Thirty luxury speedboats cut their engines fifty meters outside the shallow coral reef.
Terrified European shipping magnates, offshore bank directors, and minor dark-world barons jumped into the waist-deep turquoise water. They carried white surrender towels tied to carbon-fiber fishing poles, sloshing through the gentle surf toward the pebble beach of Island Twelve.
Their expensive bespoke linen trousers were soaked with brine, and their Italian leather loafers squelched with every desperate step.
Only two hours earlier, these same men had cheered for Stavros’s naval blockade. They had boasted over expensive cognac about how they would divide up Taichu Group’s shipping routes once Lin Mo was defeated. They had laughed about starving the delivery riders.
Now, after watching an eighty-meter armored warship sliced in half like a ripe cucumber by a young sword cultivator sipping bubble tea, their arrogant courage had evaporated completely.
On the beach terrace above the tide line, hundreds of Taichu delivery riders and ICU nurses were sitting on canvas loungers beneath wide parasols.
They sipped chilled watermelon smoothies blended with Han Shan’s spiritual honey and sweet mountain mint. Warm golden vitality qi radiated from their pores like gentle sunlight.
Several older sanitation workers were casually breaking through their mortal meridian blockages simply by relaxing on their vacation. Faint golden halos shimmered around their shoulders as years of fatigue and joint pain melted away into the warm sea breeze.
