Three months later, a high-grade Spirit Boat shot into the sky from a harbor on Xuanchi Island, cleaving through the heavens.
After deciding to carve up Cold Mountain Temple, Qing Chen had borrowed without any intention of returning, forcibly occupying this "bridgehead" and saving himself a great deal of effort.
The sea wind carried a salty tang as it lashed freely across the Spirit Boat's deck.
Wang Shisan, a rogue cultivator from Black Sand Island, crouched by the railing, stroking the high-grade Dharma Sword that had accompanied him through years of fighting, yet his eyes kept straying involuntarily toward the opposite side.
Diagonally across from him, the Second-in-Command of the Iron Saber Society leaned against the mast, carefully wiping his high-grade Dharma Blade.
Several scratches stood out on his dark iron armor, still unrepaired. Some had been blasted into it by Wang Shisan's Explosive Flame Talismans during their last chase.
Though only seven or eight steps separated them, it felt as though a vast chasm lay between them, and even the air seemed stiff.
This was the thirty-seventh squad of the Seventh Fleet, tasked with attacking Putu Islet, a mid-grade second-tier island subordinate to Cold Mountain Temple.
Each fleet had eighty squads, totaling four thousand cultivators.
The thirty-seventh squad had its full complement of fifty, but it had been cobbled together from cultivators of three different origins;
-twenty survivors of the Black Sand Island rogue cultivators led by Wang Shisan, twenty incorporated members of the Iron Blade Society, and ten cultivators sent by the Condensed Jade Sect to serve as squad leaders and battle supervisors.
"Deputy Team Leader Wang, check the Spiritual Power Shield. We'll reach the outskirts of Putu Islet in another three thousand li."
The Second-in-Command of the Iron Saber Society's voice rang out, still somewhat rough and