"So...what do we do now? Wait for the attacking team to track down the treasure and see what goes down?" Someone in the crowd said loudly in confusion.

Watching the leader of the attackers casually standing hundreds of meters overhead, Han Xuhan constructed several plans of action, ready to tackle different developments.

"Xiao Wu, how much time is left before the assembly takes place?"

"Twenty minutes or less," Xiao Wu answered him.

Han Xuhan began to walk toward the hovering ship. Emboldened by his move, his peers followed his footsteps.

However, as they got closer, the ship let out a dull, deep rumble from within its depths, startling and scattering the crowd away. Then it rose straight upwards gently, arriving at a height no Physique Transformation realm cultivator could reach without a specialized technique. It didn't go as far as the leader of the attacking team, but it would still be nearly untouchable for most of them.

Vaguely, they could see the disciples sitting inside the ship laughing at them through its semi-transparent exterior.

"Anyone here capable of flight?" Someone asked from the middle of the crowd.

"Doesn't matter. One scout isn't going to make it in there," came a reply from a corner.

"Maybe we should all head to the place where the defenders are. We could at least see what happens once the attackers track them down,"

Another guy suggested.

"That would just give away their position, you retard," someone rebutted in a pissed voice.

"You make it sound like they aren't going to realize who the defenders are the moment the treasure is found."

As the bickering amidst the crowd intensified, Han Xuhan took one last look at the airborne girl and the ship below her. Eyes narrowed into silts, he gestured at his martial siblings to leave the crowd.

"We will gain nothing by standing here. Neither do we have the time to chase after those attackers scouting our island. Let's just prepare for the assembly. If something happens in the meantime, we can just hear about it from others. The defending team has nothing to do with us anyway."

"Agreed."

"Good thinking."

"Hang on a second, let me take care of a small business-"

All three of them watched Mu Ran jog back into the crowd, making his way toward the ship once more.

What was he about to do?

Even the quarreling crowd stopped to look at this famous asshat of their sect.

And then, perhaps for the first time, this generation of the disciples witnessed the true meaning of a 'Protagonist'!

The ground began to vibrate.

BOOM!

BOOOMM!

BOOOMMM!

Far behind them, past a couple of mountains, the sound of cannons being fired made them all whip their necks around. Even the girl flying overhead spun on her heels to look at the source of the sound.

Mu Ran was no longer the focus of the crowd. What took his place, rather, were chunks of...soil. With countless trees, stretches of grass, small and large rocks intact on the surface, these small mountains had been ripped out of the island and shot up like cannonballs being fired.

Numerous eyes blankly watched the trajectory of the misshapen mounds...which turned out to be headed toward them.

"RUN!"

"What the fuck?!"

"HEEEELP!"

The paralyzed crowd broke away, disciples screaming their lungs off as they tried to avoid the fate of being crushed by the mini mountains.

However, Han Xuhan's eyes saw something else, something that confirmed his immediate suspicion.

Mu Ran was laughing at the scene, hands outstretched to welcome the oncoming mass-murder weapons.

The sight of Abyss Guild's flying battleship had been stunning, but the half-dozen mountains whirling toward his tiny existence like vengeful meteors far outstripped that shock.

It was evident that even the disciples inside the Ship were in panic. The ship was letting off the familiar rumbles signaling it was about to move. But the shadows of the soaring semi-mountains were already shrouding it.

The ship barely managed to evade the first of the falling mountains. The twenty-something-meter-high mound crashed into the ground with a sound that didn't quite fit the scene.

Han Xuhan was fairly certain that the mountain had slowed down on its way. Something, some sort of power was in control of this whole fever dream.

His suspicions were confirmed when the second mountain jerked out of an unavoidable collision course with the ship and landed right on top of the first mound.

The third mountain exploded halfway down on its trajectory, but the debris still fell on the heap of soil that had gathered below.

"Heavens damn it-"

Mu Ran's nose was bloody, Han Xuhan realized as he looked back at him. Cursing profusely, Mu Ran began to sprint forward, his target- the stacked mountains.

The fourth, fifth, and sixth mountains were still airborne, but they wobbled unsteadily on their trajectory. As Mu Ran reached the sixty-meter-high, brand-new peak of their sect, he leaped up on its slope and dug his feet into its loose soil.

The fourth mountain, meanwhile, managed to reach the end of its route and broke down into a mass of dirt, mud, and rocks just like its predecessor. But it still added to the height of the heap.

After a second's pause, Mu Ran began to climb the slope using only his feet. Like a frog, each leap of his took him dozens of meters high, and by the time the fifth mountain had fallen on top of the mountain-stack, Mu Ran had reached the peak as well.

Covered in dust and dirt, Han Xuhan and his fellow sect members forgot to breathe for a brief moment as they witnessed a spectacle of a lifetime.

Three things took up the entirety of their focus.

One- the flying ship backing away from the floating island's periphery, still too slow in its reaction.

Two- the sixth mountain plunging straight downward due to gravity, its sides breaking away from the main body showing that this last mountain too was about to fall apart.

Three- Mu Ran, who stood on the topmost point of the heap of five fallen mountains, bending his knee to make one final leap.

His feet crushed the rock they were on the moment his body shot up, displaying the full physical force of someone at the sixth layer of the Physique Transformation realm.

The bottom of the falling mountain brushed by his body as it hit the peak of the heap below.

Mu Ran used it as another springboard to keep leaping, going from rock to rock as everything on it broke apart from the collision.

And then, a fourth object of their focus came into their view.

The leader of the attackers who was desperately trying to reach her ship turned out to be a mere dozen meters away from Mu Ran.

In the dusty air above the desolation, two strangers met under extraordinary circumstances that may never again be replicated.

The two airborne figures faced off for the briefest moment before one of them spoke.

Nearly a hundred meters below at the foot of the new mountain, Han Xuhan couldn't quite hear the exchange over the sound of the 'rain'.

And then, he watched Mu Ran fall.

He watched the leader of the attackers practically fly towards the hovering ship.

He watched a small rock hurtling toward his face, which finally shook him out of his shock.

The entire mountain began to fall apart like a sandcastle. Disciples nearby ran out of its range and waited for an explanation with blank faces.

As the dust settled, a lone figure sauntered out of the ruins proudly. Han Xuhan, Yuen Zhou, and Xiao Wu waited patiently as the figure strode in their direction.

"Uh, boss? What just happened?" he said, voicing every person present there.

Mu Ran shook his head as he arrived by their side.

"I sent a proposal."

"...For what?"

"A proposal for marriage."