In the long, blood-soaked history of naval warfare across the Nine Provinces, there were established doctrines that every admiral memorized. There was the doctrine of the High-Altitude Flank, the doctrine of the Pincer Movement, and the doctrine of the Overwhelming Broadside. These were the rules of engagement, written in ink and bone, governing how massive wooden ships powered by enslaved wind spirits fought for dominance of the sky.
There was, however, no chapter in any military manual, no footnote in any strategic scroll, and certainly no precedent in the annals of history for "A Continent-Sized Mountain Drifting at Mach 1 Powered by a Pig's Cosmic Indigestion."
The Dark Beast Sect's Western Fleet was a sight designed to inspire terror. It consisted of fifty heavy assault airships, vessels of blackened ironwood and bleached bone. They flew in a tight, predatory wedge formation, a spear tip aimed at the heart of the Shattered Peaks. The flagship, The Black Manta, was a behemoth twice the size of the others, its hull bristling with Dragon-Bone Cannons and its sails stitched from the skins of Wyverns.
On the bridge of the Manta, Admiral Kuang stood with his hands clasped behind his back. He was a man who prided himself on logic, precision, and the terrifying efficiency of the Dark Beast Sect. He wore a monocle that measured spiritual pressure, and his uniform was pressed to a razor's edge. He viewed the world as a chaotic equation that needed to be solved with force.
"Report," Kuang barked, his voice cutting through the hum of the bridge.
"Sir," the navigator said, his face pressed against a brass radar-scope powered by a trapped bat spirit. "We have a visual anomaly. The cloud layer ahead... it's deforming."
"Is it a storm?" Kuang asked, unimpressed. "We fly through storms. Maintain course."
"No, sir. It's not weather. It's... solid mass. And it's accelerating." The navigator's voice climbed an octave, losing its professional detachment. "Sir, the geography is approaching us at supersonic speeds."
Admiral Kuang frowned. He snatched the spyglass from the navigator's trembling hand and strode to the reinforced glass of the viewport. He trained the lens on the horizon. He expected to see the Twilight Stable, perhaps floating on a small rock, trying to flee.
Instead, he saw the horizon itself stand up.
A jagged mountain peak, tearing through the white sea of clouds like a leviathan breaching for air, was hurtling toward them. It was wreathed in a trail of violent, violet exhaust fumes that smelled faintly of ozone and regret. And there, perched atop the very summit of this flying geological disaster, stood a tiny wooden fortress. On the guard tower of that fortress, a young man in a stable warden's uniform was holding a megaphone to his lips, his hair blowing wildly in the wind.
Kuang lowered the spyglass. His brain refused to process the image. A mountain. A flying mountain. A flying mountain moving like a arrow.
"Evasive maneuvers!" Kuang screamed, his composure shattering like glass. "Hard to starboard! Dive! Do something!"
It was too late. Inertia is a cruel mistress, and she was currently on Su Ye's side.
The impact was not a battle. It was a physics experiment gone wrong. It was a bowling ball hitting a pyramid of champagne glasses.
The Sky-Eater, propelled by the sudden release of Zhu Zhu's void-gases, smashed into the vanguard of the Western Fleet. The lead three ships didn't even have time to fire their cannons. They were instantly vaporized against the indestructible, stone-scaled hide of the ancient beast. One moment they were terrifying warships; the next, they were a cloud of splinters, scrap metal, and very confused pirates spinning into the jet stream.
Two more ships, caught in the violent displacement of air—the sonic boom of the mountain—were tossed aside like dry leaves in a hurricane. Their masts snapped, their hulls buckled, and they tumbled uncontrollably toward the mist-covered peaks below.
The sound of the collision arrived a second later—a deafening CRACK that shook the rivets out of The Black Manta and knocked Admiral Kuang off his feet.
Inside the Twilight Stable, which was securely strapped to the mountain via the Tortoise's earth-magic anchor, the sensation was less "car crash" and more "aggressive turbulence."
Su Ye gripped the helm—the rusted iron wheel connected to the Sky-Eater's nervous system—and laughed. It was a manic, terrified laugh, the kind one emits after surviving a rollercoaster that wasn't up to code.
"Strike!" Su Ye cheered, watching the debris of the enemy fleet scatter across the windshield of the sky. "Zhu Zhu, excellent propulsion! That was a textbook kinetic strike! Little Sun, mark the score!"
The golden chicken, clutching the railing with talons that had dug deep into the Star-Iron, looked dizzy. It let out a metallic Moooo! that roughly translated to 'My internal gyroscope hates you.'
A series of blue holographic boxes popped up in Su Ye's vision, courtesy of the mountain's internal operating system.
[Collision Successful.]
[Kinetic Energy Discharge: Massive.]
[Enemy Vessels Destroyed: 5 confirmed.]
[Loot Acquired via Impact: Scrap Metal, Floating Wood, 12 Parachuting Souls.]
[Sky-Eater Status: The Beast is confused but amused.]
The mountain began to slow down, its initial burst of momentum spent on the destruction of the vanguard. It drifted to a halt in the center of the enemy formation, a massive, stone shark sitting in a pond of panicked goldfish. The silence that followed was heavy, broken only by the creaking of wood and the distant screams of falling pirates.
On the bridge of The Black Manta, chaos reigned. Alarms were blaring—screaming skulls mounted on the walls warning of hull breaches. Admiral Kuang pulled himself up from the deck, blood trickling from a cut on his forehead. He looked out the window. The mountain was hovering there. It was immense. It blocked out the sun, casting a long, terrifying shadow over the remnants of his fleet.
"It stopped," the navigator whispered, hyperventilating. "It's... it's looking at us."
Kuang wiped the blood from his eye. His fear was rapidly being replaced by a cold, calculating greed. He was a high-ranking officer of the Dark Beast Sect. He knew the legends.
"It's the Beast," Kuang whispered, his eyes widening. "They woke the Sky-Eater. The ancient carrier."
He looked at the sluggish movement of the mountain. It wasn't maneuvering with grace; it was drifting.
"It's groggy," Kuang realized. "It just woke up from a thousand-year nap. It doesn't have its shields up. It doesn't have its weapon systems online. It's vulnerable!"
He slammed his fist onto the tactical console, cracking the glass.
"This is not a defeat! This is an opportunity! If we capture that mountain, we don't just win the sector—we rule the world! We can drop rocks on the Imperial Palace! We can hold the moon hostage!"
"But sir," a lieutenant stammered. "Our cannons... they bounced off."
"We don't sink it, you idiot!" Kuang roared. "We leash it! Deploy the God-Killer Harpoons! All ships, encircle the target! Drag it down!"
The order went out. The remaining forty-five ships of the Dark Beast fleet, recovering from their shock, began to maneuver. They spread out, surrounding the hovering mountain like a pack of wolves circling a wounded bear.
Panels on the decks of the airships slid open. Massive, heavy ballistae rose up, powered by hydraulic pistons and dark magic. Loaded into them were not arrows, but the God-Killer Harpoons—giant, barbed iron spears the size of tree trunks, attached to thick chains made of adamantine and inscribed with suppression runes.
"Fire!"
THWUMP-THWUMP-THWUMP.
The sound was rhythmic and terrifying. Dozens of massive harpoons flew through the thin air, trailing heavy black chains. They slammed into the rocky flanks of the Sky-Eater.
CRUNCH.
The barbs were designed to pierce dragon scales. They dug deep into the stone skin of the mountain, locking into the bedrock. The chains went taut with a sound like a giant guitar string snapping.
"Reverse thrusters!" Kuang commanded. "Pull!"
The fleet engaged their engines in reverse. Forty-five ships pulled with all their might, their engines screaming. They acted as anchors, trying to drag the floating mountain down, to ground it, to chain the leviathan before it could fully wake up.
Inside the Heart Chamber of the mountain, deep below Su Ye's feet, the hologram flickered from blue to an angry red.
[Warning: Parasitic Attachment Detected.]
[Multiple Hull Breaches in Outer Dermis.]
[Mobility Compromised.]
[Pain Levels: Mild Irritation (Like a mosquito bite).]
On the guard tower, Su Ye felt the lurch. The stable shook as the chains went tight. He looked at the holographic map floating above the helm.
"They're trying to tow us," Su Ye realized, watching the red dots swarm the green mass of the mountain. "They think we're a broken-down car on the highway."
"Master!" Lin Fan shouted from the courtyard below, frantically typing on his gauntlet. "The drag coefficient is increasing! If they pull us down into the miasma layer, the Sky-Eater's anti-gravity might stall! We'll crash!"
"They want to play tug-of-war?" Su Ye's eyes narrowed. "Fine. But they forgot that they're pulling on a living thing."
He looked at the rusty iron key inserted into the ignition pedestal. Old Man Sky had said this was a Battle-Platform. It had features.
"Let's see what this baby can do," Su Ye muttered, scrolling through the [Defense Menu] projected in the air.
Option A: Gravity Crush (Energy Low - Zhu Zhu ate the fuel).
Option B: Lightning Storm (Cooling Down - Little Sun needs a nap).
Option C: Dermal Ripple.
"Dermal Ripple?" Su Ye raised an eyebrow. "Sounds like a skincare routine. Or a very aggressive massage."
He selected it. A description popped up: [Initiates a localized seismic vibration in the outer stone scales to dislodge parasites, debris, and annoying civilizations.]
"Perfect," Su Ye grinned. He grabbed the microphone attached to the helm.
"Attention, Sky-Eater," Su Ye's voice boomed, not just through speakers, but resonating through the stone bones of the beast. "You have fleas. Shake them off. Like a wet dog."
Zzzzt.
"SHAKE..." the massive, slow consciousness of the beast agreed in Su Ye's mind. "ITCHY... CHAINS..."
Outside, to the naked eye, the mountain didn't seem to move. But then, a low hum began. It started deep in the core and radiated outward.
The mountain shivered.
It wasn't a simple vibration. The solid rock of the Sky-Eater's skin, which looked like granite cliffs, suddenly revealed its true nature. It was biological armor. The massive stone scales, each the size of a house, detached slightly from the underlying muscle. They vibrated at a hyper-sonic frequency, blurring the air around them, and then snapped back into place.
SNAP.
The force of the ripple traveled up the tight adamantine chains connecting the ships to the mountain. It was a wave of kinetic energy, transferring perfectly along the tension.
On the airships, the chain winches screamed. Smoke poured from the gears.
"The tension!" a pirate yelled on the deck of The Black Manta. "It's oscillating! The frequency is destroying the dampeners!"
The vibration hit the ships.
CRACK.
The chains didn't break. The decks of the ships broke.
The massive winches, bolted down with military-grade steel, were ripped out of the wood as if they were planted in wet cake. The vibration shattered the keels of the ships. Wooden planks splintered explosively.
On the port side, three ships simply folded in half, their structural integrity liquified by the sonic pulse. They plummeted toward the earth, trailing smoke and debris.
"Cut the lines!" Admiral Kuang roared, holding onto the railing as his flagship listed forty degrees to the side. "Cut them loose! It's shaking us apart!"
Crewmen scrambled with axes, hacking at the chains. One by one, the ships disconnected, lurching away from the vibrating mountain like burned hands pulling back from a hot stove.
"It's shaking us off!" Kuang watched the destruction of his containment grid. "We can't tow it. It's too strong."
He looked at the Twilight Stable, sitting arrogantly on the peak, untouched by the chaos.
"If we can't move the mountain," Kuang hissed, drawing his saber, "we kill the pilot."
He grabbed the tactical radio. "Boarding parties! Launch the Chimera Corps! Swarm the fortress! I want that stable boy's head on a pike!"
From the decks of the surviving twenty ships, hatches blew open. A swarm of dark figures launched into the air.
They didn't use machines. They used wings.
These were the Chimeras—the elite shock troops of the Dark Beast Sect. They were grotesque insults to nature. Men stitched together with the parts of beasts. Some had the leathery wings of bats sewn onto their backs. Others had the arms of mantises or the stingers of scorpions grafting into their spines. Their eyes glowed with a mindless, alchemical rage.
There were hundreds of them. They filled the sky like a cloud of angry hornets, screeching and diving toward the Star-Iron walls of the Twilight Stable.
Su Ye stood on the guard tower, watching the swarm approach. The sky darkened with their numbers.
"Invaders," Su Ye noted, leaning on his shovel. "Ugly ones, too. They really have no aesthetic sense."
He turned to look down at the courtyard. His team was ready. They weren't the terrified students who had fled the Academy anymore. They were the crew of the Sky-Eater.
"Luo Bing," Su Ye called out. "How is your aim today?"
"Impeccable, Master," Luo Bing replied, stepping forward. She opened the Heart of the Frozen North box. The temperature in the courtyard dropped twenty degrees instantly. Ice crystals formed on her eyelashes.
"Good. Freeze their wings. If they can't fly, they're just falling objects."
"Gao Ming," Su Ye looked at the boy in the cape. "How is your acting?"
"Oscar-worthy, Master," Gao Ming struck a pose, holding a bag of flash-powder. "I shall dazzle them into submission."
"Lin Fan," Su Ye looked at the armored boy by the control panel. "How is the amplifier?"
"Loud, Master. I tuned it to the frequency of a dying banshee."
"Excellent."
Su Ye looked at the gate. The Thunder-Clap Baboon King, now wearing the Admiral's hat he had stolen from the pirate ship, was beating his chest. The hundred baboon interns were lining the walls, holding rocks.
"And Zhu Zhu..."
Su Ye looked at the Void Pig. Zhu Zhu was currently trying to eat a piece of the adamantine chain that had landed in the yard during the shake-off. He was gnawing on the metal like it was jerky.
"Are you still hungry?"
Zhu Zhu looked up. He burped, a small gravity well forming near his snout. Squeal? (Always.)
"Good," Su Ye smiled. It was the smile of a zookeeper who just realized he didn't have to buy lunch for the carnivores today.
"Open the gates," Su Ye commanded. "Let them land. We're running a special promotion today: Buy one invasion, get a free beatdown."
He tapped the Concentration Stone embedded in the wall.
"Senior Tortoise. Wake up. We have guests. And they aren't wearing shoes. They have muddy claws."
Zzzzt.
"No shoes?" the Tortoise Ancestor's voice grumbled in Su Ye's mind, low and dangerous. "Mud on my heated floor? Disgusting. Activate the floor spikes."
The first wave of Chimeras dove. A creature with the head of a wolf and the wings of a hawk screeched, aiming for Su Ye.
"Welcome to the Twilight Stable," Su Ye swung his shovel with the grace of a grandmaster. CLANG. He hit the Chimera mid-air, sending it spiraling into the barrier. "Please keep your hands and tentacles inside the vehicle at all times."
The Sky War had officially begun. And the Twilight Stable was open for business.