As soon as Bexia returned to the Demon God Camp, he took Lucifer and accepted a mission concerning the Sea of the Abyss, then left. After all, an investigation into the place where space and time had gone haywire would inevitably lead back to him.
Not long after Bexia left the Demon God Camp, news of what had happened in the place where space and time had gone haywire spread through the entire camp like wildfire. After all, several Demon King legions and two Demon Kings had vanished. The shock was enormous.
Still, Bexia wasn’t worried that anyone would trace it back to him so quickly. The place where space and time had gone haywire was already a mess, and then there’d been that final, violent explosion. With Lucifer’s power involved, figuring out what had happened was no task for an ordinary demon.
After accepting the mission, Bexia took Lucifer through a teleportation array bound for the Abyssal Sea. By the time the Demon Gods at the camp discovered what had happened in the place where space and time had gone haywire, he’d already made several stops and reached the region of the Sea of the Abyss.
The Sea of the Abyss lay in the heart of the Abyss. It was the core of the entire realm, the birthplace of demons—and once, the very center of the Abyss.
The reason it was called the former core was that, when Bexia had been the Demon Lord, this had been the most revered place in the entire Abyss. The Sea of the Abyss also produced all kinds of divine treasures, which were of tremendous benefit to demons.
But after Bexia left, the Sea of the Abyss grew restless. Even powerful demons found it difficult to survive there. Terrifying natural disasters and storms swept across its waters from time to time, and in certain places, even Demon Kings had to give them a wide berth.
No matter how terrifying the Sea of the Abyss was, it still couldn’t stop the demons of the Abyss from coming to explore it. After all, it held nearly seventy percent of the Abyss’s cultivation resources—and it was unclaimed territory, with no master.
Ordinary demons had little chance of obtaining the resources beneath the Sea of the Abyss. But there were islands scattered across its surface, and those islands held plenty of useful resources too. Many of them weren’t fixed in place, though, which meant no demon could claim them.
Most demons who came here were searching for just such a stroke of luck. The Sea of the Abyss might be violent, but its islands were still sacred ground to demons. They were dangerous, but the risks matched the rewards: the greater the danger, the greater the chance of gaining something.
Bexia stood aboard a warship sailing across the Sea of the Abyss, leaning against the railing as he gazed at its calm waters. Since the demons traveling here came from the Demon God Camp, the warship was naturally the camp’s handiwork. The sea’s water was terrifyingly corrosive. Anyone who fell in was doomed—unless they were an Eternal-level Demon God.
Even an Eternal-level Demon God couldn’t stay in the Sea of the Abyss for long. And flying was impossible over these waters. Every demon lost the ability to fly here, except for those born with wings—but even they couldn’t fly very high.
“What are you thinking about, Master?” Lucifer clung to Bexia’s back like a boneless cat, breathing warm, fragrant air by his ear as she asked.
“You really don’t know what I’m thinking?” Lucifer wasn’t some big-breasted airhead. And before meeting Bexia, she’d been the ruler of the Supreme Heavens. Could someone like her really be as naive and sweet as she seemed?
“I’m not a worm in your stomach, Master. How would I know what you’re thinking?” Lucifer nuzzled Bexia’s cheek, her voice tinged with a hint of coyness.
“You…” Bexia turned and kissed Lucifer on the cheek, then asked calmly, “Do you think the Supreme God is the end?”
“I suppose… so.” Lucifer hesitated before answering. As far as she knew, the Supreme God was already the strongest.
Bexia heard the hesitation in Lucifer’s voice and was about to say something when the calm Sea of the Abyss suddenly turned turbulent. The warship began to rock violently. Amid the towering waves, it looked as tiny as a leaf with no roots.
“Raise the shields!” a demon shouted. A purple barrier sprang up around the warship, holding back the raging wind and rain.
But before the demons aboard could breathe easy, the warship lurched violently, as if it had struck something hard. Had they run aground?
But could they really have run aground out here? Demons who often traveled the Sea of the Abyss knew better. They hadn’t hit a reef—they’d encountered a powerful abyssal sea beast.
“All demons, prepare yourselves! Attack the moment the sea beast appears!” the warship’s captain shouted. He activated the ship’s weapons, and several massive blue pillars of ice appeared around it. A fierce chill spread through the Sea of the Abyss, freezing a patch of its surface into black ice.
“Boom!”
The ice had barely formed when it shattered. A colossal creature burst through from beneath it, its body black as ink and its scales seemingly indestructible. A single horn grew from each of its three heads, each one shining with a different color.
“Attack!” The demon captain led the charge. He was a demon native to the Sea of the Abyss. Unlike demons from elsewhere, his kind could somehow survive in these waters without being corrupted by the resentment that filled them.
But that advantage came with a downside: demons of their kind were generally quite weak. It was as if all their talent had gone into resisting the Sea of the Abyss’s corrupting power.
