Chapter 4789 — Claiming Victory

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"Sea Dragon..." Wei Zhao finally caught on. No wonder Gui Dongxi had said it was a distant relative of his—so they were all of the dragon clan. Except one was a spirit beast and the other a sea beast, and the bloodline was so far removed that the connection practically amounted to nothing at all.

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"Sea Dragon! It's a Sea Dragon! We've actually run into a Sea Dragon!" Oda Ba suddenly cried out in an agitated flurry, gesturing wildly and tripping over his words. This was the legendary god of the sea, virtually the totem creature of the endless ocean—and he had sailed the seas for over three hundred years without ever once laying eyes on one!

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Everyone else erupted on the spot. If there was one sea beast they talked about most in ordinary times, it was the Sea Dragon beyond all doubt, for tales of it were far too numerous to tell—three days and three nights would not suffice—and yet today they had actually laid eyes on a living Sea Dragon.

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But before the crowd could finish rejoicing, this Sea Dragon, haloed in the aura of the sea god, came charging at them once more. With a thunderous boom the warship heeled over violently again, and once the hull was barely steadied, the still-excited crowd felt as though a basin of ice water had been dumped over their heads—the defensive formation had shattered!

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Oda Ba included, everyone turned deathly pale at the instant the halo of the defensive formation winked out. Only now did they realize that encountering a Sea Dragon, that legendary apex sea beast, was no stroke of luck at all but the rarest of calamities. With the defensive formation gone, every soul aboard was going to die here. There was no chance of escape.

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Just then, in the midst of the chaos, Wei Zhao gathered his true qi and bellowed: "Starfall Formation—loose!"

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Fortunately the crew had not completely lost their heads, and at Wei Zhao's command they responded on instinct. In an instant seven pillars of falling starlight descended from the sky, and each one landed in exactly the same position as the seven that had missed before.

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Only now did Wei Zhao realize—by repeating the Starfall pillars at the same positions, the charging time was cut short by more than a hundredfold. At such speed, not to mention someone in the Mountain-Opening stage, even a far stronger being would have no time to react.

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But the foe, after all, was the Sea Dragon known as the god of the sea, and its instantaneous reaction in that moment still broke Wei Zhao out in a cold sweat. It actually managed to dodge six of the seven Starfall pillars outright, and only when there was nowhere left to evade did it take one. Without that final pillar, everything would have come to nothing, and the fate awaiting them all would have been death with no place even to be buried. Fortunately, the piece had not fallen on empty ground.

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This was entirely Gui Dongxi's handiwork. His earlier placement of pieces at those seven points had already sealed off every escape route the Sea Dragon had; with seven Starfall pillars, one was bound to strike home. The being said to come closest to the sea god had, in the end, still been outplayed by this distant relation of its own.

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A roar split the heavens. Struck by a Starfall pillar, the Sea Dragon did not shatter into fragments like the Mountain-Opening whales; it merely had a great hole bored clean through its body. The wound was far from light.

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Having taken such a heavy blow, the Sea Dragon did not flee. Instead its ferocity was roused, and it charged the warship again—one strike and it could kill them all. Unfortunately for it, Wei Zhao clearly had no intention of granting that chance: "Starfall Formation—loose again!"

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Seven more pillars of falling starlight, another inescapable dead angle—and another great hole was punched through the Sea Dragon. This time it finally dared not push its luck further. With a shrill, piercing scream it turned and fled into the distance, yet Wei Zhao still had no mind to let it go. At once another volley of Starfall pillars came pounding after it in relentless pursuit.

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The world fell silent.

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"Is it... is it dead?" Oda Ba swallowed hard and stared ahead, but the waters there had long since been dyed a murky, churning red with blood, and nothing could be seen beneath the surface. After that final barrage of Starfall pillars, the Sea Dragon had never resurfaced; perhaps it had been blasted to bits.

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As for those three Mountain-Opening sea beasts from before, they had been ground to pieces in that earlier storm of fire—not even bone fragments remained.

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"You tell me," Wei Zhao said, giving him a noncommittal glance. He turned and walked over to Huo Yudie's side, let out a long breath of stale air, and said: "It's over. Let's head back."

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At those words from Wei Zhao, the rest of the crowd finally burst into earth-shaking cheers. Anyone who had hovered so long at the gates of hell would be left gasping for breath; their nerves had been stretched nearly to the breaking point, and only now could they finally relax. To survive a calamity—that was cause for celebration indeed!

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Watching Wei Zhao and his companion leave with his own eyes, Oda Ba could not help but wear a complicated expression. He wanted to speak yet held back, and for a moment he did not know what to say, and could only stand there dumbfounded.

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"Senior Gui, is that Sea Dragon really dead?" Wei Zhao asked in his mind as he and Huo Yudie made their way back to the Eastern Continent disciples' living quarters. This question puzzled not only Oda Ba and the others—in truth, he himself was not sure either.

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"I already told you it's a distant relative of mine—how could I kill it?" Gui Dongxi chuckled darkly. Even he felt a twinge of shame saying it; knowing full well it was a distant relative and still scheming against it, he had no choice but to add: "It's only badly wounded and has fled, that's all."

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"Huh? Then won't it come back for another round?" Wei Zhao was startled. Dawn was about to break, and the ancient warship, its spiritual energy exhausted, was completely defenseless—it could not withstand even a casual strike from the creature.

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"That it won't. Its wounds won't heal so easily. Having taken such a heavy loss, it won't dare come looking for trouble again any time soon—though who's to say about later on," Gui Dongxi said.

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"Later? Later has nothing to do with me. Once I'm off this ship, let the floods rage for all I care." Wei Zhao laughed it off with a shrug, then asked again: "By the way, I was just wondering—why would this Sea Dragon go to such lengths to make trouble? Did Oda Ba and the others provoke it before? That doesn't seem likely. From the look of them, it was their first time seeing one too..."

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"Heh heh, they didn't need to provoke it. The very existence of this ancient warship is already an irreconcilable grievance to a Sea Dragon," Gui Dongxi said with a laugh.

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"What do you mean by that?" Wei Zhao asked, puzzled.

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"A ship must have a keel. Do you know what they use for the keel of a sea-borne leviathan on the scale of an ancient warship?" Gui Dongxi answered with a question of his own.

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Wei Zhao was taken aback for a moment, then it suddenly hit him: "Don't tell me it's made from Sea Dragons?"

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"Exactly—that's the reason. Put yourself in a Sea Dragon's place: how would you feel watching a warship like that sail right over your head?"

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"Probably even more worked up than it was," Wei Zhao said with a wry shake of his head.

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