The SSS class adventurer is a divine cleric

Wei Lianfeng stood at the bow, arms crossed, robes whispering in the chill wind. His hair was braided high, tied with a bronze clasp bearing his personal crest, a spiraling wave within a dragon's eye. His Qi was calm. Focused. But a thread of something colder had begun coiling in his chest.

Something here does not want to be seen.

Behind him, Bai Yueyin, his second-in-command, adjusted the bindings of her silver-hafted spear and said what others whispered.

"The sea is lying, Your Highness."

He looked at her. She didn't flinch.

"Every sailor's instinct says we're in calm water. But I can't feel the pulse of the waves. Not through the deck. Not even through the hull. I've been on ships all my life, and this is... wrong."

Wei Lianfeng closed his eyes, extended his senses.

She was right.

Normally, a cultivator at his level could feel the movement of water like breath, Qi flowing through the ocean's veins. But here, everything was... smothered. Muffled. Like the ship had slipped into a dead vein of the world, and the leyline currents had been cut.

He opened his eyes.

"Wake Zhao Shun. Have him sweep the surrounding Qi patterns. I want a report on anything that moves other than this ship."

Yueyin bowed and vanished.

A moment later a scholarly man came up respectful. " You called my lord."

Wei Lianfeng nodded. " Yes please survey the surroundings and notify me with anything that moves in these seas other than our ships.

"With pleasure my lord."

Then Zhao Shun performed rituals and looked up to heaven and bowed, then repeated it several times and a few minutes later he stood up very disturbed.

Seeing his troubled expression Lianfeng asked. " What's wrong? Are there monsters nearby?"

Zhao Shun shaked his head. "No there is none, not even a fish and that's what troubles me."

Day 48 since they started sailing.

It happened at twilight.

The sky, already pale, began to change. Thin, glowing lines appeared on the horizon, barely visible veins of gold and violet, like cracks in glass, running across the sky. Which is not natural at all.

Meng Nian, their scholar-cultivator, muttered beneath his breath, nose buried in a jade scroll. "This doesn't match the star map. The celestial compass is shifting every hour. Even the wind spirits don't return."

"Why?" Wei Lianfeng asked.

"Because," Meng said softly, "we're no longer in the same sea. We've crossed a boundary."

"To what?"

"I don't know. But I don't think it belongs to us."

By the 50th day, all ships in the expedition five in total were drawn into the same silence.

That night the moon did not rise and the real storm began.

The stars spun. The sky tilted. The sea rose like a wall. Lightning arced upward, not down. Dozens of sailors vomited or collapsed. Qi signatures became unstable, Qi users who reached out to the sea found feedback, like touching raw nerve endings.Instead, the clouds above formed a perfect circle.

Then... a pulse.

It began as a vibration through the deck, like a tuning fork struck deep below. Then another. Then faster.

"Qi disruption!" Zhao Shun shouted from the mast. "Something's tampering with the internal flow of the ship!"

"Formations are being unraveled!" someone else cried. "The sea's rejecting them!"

But this… this storm was different.

Wei Lianfeng stood barefoot at the edge of the deck, robe soaked, eyes locked on the raging waters. His hand gripped the railing, knuckles white. Around him, his men scrambled, not with discipline, but panic.

"Anchor's gone!" someone screamed. "the balance is unstable! The compasses are breaking!"

Bai Yueyin landed beside him, using her spear like a third leg to steady herself. Blood ran down her cheek, mixing with the rain.

"It's not a storm," she growled. "It's a formation. We're being pulled."

Lianfeng narrowed his eyes and then he felt it.

Pressure. Ancient and alive.

The sea itself was rejecting them.

"Everyone below deck!" he roared.

But too late.

One of the ships, a smaller cutter, cracked. Its keel split from bow to stern like a gutted fish. No collision. No impact. Just... rejection.

Wei Lianfeng however stood calmly, but his eyes were glowing now. His inner Qi surged, ready to defend the core of the ship.

"This isn't a storm," he murmured. "It's a defense system."

Bai Yueyin shouted over the wind. "A beast's domain?"

"No," Lianfeng said. "A land's."

One of the rear ships vanished under a spiraling vortex without a single splash.

"Pull everyone back to the main vessel!" Wei Lianfeng roared. "All flying artifacts are grounded! Ride it out in formation!"

Then the shriek came.

Not from the sky. Not from the sea.

But from beneath the hull.

A shape passed beneath them, wide as the sea itself, long as a dragon's shadow. It didn't breach or strike.

It merely moved and the ocean moved with it.

"Prepare for impact!"

The waves exploded. Water turned sideways.

The sea itself pushed.

The waters exploded.

One of the rear ships shattered on impact. Men screamed. Flame burst from the waves.

The Eastern Star buckled mid-deck. The mast snapped like chalk. Throwing everyone on board into the sea devouring every sign of life.

The next day on an unknown shore. Wei Lianfeng was lying face flat on the sandy shore.

The first thing he felt was heat.

Not warmth but like fever. Like the land itself was burning under his cheek. Salt crusted his lips. His throat was raw, his limbs numb, and his Qi… fractured.

He opened his eyes.

The sky was still gray. But this sky felt different, tighter, as if the air itself had weight. Strange birds shrieked above the canopy of dark-red trees. The ocean behind him hissed as if boiling with spite.

He tried to move. Pain lanced through his ribs. Broken—but not fatal. His muscles spasmed. Blood dried against his side.

"Where am I…?"

He pushed himself up with one arm. Every joint screamed. The beach stretched out before him, jagged black sand, like powdered obsidian, broken only by driftwood and wreckage. The hull of the Eastern Star lay cracked in half a dozen places, embedded in reef and rock.

Sails flapped uselessly in the wind, still soaked in blood.

Bodies dotted the shoreline.

He counted six at first. Then more.

"...Yueyin?"

Panic did not belong in his voice, but it flickered there for a moment.

Then a cough.

He turned, sharp as ever despite the pain. A figure stumbled from the treeline. Bai Yueyin, her right shoulder dislocated, hair matted, spear snapped in two but still clenched in her good hand.

"Prince…" she croaked. "You're alive."

He exhaled. "You as well."