Once his trap was set, Jing Qian glanced again at the rapidly approaching Dragon-Elephant cultivator. Then, stamping his foot, he sent the Dingyuan flying in the opposite direction.
With the Worldly Insight pattern, Jing Qian could spot his enemy's trace across thirty li of ocean while the other party would only sense him within a single li.
That was a difference of dozens of times in perception.
And the gap in speed was even greater.
The Jiaotu manifestation was considered one of the strongest water-pattern dharma forms, capable of reaching two hundred kilometers an hour over the sea. From thirty li away, it could close the distance in less than a quarter of an hour.
But Jing Qian's power had grown further still. The Dingyuan's speed now outstripped the enemy by more than double. If he wanted to escape, the other could never catch him.
But he had no intention of fleeing.
After pulling away for a while, he abruptly turned the ship's bow and charged straight toward his own bait.
The power of Tidal roared at full force, the Dingyuan surging forward like a maddened beast. With Su Min'er no longer weighing the vessel down, the speed was unprecedented.
When the ship reached its limit, the sea surface suddenly transformed into a great trampoline, hurling the Dingyuan skyward.
That launch boosted the speed past five hundred kilometers an hour.
The ship fell, bounced again eight hundred.
A third bounce over one thousand.
And then, the fourth, breaking the sound barrier, the vessel was completely beyond control.
But Jing Qian never intended to control it.
Every maneuver was precisely calculated through Worldly Insight. His aim was simple: to give the Dragon-Elephant cultivator a "brand-new experience" of being smashed from the heavens.
Meanwhile, the enemy, Zhen Dou, scanned the strange fish-circle carefully with his spiritual sense.
After driving off the fish, he uncovered the spider-silk figure within, only to find a chunk of White Fang bone. Confused, he prodded it with force from a distance, baffled by the bizarre arrangement.
But then, just as he prepared to withdraw, his divine sense picked up a massive object hurtling from above.
Before he could react, a gigantic ship came crashing down straight at him.
As a perfected Dragon-Elephant, with the Jiaotu dharma form, Zhen Dou's spirit sense spanned a full li more than enough to detect ambushes.
But against an object crossing that distance at supersonic speed?
The answer: less than two seconds.
By the time he sensed the danger, he already knew there was no escaping. He could only unleash his dharma form to its utmost, bracing to endure the blow.
On the ship's bow, Jing Qian's eyes gleamed like lightning, utterly fearless of the howling stormwinds.
This "falling ship strike," a move he'd first conceived when the giant clam smashed into the crocodile-dragon, had been brewing for a long time.
Now he has finally unleashed it. And it felt glorious.
Let's see how a Dragon-Elephant likes the taste of an Eastern Wind Spirit Ship crashing straight down on his head!
As the distance shrank, Zhen Dou's gaze locked onto the masked figure standing at the prow.
Only a pair of eyes was visible, but they glimmered with open mockery.
And in the instant before impact… the figure vanished.
The ship was already upon him. He had no time for further thought.
All he could do was drive the Jiaotu dharma form to its limit and meet the blow head-on.
BOOM!
Zhen Dou was like a ball struck by a hammer, driven deep into the seafloor by the Dingyuan.
The crushing force made his vision go black, blood spurt from his mouth, and his bones feel as though they had been shattered, his organs trembling violently.
Fortunately, the Jiaotu manifestation bore the brunt of the impact, keeping him from being instantly pulverized.
But at that very moment, a shadow appeared soundlessly behind him, pressed tightly against the back of the Jiaotu.
A single finger strike landed squarely on one of the dharma form's power nodes.
Already pushed to its limits, the Jiaotu instantly ruptured its sturdy form, torn open at the nape.
Zhen Dou's body was laid bare to the sea, water rushing in to scour his exposed back.
And before he could even react, that shadowy figure swiped once using a tiger fang to snap his neck before vanishing again.
Zhen Dou felt it all like a grotesque farce.
From the strange fish-trap, to the falling ship, to the phantom that appeared and disappeared at will…
These bizarre tricks combined and somehow stripped him of everything!
He, Tu Zhen Dou, dignified Dragon-Elephant grand cultivator, with a powerful dharma form and vast reserves of life essence, hadn't even made a single move before dying such an absurd death.
In another fold of space, Jing Qian, who had witnessed the man's final struggles, felt no ripple of emotion. He simply reviewed the fight in his mind, replaying its gains and losses.
Post-battle reflection, this was a habit long ingrained.
...
Meanwhile, far away, a treasure ship flying the sakura flag sailed leisurely across the waves.
Inside its central cabin stood a lone blue lantern.
Suddenly, the lantern flickered, and a strange image appeared before it: a painted scroll of the Night Parade of a Hundred Ghosts.
Among the few spirits already colored on the scroll, the image of the Jiaotu slowly faded to nothing.
"Useless!"
"Nothing but useless trash!"
"I ought to light you all myself!"
The lantern's light then stretched into the distance, and the solitary lamp floated away with it.
To ride light itself and traverse the seas, this was a power only a Seventh-Rank Longevity grand cultivator could command.
...
Only once Zhen Dou was thoroughly dead and his dharma form dissolved did Jing Qian step out of the dimensional space to tidy the battlefield.
He flicked a thread of silk, hooking a jade token from the corpse's waist.
With a surge of force, the token shattered, dissolving into gray smoke that merged with the void.
At once, Jing Qian sensed his Void Realm expand its space, doubling in size. His heart leapt with excitement.
The Jiaotu clan was truly generous. This was the third storage treasure they had "contributed." A lifelong friendship indeed!
After securing the spoils, Jing Qian dove toward the seafloor and found the Dingyuan lying upside down on the seabed.
He pressed his hand against its hull, sensing carefully despite the collapse of its internal cabins, the ship's main structure was unscathed.
An eighth-rank spirit vessel, forged entirely from refined materials by master artisans, its hull was no weaker than an eighth-rank artifact. Such things did not break so easily.
Jing Qian released more threads, fixing Dingyuan firmly to the seabed, then turned into a ripple of water and sped toward Jiangzhu Island.
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