Cryptolathys

The sea's vengeance loomed like a thunderhead on the horizon. Even as Liu Zhenhan retreated to his cabin with Hailun cradled in his arms, the weight of deception pressed upon him like storm clouds gathering force. Her tranquil breathing against his chest—soft as eiderdown yet loud as war drums in the silence—amplified an unfamiliar emotion: guilt. For a man who'd once snapped necks without blinking during midnight raids, this foreign sensation churned his gut worse than month-old bilgewater.

Xu's casual admission about the "sacrificial cargo" played on repeat in Liu's mind. Three thousand children. The scholar's nonchalant recounting of ancestral atrocities made even this battle-hardened soldier queasy. Yet here he stood, bartering with a devil for magical trinkets while wide-eyed youngsters peered through cracked cabin doors, their muffled whispers slicing through bulkhead walls.

When the meal arrived, Liu's instincts screamed trap louder than a dive bomber's siren. The oatmeal congealed in its tin pot like shipyard sludge abandoned at low tide. Salted fish—preserved through methods best left unexamined—reeked of ammonia and despair. Liu prodded the fare with a rusted spoon, its clinks echoing in the cramped quarters as he eyed Fergurson Xu's jade rings glinting under swaying lantern light.

"After you, Doctor," Liu drawled, pushing the pot toward Ning Yu. The蚌女's iridescent shells quivered—whether from outrage or fear, he couldn't tell.

Ning Yu's porcelain hands trembled as she lifted a spoonful. The congee left chalky trails on her rosebud lips. "Satisfied?" Her voice dripped venom sharper than scorpionfish spines.

"Patience, little pearl." Liu watched her throat bob. Five... ten... thirty breaths. Only when no convulsions wracked her slender frame did he nod. "Now the fish."

"You'd let her choke to prove a point?" Aviere's mocking rasp emerged from her brine-filled sarcophagus. The mermaid princess floated like a preserved specimen in the makeshift aquarium, her pallor ghostly under the sickly yellow lamplight. Strands of golden hair swayed like sea grass in the sloshing water, each movement emphasizing the raw power contained within her fragile form.

Liu flicked a fish scale at her. "Quiet, guppy. Or I'll stuff you with rice until you glow like a lantern."

Xu's chuckle grated like rusted chains. "Such camaraderie! Perhaps you'll bond over—"

Crack.

The cabin door exploded inward in a shower of splinters. Gu De's hulking frame filled the doorway, his bamboo staff quivering like a divining rod sensing catastrophe. "Master Xu! Sea devils approach! Their war-horns shake the very deep!"

Chaos erupted. Somewhere above deck, a panda warrior's guttural roar harmonized with the metallic shink of tridents being unsheathed. The stench of panic—sweat, brine, and bile—flooded the cabin.

Liu seized Aviere's coffin-lid-turned-shield. "Time to earn your keep, princess. Call off your—"

Her laugh cut through the bedlam—hollow, broken, yet carrying the weight of drowned empires. "Fools. You've awoken the Leviathan Guard."

The ocean beyond the shattered porthole boiled. Twin serpentine shadows breached the surface, their scales glinting like the spires of sunken cities. Each head dwarfed the Penglai's mainmast, obsidian eyes reflecting the crew's terror in fractured nightmare visions.

"Hai She..." Xu's whisper carried the dread of millennia. "Guardians of the Abyssal Trenches... They haven't risen since the Cloud Dragon Wars..."

Liu's grip tightened on his makeshift shield. "Your metal titans, old man! Summon them!"

Xu's jade rings lay cold against his trembling fingers. "The seals... they need twelve hours to recharge after—"

A tentacle thicker than ancient oaks smashed through the foredeck. Timbers screamed their death throes. Somewhere aft, a child's wail rose briefly before being swallowed by the sea's roar.

"Time's up," Liu growled, shoving Hailun's still form into Ning Yu's arms. Her fox ears lay flat against crimson locks, the scholar's "harmless" powder having plastered strands across her face like battle scars. "Get below! And someone wake the damn fox before we're all kelp fodder!"

As Pan-Ta warriors rallied with harpoons singing through salt-stiffened air, Liu met Aviere's gaze through the aquarium glass. Her smirk promised annihilation—and something darker, hungrier. A predator recognizing kindred spirits.

The first Hai She struck.