Spring of the ninety-first year of Incense Accumulation, Thunder Tide Island, eastern coast.
Smoke rose everywhere, and battle cries shook the heavens. Human mortals in all manner of clothing fought fiercely across the beach, their blood staining the seawater red.
Thousands upon thousands of Shrimp People were slaughtered, falling forever upon this fertile spirit island.
Meanwhile, ten full whale-class treasure ships drew close through the water, surrounding this stretch of coast as though encircling their prey.
A bald, powerfully built giant sat with a saber propped beside him, planted like an iron tower on the deck of the tallest flagship.
Satisfaction filled his face as he watched the scene and laughed heartily. "Good! Now those damned Shrimp People won't be stirring up any more waves."
The giant's name was Sha Jing. He had originally been an ordinary fisherman in the Long Sea who also served as a lookout for pirates.
Before the age of thirty, he had drifted through an utterly unremarkable life. Had nothing unexpected happened, he would have remained a worldly mortal until his dying day.
But a fortuitous encounter when he was thirty had led him to refine qi and pursue immortality, setting him upon a Dao path that defied heaven and changed his fate.
Even so, Sha Jing would most likely have ended up like countless ordinary rogue cultivators, fading into the crowd upon reaching the middle or late stages of qi refining, unable to stir up any waves.
By then, all the lofty ambitions and self-importance born of his advancement into qi refining would have vanished like smoke and clouds.
He would have understood that fortunate souls who entered cultivation this way were as numerous as carp crossing a river, scarcely worth mentioning.
Yet fortune toyed with men. Within just a few years, a demonic