Dawn never truly came. The sky just changed from black to a dark gray—a thick sheet of rain making everything look like a world submerged in water.
Li Yuan had stood on the beach all night, not moving, not sleeping, just listening through his Comprehension of Water to the changes happening at sea. And now, as this gloomy morning arrived, he could feel everything with perfect clarity.
The storm was near—no longer on the horizon but almost on top of them. The wind blew with a force that made the trees bend and the roofs creak in protest. The waves on the beach had already grown to two meters high, hitting the rocks with a sound like thunder.
But most importantly—through the resonance with the water itself—Li Yuan could feel the ships approaching from the north. Twelve large ships, nineteen small ones, all sailing in a dispersed formation, all following the middle route just as he had predicted.
The Sea Emperor's fleet had arrived.
Yara ran closer, her hair soaked from the rain, her breath coming in ragged gasps. "They're here! Jelani saw their sails from the watchtower!"
Li Yuan just nodded. He already knew.
"The residents?" he asked.
"Everyone's in the sheltered bay as you instructed. The houses look empty but not abandoned—enough to make the pirates think people are just hiding inside as usual."
"Good." Li Yuan looked out at the sea, in the direction where the ships were slowly emerging from the rain. "Now we wait. And when the time is right, we move."
The fleet docked with difficulty—the sea was already rough enough that even experienced sailors had to struggle to control their ships. Some captains shouted instructions in a voice that was barely audible over the roaring wind.
From his hidden position on a cliff overlooking the harbor, Li Yuan observed with eyes that missed no detail.
Hakeem's ship—the Conqueror—was the largest and most easily identifiable. Three tall masts, a hull painted in a dark red color, and a black flag with a symbol of crossed swords fluttering fiercely in the wind.
Through his Wenjing Realm, when some of the crew stepped down onto the pier and stood close enough, Li Yuan began to hear fragments of their intentions:
This weather is bad. We have to be fast.
The Captain won't be happy if we're late because of a stupid storm.
Get the tribute, get back before this gets worse.
And most importantly—from a man who looked like a high-ranking officer:
The hostages are safe in the lower hold. Locked. The Captain said not to let anyone near them until we get back to the base.
Li Yuan felt something cold and hard settle in his chest when he heard that confirmation. The children were there. Locked in the lower hold of a ship that would soon face a deadly storm.
"They're on the Conqueror," he whispered to Yara. "In the lower hold. Locked."
Yara gripped his arm tightly. "Mina?"
"Maybe. I can't hear the specific details—just that there are hostages there." Li Yuan looked at her with eyes that carried a promise. "But we will save them. All of them."
The tribute collection began with a brutal and efficient process that had been perfected over ten years of oppression. The pirates moved from house to house, breaking down doors, taking whatever they considered valuable—food, clothes, tools, sometimes even furniture.
Some residents who hadn't managed to hide were forced out, beaten if they protested, threatened with death if they resisted.
Li Yuan observed all of this with a face that showed no emotion—but through his Wenjing Realm, when he was close enough to the victims, he heard their fear, their pain, their desperation. And every intention he heard reinforced the decision he had made.
This has to end, he mused with absolute finality. No matter the price that must be paid.
The rain started to fall harder. The wind blew with a force that made some pirates struggle to stand. And most significantly—the waves on the beach grew from two meters to three, from three to four.
The storm was no longer coming. The storm had arrived.
Through his Comprehension of Water, Li Yuan could feel the storm's center—an incredibly powerful vortex of low pressure—moving exactly as he had predicted. In an hour, maybe two, the sea would become so fierce that sailing would be suicide.
And Hakeem's fleet was already too far from their base to return safely.
They were trapped.
Captain Hakeem himself—a large man with a thick black beard and eyes as cold as stone—stood on the deck of the Conqueror, looking at the sky with an increasingly worried expression.
Li Yuan couldn't hear his intentions from this distance—the Wenjing Realm only worked within a five-centimeter radius. But he could read the body language, could see how Hakeem spoke to his navigator with increasingly sharp gestures.
He's starting to realize, Li Yuan mused. He's starting to understand that they made a mistake by coming today. But it's too late to retreat.
Hakeem shouted orders. The pirates who were still on land began to rush back to the ships, some even abandoning the plunder they had collected. The ships began to pull up their anchors, trying to prepare to sail.
But the sea didn't care about their plans.
The first wave hit the ship formation with a surprising force—a five-meter high wave that slammed from the side, making some small ships almost capsize. Sailors screamed, ropes snapped, sails tore.
And then, as if it were a signal, the storm released its full power.
Li Yuan never saw any supernatural power in this storm. He didn't release any comprehension to strengthen the wind or make the waves higher. This was a purely natural storm—the fury of the sea that had been building for days, which now reached its peak at the time and place that Li Yuan had predicted with the precision that came from a deep understanding of natural patterns.
But despite being natural, its power was terrifying.
The waves grew from five meters to six, from six to seven. The wind blew with a force that tore sails from masts, that made the ships spin without control. The rain fell so hard that it was impossible to see more than a few meters.
And in the midst of that chaos, the pirate ships began to be destroyed.
The small ships were the first to go—their thin wooden hulls couldn't withstand the pressure from the waves hitting from all directions. One by one, they began to sink, their crews jumping into the fierce water in a desperate attempt to survive.
Some of the large ships tried to sail out of the storm, but they were already too far from the base and too close to the island. The currents—which Li Yuan had studied with obsessive detail—pulled them in the wrong direction, into an area where hidden reefs beneath the surface were waiting to tear their hulls.
The sound of a ship hitting a reef was a horrifying sound—wood breaking, metal groaning, the screams of people who knew they were going to die.
Li Yuan stood on the cliff, watching the destruction with a face that showed no emotion but with eyes that saw everything.
This is their choice, he reminded himself. They chose this life. They chose to build wealth on suffering. And now the sea is taking what they took from others.
Balance.
Yara stood beside him, her face pale, her hands covering her mouth. Through his Wenjing Realm, Li Yuan heard her when she was close enough—shock, horror, but also an awareness that this was necessary. That there was no other way to stop a system that had lasted for ten years.
"The Conqueror," Li Yuan said in a hard but controlled voice. "Hakeem's ship. Look—it's being pushed towards the eastern beach, just as I predicted."
Yara looked in the direction Li Yuan was pointing. The largest ship in the fleet—the one carrying the hostages—was struggling against the waves but was slowly being pushed towards the rocky beach on the eastern side of the island.
"We have to go now," Li Yuan said. "Before that ship sinks completely. We have maybe half an hour after it hits to save anyone who is still alive."
Yara nodded with a determination that hardened on her face. "Let's go."
They ran through the forest that separated the cliff from the eastern beach—a journey that would normally take twenty minutes but which they completed in fifteen, driven by urgency and adrenaline.
When they reached the eastern beach, they saw the Conqueror was very close—a large ship struggling against the waves, its torn sails fluttering like a destroyed flag, its crew shouting orders that no one could hear.
And then, with a sound that made the earth tremble, the ship hit a reef hidden beneath the surface.
The hull cracked. Water began to pour in at a terrifying speed. The ship—which had seemed invincible—began to list to one side with a slow but unstoppable motion.
The crew began to jump—some into the water, some trying to swim to the beach that was still twenty meters away. Some made it. Many did not.
Li Yuan wasted no time on them. He ran into the water—his consciousness body unaffected by the cold or fatigue that would cripple a normal human—and swam with a strength that came from fifteen thousand years of experience and a body that was not limited by the limitations of flesh.
He reached the ship in a time that seemed impossible to Yara who was following behind, struggling against the waves with the strength of a normal human.
Li Yuan climbed onto the listing deck with an efficient motion. The water was already up to his knees. The ship would sink completely in ten minutes, maybe less.
He ran to the lower hold, following the memory of what he had heard through the officer's intention that morning. Down the slippery stairs, through the dark corridors filled with rising water, until he found a locked iron door.
There was no time to look for a key. Li Yuan found an iron bar nearby—a part of the ship's structure that had come loose—and used it as a lever. With a strength that was at the upper limit of human ability but did not exceed it, he forced the door open.
Inside, in the near-total darkness, he heard a sound that made him stop:
The cries of children.
"I'm here to save you!" Li Yuan shouted over the sound of the rushing water. "Come with me now! The ship is going down!"
There were eight children—ages ranging from ten to sixteen. Some were too shocked to move. Li Yuan had to physically pull them, push them towards the stairs.
The water was already up to his waist. Time was running out.
Yara finally reached the ship, soaked but still strong. She saw the children and immediately moved to help—lifting the smallest ones, guiding the others.
"Are there others?" Li Yuan asked quickly.
One of the children—a girl about fourteen with eyes full of trauma—spoke in a trembling voice: "There are two more. In the captain's cabin. He keeps them separate."
Li Yuan didn't hesitate. "Take them to the beach. I'll get the others."
He ran through the corridor that was now almost completely submerged, up to the main deck that was already tilted at a dangerous angle, towards the captain's cabin at the stern.
The door was locked. No time for finesse. Li Yuan kicked with full force—once, twice, on the third kick the door broke.
Inside, two girls—one looked fifteen, the other maybe seventeen. And with them, trying to protect them even in this last moment, stood Hakeem himself.
The pirate captain looked at Li Yuan with a mix of shock and rage. "Who are you?"
"Someone who said enough," Li Yuan answered in a voice as cold as ice.
The ship gave a dangerous lurch. Water began to pour in from the broken door.
"You two, come with me!" Li Yuan shouted to the girls.
They ran towards him. Hakeem tried to block them, but the ship tilted again and he lost his balance, falling to the wall.
Li Yuan guided the girls out of the cabin, through the deck that was now almost vertical, to the edge where they could jump into the water.
"Swim to the beach!" he commanded. "Follow the others!"
They jumped. And Li Yuan turned to see Hakeem struggling out of the cabin, his face full of anger and something akin to fear.
For one moment, their eyes met.
And Li Yuan made a decision.
He would not help Hakeem. But he also would not actively prevent him from escaping.
This man's fate would be determined by his own strength, by his own decisions.
Li Yuan jumped into the water and swam to the beach, leaving Hakeem to struggle with the sinking ship.
On the beach, ten children gathered—wet, shocked, traumatized, but alive. Yara knelt among them, checking them one by one to make sure no one was seriously hurt.
And then she saw one of the older girls—the seventeen-year-old with wet black hair clinging to her face—and something in her expression changed.
"Mina?" she whispered in a broken voice.
The girl looked at her with eyes that were uncertain at first. Then recognition came—slowly, like someone waking from a long nightmare.
"Yara?" her voice was barely audible.
They collided in a desperate embrace—sister and sister separated for three years, now reunited in the most impossible of circumstances.
Yara wept—a cry full of relief and joy and pain for what Mina must have gone through. Mina also wept, holding Yara like a person afraid that if she let go, this would all turn out to be a dream.
Li Yuan stood a little away, giving them space for their reunion, his eyes returning to the sea where the Conqueror had finally sunk completely—gone beneath the waves, becoming just wreckage that would be washed ashore in the coming days.
He didn't know if Hakeem survived. Didn't know if the pirate captain managed to swim to the beach at another location, or if the sea claimed him.
But at this moment, it didn't matter.
What mattered were the ten children who survived. Ten children who would return to their families, who would have a chance to heal from their trauma.
And one sister who found the sister she had been searching for for three years.
Li Yuan felt something he rarely felt—a deep satisfaction, not because he had destroyed an enemy, but because he had saved the innocent.
Water has frozen, he mused as he looked at the still-rough sea. Hard, sharp, merciless to those who cross the line. But even in that freezing, there is a purpose—to protect those who cannot protect themselves.
And now, as the season changes again, the water will begin to melt.
It will begin to flow again.
But never forgetting that sometimes, it must freeze.
The storm slowly began to subside—not immediately, but gradually. And in the faint gray light, Li Yuan and the others began the journey back to the settlement, carrying the surviving children to what was left of their homes.
The water had frozen.
And now, slowly, it was beginning to melt again.