Fifty miles east of the coast, five thousand feet beneath the dark, freezing waves of the Eastern Endless Sea, sat the Ten-Thousand-Fathom Deep Trench.
Down here, the weight of the ocean was so heavy that an ordinary iron warship would be crushed into a flat tin pancake in three seconds. Not a single ray of sunlight reached the bottom—only the eerie blue and purple glow of deep-sea coral forests and giant bioluminescent jellyfish.
In the center of the trench stood the Underwater Crystal Palace, a sprawling fortress built from giant clam shells, black sea-stone, and glowing red coral pillars.
Inside the main throne hall, Kraken Sea-King Mo Ba slumped onto his whale-bone throne, wrapping two of his purple tentacles around an ice-pack held against his throbbing forehead.
“A hundred thousand elite Shark-Men... gone in ten minutes!” Mo Ba groaned, grinding his teeth. “And that demonic golden sponge wall drank two of my Rank 6 tsunamis without leaking a drop!”
Around the throne, a dozen Deep-Sea Crab Generals and Electric-Eel Commanders bowed their heads nervously, clacking their pincers and swishing their tails.
“Your Majesty, do not be angry!” said General Tie-Qian (“Iron-Pincer”), a massive Rank 6 Early Golden Core King Crab whose red shell was twenty feet wide and covered in spiky barnacles. “So what if that human brat Pei Xuan has a strange sponge wall on the beach? A wall can’t swim! We are fifty miles out at sea and five thousand feet deep! Even if Pei Xuan has a…
