The brief warmth of the spring thaw arrived across the Myriad Reefs Sea Domain two months after the conclusion of the grand assembly on Coral Cloud Island. Yet the melting of the northern ice floes brought no peace to the churning azure waters. As the thirty thousand cultivators dispersed from the neutral archipelago, the fragile winter truce dissolved into thin mist. Both the Myriad Ocean Palace and the Holy Nether Sea Organization mobilized their repaired armadas, steering hundreds of warships toward a treacherous, newly discovered focal point: the Dragon-Spine Trench.
Six weeks prior, a violent deep-earth tectonic shift had torn open the seabed along the trench, unsealing an ancient Fourth-Grade Spiritual Vein. Whoever claimed this surging nexus of earth-qi could anchor a permanent naval fortress capable of controlling seventy percent of the trade lanes between the outer islands and the inner sea.
