Tempest landed gracefully on the outskirts of Clearwater City. The grand pavilion was gone, but the air still seemed to hum with the joyous energy of the celebration. Li Yu dropped Hu Jian there and wished him well.

“This is it,” Li Yu said with a warm smile. “Your new home. Your new life.” Hu Jian, looking at the city with a mixture of excitement and nervousness, nodding with a smile on his face. “I can’t thank you enough, Li Yu. For everything.”

“That’s what friends are for,” Li Yu replied. “We should keep in touch via the communication token. And remember where you came from. You’ve earned this, but don’t let it change the good person that you are. And you can always ask me for help whenever you need it.” They shared a final, firm handshake, a wordless promise between friends, before Hu Jian turned and walked towards the city and his waiting fiancée.

Li Yu then headed back to the sect himself on the back of Tempest, enjoying the scenery as it passed by him. He had Tempest fly back especially slow so the flight was long and peaceful, a quiet time for reflection.

He thought about his friend’s happiness, about the encounter with the Gate Keepers, and about what he was going to do next. It felt like a well-deserved lull in the storm. That peace was shattered when his communication token buzzed urgently.

It was at this time that Fengliu contacted him. The intelligence master’s voice was grim and devoid of its usual calm. “Young Master, we have an urgent situation. The monster attacks by the sea in the south have become even more violent in the last few days. It’s not just random incursions anymore. It looks like the sea beasts have gathered and are now launching large-scale, coordinated attacks on coastal cities.”

Li Yu could only sigh wearily. The peace was already over. It looked like the Beast Faction was back at it again. After their bases were destroyed, they must have shifted their strategy, deciding to sow chaos along the entire southern coast.

Though this is what they were hoping for—not the fighting and the destruction, but for the Beast Faction to be forced into rushing their hand. This chaos was a sign of desperation, and desperation created openings. Hopefully, openings they can exploit.

He immediately sent a message to Jian. “Gather the team. We’re heading south right away.” Once he got back to the sect, he didn’t even stop at his pagoda. He landed Tempest, gave him a grateful pat, and then immediately went to the Deep Water Menagerie.

With the team assembled, he brought out Spine for them to ride down south again. Jian, Cyra, Kael, and Bai Yan were already assembled and waiting, their expressions neutral but ready for war. Since they kicked this bee’s nest they had to make sure they took care of it.

This time, they were going to follow the coastline, the party flying high above the waves on the back of a Gargantuan Spined Sea-Dragon. For the first few hours, they saw only the aftermath: fishing villages in ruins, trading ships beached and broken, and a palpable sense of fear hanging over the coast. Li Yu felt a pang of guilt seeing this, they were the ones that were acting against the Beast Faction causing this.

Then the guilt slowly went away as he remembered that the attacks on the southern coast happened from before they had attacked the bases. Sure this scale was different from back then, but he wasn’t going to let himself be weighed down by those thoughts. He quickly composed himself and pushed those thoughts aside. Only not thinking of what they will do once they get to where the battles were.

It wasn’t until much later, and much further south, that they ran into the first town where beasts were actively attacking.

A swarm of Gill-fiends, monstrous humanoids with fish-like heads and razor-sharp claws, and massive, crab-like monstrosities were crawling from the surf, overwhelming the town’s small militia of cultivators. The team didn’t hesitate at all and charged in. With Li Yu and Jian taking the lead, they descended like a thunderbolt.

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The battle was over almost before it began. The team was able to handle it easily. This kind of fight was once again a meal for Li Yu. He leaped into the fray, his staff a blur of dark metal, each swing sending dozens of beasts flying, their bodies exploding into gore. Like before in his fight against beasts, he was absorbing the energy of the aquatic lifeforms.

He moved like a god of the sea, his water arts parting and funneling his enemies into a kill zone. When he encountered a beast he hadn’t seen before, he would capture it, a tendril of spiritual energy wrapping around it and pulling it into the Koi Sanctuary. The rest were simply killed. If he blasted a beast to bits, he absorbed the whole thing into the Koi Sanctuary as extra food for life there.

The beasts with their bodies intact were left there for the townsfolk to sell to help them rebuild. Most of those beasts came from Jian Xuan’s attacks which had much more finesse.

After the last beast was slain, the team talked with the grateful, terrified people in the town, asking what had happened, getting dates and clues as to when the attacks had started to intensify. They thanked them again for their help and for leaving them with the beasts to sell. The team headed further south, leaving behind a town saved from destruction and now blessed with a small fortune in beast corpses.

They eventually ran into another battle, this one much larger. A significant coastal city, the home of a local power called the Azure Wave Sect, was under a full-scale assault. As they drew closer, they could see that the world was buzzing with different people fighting back the beasts.

The sect’s disciples were fighting desperately on the city walls, their blue robes stained with blood as they held back a veritable tide of sea monsters. A young, determined-looking disciple wielded a long trident, a “Tidal Serpent” martial spirit made of water coiling around him. He fought with incredible ferocity, his trident a blur as he stabbed and parried, working in concert with his spirit to take down a hulking, barnacle-encrusted behemoth.

Further down the wall, a team of five disciples moved in perfect sync, their cutlasses glowing with blue qi as they performed a formation attack, sending a massive wave of cutting energy crashing into a swarm of some sort of eel beasts.

Near the main gate, a grizzled elder stood like an unmovable reef against the tide, a massive “Coral Clam” martial spirit acting as a shield, absorbing the blows of giant sea creatures while the elder launched powerful earth-based spells from behind it.

Despite their valiant efforts, they were clearly losing. The sheer number of beasts was overwhelming, and the walls were beginning to crack under the assault. It was at this moment that Spine descended from the clouds.

Jian’s voice boomed across the battlefield. “We are of the Golden Shell Guild! We are here to help you out!” The beleaguered disciples of the Azure Wave Sect looked up, their exhausted faces filled with a mixture of shock and hope at the sight of the colossal sea dragon and the powerful figures riding it.

Li Yu and his team joined the fray, and the tide of the battle turned instantly. It was the same process as before. Li Yu was a one-man meat grinder, his efficiency in killing these aquatic beasts utterly terrifying to behold. He didn’t get this chance very often so he would take it when he could.

Once the fighting was over, and the last of the sea beasts had been driven back into the ocean, they talked with the sect members. The Sect Master of the Azure Wave Sect, a weary-looking man at the 2nd stage of Core Formation, greeted them with a deep, grateful bow.

“We are indebted to the Golden Shell Guild for helping us today,” he said. “We have been fighting these attacks for three days straight. Several sects along the coast are banding together to fight off what seems to be a beast wave from the sea.”

He explained that there didn’t seem to be a single center to the attacks; they were happening all along the southern coast, a widespread, chaotic assault. “There is to be a meeting between the sects later tonight to coordinate our defenses,” the Sect Master explained. “We would be honored if your esteemed group would join us, since you are here to help defend our lands.”

Their power was undeniable and help is always welcome in times of need. He had also heard of the Golden Shell Guild and had done business with them before. He had never seen these people from the guild particularly though, perhaps they were part of their fighting forces that wouldn’t travel together with the merchants usually.