"Hah!"

The green rhino great demon's sudden appearance had plainly gone beyond anything this elite water-kin force had allowed for.

The eighth layer of Return-to-Void was a realm built up out of a great heap of heaven-and-earth treasures, and whoever reached it would never hold a small territory.

Rarely did anyone come out of nowhere and remain entirely unheard of.

That the Water-Moon Merchant Alliance, a power spread across the whole of Nanhong, had failed to engage a single eighth-layer Return-to-Void expert was itself proof enough.

And on a matter of that importance, they had not caught so much as a whisper.

But even with one of the hall's own experts fallen at first meeting, these water-kin demons, once they had mastered their shock, showed not the slightest sign of drawing back.

If anything their eyes turned colder still.

Fixed hard on that black-shirted figure inside the great formation.

A moment later the remaining eleven demons, as though by one accord, sank down beneath the churning surface.

Quick to come, and quick to go.

For a little while everything around the floating island fell into a dead hush.

"Have they pulled out?"

The Water-Moon Merchant Alliance's cultivators looked out blankly, and let their breath go with their hearts still hammering.

Two ships destroyed in so short a span carried an unmistakable flavor of panic.

"……"

Wen Qiujin was examining the Retainer's injuries with care, ordering the man carried back into the alliance and treated with their finest treasure medicines.

At the sight of it, though, his brows drew tight, and he called out to Shen Yi. "Exalted immortal, take back your spirit-puppet, quickly!"

Reading faces was his great talent, and the look on those demons before they went under had not been the look of a thing finished.

Nor had the Chen family men let their guard down.

They too had a fair guess at who these demons were.

The Dragon-Fish Hall!

The water-kin power whose Hall Master's only daughter Sect Master Shen had cut down, back at the Chen family.

Knowing full well that the Nanhong Seven were behind…