A… woman… probably a woman... sashayed into the venue with an escort of strange-looking creatures.
A tight-fitting black dress clung closely to her swollen, distended figure. Her face was incredibly large at thirty centimeters across and covered with a field of pockmarks and repulsive pimples. Deep-set ox-like eyes darted rapidly around over a garlic bulb of a nose, making for an unusually hideous appearance.
She scanned the surroundings as she walked in, self-satisfaction and pride on her face suggesting a firm belief in her superiority.
“Um… What are those things?” From a floating summit, Jiangchen Xie stared dumbly at the creatures swarming in after the woman.
“Fur seals, it seems, as recorded in our historical texts.” An elder of the Corpse Refiners stood by Jiangchen Xie’s side, his expression tight. The fur seals were so hideous to the eye that it hurt to even look at them.
“Fur seals...” Jiangchen Xie frowned slightly. “I saw that woman in the celestial master tomb before. I think she calls herself Ge Yanxia.”
He couldn’t conceal his disgust of the fur seals, not because of their appearance, but for the repulsive presence radiating from their very beings. In fact, a faint pungent stench had wafted into the venue after the creatures arrived.
Rather than the smell of decaying corpses, it was the sour taste of someone who hadn’t taken a bath for hundreds of years. Even the Corpse Refiners, used to the smell of decomposition, had difficulties dealing with the stench.
Immortals closer to the entrance couldn’t resist the urge to throw up, and a chorus of retching soon filled the venue.
“What in the heavens are they?” screamed an immortal. “They brought poison with them!”
Immortals were free of dirt and resisted all filth, yet these things seemed to have an innate grime about them, despite the proper garments they’d donned. The stink rolling off them was so strong that it was like poison.
Regular immortals, and even cultivators, had never vomitted in their lives. So when their bodies heaved from the nauseating funk burrowing into their noses, they thought they’d been hit with a potent poison.
“It’s said that the fur seals lucked out and were trapped in a ruin with a complete immortal dao when the primordial world of immortals shattered. That ruin is isolated and untouched by sunlight. Does the polluted air ingrained in the fur seals come from that ruin?”
Those who believed that they’d been poisoned were the minority as the majority of immortals present had realized what these things were.
“That’s not right,” said Fangyang Xing. “Fur seals were the lowliest and foulest of species in the primordial world of immortals. They were born this way. Apparently, even the seawater in their territory is foul and pungent.”
His frown made it clear that he couldn’t stand the fur seals’ stench, either. He turned to Lu Yun with a questioning gaze. “Sir Lu, you didn’t invite the filthy fur seals, did you?“
“Uh… no...” Lu Yun stammered slowly. He was as caught off guard by the fur seals’ arrival as anyone else.
“What did you just say?!” Ge Yanxia’s expression turned thunderous when she caught what Fangyang Xing and the other immortals were muttering about, her oppressive presence flaring dangerously
With a simple lift of the hand, she pushed a giant black hand projection forward and smashed it into one of the floating summits with great viciousness.
Bam!
The floating summit exploded, all of the immortals representing their clan decimated.
“Who else?!” Ge Yanxia soared into the air, bursting through her tight black dress when she gathered power, revealing her pitch-black, gelatinous body for all to see. Layers of lard undulated like waves of dark sewage.
“Why didn’t the Dusk restriction do anything even after she used the power of a primordial dao immortal?!” someone screamed.
Belated realizations were dawning that the restriction against immortals remained inactive, even though Ge Yanxia had entered the province with her strength as a primordial dao immortal fully on display.
An immortal like her bearing a complete immortal dao and inner world put her in an entirely different league from contemporary dao immortals. She’d more than proven herself with her previous attack, yet the Dusk restriction hadn’t stirred at all.
Boom!
A beam of white light slammed into Ge Yanxia at this moment, sending her bulbous form flying backwards with a scream. The fur seals that hadn’t fully transformed were disintegrated beside her.
An enormous fortress ship had suddenly appeared over the auction’s venue. The ninth prince of Primus Major stood atop the bow of the ship with a murderous look on his face.
“The last time I traveled to the West Sea, I ran into a group of fur seals and almost didn’t survive the occasion.” The prince smiled darkly; it was plainly an encounter he didn’t care to recall.
“You aren’t going to object if I slaughter this group of fur seals, are you, great monkey?” He raised his eyebrows at Scarlet Ape.
“Fur seals? They’re nothing but simple beasts, rather than monster spirits.” Full of schadenfreude, Scarlet Ape wanted nothing more than to see the auction disrupted. Although the auction proper had ended, what came after was what truly mattered.
“Ah!” a piercing scream rang from the outside of the venue. “My children, my children—who ambushed me?! I’ll kill you!” Ge Yanxia sounded overcome with grief.
“Those… were all her children?” Immortals had gasped with surprise and envy when they witnessed the demonstration of the lord-grade fortress ship, but Ge Yanxia’s exclamation stunned them further.
“Ge Yanxia is a female fur seal, isn’t she?” Fangyang Xing asked woodenly. “Do fur seals lay eggs? Or do they carry their young to term?”
He cast his eyes toward Scarlet Ape, who was equally surprised.
“Should be the latter… are all those fur seals her children? Hasn’t she done anything other than give birth over the past hundreds of years?”
“I think I saw… descendants of her and her children in that group,” suddenly offered a small monster spirit with large eyes.
“What do you mean?” Not everyone understood the strange-looking monster spirit.
“It means that Ge Yanxia copulated with her children, or even grandchildren to give birth to more offspring,” the monster spirit explained with a deadpan look.
“Um...” Scarlet Ape turned around stiltedly to look at the monster spirit.
“That’s how fur seals are,” it said seriously. “This is perfectly normal for them. Lord Ancestor is right, fur seals aren’t monster spirits. Monster spirits are civilized, while fur seals aren’t. Back in the Primordial Era, the fur seals wanted to join the monster spirits, but the forefather at the time turned them down.”
By now, the ninth prince had directed his fortress ship out of the venue in pursuit of the fur seal.