The sea still churned, blood-flecked foam mingling with shattered stones on the surface. Chen Wuya stood at the edge of a reef, the force beneath his feet not yet dispersed, his fingertips still tingling with the numbness of Misaligned Force Backflow. He lowered his gaze to the jade token in his arms. Its crescent-moon pattern had darkened after being soaked in seawater.
At the edge of the distant trench, three black-sailed warships were swiftly sailing away. Figures moved across their decks, some carrying wooden crates whose open lids revealed broken rune-etched stones. Another man climbed the mast and adjusted the ship's heading, pointing it straight toward the northern waters.
Chen Wuya narrowed his eyes. He recognized those crates—they were identical to the ones used at the outpost to store fragments of formations. These people intended to take the items away, and spread the news as well.
He turned toward Bai Zhi and Mo Feng. The two had already leaped onto a higher reef and were watching the fleet's movements. Bai Zhi's hand rested on her sword hilt, while Mo Feng fiddled with a mechanism compass, its needle trembling faintly.
"We can't let them leave," Chen Wuya said softly.
As his words fell, he took a step forward onto the undulating sea. The current beneath his foot stalled, then condensed into a floating platform. Without looking back, misaligned force surged from his dantian and traveled upward through his meridians in reverse.
When his true qi reached the Jianjing Acupoint, he deliberately slowed its rhythm, creating a break in the circulation path of the Canglang Dragon Transformation Art. A tremor ran through his body, and the system immediately displayed a prompt:
[Abnormal true qi fluctuation detected. Judged to be an erroneous path. Activate completion mechanism?]
"Yes," he answered inwardly.
In