Exploration of the Lake Kingdom, the Seri Attack!

The third day after landing on Mountain Bird Island remained peaceful. Seabirds spread their wings in the azure sky, and whales rose and sank amid pale-blue waves. In the tawny heart of the island, Bula Deer bounded about, while Desert Turtles crawled along its edges. This was a tranquil sacred place of nature, filled with the songs and ease of all living things.

For hundreds of years, the Seri had regarded Mountain Bird Island as their ancestral land, yet they had never built villages there, nor left behind any large structures. Perhaps this was also related to the island's lack of water sources and its year-round drought.

The old Militia Chiwako led the fleet around half of Mountain Bird Island, from south to north. Mekat once again confirmed that the large island was about a hundred li long and around sixty li wide.

In that single short day of travel, giant fish in the sea kept showing themselves. They spouted water and cried beside the fleet, curiously sizing up the longboats they had never seen before. The crewmen were shaken to their cores. One after another, they prayed to the Main God, then knelt at the bows, offering mortal respect to the giant spirits in the sea.

"Ah, so many sea spirits! Could Mountain Bird Island be the end of the world?"

Chiwako was somewhat astonished. He had never seen so many seabirds, nor had he ever seen so many giant fish. In truth, the waters near Tiburon Island held one-third of all whale species in the world, as well as more than eight hundred kinds of sea fish. And on the island itself were over five hundred kinds of animals, most of them birds. This was a desolate land where human footprints were rare, and also a paradise where