Chapter 14: The Assembly of Nine Vessels, the Nine-Illuminations Cauldron, and the Voyage Across the Central Boundary Sea

The three months granted by Princess Li Zhaoyang’s imperial invitation dissolved not like water through cupped fingers, but like molten gold settling into an intricate, unyielding mold.

In the high, herb-scented clearings of the floating islands surrounding the Royal Lotus Palace, the rhythm of daily existence had transformed into a relentless, synchronized engine of preparation. Imperial Dragon City, once regarded by the ancient, haughty inner sects of the Central Divine Continent as nothing more than a wealthy border outpost of timber, coarse jade, and unrefined herbs, had become the beating heart of an economic and military metamorphosis.

Above the central valley, the silver phantom halo of the Nine-Tiered Heavenly Dao Pagoda remained anchored in the azure heavens, humming softly as its subterranean roots drank deep from the earth-veins four hundred miles beneath the province. Every midnight, when the stars reached their apex, the pagoda’s seventh-tier spatial anchor pulsed, releasing a cascading sheet of purple-gold origin vapor that enveloped the palace roofs in shimmering, liquid light.

Under this perpetual shower of celestial mist, the medicinal gardens cultivated by the elder herbalists of the Lin-Su Alliance yielded harvests that defied the traditional seasonal laws of the Eastern Province. Seven-Leaf Ice-Heart Lotus roots, which normally required eighty years of silent maturation in northern frost caverns, blossomed within forty days, their pale blue petals weeping pure, crystallized spirit-dew. Dragon-Blood Ginseng, thick as a warrior’s forearm and threaded with gold-and-vermilion veins, burst through the dark soil of the central floating garden, filling the air with a musky, metallic fragrance that invigorated the dantians of any guard standing watch within five hundred yards.

Lin Chen stood upon the marble balcony of the Grand Assembly Hall, his hands clasped loosely behind his back as he looked down upon the bustling lower court of the palace. He was dressed in a dark pine-green silk tunic embroidered along the collar and wide sleeves with silver thread forming the nine-tiered pagoda emblem, over which hung a light, unadorned robe of translucent white crane-down.

His long black hair was tied neatly at the crown with a simple piece of dark purple jade, leaving a few soft strands to frame a face that possessed the serene, sculpted beauty of an ancient immortal. Yet beneath that quiet, porcelain-smooth composure burned an aura so profound, so dense, that the very air within three feet of his boots shimmered with faint, golden thermal waves.

Beside him, resting her elbows against the carved jade balustrade, stood Su Qingyao. The chilly autumn wind rustled her sweeping ice-blue robes, causing the silver lotus embroidery along her hem to catch the morning sun. Her hair was bound in an immaculate, intricate phoenix weave held by three pale blue jade pins, and her calm, deep eyes reflected the vast expanse of the lower courtyard where hundreds of heavily armored alliance disciples were assembling supply chests.

“The nine primary transport vessels are fully loaded and sealed,” Su Qingyao said softly, her melodic voice cutting through the distant clatter of iron-bound crates and horse-shod hoofs. “Elder Chen Xuan personally inspected the hull array nodes on the Grand Azure Sovereign. The third-grade spirit-shield matrices have been replaced with Fourth-Grade Star-Iron Runes supplied by the Northern Frost Empire. Even if we encounter a storm of spatial void-shards in the middle of the Central Boundary Sea, the ship’s interior core will remain as stable as solid mountain earth.”

Lin Chen turned his head slightly, his golden-tinged eyes fixing upon her with a warm, gentle smile. “And the medicinal inventory?”

“Three hundred carved jade chests of Flawless-Grade Foundation-Consolidating Elixirs, eighty chests of Third-Rank Mind-Clearing Origin Pills, and twelve sealed white-gold coffers containing the Nine-Revolutions Flame-Purging Pills you refined last week,” Su Qingyao replied smoothly, pulling a small silver-bound ledger from her sleeve and opening it for his view. “If the central market prices quoted by Princess Li Zhaoyang hold true, this single cargo will yield enough top-grade spirit stones to fund our Alliance’s military expenses for the next seven years.”

“Pills are merely our entering wedge, Qingyao,” Lin Chen murmured, looking out toward the northern horizon where the silver line of the distant sea met the sky. “The Central Divine Continent has existed for tens of thousands of years under the rule of the Three Divine Sanctuaries and the Seven Great Dynasties. They do not lack spirit stones, nor do they lack ancient herbal recipes. What they lack… is a master who can strip away the impurities of their ancient formulas without destroying their foundational root.”

A soft, intoxicating laughter echoed from the doorway behind them, accompanied by the gentle, rhythmic chime of silver ankle bells.

Huang Yanyan glided out onto the balcony, her crimson silk dress swaying with feline grace around her slender hips. Her long, voluptuous red hair cascaded over her shoulders like a river of liquid mahogany, and her crimson eyes sparkled with mischievous, predatory delight. In her right hand she held a black lacquer tray bearing two small cups of steaming, aromatic amber tea.

“Husband is speaking of conquering the central market again,” Huang Yanyan purred, stepping close to Lin Chen and setting the tray on the stone balustrade before sliding her arm around his waist. She leaned her head lightly against his shoulder, her red lace fan tapping playfully against his chest. “Why bother with long trade negotiations when we have nine fully armed flying warships? If those central sanctuary elders prove disagreeable, we can simply let Zhao Ling’s vanguard drop fifty thousand rounds of thunder-crystal artillery onto their sect gates!”

“Yanyan,” Su Qingyao said with a gentle, long-suffering sigh, though the corners of her lips twitched upward in an affectionate smile. “We are attending the Grand Central Immortals’ Gathering as an official sovereign diplomatic power invited by the Imperial House of Grand Tang. We are not launching a pirate raid on the Central Boundary Sea.”

“Oh, sister Qingyao, where is the fun in being polite to those arrogant central fools?” Huang Yanyan giggled, leaning over to press a soft kiss against Lin Chen’s cheek, leaving a faint, sweet rose-scented mark on his skin. “Yin Tianming’s father, the Grand Elder of the Imperial Sun Sanctuary, has already sent three secret messages to the surrounding maritime island sects, warning them that our Lin-Su Alliance is a rogue provincial force carrying forbidden ancient treasures. Do you really think they will let our fleet cross the Boundary Sea without testing our strength?”

Lin Chen’s smile did not fade, but his golden pupils flashed with a sudden, cold light that made the air on the balcony drop by ten degrees in an instant.

“Let them test,” Lin Chen said quietly, his voice smooth and clear as ringing steel. “The Central Boundary Sea has belonged to nameless ocean beasts and lawless sea-tribes for three thousand years because no provincial power had the strength to sweep the waters clean. If the Imperial Sun Sanctuary wishes to use those maritime sects as a razor to test our skin… they will only succeed in providing our fleet with target practice.”

An hour later, the central plaza of the Royal Lotus Palace grounds was filled with the deafening, rhythmic beat of war drums.

Nine massive, two-hundred-foot flying warships hovered in three tight V-formations three hundred feet above the white marble parade grounds.

At the apex of the fleet floated the flagship, the Grand Azure Sovereign. Built from a combination of ancient iron-wood, reinforced dragon-vein steel, and plated in dark blue Star-Iron, the flagship looked less like a merchant transport and more like a soaring, immortal sea-dragon. Its three towering masts were strung with wide, dark-purple sails woven from silk spirit-threads that absorbed ambient origin vapor directly from the clouds, converting it into kinetic propulsion energy. Along both flanks of its hull, sixteen heavy bronze ports rested behind sliding dragon-scale shutters—each port housing a Fourth-Grade Void-Cracking Thunder Cannon forged personally by the elder smiths of the Heavenly Sword Sect under Lin Chen’s direct array guidance.

Behind the flagship hovered eight escort warships of equal grandeur, their decks lined with three thousand elite martial scholars and cultivators drawn from the unified banners of the Lin-Su Alliance, the Heavenly Sword Sect, and Prince Han Wu’s Northern Frost Cavalry.

On the main deck of the Grand Azure Sovereign, Zhao Ling stood at the bow railing, her dark silver dragon-scale armor polished to a mirror shine, her long purple cape snapping wildly in the high wind. Her dark eyes scanned the horizon with sharp, unwavering vigilance as she called out orders to the deck crews and array masters below.

“Main array nodes cleared!” Zhao Ling’s powerful voice boomed across the wood and metal structure. “Wind-element spirit stones loaded into primary propulsion engines! Auxiliary defensive matrices linked to the flagship core! All ships report readiness!”

Lin Chen, flanked by Su Qingyao and Huang Yanyan, stepped smoothly off the marble balcony of the Grand Assembly Hall. With a light tap of his foot, a streak of translucent golden-and-silver spatial light swept under their boots, carrying the three of them through the open sky in a silent, arc-like glide that landed them effortlessly upon the quarterdeck of the flagship.

Sect Master Chen Xuan of the Heavenly Sword Sect, dressed in his grand dark-blue ceremonial robes, stepped forward from the helm wheel and bowed deeply to Lin Chen.

“Young Master Lin,” Chen Xuan said, his voice brimming with deep emotional weight. “The flagship is at your absolute command. The provincial elders who remain behind in Imperial Dragon City have pledged their lives to guard the estate foundations and the spatial anchor until our return.”

Lin Chen looked back one last time at the sprawling, prosperous expanse of Imperial Dragon City. Down in the streets, tens of thousands of citizens were kneeling on the roofs, waving white silk banners, and shouting prayers for the fleet’s triumphant return.

Lin Chen raised his right hand into the air. The gold-and-silver pagoda mark on his skin flashed with a brilliant, sovereign beam of light that shot three thousand feet into the heavens!

“Raise the sails!” Lin Chen’s voice echoed across all nine ships, amplified by spatial energy until it resounded across the entire mountain valley. “Course set due east—across the Central Boundary Sea to the Capital of Grand Tang!”

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

Nine colossal array engines roared to life simultaneously, releasing rivers of blinding blue-and-gold propulsion flame from their stern ports! The nine massive iron warships surged forward, cutting through the high morning clouds like nine soaring blue dragons, leaving long, brilliant white trails of spatial light across the vast blue canopy of the Eastern Province sky.

For seven days and seven nights, the fleet flew east at breathtaking speed.

Below them, the familiar, mountain-studded green terrain of the Eastern Province gradually gave way to jagged coastal cliffs, which soon dissolved into the endless, dark-blue expanse of the Central Boundary Sea.

The Boundary Sea was not ordinary ocean water. It was an ancient, lawless maritime realm spanning over twelve thousand miles between the eastern provinces and the central continent. Here, the atmospheric origin energy was chaotic and untamed, frequently triggering violent elemental storms where purple lightning struck the waves and spatial rifts opened without warning. The waters were infested with colossal sea-beasts—fourth-and fifth-rank creatures that could capsize an ordinary iron transport ship with a single flick of their armored tails.

Yet for the nine warships of the Lin-Su Alliance, the journey through the outer sea was astonishingly tranquil.

The flagship’s primary array—linked directly to the Seventh-Rank Spatial Anchor in Lin Chen’s body—emitted a continuous, invisible wave of spatial stabilization frequency that smoothed the turbulent sea winds within three miles of the fleet. Whenever a hungry fourth-rank sea-monster, such as a hundred-foot Thunder-Crab or a blue-scaled Deep-Sea Python, breached the waves to strike at the flying ships, the sixteen Void-Cracking Thunder Cannons on the flagship’s flank would flare with blinding golden origin light. A single synchronized volley was enough to blast the creature back into the depths as a cloud of vaporized blood and shattered scales.

By the evening of the eighth day, the fleet entered the deep maritime zone known as the Sea of Nine Illusions.

Here, the sky turned a dark, bruised violet, and a thick, unnatural sea fog rolled across the water, reducing visibility to less than fifty paces. The wind died down completely, replaced by an eerie, suffocating silence broken only by the muffled rhythmic churning of the ship’s propulsion engines.

Lin Chen sat inside the spacious, luxurious master captain’s cabin at the stern of the Grand Azure Sovereign.

The cabin was lined with dark sandalwood paneling and lit by glowing white spirit-pearls suspended in brass sconces. At the center of the room sat a heavy, square table carved from a single block of Nine-Dragon Heat-Stone, emitting a pleasant, cozy warmth that banished the cold sea dampness outside.

In the center of the table rested a round, eighteen-inch bronze object thatLin Chen had retrieved from the Seventh Tier of the Heavenly Dao Pagoda before departure: the Nine-Illuminations Origin Cauldron.

Unlike ordinary alchemy cauldrons, which were heavy, bulky four-legged vessels forged from bronze or cast iron, the Nine-Illuminations Cauldron was an ancient, spherical masterpiece of spatial engineering. Its outer surface was carved with nine revolving concentric rings of pale gold metal, inlaid with tiny, star-like fragments of Void-Origin Crystals. When activated by Lin Chen’s Innate Origin Flame, the nine rings revolved independently at staggering speed, creating an internal spatial vacuum where herbal ingredients were refined directly by spiritual heat without ever touching the metal walls!

Lin Chen sat cross-legged on a plush velvet cushion before the table, his eyes closed in deep concentration.

Floating inside the hollow center of the revolving bronze cauldron was a translucent, three-inch sphere of pure golden-red liquid fire. Inside that sphere lay three rare, ancient ingredients that Lin Chen had selected from the pagoda’s herb storage: a thumb-sized chunk of Nine-Leaf Celestial Jade-Ginseng, three drops of Dragon-Heart Marrow-Liquid, and a single petal of the Seven-Color Void-Lotus.

Su Qingyao sat quietly at the side tea table, carefully pouring fresh hot water over dried snow-lotus leaves, her gentle eyes watching Lin Chen’s hands with quiet fascination.

“This is the fifth batch today,” Su Qingyao remarked softly, setting down the ceramic teapot. “Lin Chen, you have been refining the Heavenly-Vein Golden Core Pill continuously for three days. Your spiritual energy consumption must be immense.”

Lin Chen did not open his eyes, but his hands moved with precise, fluid grace, his fingers twisting into an ancient, complex hand-seal that caused the bronze cauldron’s outer rings to hum with a sharp, high-pitched musical frequency.

HUMMMMMM!

A wave of rich, intoxicating herbal fragrance—smelling simultaneously of sweet honey, old pine wood, and fresh mountain rain—erupted from the small air vents of the cauldron, filling the entire room in less than half a breath.

“The Heavenly-Vein Golden Core Pill is not an ordinary Third-Rank pill, Qingyao,” Lin Chen explained smoothly, his voice deep and calm. “It is a ancient, long-lost formula recorded in the Heavenly Dao Pavilion’s forbidden records. When a Foundation Establishment cultivator at the peak stage consumes this pill during their Golden Core breakthrough, it does not merely increase their success rate—it purges ninety percent of the latent impurities within their dantian, allowing their emerging Golden Core to form three additional Dantian Spatial Rings.”

He slowly opened his eyes, his golden pupils shining like two miniature suns in the soft light of the cabin.

“In the Central Divine Continent,” Lin Chen continued, “a Golden Core master with three spatial rings is considered an elite elder. A master with six rings is hailed as an imperial genius. But if a cultivator uses this pill alongside a Flawless Foundation… their Golden Core will birth Nine Sovereign Spatial Rings—the absolute limit allowed by the laws of Heaven and Earth.”

Su Qingyao’s breath caught slightly in her throat. She understood immediately what Lin Chen was preparing for.

“You intend to use this pill for your own breakthrough when we reach the central continent?” she asked softly.

“For myself… and for you, Qingyao,” Lin Chen smiled warmly, reaching out his right hand.

SWISH!

The revolving rings of the Nine-Illuminations Cauldron slowed down, locking into place with a crisp, harmonic CLICK.

The top lid slid open automatically, and two perfectly round, thumb-sized pills floated gracefully out of the bronze interior, hovering three inches above Lin Chen’s open palm.

The pills were not dull brown or yellow like standard medicinal pills. They were made of a translucent, glass-like amber material, inside of which miniature, swirling clouds of golden fire and silver starlight revolved in a continuous, hypnotic dance. Around the smooth surface of each pill burned three distinct, glowing golden rings—the unmistakable mark of a Flawless-Grade Nine-Ring Pill!

Su Qingyao leaned forward, gazing at the floating amber pills in absolute, speechless wonder.

“Flawless Grade…” she whispered softly. “Not a single particle of pill poison or ash… Lin Chen, if an ancient alchemy patriarch from the Central Continent saw these pills, he would drop onto his knees and worship you as a living alchemy deity.”

Lin Chen laughed softly, taking a small, intricately carved jade vial from his sleeve and placing the two glowing pills inside, sealing the stopper with a golden spirit-tack.

“Let the central alchemy patriarchs hold their pride for a little longer,” Lin Chen said, handing the sealed vial to Su Qingyao. “Keep this vial safely in your dantian space, Qingyao. When we reach the ancient meditative grounds of Chang’an, I will assist you in breaking through to the Golden Core Realm first.”

Su Qingyao held the cold jade vial against her chest, her blue eyes brimming with deep, profound warmth and devotion. She stepped closer to him, leaning down to press her soft forehead against his shoulder.

“Thank you, Lin Chen,” she whispered softly. “I will never lag behind your footsteps.”

Lin Chen was about to wrap his arm around her waist when suddenly—

BOOM!

A sudden, violent tremor shook the flagship!

The wooden floorboards pitched at a sharp ten-degree angle, causing the heavy tea service on the side table to slide across the polished wood! Outside the cabin windows, the deep violet sea fog exploded into a sheet of brilliant, crackling crimson lightning!

CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!

The sharp, urgent bronze alarm bells on the main deck began to ring frantic warning signals across the entire fleet!

“Report!” Zhao Ling’s loud, icy voice boomed through the cabin walls. “Enemy contact! Multiple maritime war-junks emerging from the deep fog at three o’clock and nine o’clock! They have activated a Fifth-Rank Sea-Locking Array!”

Lin Chen’s expression did not show a single trace of panic. He stood up slowly from his cushion, smoothed his crane-down white robe with a casual flick of his sleeve, and gently patted Su Qingyao’s shoulder.

“It seems Yanyan’s prediction was correct,” Lin Chen said smoothly, a cool, amused smile appearing on his lips. “The maritime dogs have arrived to collect their fee.”

“Shall I fetch my sword?” Su Qingyao asked, her blue eyes instantly cooling into icy, lethal sharp blades.

“No need for you to dirty your blade yet, Qingyao,” Lin Chen smiled, stepping toward the cabin door. “Let us go out onto the deck and see who has given these ocean rats the courage to stand in the path of my fleet.”

On the main deck of the Grand Azure Sovereign:

The serene, foggy atmosphere of the Sea of Nine Illusions had vanished, replaced by a terrifying scene of nautical ambush!

Surrounding the nine flying warships of the Lin-Su Alliance were no fewer than thirty colossal, pitch-black war-junks built from jagged iron-wood and armored with thick black dragon-hide. The sails of these ambush vessels were painted with a crimson emblem depicting a dripping, iron-scaled sea skull—the dreaded mark of the Blood-Shark Maritime Alliance, the largest and most ruthless pirate syndicate operating in the Central Boundary Sea!

Above the thirty pirate vessels, a massive, translucent dome of crimson energy had locked onto the sky, covering a five-mile radius. The dome emitted heavy, oppressive gravitational fields that forced the Lin-Su Alliance’s flying warships down to within thirty feet of the rolling sea waves, preventing them from ascending into the high clouds!

On the main deck of the largest pirate junk—a three-hundred-foot monster ship anchored fifty yards off the flagship’s starboard bow—stood a massive, hulking man over seven feet tall.

He was bare-chested, revealing skin covered in jagged, purple ritual tattoos and deep battle scars. In his right hand he held a gigantic, four-pronged iron trident that dripped with viscous green sea-snake venom. His cultivation aura was brutal, wild, and unrestrained—radiating the terrifying power of an Intermediate-Stage Golden Core Master!

Flanking him were six pirate captains, all possessing Early-Stage Golden Core or Peak Foundation Establishment cultivations!

“Hahaha! Look at these delicate provincial birds!” the giant pirate leader roared, his booming voice cutting through the crashing waves and crackling crimson lightning. “They actually thought nine shiny flying ships could sail through the Sea of Nine Illusions without paying tribute to Lord Blood-Shark!”

Around him, hundreds of savage, iron-armored pirate cultivators cheered wildly, beating their heavy cutlasses and iron spears against the wooden railings of their junks!

On the deck of the Grand Azure Sovereign, three thousand Alliance disciples stood in crisp, immaculate military formations, their bows drawn, their long spears locked forward, their faces cold and devoid of a single grain of fear.

Zhao Ling stood at the bow, her dark silver sword drawn and pointing directly at the pirate leader’s face.

“State your name and purpose, ocean rat!” Zhao Ling shouted, her voice echoing with sharp, icy authority. “You are standing in the path of the Lin-Su Alliance fleet! If you do not deactivate your array and drop your sails within three breaths, we will sweep your vessels into the sea floor!”

The pirate leader, Lord Blood-Shark, threw his head back and laughed maniacally!

“Lin-Su Alliance?! A bunch of backwater provincial dogs from the Eastern Province!” Blood-Shark spat onto the deck, his red-rimmed eyes gleaming with naked greed and sadism. “An elder from the Central Divine Continent has paid us twenty million middle-grade spirit stones to sink your fleet and bring back the head of a young man named Lin Chen!”

Blood-Shark raised his heavy venomous trident, pointing it at the flagship.

“Listen up, provincial weaklings!” Blood-Shark bellowed. “Hand over your storage rings, surrender your nine flying warships, and deliver Lin Chen’s head on a silver platter… and I might grant the rest of you quick deaths!”

“Is that so?”

A soft, magnetic voice echoed across the quiet deck—a voice so clear, so coolly composed, that it easily cut through the roaring ocean winds and the pirate leader’s boisterous laughter.

The Alliance disciples at the bow parted instantly, bowing their heads in deep, silent reverence as Lin Chen walked smoothly to the front railing, flanked by Su Qingyao and Huang Yanyan.

Lin Chen looked down from the high quarterdeck at the massive pirate leader standing fifty yards away. His hands were tucked casually into his wide sleeves, his dark green and white robes fluttering gently in the sea breeze, his handsome face bearing a pleasant, almost entertained expression.

“You mentioned an elder from the Central Divine Continent paid you twenty million spirit stones,” Lin Chen said pleasantly, as if chatting with an old acquaintance over afternoon tea. “Let me guess… an elder bearing the crest of the Imperial Sun Sanctuary?”

Lord Blood-Shark’s eyes narrowed slightly, surprised by the young man’s absolute lack of panic. “So what if it is?! Dead men don’t need to know who bought their tombstone! Boy, are you Lin Chen?!”

“I am Lin Chen,” he acknowledged with a gentle nod.

Lin Chen reached out his right hand, resting his palm lightly upon the cold bronze railing of the flagship bow. He looked across the thirty black war-junks surrounding his fleet, his golden-tinged eyes assessing their defensive array nodes in less than a second.

“Lord Blood-Shark,” Lin Chen said smoothly. “Twenty million middle-grade spirit stones is a respectable sum for an ocean bandit. But unfortunately for you… your buyer omitted a crucial piece of information.”

“What information?!” Blood-Shark growled, tightening his grip on his heavy venomous trident.

Lin Chen’s smile widened into a divine, chilling expression that made every pirate captain on the surrounding ships feel a sudden, instinctual shudder run down their spines.

“They forgot to tell you…” Lin Chen whispered softly, “…that my fleet does not carry cargo.”

He raised his right hand, gesturing casually to Zhao Ling beside him.

“We carry firepower.”

Lin Chen’s right index finger pointed calmly down at the pirate flagship.

“Zhao Ling. Open all sixteen ports.”

“ALL PORTS OPEN!” Zhao Ling’s icy command rang out across the ship!

CLATTER-CLANG! CLATTER-CLANG!

Along both flanks of the Grand Azure Sovereign—and across all eight escort warships—the heavy dragon-scale shutters slid back simultaneously!

One hundred and forty-four massive bronze muzzles of the Void-Cracking Thunder Cannons thrust forward out of the dark hull ports, their dark barrels carved with intricate gold-and-silver spatial array runes that began to glow with a blinding, incandescent white light!

Lord Blood-Shark’s face instantly lost every drop of color!

As a veteran pirate who had dominated the Boundary Sea for fifty years, he had seen many defensive artillery pieces on central merchant vessels. But the terrifying energy gathering within those one hundred and forty-four bronze barrels was not ordinary explosive fire—it was concentrated, compressed Spatial-Void Fire drawn directly from the Heavenly Dao Pagoda’s core!

“NO! ACTIVATED ALL DEFENSIVE SHIELDS! FALL BACK! FALL BACK—” Blood-Shark screamed at the top of his lungs, his voice cracking in absolute, sheer horror!

“Fire,” Lin Chen commanded quietly.

BOOOOOOOOOOOM!

The Sea of Nine Illusions exploded into a sun-bright flash of absolute, catastrophic light!

One hundred and forty-four thick beams of pure golden-white spatial artillery fire tore through the dark foggy air simultaneously! The speed of the projectiles was so immense that they did not merely travel through the air—they collapsed the spatial distance between the cannons and the targets in less than a hundredth of a second!

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

The crimson Fifth-Rank Sea-Locking Array overhead was shattered into fine red dust in the very first millisecond of the blast!

The thirty black iron war-junks of the Blood-Shark Maritime Alliance did not even have the chance to splinter or catch fire. Under the absolute, disintegrating thermal-spatial force of the combined volley, twelve war-junks were instantly vaporized off the surface of the ocean—their iron plates, wood hulls, sails, and hundreds of pirate crew members converted into clouds of floating black ash before they could even scream!

The pirate flagship—the three-hundred-foot monster vessel carrying Lord Blood-Shark—was struck by six main-cannon beams simultaneously!

RUMBLE!

The giant warship split down the middle like a piece of dry firewood under a heavy axe! Its three massive masts were sheared off in mid-air, exploding into brilliant showers of glowing splinters that rained down upon the boiling, crimson-tinted sea waves!

Lord Blood-Shark screamed in agony as the spatial shockwave tore through his chest, shattering his iron trident into twisted scrap metal and sending him flying three hundred yards through the air, crashing heavily onto the burning deck ruins of his halved flagship!

The entire engagement had lasted less than three seconds.

Where thirty menacing pirate vessels had once surrounded the Lin-Su Alliance fleet in a terrifying trap, there were now only burning wooden splinters, boiling sea water, and six crippled, sinking ship hulls drifting helpless in the waves.

The thick, suffocating sea fog of the Sea of Nine Illusions had been completely cleared away by the blast wave, revealing a bright, clear evening sky illuminated by a magnificent crimson sunset over the ocean horizon.

On the quarterdeck of the Grand Azure Sovereign, the three thousand Alliance disciples stood in absolute, stunned silence for two full breaths… before erupting into a roaring, triumphant cheer that echoed across the ocean!

“Sovereign Master Lin! Sovereign Master Lin!”

“Victory! Total Victory!”

Huang Yanyan leaned against the railing, her red lace fan covering her mouth as she let out a delighted, musical laugh. “Oh, my~ Husband… you didn’t even give them a chance to surrender! That was terribly uncivilized!”

Lin Chen tapped her chin lightly with his finger, a calm, pleased smile on his lips. “They asked for my head, Yanyan. It would be rude not to answer with appropriate enthusiasm.”

Lin Chen stepped onto the bow railing, looking down at the burning wreckage of the pirate flagship three hundred yards away.

There, propped against a broken mast stump, lay Lord Blood-Shark. His body was scorched black, his left arm missing, his chest heaving as he coughed up thick mouthfuls of black, bloodied foam. He looked up at the handsome young man standing on the quarterdeck of the flying warship with eyes filled with utter, broken, cosmic terror.

Lin Chen raised his hand, making a gentle pulling motion through the air.

SWISH!

A thread of invisible spatial force wrapped around Blood-Shark’s collar, dragging his heavy seven-foot body off the burning deck and flying across the open water, slamming him heavily onto the marble-plated bow deck of the Grand Azure Sovereign, right at Lin Chen’s feet!

Blood-Shark trembled violently, clutching his bloodied chest, his head bowed against the polished deck wood.

“P-Please…” Blood-Shark whimpered, his loud, arrogant voice reduced to a pathetically thin, croaking squeak. “Spare… spare my life… Young Master Lin… I was manipulated… the Imperial Sun Sanctuary… they gave us the coordinates… they paid us—”

“I know,” Lin Chen said softly, looking down at him with cold, dispassionate eyes.

Lin Chen reached into his sleeve, withdrawing a small, white wooden token stamped with the golden seal of the Lin-Su Alliance. He tossed the token down onto the deck in front of Blood-Shark’s bloodied face.

“I am leaving you alive, Lord Blood-Shark,” Lin Chen announced calmly, “for one purpose.”

Blood-Shark looked up frantically, his trembling hand clutching the white wooden token. “W-What purpose… Young Master?”

Lin Chen turned his back on him, walking back toward the master captain’s cabin alongside Su Qingyao and Huang Yanyan.

“Take your remaining crippled ships and sail directly to the coastal mountain gates of the Imperial Sun Sanctuary,” Lin Chen’s voice echoed across the quiet deck, carrying an absolute, sovereign weight that chilled the pirate leader’s soul.

“Deliver that token to their Grand Elder.”

“Tell him…” Lin Chen paused, looking back over his shoulder with golden pupils that burned like ancient stars, “…that the sovereign lord of the Eastern Province has arrived in the Central Divine Continent.”

“And if he wishes to play games of life and death…”

“…he had better prepare his entire sanctuary for burial.”

[End of Chapter 14]