Obviously, no one expected Ryan Ling to pull off a move like this—it seemed even more supernatural than his slaughter of the Wuzhou crowd at the tournament.
Gabriel Xue had personally watched him wipe out those shameless scumbags, and that's exactly why he went to the Haizhou guild hall late at night to recruit Ryan. But seeing this scene now, he almost couldn't believe it—Ryan's power seemed to have skyrocketed to an unprecedented level in just a few days.
The surrounding officers, who'd been chattering nonstop, were all stunned—Ryan had somehow entangled every blood shark. A dozen sharks had been about to ram the boat, but he flung them all away.
At this moment, he really was the true overlord of the sea.
But those blood sharks, which had wanted to flee, were suddenly controlled by some eerie force—all of them kept attacking, even if it meant dying.
"Master, someone’s controlling these sharks!" shouted Warren Yuan from beside him.
Ryan shot him a fierce glare—he’d already noticed something was off. And the sudden appearance of hundreds of blood sharks was obviously a problem.
"All of you, go to hell!" Ryan gritted his teeth, his whole body slowly rising into the air along with hundreds of strands of gang-qi. The thin threads crackled, like they were electrified.
In an instant, all you could hear was a thunderous series of cracks—the sound of countless bones breaking.
On the sea’s surface, every blood shark was torn open—some lost their heads, some were split in two, some were shattered into pieces. The scene was so brutal, it made everyone’s eyes nearly pop out.
"My great-grandma, it's like a god is riding my boat! A god, a god!" The captain was totally dumbfounded, turning to Ryan and kowtowing like crazy.
"Is he even human?" In the cabin, Anqi Chen, Hayden Zheng, and the others looked like they'd just been struck by lightning.
Gabriel Xue and the rest were slapping their thighs and cheering loudly. In the past few months, this Blood Shark Formation had trapped countless heroes—some barely survived, but no one ever wiped out the sharks this cleanly.
"Die, die, die!" Ryan roared at the sky, unleashing his qi to the max. In an instant, nearly every shark was killed—the whole sea turned blood-red.
Right after, Ryan landed back on the deck, took a deep breath, sweat beading on his forehead. He didn’t hesitate—he sat down cross-legged and started recovering his energy.
"Boss!" Jason Lin, Harvey "Million" Jin, and the others were about to rush over, but Warren Yuan stopped them.
"Stay back! Master’s true yuan is depleted—let him recover!" Warren Yuan, true to his Daoist training, immediately saw that Ryan’s flashy move had burned up too much of his energy. He needed to meditate ASAP.
Everyone nodded and quickly called for the captain to get the boat moving.
The captain scrambled to his feet and crawled into the cockpit, but as soon as he hit the stairs, his legs started shaking uncontrollably and he collapsed with a thud.
"What’s wrong with you? The sharks are dead, what are you freaking out about? Get us out of here!" Jason Lin and the others shouted, but the blood-red sea still made everyone anxious.
But the captain couldn’t move at all—his face was waxy yellow, his whole body trembling, fingers shaking as he pointed at the sea. He lost all courage and fainted dead away.
Everyone froze, then rushed to look—except for Warren Yuan, every single person dropped to the deck in terror.
Because under the surface, a swarm of bizarre upright corpses had appeared—hair wild, faces chalk-white, lips blood-red. Worst of all, every single one was staring straight at them.
"No way! What kind of sorcery is this? Who could control a thousand upright corpses?" Now, all the dead heads popped out of the water—over a thousand, glaring at them with chilling malice.
"Oh my god, I want to go home—I want out!" Anqi Chen screamed, totally losing it. She was scared out of her mind, shrieking like crazy, while Hayden Zheng was frozen, face pale, eyes rolling back like he was about to pass out.
"How is this even possible? Shouldn't we be in the clear after the Blood Shark Formation?" On the warships behind them, even the officers were stunned—even from dozens of miles away, their hearts were pounding out of their chests.
Gabriel Xue was silent. Even though he’d seen countless battles, his forehead was slick with cold sweat. He’d underestimated the Japanese sword sect’s tricks. He glanced at Ryan with concern and suddenly barked, "Full speed ahead—go save them!"
"Right now?" The officers hesitated.
"Yes—move! Now!" Gabriel Xue didn’t hesitate. The situation had changed; it wasn’t just about wiping out the Shark-Hook Island invaders anymore—he couldn’t risk anything happening to Ryan.
A kid like Ryan coming out of Haizhou is a blessing for all Jiangdong Province—no way could they let him die at sea.
The three mysterious observers felt a chill run down their spines, shooting Shigeru Fujita a wary look before silently turning their gaze back to the battered ship in the distance.
"What? Get down there and check it out—now!" Gabriel roared, feeling the doom closing in. It was like fate was sealed—no suspense left.
The officers snapped to attention and rushed below with the crew, tension thick in the air.
Meanwhile, on the rocking ship, Warren Yuan trembled as he approached Ryan Ling—even he was barely able to stand, and the whole deck felt like it might collapse any second.
Ryan took a deep breath, face pale, and slowly opened his eyes. Seeing the scene on the sea, his heart skipped a beat—he knew his remaining true yuan wasn’t enough for another gang-qi thread attack.
But as the sea corpses drew closer—some already climbing the railings—the whole boat groaned under their weight. Everyone tensed up, weapons drawn, but deep down, fear gripped them all.
"Here they come! Kill them!" Tom Tang, supposedly the weakest, couldn’t hold back and charged in, with the others rushing to different spots to fight.
But for every corpse that climbed aboard, another followed—soon, hundreds, even thousands, were pouring onto the deck, making the whole ship shake and groan.
By now, the Chen and Zheng groups were totally useless—only the eight of them could put up a fight, the rest just cowered in terror.
Even with everyone using their grandmaster power, they could only hold out for so long—the ship itself was about to fall apart, and desperation was setting in.
But just then, Ryan heard a crisp, mechanical voice: "Sir, your Seventh-Grade Spirit Officer uniform has just been delivered…"