If the law of the jungle held sway in the Four Continents, then in the Endless Sea, it was a tyrannical overlord that no amount of moral ideals could overturn. Beyond the Outer Sea, a Nascent Soul loose cultivator's life expectancy was about 100 years. Ancestral clan wars ran amok, and the regulated islands, archipelagos and principalities aside, all was fair game. Even in those regulated areas, as long as the warring sides could obtain a war permit from the Evernight Palace, they had every right to butcher one another for resources, resentment, or both.
The White Foxes and Ice Spirits were only two of the secret clans that chose exile to avoid the tyrannical rule of the Hengye clan and rampant destruction in the Endless Sea. Alas, this choice made them the target of all other sea creatures, forcing them to seek asylum in the most dangerous area of the seas: the Western Damnation Sea.