The Port Battle

The Big Three pushed open the iron door and entered the secret chamber. The lights automatically clicked on. The room was square, its ceiling and floor lined with black square tiles. There were no windows, no furniture, and no clutter—only a meter-high cast-iron cylinder standing in the center. Floating above the cylinder was a basketball-sized crystal sphere, inside of which rested a tightly shut eye. With a wave of his hand, Sean Meade stirred an airflow to shut the iron door, then gestured palm-up toward the crystal sphere, signaling that Winnie could begin. As the Big Three had agreed, Winnie would be the one to use the Eye of the Sky this time. Once the enemy's location was pinpointed, Sean Meade, being a Wind Mage with supreme speed and aerial dominance, would lead Heaven's Punishment's Dominators to the battlefield. Meanwhile, Channing Lu from the board of directors would hold down the fort at the Heaven's Punishment branch while also protecting Winnie after she lost her vision. Winnie stepped forward and pressed her palm against the crystal sphere, storing the rule-based item into her inventory before immediately taking it back out, completing the ownership binding. Then she swiped her hand across the crystal sphere's surface. The eye inside suddenly snapped open. It had no pupil, its interior a profound, fathomless dark. In that instant, everyone except Winnie—its master—felt an unseen gaze falling upon them. Channing and Sean felt needles on their backs, overcome with restlessness. It gave the illusion that all their secrets were laid bare. Her left hand resting on the crystal sphere, Winnie stared blankly into empty space, her gaze unfocused. Her right hand traced across the air, writing on a panel visible only to herself: *The Heavenly Dao is Unjust!* This was the Spirit Realm ID of the Soldier Master sect's Divine General of Envy, obtained from Jumang. After she finished writing the Spirit Realm ID, the eye inside the crystal sphere grew even deeper, faintly forming a vortex. Within Winnie's unfocused eyes, two deep vortexes also emerged. After roughly a dozen seconds, she said in an urgent voice, "Port of New York, Harbor Three, thirty degrees south of east, six nautical miles out—there is a ship!" Without a word, Sean Meade bolted out the door, rushing toward the destination. As the largest official organization in the Free Confederation, Heaven's Punishment could mobilize satellites and naval fleets to hunt down smuggling vessels. In terms of Spirit Realm walker methods, they had Wind Mages patrolling the skies and Sirens from the Sea God Church patrolling the seas, yet neither had managed to locate the smuggling ship from the Second District. The enemy clearly possessed specialized concealment methods that erased both physical traces and aura alike. Considering that the reinforcement team included Stargazers from Dark Night Rose, the concealment method was almost certainly a Night Roaming item, and one of exceptional quality at that. Just as Sean Meade's back vanished beyond the doorway, Winnie let out a muffled groan of agony. Her eyes squeezed shut, and crimson tears of blood began to stream down. She staggered, barely keeping her balance by gripping the cast-iron cylinder, bending forward as blood and tears surged down. She had been stripped of her sight by the Eye of the Sky, losing all perception of the outside world. This deprivation was rule-based; no item could restore or substitute for her lost vision. "Are you alright?!" Channing Lu hurried over to support Winnie. "I'll take you back to your office." "No," Winnie waved a hand weakly. "Please let me rest here for fifteen minutes. My head hurts so badly I can't... I can't think straight..." Bloody tears continued to flow from her sockets, staining her fair, exquisite face with an unspeakable, tragic beauty. *** Port of New York. A towering lighthouse stood silently in the night, its bright light flashing in a steady rhythm. The sea, normally teeming with cargo ships and crisscrossed by cruise liners, was pitch-black. Dockworkers had ceased their unloading, leaving only a few goose-down-yellow xenon lights on for baseline illumination. Shipping containers sat silently bathed in the dim yellow glow. Zhang Yuanqing stood atop the lighthouse, gazing out at the boundless, ink-black sea. In his Night Roaming state, he was perfectly melded into the darkness, undetectable by anyone. By now, the duration of his Night Roaming was measured in days. He could sustain the state for days and nights on end, and wearing the Companion Spirit Moon would prolong it even further. Other Saints of orderly classes lay in wait across various docks or concealed within nearby factories, awaiting Sean Meade's signal, primed and ready. At 11:15 PM, Zhang Yuanqing, perched high above and possessing night vision, saw a massive wave rise on the horizon. Cresting the wave was a two-story yacht, fleeing desperately toward the shore. In the water behind the yacht, an enormous body covered in iridescent scales breached and plunged, alternately breaking the surface and vanishing beneath the swells as it gave chase to the vessel. *An Aberrant monster?* The moment Zhang Yuanqing saw the black-scaled sea beast, his first thought was that it was a creature summoned by the evil faction. Then he immediately realized: this was the port of New York County, the headquarters of the Sea God Church. Sirens were the rulers of the sea; any marine life in the ocean would be enslaved, manipulated, and suppressed by them. That included monsters spawned by Aberrants. The black-scaled sea beast was the handiwork of the Sea God Church, and the two-story yacht was the true quarry. One pursued while the other fled. Floating on the crests of the waves, the two-story yacht came close to being overtaken several times, yet it always miraculously evaded the perilous attacks, never once getting destroyed. *There's either a high-tier Water Ghost or a Siren on board. An item alone couldn't achieve such consummate water manipulation. Well, if it were a Siren, the black-scaled sea beast would be suppressed and wouldn't dare chase so brazenly. So it must be a Water Ghost...* Looking out from his high perch at the thrilling maritime pursuit unfolding in the dark, Zhang Yuanqing mused inwardly. The port was dead silent. The orderly Saints lying in ambush nearby all saw this, but none made a move, quietly observing the chase as though awaiting an outcome. Just then, a gale howled in from the direction of the port, colliding with the oncoming sea breeze and churning up mini tornadoes. In the heavy night sky, a figure no larger than a speck swept in from the distance and shot out toward the dark ocean, the tempest in his wake rippling the sea into rolling layers of waves. The figure, moving as swiftly as a supersonic fighter jet, halted high above. Looking down at the yacht and the sea beast pursuing it, he thrust both arms downward. *Swoosh, swoosh, swoosh!* With the shrill screech of a missile barrage, a storm of wind blades rained down toward the yacht, sealing off every avenue of escape and blanketing a fifty-meter radius. A casual strike from an eighth-grade Wind Mage was a catastrophic blow to mid- and low-tier Spirit Realm walkers. Just as the torrential wind blades were about to engulf the yacht, a cold snort echoed from the cabin. In the next instant, the blades—sharp enough to cleave gold and jade—veered upward, leftward, or downward, shifting their trajectories to bypass the yacht entirely. Hiding within the cabin was a Dominator-tier Alcoholic. "Meade, come on down!" The sinister voice rang out once more from the yacht. Immediately afterward, Sean Meade, perched hundreds of feet up in the sky, plummeted straight toward the ocean. A Dominator-tier Alcoholic had directly inverted the rules, turning flight into a plunge. At the same time, the sea suddenly surged, shooting up a ten-meter-tall geyser of water that slammed toward the falling Sean Meade with formidable momentum. The rising pillar of water wasn't particularly fast, but it carried immense force, seemingly tailor-made to counter his wind wall. Just as the water column was about to strike Sean Meade, he suddenly shot upward against the drop, riding the gale back into the night sky. At the crucial moment, Sean had pulled off a reverse maneuver: he had actively commanded the wind to drive him downward, and under the Alcoholic's rule-inversion skill, that logically translated into soaring upward. Back in the sky, Sean Meade inhaled deeply and thrust both palms violently upward. *Wooo—* Towering waterspouts rose from the sea, piercing into the clouds and carrying hundreds of tons of seawater. Deceptively bulky and sluggish, they hurtled toward the skiff-like yacht with terrifying speed. At that moment, the space around the yacht suddenly warped like an illusory mirage. The waterspouts bearing monstrous volumes of seawater seemed to pass through a phantom; colliding into one another, they collapsed into rampant gales while the seawater cascaded down as torrential rain. *Realm of Distortion!* It was a Dominator-stage skill of the Alcoholic class. This skill could warp reality, turning truth into illusion and order into chaos; anything positive would be flipped into its opposite. Sean Meade's attack missed its mark, failing to sink the vessel. By now, having entered an illusory state, the yacht pushed through the storm and closed in on the port. Just then, the sea swelled as if an enormous monster beneath were churning the waters. Moments later, a hundred-meter-tall colossus emerged from the seabed. Formed entirely of seawater, its facial features were indistinct, vaguely resembling a rugged, bearded man gripping a trident—like the mythical sea god Poseidon. The sea reached only to his waist. Holding the trident in one hand, the giant scooped up the yacht with the other. The moment he appeared, the yacht's "illusory" state began to waver. Another Dominator had stepped in, seemingly from the Sea God Church. The ocean was the realm of Sirens; here, even an Alcoholic's Realm of Distortion was suppressed. *I wonder if the demigods are watching this... I wonder how many other Dominators are observing in secret...* Zhang Yuanqing watched patiently, waiting for an opportunity. "Poseidon" held the yacht in his palm and was about to crush the hull along with the evil classes inside when a silvery burst of laughter suddenly chimed out. A black-dressed figure stepped through the air. When she first appeared, she was still extremely far off, but with that chime of laughter, she arrived at the edge of the harbor in the blink of an eye. The melodious laughter drifted through the night. Male or female, Dominator or Saint, every face showed traces of entrancement. Charm! The colossus "Poseidon" stood dazed in the vast ocean, forgetting to crush the yacht. Catherine, vice president of the Hunter Guild—the fourth Dominator had appeared. The first to shake off the charm was Sean Meade. Sound required air to propagate, and for a Wind Mage, blocking out laughter was child's play. Yet before Heaven's Punishment's chief executive officer could launch an attack on the yacht, a dense, thunderous fluttering of wings echoed through the night sky. Zhang Yuanqing, perched atop the tower, looked in the direction of the noise. Across the horizon between sea and sky surged a swarm of firefly-like red points of light, practically engulfing half the sky. Amidst Catherine's melodious laughter, the red lights drew closer at breakneck speed. Only then did he make out a dense flock of birds. Their eyes glowed crimson; their wingspans spanned two meters; their bodies were clad in iron-like black feathers, and their talons gleamed with a blackish-green metallic sheen in the moonlight. Countless in number, they blotted out the sky. A fifth Dominator! Only a Dominator-stage Toxic Chemist could command such an immense flock of mutated, aberrant birds. Sean Meade's expression shifted slightly. Even though a Wind Mage possessed aerial dominance, blistering speed, and sky-domain suppression, such a massive flock would still pose a fatal threat to him if he were surrounded. Without the slightest hesitation, he rode the wind toward the open sea, lashing out with a torrential barrage of wind blades to hack at the encroaching flock. Bizarre birds fell into the sea one after another with their wings severed, foul, reeking blood staining the water red. *Boom!* Just then, the world flared brilliantly as a thick pillar of lightning struck down from the heavens, blasting directly into the yacht. Over a dozen figures leaped out, diving toward the sea. Yet in the very next instant, they materialized right on the harbor wharf. A whole nautical mile had been erased out of thin air. This was another skill of the Alcoholic: distorting distance, turning real physical space into nothingness, delivering the Saints directly to shore. Now that the orthodox faction's Dominators were making their moves one after another, there was no longer any need to fish for more prey. Leaving these Saints aboard the yacht would leave them caught in a battlefield of Dominators, which was far more dangerous. The yacht, struck squarely by the lightning pillar, was swallowed by brilliant arcs of electricity. "Prepare to hunt!" Zhang Yuanqing heard the knight Chazo's low voice come through his earpiece.