The sky erupted in a cacophony of thunder and shattering light. Spiritual cannon fire—massive orbs of condensed elemental energy—began to rain down on the Invictus from every direction. The dark fleet of Captain Iron Hand moved with the practiced grace of a wolf pack, circling the wounded titan and striking at its exposed flanks.

"Launch the escorts! Burn them out of the sky!" Elder Xuan Ni roared on the bridge, his face purple with indignation.

The few remaining 500-meter escort ships—less than a dozen in total—swarmed out from the Invictus's docking bays. But they were crippled and outnumbered. The black ships of the pirates focused their fire, their boarding harpoons and spiritual arrays tearing the smaller vessels apart before they could even form a defensive screen. Debris fell into the ocean below like burning stars.

Without his main cannon, the Invictus was a toothless god. It sat in the air like a massive, bleeding turtle, its secondary batteries firing sporadically but unable to pin down the agile attackers.

"We are the Crimson Sect!" Xuan Ni's voice was amplified by a spiritual array, booming across the waves. "You filthy rats! If you do not retreat this instant, we will hunt every one of you to the ends of the earth! We will exterminate your families and salt the land where you were born!"

Across the sky, a projection of Captain Iron Hand appeared, his metallic hand glinting in the light of the explosions. He let out a scraping, mocking laugh.

"Exterminate us? With what, Elder?" Iron Hand sneered. "Your pride? Your broken hull? You look like you've been chewed up by a dragon and spat out. Today, the Crimson Sect pays its debts to the 'rats' of the sea."

Xuan Ni snarled and reached into his robes, pulling out a jade communication talisman. It was a high-grade relic designed to pierce through spatial barriers to reach the Sect headquarters. He channeled his spiritual energy into it, but the jade remained cold and dead.

"What?" Xuan Ni hissed, shaking the talisman. "Open Sky! Why is the long-range array dead?"

Venerable Open Sky looked up from his consoles, his face grim. "It's not dead, Elder. It's being suppressed. Look at the sky."

Xuan Ni looked up. Surrounding the battlefield, a faint, flickering red lattice was visible. The black ships weren't just attacking; they had deployed a massive Spatial Isolation Net.

"Elder Ni, you must understand that we are professionals," Iron Hand's voice echoed again, dripping with cold satisfaction. "This entire sector was isolated the moment your crippled ship crossed the horizon. No signal goes out. No help is coming. Nobody will ever know what happened to the great Invictus or the arrogant Elder who commanded it."

"You... you dare..." Xuan Ni's voice trembled, not just with rage, but with the first genuine spark of fear.

Deep below deck, the ship fought violently as a spiritual shell slammed into the hull near the brig. Dust fell from the ceiling, and the lights flickered.

Ethan's guards were no longer cultivating. One was clutching his sword, pacing the small hallway, while the other was frantically trying to get a signal on his internal comms.

"The ship is taking water—no, spiritual leakage! The hull is breached on deck four!"

Ethan, still suspended by the hooks in his chest, felt the tremors. The Iron Mask of Suppression vibrated against his skull. Through his ghostly vision, he saw the fear in his captors. He felt the ship's internal mana flow becoming chaotic as the shields began to fail.

Closer, Ethan thought, his mind a cold, calculating machine. Break the ship. Break the cage. Just give me one second of chaos.

The Invictus shuddered under a fresh barrage of spiritual shells. On the bridge, the status runes were turning from a warning yellow to a terminal, bleeding red.

"Divert more power to the bow shields!" Xuan Ni screamed, his voice cracking. "Open Sky, what are you waiting for?!"

"There is no more power to divert, Xuan Ni!" the formation master shouted back, his hands trembling as he slammed them against the empty slots of the power array. "We burned through every high-grade spirit stone we had left just to survive that lightning humanoid on the island. The treasury is empty! We're running on the dregs of the medium-grade reserves, and they're evaporating!"

Xuan Ni's face went pale. Without high-grade stones to fuel the complex defensive arrays of an Invictus-class ship, they were nothing more than a giant target made of expensive wood and metal.

He looked over the railing at the black ships circling below. He was a Half-step Spiritual Sea expert—powerful enough to level a mountain—but he was trapped. Because he hadn't yet fully ascended to the Spiritual Sea Realm, he lacked the ability to maintain sustained flight without a vessel or a specialized treasure. The pirates knew this; they maintained a precise, agonizing distance, staying just out of his jump range while their cannons dismantled his ship.

"Surrender, Xuan Ni!" Iron Hand's voice boomed, dripping with mockery. "The great Crimson Sect Elder, reduced to a sitting duck. Drop the shields and maybe I'll keep you as a slave. A man of your cultivation would fetch a fine price in the dark markets! Hahaha!"

Xuan Ni's teeth ground together with such force that one of his molars shattered. "I will see you in the deepest pits of hell first, you pirate scum!"

"Then you can go there together with your ship!" Iron Hand retorted. "All batteries! Maximum output! Shatter that bubble!"

The dark fleet synchronized their fire. Dozens of beams of concentrated spiritual energy converged on a single point on the Invictus's dorsal shield. The sky turned a blinding, neon white.

Inside the ship, the sound was deafening—a high-pitched shriek throughout the ship as the shield runes began to catch fire and melt.

Crr-ack...!!

The sound echoed through the entire ten-kilometer hull. A spiderweb of fractures appeared in the crimson dome protecting the ship.

"It's over," Open Sky whispered, stepping back from the console.

With a sound like ten thousand mirrors breaking at once, the shield of the Invictus detonated. The shockwave blew out every window on the bridge and sent Xuan Ni stumbling back. The great warship was now completely naked, exposed to the cold wind and the predatory hunger of the black fleet.

In the brig, the lights died completely. The two guards were thrown against the wall by the force of the shield's collapse.

"The shield is down!" one screamed, his voice high with panic. "We're going to sink!"

In the pitch blackness, the Iron Mask of Suppression hummed. Ethan felt the sudden influx of raw spiritual energy from the shattered shield leaking into the ship's corridors. It was chaotic, violent, and exactly what he needed.

-------------------

From this moment forward, to avoid confusion regarding cultivation ranks, I will include this footer with the current established levels.

Note: These are only the ranks mentioned so far to avoid spoilers. 𝙛𝒓𝓮𝙚𝔀𝒆𝒃𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝓵.𝙘𝒐𝒎

Body Refinement Realm

Skin Refinement / Bone Refinement / Organ Refinement

Spiritual Gathering Realm

Spiritual Perception / Spiritual Mist / Spiritual Condensation

Spiritual Core Realm

Core Solidification / Core Awakening / Spiritual Collapse (Half-step Spiritual Core)

Spiritual Soul Realm

Spiritual Soul Awakening / Soul Nourishing / Soul-Core Fusion

Golden Core Realm

Prime Fusion / Core Perfection / Core Destruction

Spiritual Sea Realm

Stage 1 ?? / Stage 2 ?? / Stage 3 ??

Dao Manifestation Realm

Stage 1 ?? / Stage 2 ?? / Stage 3 ??

Spiritual Transcendence

Stage 1 ?? / Stage 2 ?? / Stage 3 ??