Embarking on the Journey

Ethan cleared his throat, then took a small sip of water from the wooden spoon.

"Only a little water left. If I don't see land or it doesn't rain again soon, I might be the first transmigrator to die of thirst." Glancing at the nearly empty bucket, Ethan felt this way of dying was too pathetic, a complete disgrace to the transmigrator community.

Setting down the wooden spoon and covering the bucket, Ethan stood at the front of the small boat again. While telling himself internally, 'Heaven never seals off all the exits!' and 'Everything will be alright!', he straightened up and gazed out at the boundless sea, hoping something would appear on the horizon—anything at all, as long as it wasn't just endless water.

Raising his left hand, he concentrated his mental energy. A faint blue glow suddenly appeared in his upward-facing palm, and then a translucent blue sphere of light materialized in Ethan's hand.

The sphere of light wasn't particularly special; it just had an arrow-like shape in the center pointing in the direction the small boat was sailing.

"I firmly believe you're my Golden Finger, so please don't screw me over..."

Recalling the past few years since he arrived in this strange world, Ethan suddenly felt that pinning his hopes on something he didn't even know what it was, was truly unreliable.

"In the future... I can't do such reckless things anymore... if there is a future..."

Ethan, whose name was also Ethan in his previous life, the only difference being that his last name was Yi in his past life, while in this world he didn't even have a surname, just a simple given name: Ethan.

In his previous life, Ethan was a very ordinary person. His studies were neither good nor bad, his character was neither good nor bad, he found a job that neither made nor lost money, and his life was passable.

He thought he would live out his life uneventfully, but an acute illness took his life, and when he woke up, he was already in this world.

Luckily, he directly possessed the body of a seriously ill young man and fully absorbed the young man's memories, learning the language and some basic knowledge of this world, which allowed him to quickly integrate into the new world without the young man's father noticing anything amiss.

He grew up under the care of his new father, and during these years, he also learned what kind of world this was.

A world full of seawater, where land was extremely scarce and simply couldn't support too large a population. Even though the ocean near the islands had a pleasant climate and abundant seafood, there was ultimately a limit.

Over the years, Ethan had seen countless people leave everything they had to their children, then set sail alone into the completely unknown ocean to search for the legendary Endless Land—not a single person returned. Ethan himself had never seen it, nor had he heard of any cases of return from the few elderly people.

Therefore, Ethan came to a conclusion: this was a backward and ignorant small island, following the simplest rules to perpetuate life, and those who went out to sea were merely giving the chance to survive to their descendants. The so-called Endless Land might just be ordinary continents, simply difficult to reach with the boats from this island.

"They must have all died at sea."

Otherwise, there's no reason there isn't a single case of return. It's not like there wouldn't be anyone who wanted to bring their wife and children back, right?

Whether this was the case, Ethan didn't know, but when he turned sixteen, his father contracted a serious illness after returning from a voyage and passed away after half a month.

In the following days, after Ethan had fulfilled his duties as a son, he didn't take over his father's job, 'filling in' for the most 'sought-after' fishing fleet on the island. Instead, he found the small boat his father had quietly prepared long ago, loaded it with supplies, and embarked on the journey to find the 'Endless Land'.

He made this choice, besides being unwilling to live another ordinary life on a 'backward and ignorant' small island, because of the peculiar glowing sphere pointer in his hand.

From being vague and unformed at first, to gradually taking shape but flickering as if interfered with, to now being able to stably maintain the sphere shape without any issues, Ethan spent a full seven years.

In these seven years, from the moment Ethan could tell it was a pointer, the direction it pointed never changed, consistently and firmly pointing in a fixed direction.

Having been influenced by numerous novels in his previous life, Ethan felt this was telling him, 'Leave that island with no future; a brighter future awaits you.'

Setting sail, from being clumsy to gradually becoming skilled, the theoretical knowledge learned from his father gradually transformed into practical skills. Although he occasionally fumbled and made mistakes, fortunately, this sea area was very gentle, without strong winds, heavy rain, or turbulent waves, giving this novice enough time to improve his sailing proficiency.

Especially as the three arrows on the glowing sphere pointer in his hand turned into two, and now into one, some of the troubles encountered after setting sail seemed to disappear, and he became increasingly expectant of the treasure he was about to obtain.

Until... the fresh water on the boat was about to run out, and he finally realized he was on the vast, boundless ocean, and no one would come to save him. All his reliance was on this small boat less than ten meters long. Without fresh water, he probably wouldn't survive three days.

"Indeed... I was just an ordinary person in my last life. How could I suddenly become a Son of the Plane, the center of the world?"

Looking at the already bone-dry water bucket, Ethan instead became completely calm.

"Worrying is useless. Now I either hope for rain, or I can only put my hope in this pointer that I don't know where it's pointing."

Going all out, Ethan squeezed out almost all his potential, not only sailing the small boat quickly but also using the limited remaining watery fruits to maintain his body's needs.

He barely managed to hold on for another five days, and just as he was about to give up, Ethan noticed a change in the glowing sphere pointer in his hand.

It didn't continue to point forward but firmly pointed downwards.

"Here? This place?"

Taking down the sail and dropping the anchor, Ethan looked around with a bewildered expression. The scenery in his eyes hadn't changed at all; it was still the boundless sea.

"Could it be underwater?"

His face turned even worse. Ethan had lived on an island his entire life and made a living from the sea, so his swimming skills were naturally not bad, but he had been sailing on the sea for so many days and hadn't seen land. Who knew how deep the sea beneath his feet was?

The only color he could judge by—strangely, after sailing for so long, the color of the seawater was still light blue with a hint of green, which meant it wasn't truly deep sea, but it wasn't a depth a person could dive to without any equipment.

"I've been screwed..."

He sighed helplessly.

"And directly screwed to death! I just don't know if I'll get another life this time?"

Ethan sat on the bow of the boat in despair, wondering if he should just jump in and take his chances. Maybe drowning would be better than dying of thirst?

Lost in thought, he raised his left hand again and suddenly noticed a strange change on it.

Originally, besides concentrating his mental energy on his left hand to summon the glowing sphere pointer, his left hand had nothing special about it. But this time, he found that a complex pattern had appeared on the back of his left hand.

"This..."

As the pattern gradually became clearer, he could also gradually see what it was.

"Looks like a Magic Array?"

Just as the Magic Array finally took shape and began emitting a soft blue light, a surge of mental energy suddenly rushed back into his brain from his left hand.

In that instant, Ethan suddenly understood what this thing was all about.

"Hahaha, as expected, Heaven never... cough cough cough..."

Turns out you really can't get too cocky. Ethan, who nearly choked to death, no longer stood at the bow posing. Instead, he honestly walked to the most stable spot in the middle of the boat, then knelt on one knee and placed his left hand on the 'ground'.

"I need to mobilize all my mental energy... My current state isn't great, I don't know if it'll be enough."

Regardless, Ethan decided to try once first. If this failed, he might be able to try again with the last bit of food he had left. If he rested, the burst of mental energy he gained from the surprise might dissipate, and he might die before he could even last until then.

"There's no choice at all, I have to go for it!"

Betting everything, Ethan sent all his mental energy into his left hand. Years of practice made this task easy for him, with almost no difficulty at all.

The Magic Array, which received Ethan's mental energy, also became increasingly dazzling, finally erupting with blinding light, and even displaying a Magic Array pattern identical to the one on the back of his hand on the 'ground'.

"It worked!"

Seeing the Magic Array appear, Ethan knew he had succeeded. The mental energy that fed back from the Magic Array into his mind not only told him how to use it, but also showed him the state of the Magic Array when it successfully activated, and even 'told' Ethan the function of this Magic Array.

Plane Travel!

That was the function of this Magic Array.

Ethan, who had been heavily influenced by web novels, didn't need to think much to know what this meant. Although it still contained boundless risks, he was on the verge of dying of thirst right now and had no other choice.

"No matter what, it won't send me somewhere I can't even get a drink of water, right..."

Just as the light of the Magic Array gradually enveloped Ethan and the teleportation was about to begin, Ethan suddenly felt a wave of dizziness, like the weakness he felt after staying up all night studying back in school, causing him to fall directly to the ground.

"To collapse at the very last moment... I'm really unlucky..."

Before his consciousness disappeared, Ethan vaguely saw the surrounding light slowly dissipate. A group of people in robes were staring at him with wide, wary eyes. Among them, a bald woman in a yellow robe slowly walked towards him, seemingly saying something?