The Sea Dragon People

Stand still and let her slash him once?

It was the first time Nan Zhi had ever heard such a bizarre request.

Her hand was already resting on her storage bag, preparing to pull out the Fish-Dragon Guillotine, when the troublemaking yaksha suddenly blurted out those words.

A Foundation Establishment cultivator, a ghost cultivator of over thirty years, and a newly transformed little hedgehog.

No matter how one looked at it, this trio seemed like soft targets that anyone could easily bully.

Thus, before boarding the ship, Nan Zhi had already prepared herself for trouble.

The trope of playing a pig to eat a tiger could be used occasionally, but if one played a pig too often, what difference was there from actually being a pig?

“No, no, no, that’s not what I meant,” the yaksha stammered. Realizing he was too tongue-tied to explain himself, he looked toward a nearby female yaksha.

Most yakshas looked roughly the same; both males and females had blue faces and sharp fangs protruding from their mouths.

The female yakshas did not wear clothes on their upper bodies either, and the bone tuzi hanging across their chests were bright and perfectly round.

“Ha-ah ka-ka-ka ba-ba—”

【You look so nice. For you, for you.】

She could not speak human tongue. Growling a stream of gibberish at Nan Zhi, she reached out to grab Nan Zhi's arm while unhooking a bright pearl and insistently stuffing it into her hand.

“Gulu, ka, babaka...”

【This, pretty, for you to play with.】

Nan Zhi was utterly bewildered, but seeing these yakshas, whom she had only just met, trying to get close to her, she could faintly guess the reason.

—It was likely due to the Savior title floating above her head.

A flat plus two hundred to Favorability across all factions.

While human cultivators might only find her amiable and friendly, for foreign races with stronger beast-like instincts—such as the yakshas and Rakshasas—two hundred points of faction Favorability was more than enough to make them completely devoted to her upon their very first meeting.

Wait, the twelve nations of the four directions of the southern seas seemed to consist mostly of foreign races.

Did that not mean that as long as she did not court death, she could use this faction Favorability to lie low and develop herself like a fish in water?

Nan Zhi's thoughts drifted for a moment. Then, seeing that she was not accepting the pearl, the leading yaksha generously stuffed a bright pearl into Hongluo's arms and stammered an apology in human tongue:

“Sor... ry.”

“!”

Hongluo had never seen a yaksha before. Seeing such a fierce-looking creature actually apologize, she peeked at Nan Zhi, her heart swelling with even more joy.

Mistress is truly amazing!

Even such fierce yakshas are afraid of her!

Nan Zhi glanced at Hongluo. Seeing that she was not frightened and had even accepted the bright pearl, she turned back to the leading yaksha and said:

“My young companion has accepted this bright pearl, so we accept your apology. We humans have an old saying: ‘Out of blows, friendship grows.’ My words earlier were also a bit harsh. As for the Life and Death Arena, let us just treat it as a joke.”

The yakshas nodded repeatedly like chickens pecking at grain.

But just as the atmosphere here softened, several oddly-shaped Sea Dragon people walked over from the other side. Catching sight of the yakshas, they immediately began to mock them:

“My, I was wondering why there was such a stench of rotting fish and shrimp in the air, smelling it from three li away. Sure enough, it’s you yakshas.”

These Sea Dragon people, both male and female, looked similar to humans in their upper bodies.

However, while their upper bodies were human, their lower bodies were thick, prismatic snake tails, arched and curled like seahorses.

Unlike the yakshas who disliked clothing, the Sea Dragon people preferred to cover themselves with light gauze. Both men and women wore the extremely thin and comfortable Water Cloud Silk.

As they slithered, their abdomens contracted along with their tails, revealing well-defined abdominal muscles half-hidden beneath the sheer gauze.

“It’s the Sea Dragon people and the yakshas...”

“They’ve run into each other again. How unlucky. Let’s get out of here quickly before a fight breaks out and we get caught in the crossfire.”

“Shh, the Yaksha Nation and the Sea Dragon Kingdom are at war. They’ve been fighting for decades without a clear victor—”

“That female cultivator is in trouble. She accepted the yaksha’s bright pearl. Everyone knows that when Sea Dragon people see yakshas, they want nothing more than to flay their bones and eat their flesh raw. She’ll likely be dragged into this.”

“They’ll probably end up in the Life and Death Arena. Tsk tsk, whenever yakshas and Sea Dragon people cross paths, it’s a miracle if they don’t fight until everyone is dead!”

The surrounding crowd of onlookers suddenly backed away by several zhang, leaving a wide, empty space that instantly exposed Nan Zhi and the yakshas to the Sea Dragon people.

Suddenly insulted by their mortal enemies, the yakshas refused to back down.

“Stinky Sea Dragons! You’re just like wild seagulls—your mouths are foul and annoying! Feel my trident!”

The leading yaksha stomped his massive foot and hurled his trident directly at the Sea Dragon people. It pierced straight into one of their chests, causing a torrent of aqua-blue blood to spray out.

It all happened so fast. Nan Zhi scooped up Hongluo and pulled Wanniang back in a hasty retreat. The Sea Dragon people, refusing to be outdone, bared their sharp claws and lunged forward, viciously biting and tearing at the yakshas!

In an instant, flesh and blood flew everywhere. The sounds of tearing, chewing, and swallowing echoed continuously in a primal, life-and-death struggle between beasts. In the blink of an eye, two Sea Dragon people and one yaksha lay dead on the ground.

Heavens!

Seeing that they had resorted to physical violence immediately, the surrounding crowd backed away even further, terrified of being caught in the fray.

A moment later, disciples of the Wuwei Sect arrived in a hurry, riding giant eagles. The eagles were as large as carriage cabins, their sharp talons gleaming with a cold light. As they flapped their wings, they whipped up a fierce gale that forced everyone to squint.

Only then did the fighting yakshas and Sea Dragon people separate, still hurling curses at each other:

“Gulu-lu-lu! Ga-ga-ga! (Dead snakes! Sooner or later, I’ll gouge your eyeballs out!)”

“You yaksha devils, one day we will trample the Yaksha Nation to the ground! We’ll skin you to make rugs and chop your bones to use as firewood!”

They spat the most vicious insults at each other, their faces twisted in pure hatred, wishing they could tear each other apart with their teeth.

It was a hatred carved into their very bones, a feud that would only end in death.

Nan Zhi covered Hongluo’s eyes, her expression turning solemn.

The yaksha who had just been speaking to her had already turned into a cold corpse.

The Sea Dragon people fared no better, losing two of their own in the blink of an eye.

A Sea Dragon woman squatted over her companion's corpse, her lower half coiled tightly as she slowly licked her wounds.

She met Nan Zhi’s gaze. Her pupils suddenly slit into vertical, diamond-like shapes before returning to normal after a long moment.

“Siss—what are you looking at? I saw you accept that yaksha’s bright pearl. Get lost.”

“My apologies. We did not mean to disturb you.”

Nan Zhi frowned slightly. Glancing at the two Wuwei Sect disciples, she led Hongluo and Wanniang away, disappearing into the crowd.

...

A short while later, Nan Zhi was able to piece together the generational feud between the Yaksha Nation and the Sea Dragon Kingdom from the surrounding onlookers.

The twelve nations of the four directions of the southern seas were Chuyun, Yaksha, Rakshasa, Sea Dragon, Poison Dragon, Peony, Black Crow, Qingqiu, Jiao People, Dragon Kingdom, Alligator Dragon, and Afterlife.

Among them, the Dragon Kingdom possessed the largest territory and bordered the Alligator Dragon, Poison Dragon, and Sea Dragon nations. Next was the Afterlife Kingdom, where the souls of the dead remained.

To its west lay the three nations of the Jiao People, Black Crow, and Qingqiu, while to its east were Yaksha and Rakshasa. As for Chuyun and Peony, they were the most mysterious, always remaining isolated from these island nations, which meant very few people had ever seen their inhabitants.

The yakshas lived by the sea and were extremely fond of a certain kind of bright pearl.

The yakshas called these bright pearls “bone tuzi” and wore them around their necks as decoration. The higher their status and the stronger their power, the more bone tuzi they wore.

However, these pearls only grew in the deep sea, gestated by giant clams that bathed in moonlight. Because the ocean depths were profound and dark, it was incredibly difficult for the yakshas to harvest them.

On the other hand, the eyes of the Sea Dragon people could emit a soft glow in the dark, much like the moon. When the giant clams saw this light, they would mistake it for moonlight and open their shells, revealing the bright pearls inside.

Thus, some yakshas, driven by their obsession with the bright pearls, began to harbor malicious intent. They would secretly murder Sea Dragon people to gouge out their eyes, using them to harvest the pearls.

With their kin slaughtered and eyes stolen, the Sea Dragon people naturally refused to let the matter slide.

One thing led to another, and the two nations declared war. Over the course of a thousand years, they fought off and on, accumulating a deep-seated blood feud.