That sea-blue figure—the divine-sense avatar of Sea God Tang San—slowly turned.
His majestic gaze, falling upon his daughter's rain-soaked face and wretched state, turned in an instant into indescribable heartache, tenderness—and boundless fury.
He stretched out his hand. A gentle yet vast divine power rose like the softest tide to catch the stumbling Tang Wutong and bring her to his side.
Warm golden-blue radiance enfolded her like the safest haven, shutting out every storm.
"Xiao Qi, my precious daughter…"
Tang San's voice remained steady, yet gentler than ever, carrying a soothing divine cadence that calmed Tang Wutong's shattered emotions.
"No more tears. Daddy's here. It's all right. It's over. With me here, no one will harm you by even a hair."
He reached out a hand—illusory but warm—and stroked her hair with utmost care, as if touching a priceless, fragile treasure.
"You've suffered. It's my fault. I came too late…"
His voice brimmed with guilt and love.
Though Tang San favored sons, Tang Wutong was still his flesh and blood. His darling daughter had been wronged; of course he burned with wrath and self-reproach.
Seeing her pear-blossom-in-rain face and sensing the weakness and fear trembling in her soul, the deep of his tender eyes gathered a thread of glacial fury.
He slowly raised his head. His gaze swept first across the hellscape of Mingdu's ruins below, then flicked to the battle raging high above between the Lord Ravager and the Xianzhou general. At last, that god-imbued, killing-cold gaze snapped toward—
The figure wreathed in black-red destructive thunder, radiant, resplendent, and overwhelmingly powerful, not far ahead.
From that figure, he clearly sensed the lingering aura of Titan Giant Ape Er Ming—the blood-reek smeared with rage and unwillingness.
He also saw the huge, lifeless ape corpse in the distance.
In an instant, all was clear.
"So it's you?"
Tang San's voice was no longer gentle but flat to the extreme—beneath which seethed a terrifying fire and killing intent.
"You killed Er Ming. You humiliated my daughter…"
"No matter who you are, what fortune you bear, or which power you hail from—today, you will pay with utter annihilation in body and soul."
Yet just as Tang San gathered his divinity to obliterate this insolent, damned insect and scour his soul from existence, his eyes froze.
He stared hard at the surging, shockingly high-quality black-red divine power around Lu Jingming and at the slowly turning thunder god-ring behind him—its structure perfect and complex, infused with the dual laws of thunder and death.
As one of the five God-Kings of the God Realm, holding two god-seats, how keen was his sense for divinity?
This was not the attribute of any known god of the God Realm, nor a counterfeit god-power simulated by artifacts, arrays, or special techniques.
It was a true, complete god-seat recognized by the laws of the universe.
Moreover, its tier and law-origin were so powerful they made even him—a God-King—feel an inexplicable jolt of apprehension.
"This… this is… a god-seat?!"
Tang San's pupils shrank violently. For the first time, disbelief and confusion cracked his face.
"Douluo Continent—how could it possibly—birth a new god-seat on its own?! Impossible!"
After all, at the God Realm Committee, he had single-handedly rejected the God of Destruction's proposal to expand the God Realm and add god-seats, under the banner of stability. This severed inheritance to the lower realm and choked the birth of new god-seats. For ten thousand years, no one on Douluo had been able to break limits to ascend.
By all logic, he himself had cut off the path to godhood in this world.
A new god-seat independent of the God Realm system should not—could not—exist.
Much less one so powerful, so complete it seemed able to rival his Sea God and Asura God seats.
The sight before him overturned his understanding, suppressing even the anger he felt on his daughter's behalf—plunging him into shock and doubt.
He knew Lu Jingming. Tang Wutong's awakening had been his own design; this divine-sense avatar shared that memory.
But never did he imagine that in such a short time, this mortal—supposed to be a mere piece on the board—would leap to possess strength enough to butcher the Titan Giant Ape, and would, in an absurd twist, hold a complete god-seat so powerful even he could not see its root.
This utterly exceeded his expectations—broke free of his control.
At that thought, the shock in Tang San's eyes was swiftly replaced by bone-piercing killing intent.
Setting aside the blood-debt of Er Ming and the humiliation of Xiao Qi, the mere existence of this improper, plan-wrecking force that could disrupt his millennial design meant the boy could not be allowed to live.
Douluo Continent must remain under his absolute control. No variables outside the plan, no threats could be tolerated.
Lu Jingming must die!
Lu Jingming, for his part, keenly felt the unhidden, glacial killing intent from Tang San's wisp of divine sense.
He wasn't surprised—if anything, he felt a grim confirmation.
Just as he had always regarded the lofty Sea God and Asura God as his hypothetical enemy and final obstacle, once the other sensed the potential and threat in him—enough to overturn millennia of layout—the two were destined for a fight to the death.
Their core conflict was over who would steer Douluo's future. Their positions were fundamentally opposed, irreconcilable—unless one bowed completely.
With foreknowledge, Lu Jingming knew Tang San's nature and ambition—he would never bow. Thus, Lu Jingming held no illusions of subduing him or coexisting peacefully.
His goal had always been clear.
As for Tang San, God-King though he was, at first he could not see through Lu Jingming's true trump cards or the size of his fortunes.
In his initial judgment, Lu Jingming might be another fate-favored child like Huo Yuhao—someone to tame and use.
But when Lu Jingming displayed that complete and mighty god-seat—its power-tier and law-integrity utterly beyond Tang San's estimates or control—the situation slid beyond repair in an instant.
Peace? The most laughable of luxuries now.
Let alone that the blood debt of Er Ming lay between them.
"No need for words, Sea God Tang San. Fight!"
Lu Jingming's voice was icy, thunder-god might humming in it, cutting through the stagnant air of killing intent and shock.
He had no interest in wasting words on a mere wisp of Tang San's divine sense.
In his view, even Tang San's body in the God Realm had been driven to disgrace by his designs. A mere avatar was nothing more than a whetstone—to hone his newly gained divinity and verify his god-seat's might.
"Chidori cries, mad thunder weeps; when white night breaks, the blood of war never ends!"
A battle-chant spoken—law obeyed.
In an instant, the black-red destructive thunder around him boiled as if it had life.
Myriads of fine lightning bolts rose in a chorus like ten thousand keen thunder-birds, sharp and ruinous in rhythm, making space itself hum.
He became a streak of ultimate, rending dark-red lightning—so fast it seemed to outrun time.
Where he passed, space was savaged into long black gashes that would not heal, as he charged headlong at the sea-blue god.
Across the way, Tang San's brows knit tight.
Not because of the oncoming strike, but because, just before the other's divinity fully erupted, he sensed from afar a faint, familiar aura that made his soul palpitate.
It was so like Xiao Wu!
But before he could probe, that dark-red annihilating bolt was upon him.
The thunder-law within carried an intent of all-things-to-ruin—pure, overbearing—enough that even he, in this divine-sense avatar, felt a hint of threat.
Facing a ferocity already stepping into the divine—even if born of mortal roots—Tang San, though shaken by that familiar aura, had to shelve all distractions.
He snorted coldly. The pride of a God-King kept him from taking this upstart seriously, yet tactically he did not grow careless.
"Ants dare shake the sky? Boundless Sea!"
Golden light flashed in Tang San's hand. Behind him, endless sea-tide phantoms seemed to surge and converge. Vast divinity condensed into tangible Sea God radiance, like a world-drowning wave to smother this thunder that knew not its height.
Gods clashed—exploding in an instant!
Facing Lu Jingming's thunder strike suffused with the intent of returning all to dust, a shard of cold glinted in Tang San's eyes.
He did not move. He simply lifted his right hand and pushed his palm forward.
"Boundless Ocean Aegis."
In a heartbeat, the phantom of an infinite azure sea rose before him, billowing and immense.
It wasn't worldly water, but a bastion forged of the purest Sea God power, highly compressed—a defense of absolute softness-turned-steel, the Sea God's law of yielding to dissolve all force.
Boom—!!!
The dark-red thunder of ruin smashed into the cerulean bulwark.
A ring-shaped shockwave of horrific energy erupted, tearing more black fissures into the air. Below, another layer of Mingdu's ruins was ground to dust by the spillover.
A blow that could slay ordinary divine officials was held fast by what looked like gentle sea.
Black-red lightning gnawed at blue divine power with a violent sizzle, yet could not advance an inch.
"Is that all?"
Tang San's voice drifted, flat, tinged with a God-King's lofty critique.
"You have a god-seat, yet know nothing of the finesse of divine power—crude and vulgar."
Before he could finish, Lu Jingming used the rebound to pull back.
He hovered in the air. The thunder around him did not diminish—if anything, it flowed in more obscure, profound circuits.
"Crude?"
His ionized locks lashed wildly. A flicker of mockery lit his thunder-lit eyes.
"Then behold what true technique is."
Tang San, god for countless years, still wielded Tang Sect skills and his predecessor's Golden Thirteen Halberd—no personal insight or creation.
You could say the times made this Sea God. In talent alone, many surpassed Tang San.
Whether the current era's Limit Douluo or those ten millennia hence like Yun Ming—judged purely on talent, they outshone Tang San before godhood.
Tang San was simply early—he seized the initiative and monopolized god-seat inheritance. Otherwise, how would Douluo be his to manipulate at will?
And such a man, lacking creativity and living on legacy, called his technique crude?
It amused Lu Jingming. He had only just begun to master divine power and hadn't yet fully adapted. Did Tang San really take him for a brute of raw force?
He wasted no more words. Lu Jingming's hands flashed into a complex seal at his chest. The surging thunder of destruction flocked to him madly.
The colossal black-red thunder god-ring behind him blazed—light like ten thousand suns.
"Eightfold Thunder Interdict!"
A godly edict rang through heaven and earth.
Borrowed from a lightning doctrine of another world, and for the first time driven by this realm's god-seat power, its terror was unveiled.
"First Interdict—Roaring Thunder!"
Lu Jingming opened his mouth—not with sound, but with a jet of extremely condensed, pitch-black sonic lightning, a beast's bellow unleashed in an instant.
The sonic thunder cannon ignored space itself, piercing straight through Tang San's Boundless Ocean Aegis to jar his divine sense at the root.
Tang San's avatar quivered slightly, surprise flickering in his eyes. He had not expected an attack that struck directly at divine sense.
"Second Interdict—Startling Thunder Palm!"
Before Tang San could react, Lu Jingming thrust out his right palm.
A colossal imprint, forged of billions of dancing black-red electric serpents, appeared out of thin air. Within the palm, countless thunder-hells rose and fell, bearing a tyrannical will to startle the hearts and break all evils. It slammed down upon Tang San.
Where the palm wind passed, even light bent and was devoured.
Tang San frowned, tapped a finger, and a highly condensed phantom of the Golden Trident shot forth. It collided with the Startling Thunder Palm—both vanished, erupting in searing brilliance.
"Third Interdict—Raging Thunder Darts!"
Lu Jingming drew his hands apart. The sky filled in an instant with dark-red javelins—long darts forged from hyper-compressed destructive thunder—pouring down like a storm.
Each dart carried triple properties of penetration, detonation, and annihilation—terrifying in power.
Sea God light spun around Tang San, becoming countless spiraling water-tornadoes that shredded and deflected most of the darts.
Even so, a few slipped through, bursting into glaring blooms upon his divine barrier. They didn't bite deep—but they rocked his figure a few steps.
"Fourth Interdict—Heaven-Thunder Execution!"
In the heavens, the dark-red thunderclouds, gathered by planar repulsion, now moved at Lu Jingming's command.
A thunderbolt thick as a mountain—black, red, and violet intertwined—descended like a blade of heavenly punishment, saturated with ultimate annihilation.
It fell straight for Tang San—an attack drawing upon a portion of heaven and earth's might.
Tang San finally shed his composure. He raised his hand; the true phantom of the Sea God Trident grew more solid. A pillar of brilliant gold-blue shot up to meet the Heaven-Thunder Execution.
Rrrraaaa—!!!
The blast boomed across the firmament, its light blinding creatures for hundreds of kilometers around.
"Fifth Interdict—Thunder-God Lash!"
As the afterglow lingered, a hundreds-meter-long whip of black-red lightning had already coalesced in Lu Jingming's hand.
He snapped it, rending space, angling past the Trident's guard to strike Tang San's flank.
Crack!
A crisp detonation rang.
Tang San's divine barrier shuddered violently, flickering under the blow. The whip's terrible force and the laws of thunder and death drove him sliding several steps to the side.
He wasn't truly hurt—but being driven back by one he deemed an insect was a humiliation beyond bearing for the Sea God.
His face went iron-dark; killing intent all but took form in his eyes.
"Very well… you've succeeded in angering me."
Tang San's voice was colder than ten millennia of ice.
"Behold the might of a God-King."
The phantom of the Sea God Trident in his hand burst with unprecedented radiance. Across Douluo Star, every ocean seemed to answer in thunder.