off."
Amused, frustrated, and wary, the group entered the castle.
***
The interior felt even stranger than the outside. The ceiling high above seemed liquid, shifting like the golden air around them, giving the impression the entire structure was an illusion. They walked through vast, empty corridors of polished black stone, their footsteps echoing ominously.
Occasionally, they saw corpses.
Cultivators in various states of dress, from different sects, lay where they had fallen. The fights here had clearly been extremely vicious before their arrival.
Chubbs knelt by one older man in blue and silver robes. "I recognize this face. He was one of the elders with Camui at the start of the expedition. Even someone of his level was killed… but by what?"
Lorel examined another body a few paces away. "He is not the only one. Many cultivators have died here."
Gen moved to a third corpse, a powerfully built man whose left arm was a mass of blackened, necrotic tissue. The skin around it was webbed with dark veins. His features were locked in a rictus of agony. Gen's face darkened. Kang Mao and Liang came to look, and the same grim understanding passed between them.
Gen turned to Lorel. "It is him. The three-tailed Sky Demon."
Lorel gasped in shock. After Gen explained the nature of the poison and the beast's intelligence, the pieces clicked into a horrifying picture.
"It means," Kang Mao said, his voice low, "the Sky Demon is probably the apex hunter of the Sky Ocean."
Liang bailed his fist, pointing his head down. The memory was still vivid in his mind—the despair, the impossible speed, the feeling of being prey. If it hadn't been for Gen touching the Third Door of the Eternal Body, they would all have died on that island.
Gen placed a hand on Liang's shoulder. "Don't worry. This time around, we will get its head and save you."
It was at that moment the group felt it—a sudden, violent burst of powerful Qi from somewhere deep within the castle's labyrinthine heart. It wasn't the chaotic dark energy of the Sky Demon. It was something else, sharp and blazing and full of killing intent.
They all exchanged a look.
Who was it that was still fighting in this graveyard?
Gen and his group followed the fading echoes of the clash, their movements swift and silent through the castle's cavernous halls. They rounded a corner into a vast, vaulted chamber, its ceiling lost in swirling, liquid shadow.
The scene before them was one of desperate struggle.
Facing a strange Milky Beast was a duo of cultivators. The beast walked on all fours, its limbs ending in cruel, hooked talons that allowed it to scale the vertical walls of the chamber with the ease of a spider. It would cling to the stone, then launch itself in a blur, only to land on another wall, constantly moving, a hunter toying with cornered prey.
Its body was sleek and muscular, covered in overlapping, iridescent scales that shifted from deep blue to violent purple in the strange light. But the most striking feature was on its back: not one, but **seven** sinuous, whip-like tails, each tipped with a barbed stinger that gleamed with a venomous light. This was no ordinary predator. This was a **Greedy Shark**.
Its eyes, two pits of cold, calculating malice, tracked the two cultivators below.
The cultivators were in bad shape. The older man, bleeding heavily from a gash in his side that stained his elegant grey robes black, was someone Gen recognized almost instantly—the stern, imposing elder from the **Li Family**. His face was pale with pain and effort, one hand clamped over his wound, the other holding a crackling blade of white lightning that seemed to be the only thing keeping the beast from immediately finishing them.
Beside him, a younger Li disciple, perhaps seventeen, was paralyzed with sheer terror, his sword trembling in his hand, his feet rooted to the spot.
Kang Mao frowned, his voice a low whisper. "Another Adult Milky Beast. A peak one, by the look of those tails." He pursed his lips. *Staying with Gen was indeed the best and the worst decision I could make,* he thought. It was as if all the danger in the Sky Ocean was converging on this one reckless boy—Buqu, the three-tailed Sky Demon, and now this. But another part of him, the part that had chafed under the rigid protocols of the Kang Family, felt a strange exhilaration. He had always thought his older brother was monstrously strong, a force his father had to constantly reckon with. Now, he could see how truly vast and terrifying the world was. His brother seemed… provincial, in comparison.
The moment the young Li disciple saw Gen's group appear at the chamber entrance, his paralysis broke. He didn't think. He turned and sprinted toward them, his face a mask of raw, animal panic, abandoning the wounded elder completely.
"HELP US!" he screamed, his voice cracking. "PLEASE, HELP US!"