Loa frowned. He remembered them-the people caught up in the aftereffects of his cultivation thirty years ago.
He had been tempering his body on Thunder Mist Island when the resulting thunderstorm vortex swept in a passing merchant ship. Afterward, he had casually cleaved open a passage for them to leave. What were they doing here again?
Before he could finish the thought, an opening suddenly appeared atop the diamond-shaped Metal Lifeform behind them, and a burly bald man emerged. Planting both feet on the Metal Lifeform, he grinned viciously and hurled his right fist forward, wrapped in the earthen-yellow profound mysteries of strength.
An enormous fist imprint tore through the thin mist over the sea, hurtling straight toward the stern of the conical Metal Lifeform ahead.
Just before the fist imprint struck, a pale green wind wall materialized out of nowhere, blocking its path.
The two forces held each other off for less than a breath. In the end, the wind wall could not withstand the fist imprint's sustained impact and dispersed into a breeze.
But that brief respite had given the conical Metal Lifeform time to turn its bow. The fist imprint grazed its hull and blasted a column of water dozens of yards high out of the sea.
Loa withdrew his gaze.
He had not created that wind wall. A guard aboard the ship who cultivated the Laws of Wind had used his last trump card to block the blow.
He had no intention of meddling. In the Higher Planes, robbery happened every day. He was no bodhisattva who delivered people from suffering.
Still, these people were rather clever. They knew to flee in his direction and use him as a shield.
"Bandits on your heels, and now you're treating me as your savior?" Loa found it rather