Peak Showdown

Six hundred kilometers northwest of the Thunderclap Archipelago, west of the Jade Whale Sect's base, lay a sea region stretching several hundred kilometers in every direction, scattered with hundreds of islands large and small.

This sea had already been utterly transformed. The water was no longer the deep blue or dark green of memory, but a murky grayish brown, as though all the silt from the entire sea had been churned to the surface. Burned driftwood, shattered planks, tattered flags, and countless pieces of debris drifted back and forth in the currents.

The wind howled without cease, but it could not disperse the heavy smoke and dust. It could only raise rolling wrinkles across the surface of the haze.

Not one of the hundreds of islands remained intact. Several of the largest islands nearest the southwest had been shaved flat by a third, exposing dark red rock beneath the mountains. Their surfaces were covered in scorched marks and densely packed craters.

Most of the defensive fortifications on the islands had collapsed. Rune Towers leaned crookedly to one side, their bodies broken in half, exposing melted metal frameworks and shattered Energy Crystal fragments within.

Nearly all vegetation on the islands had vanished. The soil had been baked into a hard shell by the extreme heat, while the deeper earth beneath had been scorched dark red.

On the shaded western sides of several islands, areas had been cleared out and turned into postwar burial grounds. There were no coffins and no gravestones, only rows of earthen pits arranged step by step along the contour lines of the slopes.

The spacing between the pits was uneven. The closer they were to the top of the slope, the denser they became. Clearly, the soldiers clearing the corpses had been completely exhausted by the end