The beast shot two of its tentacles my way, and I barely managed to dodge by exploding as much Qi as I could muster in that fraction of a second from the soles of my feet. The explosive Qi helped torpedoing me out of the trajectory of the tentacles that crashed right where I was a second ago.
The blast created massive turbulences in currents that spiraled me away from the area but in a disorienting tumble in the water.
Thankfully a broken-down wall stopped my spiraling, though it was still painful as I crashed face in.
I immediately shook my head and used the same Qi blast to move away before the Kraken realized that among the rising dust, my corpse was nowhere to be found.
As I flew, or more like, 'floated?' in the water, I threw as many talismans as I had, and with a hand gesture, I blew them up, rising more dust, though it wouldn't do much against the Kraken's Divine Sense, I've come to realize that the One Eyed Kraken relies more on its sight than the scanning ability of Divine Sense, so it was a good visual obstruction, and that helped greatly in my escape.
Ahead of me, Huang, Wu Di, and Hua Yue had already reached the other side of this submerged Dome, and they were currently trying to open the gate leading to the other side, and away from this watery death trap. If I were to get closer to them, the Kraken will definitely catch and kill us all off as we're stuck trying to open the gate.
I turned, blasted another Qi surge, and moved to the side.
The sea Beast thankfully focused on me and sent another Tentacle my way.
"Y, teach it manners!" I sent.
Immediately, a sword Qi shot from within my chest, which was Y's slash that cut through the water and sliced off the tentacle in half.
Yet, this didn't serve to deter the creature, only enrage it, as it screeched with enough force that I was able to see ripples inside the seawater, which was physically impossible.
But the worst part was that the stub of the cut tentacle immediately birthed a new one, and the sea beast sent it my way again with even more force.
Y shot another Sword Qi to slice it in half, but this time, I wasn't going to let Y's declining Qi reserves go to waste.
The moment the tentacle was cut, I used my own Poison Qi to blast myself forward and smacked an open palm into the cut limb.
"Burn!" I called, and my Veridian Heart Flame Surged from my palm, creating massive heat shock as a steam explosion blasted me and the Tentacle away from each other. While I wouldn't suffer much damage from heat, the steam explosion inside the water caused my bones to rattle.
But it was still worth it.
The Veridian Flam had surged and seared the open wound, causing the tentacle to not grow once again.
Yet, though this was good news, bad news always follows.
The Sea beast, realizing that its limb was no longer capable of regenerating screeched with even more force than the small opening it had at the top of the dome began to crack even further.
The One-Eyed Kraken had been attacking us from outside the dome thanks to his tentacle since they were relatively thin enough to go through the broken piece of the dome, yet with cracks spreading all over the top of the dome, the sea beast will soon break through it and come at us with all of its literal might.
Thankfully, this gave me a few more moments of rest, as the sea beast was actively breaking the dome, I had a bit of time to go back to the group.
Once I arrived, the three of them were pale-faced and stricken with panic.
"What's wrong?" I sent.
"It's locked, we can't open it." Wu Di replied in a divine sense.
I gave the gate a quick glance and scanned it with divine sense, I then immediately came to the realization of what's the underlying problem.
"Because it's inscription protected, that's a flooding mechanism, when a flood happens the gate would close. I could break the formation but it would take some time, the time we can't afford as this sea beast is adamant about hunting us. But we can still trick the mechanism into thinking that the area is no longer flooded."
"How are we going to do that?" Wu Di asked.
"Give me a moment," I said then I pulled my Lord of Lords Token.
"Get back, we'll only have a moment once the gate opens, you'll have to be fast!" I replied.
The group took a few steps away and once I deemed them far enough, I summoned the pagoda with its gate exactly connected to the door.
I then ordered the pagoda to open its gate, and this caused the Palace of the Deep's gate to realize that it was no longer in contact with water, then it shone bright and started slowly opening up.
"It's working!" Hua Yue said. "We can escape!"
"Shit, you shouldn't have said that," I replied.
Because I knew a flag when I hear it, and immediately the dome that was holding the behemoth cracked and broke, releasing the Kraken.
The One-Eyed Kraken came at us now with all of its tentacles coming our way.
I called back the pagoda into the token, and the Palace of The Deep's gate began closing.
The current sucked all the four of us in as the door closed behind it, then not a fraction of a second later, a loud bang sounded against the massive gate as it visibly bent from the force of the eight tentacles. Then came after it the shaking of the Mountain, and a vengeful and frustrated screech of wrath and indignation from the One-Eyed beast.
As we all laying supine on the ground, wet, half terrified, and completely exhausted, as we took deep breaths, Wu Di was the first to start a fit of contagious laughter that we all followed after.
"Can you believe it? we just escaped a third layer of Demonic Beasts while none of us died? Not even a group of Nascent Cultivators can escape this creature." Huang said.
"That was a series of very fortunate events that happened. Anyway, here come closer," I said as I raised my hand forward.
I lit up a small green fireball for all of us.
"I've seen you use this before, I thought it was a strange flame, but when it seared the One Eyed's tentacle, I knew this was something special," Huang said.
"That's a heart flame." Wu Di said as he got closer to the flame.
The flame was hot enough that it dried all of our clothes without burning any of us.
"Heart Flames are very rare. Congratulations on obtaining such a rare treasure, brother Shen Bao."
"Thank you, I was just lucky, anyway we'll need to continue heading forward, because, you probably didn't notice it, but you're bleeding," I said as I looked at Wu Di in the face.
Wu Di wiped his face and noticed that his white sleeves were now smeared with blood.
"You used a lot of Qi, not even my pills can help you now, we'll need to find the Sealing technique, and from the smell of this place…I think we're not that far away."
"What do you mean by smell?" Huang Asked.
"This moldy, old but still very pleasant smell, it's the smell of old books. We're probably in a library or Pavilion area, let's head forward.." I said and our group moved ahead.