A gentle breeze brushed past as Luo Chen slowly let out a breath of relief. The moment Dry Ink Mountain was nothing more than a tiny molehill in the distance, the pressure that had been stifling him lifted all at once, and he felt like a bird finally breaking free into the open sky or a fish returning to the sea.

Even from this distance, he could make out two tides of nearly identical color crashing against each other. Their collision drove towering waves across the Coldlight Archipelago, crushing the few islets that had survived the earlier devastation.

Such was the destructive power of Sages when they no longer held back. With the natural spirit energy fully under their control, they could flatten mountains, crush peaks, and, indeed, sink entire islands. Luo Chen's Azure Yang Great Handprint, infused with Spirit Enslavement, was a perfect example. If nothing interrupted its accumulation of power, it would continue swelling like a snowball rolling downhill until a single strike could erase an entire city from the map.

Yet the spectacle no longer inspired within him the awe it once had. 

By forcing Blood Nightmare out of hiding, he had exposed him to Blood Hermit and reignited their fight. Both men had been famous throughout the Northern Sea for years, and he had once regarded experts of their stature as distant and unfathomable as the ocean itself. But now, as their battle raged in the distance, neither seemed beyond his reach. Perhaps it was because his own cultivation had advanced enough to participate in such a fight himself, or perhaps because decades of relentless fighting had dulled away the edge he'd once felt. Whatever the reason, neither of them now seemed powerful enough to make him feel hopeless.

Only moments earlier, he had torn Blood Nightmare's body apart. Yes, the man could regenerate from the sea of blood, but Luo Chen could destroy him again just...