The air at twenty thousand feet is crisp, thin, and entirely unsuited for a naval battle. Yet, here they were.
The Sky-Pirate Dreadnought loomed out of the thunderhead like a nightmare shark. It was massive, constructed from blackened wood and reinforced with bleached white bones. Along its hull, three rows of Dragon-Bone Cannons swiveled, aiming directly at the Twilight Stable.
On the deck of the pirate ship stood the Carrion Lord. He was a gaunt giant of a man, wearing a cloak made of sewn-together gryphon wings. His eyes glowed with a sickly yellow storm-light.
"You threw my men off a cliff," the Carrion Lord's voice boomed, amplified by wind magic. "I take that personally. That was my harvesting crew."
Su Ye stood on the guard tower of his stable, holding a megaphone. "They tried to harvest my house. I consider that a zoning violation."
"In the sky, there are no zones," the Carrion Lord raised a jagged sword. "There is only the food chain. And you are drifting plankton."
He slashed his sword downward.
"FIRE ALL BATTERIES!"
BOOM-BOOM-BOOM.
Twelve Dragon-Bone Cannons fired simultaneously. Twelve massive iron cannonballs, wreathed in green necrotic fire, screamed through the thin air toward the stable.
"Shields!" Lin Fan yelled, slamming his hands onto the control panel.
"No," Su Ye said calmly. "Save the energy. Little Sun looks peckish."
Su Ye whistled.
From the roof of the barn, the golden chicken launched.
To the pirates, it looked like a speck of gold dust against the blue sky. To the cannonballs, it was a garbage disposal unit with wings.
Little Sun moved at Mach 2.
Crunch. Gulp. Burp.
The first cannonball vanished.
The second was pecked in half.
The third was swallowed whole.
In two seconds, the deadly barrage was reduced to iron shavings and confused smoke. Little Sun landed back on the railing, its crop bulging slightly. It let out a metallic Moooo.
The Carrion Lord stared. His crew stared.
"Did... did that bird just eat the bombardment?" a pirate lieutenant stammered.
"It's a trick!" the Lord roared. "Reload with Chain-Shot! Tear down their walls!"
"My turn," Su Ye grinned. He turned to the Thunder-Clap Baboon King, who was currently wearing the stolen goggles and a pirate hat.
"Monkey," Su Ye pointed at the Dreadnought. "See the big boat? It's made of wood. You know what wood is?"
The Baboon King tilted his head.
"It's kindling," Su Ye said. "Light it up."
The Baboon King roared. OOK!
The hundred Thunder-Clap Baboons lined up along the Star-Iron wall. Each one held a chunk of Lightning Ore they had mined from the peak.
They wound up.
WHOOSH-WHOOSH-WHOOSH.
It was a primitive volley, but effective. A hundred electrified rocks sailed through the air, arcing with blue voltage.
They hit the pirate ship.
CRACK-BOOM.
The lightning ore exploded on impact. The black sails caught fire instantly. The rigging sparked. Pirates danced the electric boogaloo as static charges arced across the deck.
"My sails!" The Carrion Lord shrieked, batting at a burning rope. "You flying rats! Bring us alongside! Board them! I want to skin them alive!"
The Dreadnought turned, its engines roaring as it closed the distance. The pirates extended grappling hooks and boarding planks.
"They want to board us?" Luo Bing drew her sword, the air around her freezing. "We are outnumbered ten to one, Master."
"They aren't boarding us," Su Ye grabbed the helm of the stable (a modified ship's wheel attached to the Tortoise's shell). "We're boarding them."
"Senior Tortoise!" Su Ye shouted into the Concentration Stone. "RAMMING SPEED!"
Zzzzt.
"I am not a battering ram," the Tortoise complained. "I am a delicate flower."
"There is high-grade calcium on that ship," Su Ye lied. "Dragon bones."
"CALCIUM?"
The Obsidian Tortoise's eyes snapped open. It surged forward. The massive floating mountain-spire beneath them was stable, but the Tortoise moved across it, gathering momentum.
The pirates were preparing to jump. They expected the stable to run away. Instead, they saw a spiked Star-Iron fortress rushing at them at thirty miles per hour.
"Hard to port!" the pirate helmsman screamed. "It's coming right for us!"
Too late.
CRUNCH.
The Twilight Stable slammed into the side of the Sky-Pirate Dreadnought. The Star-Iron spikes on the stable's walls acted like a can opener, shearing through the wooden hull of the ship.
The two vessels locked together, grinding in the sky.
"Boarding Party!" Su Ye yelled, jumping onto the pirate deck with his shovel. "Loot everything! Leave the wooden legs, they have termites!"
It was chaos.
Su Ye led the charge, flanked by a freezing Princess, a sonic-blasting Lin Fan, and a strobe-lighting Gao Ming. Behind them, a horde of blue baboons swarmed onto the ship, screeching and stealing everything that wasn't nailed down.
Zhu Zhu waddled onto the deck. A pirate tried to stab him with a cutlass. Zhu Zhu ate the cutlass, burped, and then headbutted the pirate off the ship.
The Carrion Lord roared, cutting down two baboons with his storm-sword. He locked eyes with Su Ye.
"You!" The Lord charged, summoning a tornado around his blade. "Die!"
Su Ye didn't dodge. He stood his ground.
"Hey, Senior!" Su Ye shouted at the floorboards of the pirate ship. "Do you recognize these bones?"
He slapped his hand onto the deck.
Zzzzt.
He connected not to the pirate ship, but to the Dragon Bones that made up the cannons and the keel.
The Ancestor Spirit within the bones wasn't a dragon. It was a fragment of the Sky-Eater itself—the beast they were riding on. The pirates had been mining the mountain for parts.
"MY RIB..." the massive voice of the Sky-Eater echoed in Su Ye's mind, and simultaneously, through the ship itself. "THEY TOOK MY RIB..."
The entire mountain beneath them shuddered. The cloud sea darkened.
"GIVE. IT. BACK."
The ship groaned. The Dragon-Bone cannons suddenly animated. They twisted around, aiming inward at the pirates.
"What is happening?!" The Carrion Lord stopped, horrified as his own ship turned against him.
"You built your ship out of the landlord's spare parts," Su Ye smirked. "And the landlord wants his deposit back."
The cannons fired. Not cannonballs, but compressed air bursts.
BOOM.
The Carrion Lord was blasted point-blank by his own artillery. He flew backward, crashing through the captain's cabin and out the other side, tumbling into the endless white clouds below.
"Captain's down!" a pirate yelled. "Abandon ship!"
The remaining pirates looked at the angry cannons, the lightning baboons, and the guy with the shovel. They made the smart choice. They jumped, deploying their emergency gliders.
"Victory!" Gao Ming struck a pose on the figurehead of the sinking pirate ship. "The sky is ours!"
"Stop posing and start looting!" Su Ye ordered. "This ship is going down! Grab the cargo! Look for maps! Look for spices! We are low on cumin!"
The disciples and the monkeys scrambled, grabbing chests, barrels, and weapons, throwing them back over the railing into the Twilight Stable.
As the Dreadnought began to list heavily, groaning under the Sky-Eater's anger, Su Ye jumped back onto his own turf.
"Detach!" Su Ye commanded.
The Tortoise retracted its head and pushed off. The stable drifted away.
Behind them, the Sky-Pirate Dreadnought broke apart. The bone pieces fell toward the mountain below, reabsorbing into the mass. The wood scattered into the wind.
Su Ye stood amidst the piles of loot. There were chests of gold, barrels of sky-wine, and crates of rare herbs.
But Su Ye was holding something else. A map he had snatched from the Captain's table.
"Master," Luo Bing asked, nursing a cut on her arm. "What is it?"
"A map of the Shattered Peaks," Su Ye traced a line with his finger. "But look here."
He pointed to a marked location deep within the floating mountain range.
"The pirates weren't just scavenging," Su Ye whispered. "They were mining. They were looking for the Heart of the Sky-Eater."
"The heart?" Lin Fan asked. "Is it... valuable?"
"It's the source of the anti-gravity that keeps these mountains floating," Su Ye said. "If the Dark Beast Sect gets it... they don't just get a battery. They get a flying fortress capable of dropping rocks on the Capital."
Su Ye looked at the map, then at the endless clouds ahead.
"We have to get there first."
"Why?" Gao Ming asked. "To save the world?"
"No," Su Ye rolled up the map. "Because if this mountain crashes, my heated floors stop working."
He turned to the helm.
"Full speed ahead, Senior. We're going inside the mountain."