Three Years Pass, the First Light Breaks

The turbid sea had receded completely. For seven days, all was still.

The boiling sea of gold and red had steamed away. Beyond Blackwater Harbor, a thousand miles of seabed lay buried beneath gray-white salt crust, several feet thick and hard as iron, layered over the reefs.

The old soldiers called it "salt bone." Morning light drew no gleam from it, revealing only a gray haze of death. Wind moaned through its gaps like weeping ghosts.

Zhao Canghai stood alone on the broken seawall, frost staining his blue robe. He bent and pried off a piece of crust, then crushed it beneath his thumb. The grains bit into the lines of his palm, leaving a faint burning sensation.

"Master."

Zhang Zhenshan approached with a sheepskin ledger in his hands. A bandage steeped in medicine wrapped his left arm.

"The seventeenth outpost is clear," Zhang Zhenshan reported evenly. "A reef cave three miles north of White Sand Bay. Forty-three juvenile Reef Crabs, two adults, and one Golden-Membrane Sea Serpent. Seven lightly wounded, two seriously wounded. No dead."

Zhao Canghai took the ledger. His gaze lingered on the word outpost. Not a nest. Not a monster's lair. An outpost.

Since the day of Heaven-Burning Sea-Boiling, some inexplicable order had emerged within the mutants' increasingly muddled minds. They hid, lay in wait, struck, and withdrew. Each move followed a pattern.

"Don't rush. See that the wounded are cared for."

Zhang Zhenshan accepted the order and left.

Zhao Canghai remained alone on the seawall, looking east.

A vast expanse of blue waves had once stretched there. Now only cracked mud remained, fissures spreading like spiderwebs. Oily sludge gleamed in their depths, and bubbles occasionally swelled to the surface.

Zhao Canghai walked south along the seawall. Salt frost clung to the hem of his robe