The one who arrived was a woman.
She wore a shimmering crimson robe, her sea-blue hair cascading freely down her back.
In her right hand she held a gilded staff nearly three meters tall. Her delicate, youthful face—appearing to be around thirty—was framed by a pair of clear blue eyes, deeper than the ocean itself.
"High Priest!"
Sea Dragon, Sea Spear, Sea Star, and Sea Ghost—four of the Sacred Pillar guardians—darted to her side and bowed respectfully.
The woman gave a slight nod, her gaze turning toward the white-robed youth aboard the ship. A trace of surprise flickered through her azure eyes.
Li Zhexian was also looking at her.
Without question—
Her aura was subtly linked to the sea itself.
With a single thought, she could calm wind and waves alike.
Only one person fit that description—
The one hailed as invincible in the ocean, Sea God Douluo, Bo Saixi.
Buzz—
Buzz—
Beside Li Zhexian, sunlight rippled, faintly sketching a human outline.
Qian Daoliu revealed himself.
His eyes, always calm like an ancient well, trembled slightly at this moment.
Even the radiance enveloping his body grew chaotic and scorching.
Decades of restraint.
Decades of bitter cultivation.
All of it collapsed the instant he saw her.
Qian Daoliu's lips moved, as if countless words were choked in his throat.
In the end, all those surging emotions condensed into a single greeting—soft and slow.
"Have you… been well?"
Bo Saixi's gaze swept across the ship.
As her eyes shifted,
it seemed as though she were searching for a specific figure.
After a brief, fruitless search,
the faint ripples deep within her eyes finally settled into stillness.
She raised her gaze to the old acquaintance before her. The emotion in her deep blue eyes turned into quiet resignation.
"Qian Daoliu… it has been a long time."
Seeing the direction of her search, Qian Daoliu instead withdrew the turbulence in his eyes and returned to calm.
He turned slightly toward Li Zhexian…
Some things,
were best spoken by someone who had ties to both sides.
"The Titled Douluo of Sea Dod Island did indeed fall by the sword of Li Zhexian beside me."
Qian Daoliu spoke evenly.
He recounted in full how Dai Mubai had acted with arrogance that day,
and how Sea Horse Douluo had aided him in wrongdoing.
This was partly thanks to the fact
that Qian Daoliu had stayed in Heaven Dou City for a day,
and listened to the storytellers.
The Sacred Pillar guardians clenched their fists, knuckles whitening.
If things were truly as Qian Daoliu described, then Sea Horse had brought disaster upon himself.
Yet for a Sacred Pillar guardian to fall just like that—
how could they accept it?
Bo Saixi's expression remained calm.
She looked at Qian Daoliu, who, even after finishing his account, still seemed hesitant to speak. Her blue eyes suddenly grew far deeper.
Qian Daoliu truly was wavering.
Tang Chen's death…
If he did not say it—
Bo Saixi would never know.
And this journey would be far less turbulent.
But just as he was about to steel his resolve,
Li Zhexian stepped forward.
He raised his sword fingers.
A clear, resonant sword cry shot straight into the heavens.
As clouds and mist churned,
scenes from the past emerged.
—Bibi Dong joining forces with the Slaughter King; the white-robed youth facing them alone with a single sword.
Within the light screen,
the heaven-shattering, earth-rending battle made the Sacred Pillar guardians inhale sharply.
And Bo Saixi's gaze—
the moment it touched that slender figure wrapped in a crimson robe—
froze completely.
Li Zhexian's calm voice echoed across the sea.
"I have no intention of hiding the past. The twists of right and wrong are before you—judge them for yourselves."
The images shifted,
revealing the most critical moment.
Bibi Dong used a bizarre secret art to make the Slaughter King die in her stead, and the youth's sword cleaved that crimson figure apart.
At that instant,
Bo Saixi stiffened.
She saw the face she had missed for decades turn back within the sword light, his eyes crossing time and space to meet hers from afar.
That single glance seemed to contain a thousand unspoken words,
yet in the end, they vanished together with his shattered body, dissolved by the ruthless sword intent.
A dim veil covered Bo Saixi's blue eyes.
The roar of the sea ceased abruptly.
The crests of waves froze in midair.
The entire ocean was left with nothing but boundless, suffocating silence.
"Tang… Chen…"
After several decades,
Bo Saixi's voice was as light as a dreamlike whisper as she spoke that name once more.
Memories surged like tides.
Back then, she, Tang Chen, and Qian Daoliu had been both rivals who honed one another
and sworn friends who shared life and death.
They had retreated together from countless perilous situations,
drunk and sung beneath innumerable moonlit nights.
Until that day—
when both men confessed their feelings to her.
She had said:
"Whichever of you becomes a god first, I will marry."
Those words already carried an answer.
Because she knew all too well—
Qian Daoliu, as the guardian of the Angel God, was destined never to obtain a god position in this life.
But Tang Chen did not understand the meaning behind her words.
He resolutely set foot upon the long and arduous road in search of godhood.
That parting lasted decades.
They missed each other's most passionate years,
missed the time they should have spent standing side by side.
A lifetime of waiting yielded only the final news of his eternal separation from the mortal world.
Bo Saixi stood quietly atop the rolling waves.
Behind her, the solemn phantom of the Sea God emerged.
The vast power of the entire ocean flowed around her body.
She looked toward the white-robed youth on the deck, her gaze calm and deep like a ten-thousand-meter abys.
"Li Zhexian."
"Sea Horse's death was due to his failure to distinguish right from wrong;
Tang Chen's demise stemmed from his own unsteady Dao heart."
"At their root, both were the consequences of their own choices."
"But…"
Her steady voice suddenly turned hoarse.
"I am the High Priest of Sea God Island, and I am also bound by the karmic cause of Tang Chen's fall into the demonic path."
"Whether in public duty or private feeling…"
"I must demand an explanation from you for their deaths."
"Take one attack from me."
"If you withstand it, all past grudges shall be laid to rest."
"If you deem it unjust…"
"Then we may fight until death—there is no harm in that either."
Upon hearing this,
Qian Daoliu's expression could not help but change slightly.
He knew Bo Saixi's terrifying strength better than anyone.
Decades ago, he and Tang Chen had fought her with all their might upon the sea.
Back then,
he and Tang Chen had taken turns entering the battle,
yet both were defeated before her.
Upon this vast ocean, Bo Saixi was the ruler who wielded the very laws themselves, capable of mobilizing the boundless might of the entire sea.
It could be said—
so long as a true god did not descend into the world, even a Limit Douluo had no chance of defeating her at sea.
As for Li Zhexian…
he was even more unfathomable.
Though he had not become a god, Qian Daoliu could not see through him in the slightest.
In his eyes, once this battle erupted, the outcome would likely be mutual destruction—
or at best, Li Zhexian winning by a hair's breadth.
"Zhexian…"
Qian Daoliu turned his head, intending to dissuade him.
But he saw that the QinglianSword was already in the young man's hand.
The instant the sword light appeared,
its piercing sharpness even made Qian Daoliu's eyes ache faintly.
"That suits me perfectly."
Li Zhexian pointed his sword diagonally, his voice calm:
"One strike—after that, all grudges are settled."
"If I win, I want you to agree to two things:
allow my companions to land on the island, and tell me where Tang San is."
Bo Saixi's gaze tightened slightly.
How could she not understand the meaning behind the youth's words?
He was clearly treating victory as a foregone conclusion—
even arranging matters after his win.
Boom!
Boom!
Boom!
The sea erupted as towering pillars of water exploded skyward.
Bo Saixi's crimson robe billowed, her words resounding like a divine decree:
"All ships, withdraw!"
As her voice fell, wave after wave surged forth as if obeying a command, pushing every vessel on the sea far into the distance.
Seeing this, Li Zhexian raised an eyebrow.
"For the sake of this mercy, I will not take your life in this battle."
"Insolent youth!"
Even with Bo Saixi's composure, anger inevitably surged in her heart at that moment.