Li Chen settled down at Black Stone Reef for the time being, experiencing once more the life he had led as a Wilderness Rogue Cultivator.
Every day, he performed Enhancement Modifications on the Puppet Masters and Puppeteers stationed there, genuinely strengthening their physiques, then modified their Mechanism Puppets as well. Yet he ultimately felt that such improvements were ineffective.
However diligently he worked, he could only provide a temporary improvement, not truly change these people's cultivation, strength, or outlook.
Nor could this change conditions on the Eastern Coast battlefront or halt the incursions of Demons and Nature Spirits.
History ascended in a spiral, but that ascent was extraordinarily difficult. Much of the time, it merely repeated the same old cycles.
Cycles, day after day, year after year...
A few days later, this thought became reality.
Clang, clang, clang, clang...
The warning bell rang incessantly, its urgent alarm sounding once again.
Li Chen stepped out of the detached little building where he lived. The first thing he saw was black cloud bearing down upon the settlement from the horizon, a terrifying demonic atmosphere shrouding heaven and earth like the calm before a storm.
Amid waves of overwhelming menace, water and clouds rolled backward, as though the entire floating reef island would be swallowed by the sea spreading out from the water realm.
Within this strange spectacle of raging seas overhead and themselves below, a thunderous roar erupted. Immediately afterward, rifts in the void widened, and gang gales spilled in all directions.
Hundreds of demonized shrimp and crabs resembling yaksha fiends burst out of them, riding the wind and waves onto Black Stone Reef.
"Enemy attack! Enemy attack!"
You Cheng rushed out, shouting at the top of his lungs.
"Are those the Shrimp People of the Sea Folk? They don't look like