Chapter 263 - 263: Harbour city 4.

Several someones screamed, actually, and the whole deck exploded into chaos as passengers scrambled for cover and the ship's designated defenders, a handful of Core Formation disciples from the sponsoring sects, rushed toward the railing with weapons already drawn.

"Jiao beast," Chen Hao said grimly, pulling Ruan Xue back from the railing by the arm. "A big one too. That is at least peak Core Formation cultivation base, maybe higher."

The captain, an old grizzled cultivator named Han who had apparently made this crossing more times than he could count, was already bellowing orders from the upper deck, telling everyone without combat ability to get below and telling everyone with combat ability to hold the formation line and not engage directly unless the beast actually breached the hull. It was clearly a drill they had run before, the kind of practiced chaos that only came from surviving similar situations more than once already.

Mo Yuxin watched the jiao beast rear back for what looked like a charging strike toward the ship's side, glanced at Su Yubing, and let out a small sigh, like this was mildly inconveniencing her afternoon plans rather than an actual life threatening situation for everyone else on board.

"Do you want this one," she asked, almost bored.

"You can have it," Su Yubing said, waving a hand lightly. "I want to check on some of the passengers first, a few of them look like they are about to faint from fright alone."

"Fine," Mo Yuxin said, and stepped up onto the railing like she was stepping over a puddle in the street. A few of the nearby disciples shouted at her to get back, thinking she had lost her mind or panicked badly enough to do something suicidal, and then she jumped straight off the ship toward open water where the jiao beast was already surging forward with its jaws wide open, teeth longer than a grown man's arm.

What happened next took less than three seconds, though it felt much longer to everyone watching from the deck. Mo Yuxin's sword, a plain looking blade she usually kept sheathed at her hip without any obvious ornamentation, came free in a single smooth motion, catching the sunlight for just a moment before sweeping forward in a wide arc that trailed something almost like a silver ribbon of light behind it. The jiao beast's charge simply stopped, its enormous head separating cleanly from its body a moment later, and the whole massive carcass slumped sideways into the water with a splash big enough to rock the ship even from that distance. Mo Yuxin landed lightly back on the deck a second after that, sheathing her sword like she had just finished stretching rather than beheading a Core Formation grade sea beast in a single strike, and calmly asked whether anyone knew if the kitchen still had any of that ginger tea left over from breakfast.

Nobody answered her right away. The entire deck had gone completely silent, forty or fifty cultivators just staring at her with their mouths slightly open, the old captain included.

While everyone was still busy staring at Mo Yuxin like she had grown a second head, Su Yubing had already moved to where a few of the younger disciples had collapsed from shock or minor injuries sustained scrambling away from the railing, kneeling down beside a boy who had twisted his ankle badly in the panic. Frost colored qi gathered softly around her fingers, cool and gentle rather than sharp, and the swelling in his ankle visibly went down within moments as she worked, the pain clearly easing from his face almost instantly.

"There," she said kindly. "Try not to run on wet decking when you are frightened. It never ends well for anyone's ankles."

"Thank you, senior," the boy mumbled, still staring up at her with wide eyes, half from the healing and half from how unfairly beautiful she looked up close even in the middle of a crisis.

Ruan Xue, once she found her voice again, practically launched herself toward Su Yubing with about a dozen questions all at once, wanting to know what technique that was, whether it could be learned, whether Mo Yuxin was always like that, and whether the two of them were actually married the way it looked from how they acted around each other, all without pausing for a single breath in between any of it.

"One question at a time," Su Yubing said, laughing softly despite herself.

A sect elder traveling with one of the sponsoring groups approached shortly after, offering a formal reward of spirit stones and a token of gratitude on behalf of all three sects for dealing with the beast so efficiently, only for Mo Yuxin to wave it off politely.

"We were on this ship too," she said simply. "Keeping it in one piece benefits us just as much as everyone else. Save your reward for someone who needs it more."

The elder looked faintly stunned at the refusal, clearly not used to cultivators turning down free spirit stones, but did not push the matter further.

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Over the following weeks, as the Tide Dragon cut steadily through open water with nothing but ocean in every direction, the story of the jiao beast only grew taller in the retelling, the way stories always do on a long voyage with nothing else to talk about. By the time it had passed through every deck and every cabin on the ship at least twice, some versions had Mo Yuxin fighting off three jiao beasts at once, or catching the beast's own attack and throwing it back at itself, or any number of increasingly dramatic embellishments that neither she nor Su Yubing bothered correcting, mostly because it was funnier to just let people believe whatever they wanted to believe.

Someone, nobody quite remembered who first, started calling them the Frost and Blade pair, on account of Su Yubing's ice affinity techniques and Mo Yuxin's sword, and the name stuck fast enough that even the ship's captain used it without seeming to notice he was doing so.

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TO BE CONTINUED.

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