Chapter 536: with translation of chapter title

The ways to gather resources are just a few: either honestly help people with tasks, or kill and pillage, or go raid secret realms.

However, after Yan Buji returned to the human race's territory, seeing the cultivators of True Yellow Island and the Sinking Dragon Society already engaged in naval battle truly surprised him.

Watching the warship pierced and blown apart by spirit cannons slowly sink to the seabed, a large number of corpses floated on the sea surface, fresh blood and gunpowder staining the waters red.

"Well, since the fighting has already started, it's convenient to fish in troubled waters; we should first make thorough preparations."

Thinking this, Yan Buji was about to fly toward Golden Bull Island when several cultivators suddenly emerged from the shadows, blocking his path.

"Stop! Who are you?!"

Yan Buji looked at them, puzzled, and said: "I am a person of Golden Bull Island; who might you be?"

"We're hitting you, the lackeys of the Sinking Dragon Society! Kill him!"

After a while.

Yan Buji grabbed the throat of a Golden Core cultivator and asked: "Although I am from Golden Bull Island, I have not taken part in the war; why do you shout for battle as soon as you meet?"

"Fellow Daoist, let's talk nicely; we aren't from True Yellow Island either, just trying to make a living..." The Golden Core cultivator whose neck was gripped flushed red, looking at Yan Buji in terror.

"So you're just taking advantage of the chaos to loot."

Crack.

After snapping their necks, Yan Buji slaughtered the lot, picked up their storage accumulation devices, and shook his head.

"Really little."

Even combined, those Golden Core cultivators amounted to no more than a million low-grade spiritual stones, far from enough to stuff between his teeth.

"But these Golden Cores store the cultivators' essences; after slight refinement they can replenish the consumption of the Rift Scepter."

Yan Buji stored those Golden Cores properly and continued on his way.

During this time, Yan Buji occasionally saw cultivators of True Yellow Island and the Sinking Dragon Society piloting spirit vessels in battle on sea and sky, fighting fiercely with hundreds or thousands of cultivators involved; the resulting spiritual energy tremors made him dare not easily approach.

"Speaking of which, not seeing any Nascent Soul cultivators take the field means the battle hasn't yet reached its most intense stage," Yan Buji thought.

The war has already broken out; whatever the purposes of True Yellow Island or the Sinking Dragon Society are, they no longer matter.

Whether the participating cultivators fight for fame or profit also doesn't matter.

Surviving is what matters most.

Yan Buji intended first to gather some news, see how the situation stands, then go fish in troubled waters.

After returning to Golden Bull Island, Yan Buji soon met Yuan Shui True Lord.

Yuan Shui True Lord, seeing Yan Buji return, happily said: "Daoist, you're back. Nothing happened, I hope?"

"Thanks to your blessings, Lord, nothing major happened. How are True Yellow Island and the Sinking Dragon Society faring now?"

Yuan Shui True Lord sighed: "Daoist, look at the sea chart. Now True Yellow Island and the Sinking Dragon Society are fighting in the central sea of the Boundless Sea, each occupying part of it, and the battle is quite fierce."

"Oh? Then you, Lord, have joined the Sinking Dragon Society?"

"Isn't this forced? Although the Sinking Dragon Society didn't demand I send people, once Nascent Soul cultivators enter the fray, Golden Bull Island will likely face imminent destruction," Yuan Shui True Lord said.

Yan Buji frowned: "Has it already come to this?"

"So I still advise you, Daoist, to stay away from this sea area, peacefully retreat into seclusion for a few decades; perhaps by then the fighting will be over," Yuan Shui True Lord laughed.

Yan Buji shook his head: "The Rift Sea has been chaotic for nearly two hundred years with no end in sight; though the Boundless Sea is small, the conflict there is even more intense."

Precisely because the resources of the Boundless Sea cannot sustain so many great powers, this leads to both outsiders and locals fighting tooth and nail over that tiny plot of land; moreover, as the situation in the Rift Sea remains unresolved, only more cultivators will arrive at the Dongxing Sea Region.

Where is there any truly safe place?

Yan Buji planned to make a score here, then go to the Heavenly Spirit Realm and transfer to the West Sand River Basin to have a look.

"Then what do you plan to do, Daoist?"

"I will find a place to retreat on my own; thank you, Lord, for your care over these years," Yan Buji said, clasping his hands in salute.

Yuan Shui True Lord nodded and personally saw Yan Buji off.

Leaving Golden Bull Island, Yan Buji again thought about how to make a big score.

Just looting amid the chaos really won't earn much, unless one could directly raid the treasury of True Yellow Island or the Sinking Dragon Society, but that...

"Wrong, why must I go raid those two factions?"

Yan Buji gave a slight smile.

Leaving aside that these two factions, now at war, will surely have tight defenses on their main islands, plus there are rumors of divine incarnations as offerings; attacking their main islands in the past would have been suicide.

But the current Boundless Sea is no longer the former Boundless Sea.

Besides these two, aren't there still three other great powers?

Yan Buji pinched his chin and thought carefully.

"If we're going to do it, we go big; anyway we won't stay long in the Boundless Sea, so time and information are crucial."

In wars between cultivators, various accumulation devices are usually exploited to the extreme; in recent years, spirit cannons transmitted from the West Sand River Basin have become the preferred choice for storming fortifications, and via merchants of the Heavenly Spirit Realm they have also become key to naval warfare.

"Hurry up, hurry up!"

"Have you all not eaten? Quickly load them onto the ship!"

At a dock, many cultivators walked back and forth between the warehouse and the ship, shouldering cannon barrels and ammunition and placing them aboard.

"Tsk, they really know how to make people work!"

"Aren't we here to serve as offerings? How did we become dock stevedores?"

"Still talking about offerings? With True Yellow Island and the Sinking Dragon Society fighting so fiercely, you really want to go seek death?"

"Speaking of which, aren't these cannon barrels and ammunition very valuable? Just leaving them on the ship? Why not store them in accumulation devices?"

"Officially they say spirit cannon accumulation devices cannot be placed inside storage accumulation devices, but actually...."

"Huh? Explain."

"Actually, these spirit cannons were ordered by True Yellow Island from You Tian Sect; each time You Tian Sect's people ship materials to True Yellow Island they suffer attacks, and the losses are enormous."

"Then why still openly ship them by boat?"

"Who knows?"

After a while, a Foundation Establishment cultivator sat on the dock, wiped sweat, and laughed watching the coming and going merchant ships.

"Interesting, the people of Roaming Heaven Sect deliberately used merchant ships to transport supplies—are they trying to ambush the Sinking Dragon Society's members, or do they have some other scheme?"

Although these merchant ships were also made of spiritual material, their grade is low; they cannot compare at all to the warship spiritual boat Yan Buji saw in naval battles. Even if equipped with spiritual cannons, given their extremely poor defensive capability, they simply cannot engage effectively.

Although this era has seen the appearance of such a great lethal weapon as spiritual cannons, even if several hundred of them are lined up, even an island's protecting formation cannot withstand them—but cultivators are simply too agile.

Lianqi Phase cultivators can't escape; can Foundation Establishment and Golden Core cultivators escape either? As long as cannonballs don't hit oneself, who would cry out in pain?

Therefore, the naval battles between True Yellow Island and the Sinking Dragon Society now all have forcibly attacking the enemy's defended islands as a precondition; Lianqi Phase cultivators are the foundation of a force, impossible not to defend—this is precisely "attack to compel rescue".

Besides this, spiritual boats can fly, and after slight modification to load spiritual cannons they also gain powerful aerial firepower; the advantage is that even without Golden Core cultivators they can still pose a huge threat to sea-surface fleets. Thus the emergence of spiritual cannons has changed the previous pattern of warfare, especially the era when large numbers of cultivators collectively released spells to bombard has passed.

Now it has become a matter of who has more spiritual cannons in hand—whoever has more gains the dominant position.