Li Yu arrived back at the city on Tempest. The people of the city wouldn't have known he had left or that he had come back completely injured. Spine was there waiting for him to come back after he had left in such a hurry. Spine had been guarding the city waiting in case it was some kind of distraction to pull Li Yu away.

Spine saw that Li Yu was injured, he was moving so slowly, dragging his body off of Tempest before landing on the ground. He had never seen Li Yu so injured before, what kind of battle went on out there. He finally spoke, “Young Master, how did you get so injured? Are you okay?”

Instead of answering Spine directly, Li Yu leaned against Tempest for a bit of support and took out his communication token. He planned to explain what had happened to everyone at once to save himself time. He wanted to continue resting as soon as possible. “Jian, Cyra, Kael, Bai Yan… everyone listen.”

He began retelling his encounter, his voice weak but steady. He spoke of the terrifying aura he had sensed, of his decision to intercept it alone, and of the eccentric, impossibly powerful old man he had met. He described the one-sided battle, the casual shattering of his staff, and the two devastating blows that had left him paralyzed in the water. As he recounted his short ‘adventure’, his retainers’ thoughts began to race at certain parts of the story.

In his city, Jian’s knuckles turned white as he gripped the hilt of DayBreak. At the part where the man suddenly attacked him and how strong it was, a cold fury rose within him. He too wanted to try his blade against this man that completely overpowered Li Yu.

The pride of a swordsman screamed at him, demanding that he seek out this man and test his blade against such an ultimate power. The desire to fight was an almost overwhelming inferno in his soul. But as Li Yu continued, explaining Zephyr’s estimation of his own realm—the 7th stage of Divine Transformation—the fire in Jian’s heart was doused by a bucket of ice-cold reality. ‘Divine Transformation… a whole realm beyond me.’

The battlelust didn't vanish, but it transformed into a deep, simmering frustration. His pride wasn't enough to delude him into thinking he could fight across that huge gap in power. It was no longer a challenge; it was an execution. Jian felt once again the bitter sting of his own inadequacy, a renewed hunger to grow stronger.

In her city, Bai Yan didn’t think much of the story. She had no strong family ties so the story was simply a story to her. She didn’t know Lirael either or had even met her yet. She was shocked that the man completely outclassed Li yu, having seen him fight.

Once finding out that he was in Divine Transformation she had admiration for this old man that Li Yu kept describing as hateable. She had never seen someone in the Divine Transformation realm before, there weren’t even many records of it from what she had read so far.

Kael heard a completely different story. The fight, the power levels—those were secondary details. What struck him to the core was the tale of a kingdom betrayed, a family scattered for centuries, and a great-grandfather’s desperate lonely search.

It resonated with the deepest parts of his own soul, with the grief for his lost family and his own single-minded quest for vengeance. He was especially moved by the story of a family reunited after such a long time, the relief and happiness that the old man must have felt. He too wanted to have that moment when he could feel such a thing.

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When Li Yu finished, explaining how Lireal had now left with her great-grandfather, Kael felt a profound sense of vicarious joy. It was as happy an ending that could be possible given the circumstances that their kingdom had gone through, a sliver of impossible hope in a world of loss. It didn't soothe his own pain, but it strengthened his resolve. Vengeance was his path, but seeing a family made whole again reminded him of what he was truly fighting for.

Cyra listened from her city, her mind captivated not by the violence, but by the sheer artistry of the power described. ‘To the staff with a fist… that is not mere force. That is a perfect harmony of body and soul. A fusion of existence.’ Her own illusion arts were about manipulating perception, about bending the rules of reality.

Li Yu had told them about Zephyr saying Divine Transformation is when you can more easily start to look into the natural laws. She was filled with an intense, academic curiosity. What did it feel like to be in that realm? What insights did one gain? She had no desire to fight him; she wanted to sit and talk with him for a hundred years, to learn everything he knew about the nature of the soul and the dao.

With the story told, Li Yu took a ragged breath. “In any case,” he concluded, his voice strained, “I won’t be able to fight for a while. My body is a mess. Spine will need to be the main support here now as I recover.”

He paused for a bit thinking. “But I will still come out for the battles. My absorbing powers for aquatic life should still be working fine, and I can at least use that to weaken the creatures for everyone else.”

With the debriefing over, Li Yu returned to a quiet room to rest and recover. As he lay there, meditating, he could sense his body’s incredible restorative powers at work. He could vaguely feel that his body was recovering stronger than before, the mended meridians tougher, the healed flesh denser.

He thought perhaps one method to increase body tempering outside of herbs and natural treasures was to get beaten up. It didn’t say that at any point in the technique that his martial spirit had bestowed upon him, the Abyssal Leviathan Physique. However, he could vaguely feel that after getting beaten up by that man, his body was recovering stronger.

But he immediately dismissed the idea. He wasn’t so sick as to go get beaten up just to speed up the process. The memory of the pain, the feeling of absolute helplessness, was too fresh, too scary. He didn’t want to feel that kind of pain again if he could help it.

Then he laughed a bit to himself, trying to look at the more positive side of things. If he had tough fights in the future, at least the positive thing is that his body might heal stronger. But at this time he wasn’t even sure if it would; that was just his vague sense of things.

The beast tide didn’t wait for him to get better. Just a few hours after he got back, more beasts were attacking the five cities. As promised, Li Yu went out to absorb as he usually does. He merely stood along the walls using his martial spirit Koi to draw in the qi of the attacking beasts holding nothing back. The effects were as before, it weakened them significantly before they reached the city walls.

This time the sects noticed something different. This wave didn’t have any beasts in the Core Formation realm. This led them to a hopeful thought, that they believed the beast tide was weakening. That they had weathered the storm and stopped the main force of it.

This confidence, combined with the weakened state of the beasts, led to a fierce and effective defense across the five cities. In the city Kael was defending, a disciple of the Soaring Gull Sect with a “Hurricane Eagle” martial spirit created a massive vortex of wind that tore through a swarm of flying sea-skaters.

In Jian’s city, an elder of the Stone Sentinel Sect with a “Living Mountain” spirit—a colossal, humanoid golem of rock and earth—single-handedly held back a breach in the city’s defenses, his immense form an unbreachable wall. The defenders fought with renewed vigor at the hopes that they had gotten over the strongest wave of this beast tide.