The sky turned dark red above the Southern Cloud Mountains.
At the prow of the Nether-Dragon Flagship, Patriarch Nether-Ghost raised his bone staff. Green corpse fire burned in his eyes as he chanted, and the air shook around him.
“FROM THE NINE NETHER DEPTHS, DISSOLVE THE HEAVENS AND CORRUPT THE EARTH! NINE-NETHER BLOOD RIVER ANNIHILATION CANNON, FIRE!”
RUUUUUUMBLE.
Deep inside the flagship, ten thousand blood-refined spirit stones ignited. Demonic workers shoveled black marrow into the furnaces and turned bronze pressure wheels until the boiler seams shrieked. Bone runes lit along the hull.
The giant dragon skull at the prow opened its jaws.
A mile-wide river of rotting blood poured from the cannon. It was thick as pitch and filled with the screaming faces of tortured souls. The huge red mass plunged toward Sunset Peak.
The smell reached the valley first: spoiled meat, rancid fat, and swamp rot. The acid in the blood dissolved the clouds into yellow smoke.
The river was aimed at Austin’s cabin, his new garden beds, and every survivor on the ridge.
“The Nether Blood River...” Gu Qing pressed himself flat in the clover. “It melts spirit weapons and rots Golden Cores. Even a Nascent Soul sovereign would die under it. We’re finished.”
Two hundred disciples and sixty elders huddled in the weeds. Some closed their eyes and recited final prayers. Others clung to each other’s blood-soaked sleeves and wept.
Austin stood between the cannon and the porch, where Elder Mu was treating the wounded. He tilted his head back and watched the red mass blot out the sun.
His nose wrinkled.
“That looks like a town sewer main blowing out at forty pounds of pressure over a field hospital. If I let that fleet keep firing, none of these people get home.”
The carrot bed could wait. The ships had to stop now.
A red-bordered warning appeared.
Hot pressure built behind Austin’s collarbone. Jumping five levels in seconds had left him feeling like an overheated boiler with a stuck valve.
“Good timing. I need to vent before something bursts.”
He walked to map point [X: 08, Y: 08] in the center of the courtyard.
He did not draw a weapon or take a martial stance. He simply looked straight up at the falling blood river, opened his mouth, and released a deep, relaxed burp.
FWOOOOOOOOOSH!
A pillar of sapphire star-fire forty yards wide erupted from his throat.
It roared into the sky and lit the entire province in blue daylight. For a moment, shadows vanished across a thousand miles of mountains, rivers, and cities.
The beam struck the center of the Nether Blood River.
At fifty thousand degrees, the blood, acid, and swamp filth did not even have time to boil. The entire mile-wide river vanished in less than a fraction of a second.
The star-fire did not slow.
SKYYYY—CRACK!
It punched through the clouds and struck the Nether-Dragon Flagship from bow to stern.
The ancient dragon-bone hull, which had survived heavenly lightning and mountain-splitting swords, parted like wax under a hot knife. The flagship split down its keel. Both halves tumbled through the sky, shedding white-hot fragments and molten bronze.
The forty-seven remaining war skiffs caught the edge of the blast.
Their sails burned to ash. Their wooden hulls glowed red, and their corpse-coal boilers burst. Captains cut anchor lines and threw cargo overboard as the entire fleet scattered in panic. They raced for the horizon, desperate to put whole mountain ranges between themselves and Sunset Peak.
On the melting command deck, Nether-Ghost stood frozen. His scarlet robes had burned to rags, and blisters rose across his gray skin. His skull staff slipped from his fingers and melted on the deck.
He stared through the hole in the clouds at the skinny young man in the work apron.
“HE VAPORIZED THE ANCESTRAL BLOOD RIVER WITH A YAWN! HE CUT MY FLAGSHIP IN TWO WITH ONE BREATH! HE IS NO CULTIVATOR—HE IS A LIVING SUN!”
Nether-Ghost did not stay to watch his ship fall. He bit his tongue, crushed his Nine-Nether Soul-Escape Talisman, and burned three hundred years of cultivation in one desperate burst.
BANG.
A streak of crimson light shot north at ten times the speed of sound. The demonic patriarch fled toward his swamp, shrieking like a scalded dog.
Ten miles away, the two halves of the flagship crashed into an empty ravine. A white cloud rose above the wilderness.
The sky cleared. Warm sunlight returned to the mountains, and the air smelled of pine and clean rain.
Austin released one last soft burp. A curl of blue smoke drifted from his lips.
“Ahhh. Much better. Pressure’s back to normal. Nothing like a good burp to clear the pipes.”
He walked back toward the porch. The remaining ships were fleeing. The wounded were alive. That was enough.
“Xiaoyao, keep the treatment path guarded. Pug, watch the tree line. Nobody else gets hurt on my site.”
He pointed toward the wrecks below the ridge.
“Zhao, send salvage teams with the healers, not ahead of them. Bring back clean cloth, water, food, and straight timber. Mark any hot wreck and leave it alone.”
Gu Qing pressed a hand to his injured ribs. “And the enemy survivors?”
“If they surrender, bind their wounds and disarm them. I’m stopping a battle, not starting a slaughter.”
Austin picked up a fallen water barrel and carried it to the porch. Then he took a stack of bandages from Xiaoyao and knelt beside the girl with the bolt in her leg.
“Hold still,” he said. “We’ll get you through this.”
Behind him, his ruined carrot bed lay open to the sky. He did not look at it again.