Several months later.
Over a sea shrouded in gray mist, two shadows chased and fought, one behind the other.
The Spirit Boat in front was only a hundred feet long, its hull weathered and its sail riddled with holes. It was the high-grade Spirit Boat belonging to the First Rogue Cultivator Army, where Wang Shisan and Liu Laosi of Black Sand Island served.
The Green Snake Banner hanging from its stern snapped in the sea wind, its fabric already blackened with bloodstains.
"Quick! Push another thirty percent spiritual power into it!" Wang Shisan lay beside the helm, both hands pressed firmly against the spiritual power hub.
His Qi Refining ninth layer spiritual power circulated wildly through his body, surging along his meridians into the Spirit Boat's Formation Plate;
The luminous formation patterns beneath the hull flickered, barely sustaining its headlong flight.
Liu Laosi crouched at the bow, his plump face deathly pale, both hands gripping a mid-grade Greenwood Shield Dharma Artifact.
Cracks crisscrossed the shield, scars blasted into it by several of the enemy's Blazing Fire Talismans and spells just moments earlier.
Watching the Spirit Boat pursuing them relentlessly, he said in a trembling voice, "Shisan! That's not a ship from the Condensed Jade Sect or the Demon Lotus Sect! That banner... it's some kind of Iron Blade Banner!"
The Spirit Boat behind them was somewhat better, its hundred-and-twenty-foot hull pitch-black, a savage Iron Beast Head mounted on its bow.
Twenty-odd cultivators stood along the gunwales, every one of them seething with killing intent.
A burly man stood at the bow, wearing a somewhat worn suit of Mid-Grade Dark Iron Armor, a high-grade Dharma Blade gleaming with spiritual light in his hand. He was the Second-in-Command of the Iron Saber Society.
"You came scouting right under your granddaddy's nose? You're