Sailing Out to Sea

Mo Qiong attended classes as usual during the day and fired GPS devices from the seaside at night.

To prevent the GPS devices from being damaged, he bought fifty aluminum-alloy canisters and used them to contain the GPS devices before firing them out. In any case, nobody could see them in the sea.

Although it seemed that there were no obstacles in the sea, the water pressure itself was actually formidable.

The GPS devices moved through the sea at high speed. They might become useless before even reaching their destinations.

The canisters Mo Qiong bought could withstand the water pressure at a depth of five hundred meters without deforming. They were no cheaper than the GPS devices.

"First, let's try the Random Arrow."

Mo Qiong tried firing out a canister, relying solely on imagining some kind of environment in the sea with a piece of jewelry in it.

In his imagination, everything around it was blurred. He only determined that there was a beautiful gem submerged in murky seawater. He used some pictures from the internet as references for the gem's details, but changed them slightly so it looked somewhat different.

In short, he imagined the environment as something sunken in the sea, but he did not think about or consider any details of the surroundings or what might have covered the gem after it had been submerged.

Thus, even if there were an identical piece of jewelry on land, the arrow would not go there, because Mo Qiong had imagined an additional seawater reference for the target.

In fact, this was a matter of how detailed the image was. If Mo Qiong casually imagined a gem with a certain appearance without determining anything else, the arrow could hit any gem, as long as it looked the same.

If he imagined it submerged in seawater, then any gem submerged in the sea could become the target.

It was like shooting at someone while imagining what they looked like with their eyes open, even though that person currently had their eyes closed. They looked slightly different, but would that mean the arrow would not hit them?

No. Even if that person wore glasses, or even a mask, or had put on makeup, the arrow would still shoot them, as long as nobody else looked exactly like them.

Conversely, if Mo Qiong imagined the target already wearing glasses, makeup, and so on when he fired, adding many more points of reference, then it would only shoot toward a target matching those details more precisely.

"It might even be willing to travel through time and space... Hmm, if the arrow disappears, that means it crossed through time and space. That's the most likely possibility."

"If the arrow really can travel through time and space, then even if another world has an identical target, it will prioritize this world."

"The arrow will try to violate as few rules as possible. Unless it absolutely has to go somewhere, it generally won't recklessly trample natural laws."

"If something doesn't exist anywhere in the entire world, the arrow will disappear. Conversely, if the arrow disappears, that proves the thing I want to shoot isn't in the same world as me."

When Mo Qiong wanted to shoot a specific person, he had to make the landing-point conditions as detailed as possible.

But randomness also had its advantages. For a gem, he did not have to hit one specific gem. Any gem would do.

That meant Mo Qiong did not need so many details. A gem, submerged in seawater—You figure out the rest, arrow. Any one will do. As long as you don't disappear, just grab the nearest one. They're all valuable anyway.

"Tsk, it really did disappear."

Mo Qiong only saw the canister vanish, leaving the GPS device to fall out of it.

This meant that the sea before him contained no gem like the one he had imagined. The shot had directly crossed through time and space.

"It's fine. This is a chance-based shooting method to begin with. Without detailed landing-point conditions, I can only trade attempts for opportunities."

Mo Qiong took out his phone and looked up the appearances of various gems for reference.

Then he continuously fired out stones. He watched as they repeatedly left his hand and vanished, heading to worlds unknown.

This was actually quite safe. Whether the arrows truly disappeared or crossed through time and space, neither possibility would affect Earth, so Mo Qiong had no need to worry too much.

As long as one arrow did not disappear and plunged into the sea, Mo Qiong could find a way to retrieve it.

After disappearing again and again, finally, on the forty-second attempt, the stone in his hand did not vanish. It shot straight into the sea.

"As expected, pearls have much better odds... There are simply too many gem designs."

On the forty-second attempt, Mo Qiong had set the target as a Large Pearl—round, plump, and about the size of a fist.

This was still quite rare. There just happened to be a pearl in the sea exactly like the one Mo Qiong had imagined. Its color, size, luster, and shape all matched perfectly.

After using the canisters to determine the locations, he continued repeating the process until only eight canisters remained.

"Hmm, there are only eight canisters left. I need to keep some in reserve."

Mo Qiong temporarily stopped firing Random Arrows. The ocean was so vast that even if he found something, it might be extremely far away. In the end, he would only retrieve one or two of them.

"I'll fire one more to find the crown. I'll save the other seven for now."

Thus, he instead set the landing point on the crown and fired a GPS canister out from the water. The canister was not moving very fast—only thirty meters per second. There was no rush anyway, so he let it drift over slowly.

The canister traveled through the seawater, gradually disappearing into the distance.

Mo Qiong gazed far out, but he never saw the canister surface. This also showed that the Great Pirate King's treasure was in the sea rather than somewhere at a high altitude.

If the canister surfaced, that would mean the crown might be on a mountain. Mo Qiong would immediately slide into the sea, chase after it, and retrieve the canister.

For now, all he had to do was wait for it to stop.

Early Saturday morning, Mo Qiong had been staring at the map the entire time. He had already waited more than a day for the GPS to stop.

Suddenly, he jolted. More than ten GPS devices searching for pearls had stopped.

The nearest one was in the waters northeast of the Philippines, more than two thousand kilometers from him. The ones that had stopped first were already that far away, so the ones that had not stopped yet could only be farther.

However, he did not panic. He continued staring at the GPS searching for the crown.

That GPS traveled south the entire way, crossing the Philippines and moving farther and farther from his country.

"Tsk, tsk, it's almost reached the equator. How did a person from the Ming Dynasty manage to send it so far east... No wonder nobody could find it."

In the afternoon, Mo Qiong jolted again and discovered that the GPS had lost contact in the waters near the Caroline Islands.

"Did it hit something?"

Mo Qiong shook his head. He had known that pirate treasure would be difficult to find. After all, people had been searching for it for hundreds of years without success.

It was not a sunken ship, but something deliberately hidden. It was very likely sealed inside a completely enclosed structure.

In that case, the GPS would have to forcefully smash through a hole to get inside.

It had certainly gotten in, but the GPS must have become useless.

In this situation, he could only go to the waters where it had lost contact and see what was going on. Perhaps the treasure was near the point where contact had been lost. Perhaps it was still far away, and the GPS had been accidentally damaged.

Precisely because he had thought this might happen, Mo Qiong had cast a wide net, searching for exposed and easily retrievable pearls to obtain some capital first. Who knew what kind of situation awaited him at the treasure's location?

"Man, that's far away. Even if I travel at a hundred kilometers per hour, it'll still take me thirty or forty hours to get there."

"The pearl's location is closer. A little over twenty hours should be enough."

Mo Qiong was helpless. Both targets had gone abroad.

He would travel in his own boat. No matter how fast it was, he could not make it go too fast. Around thirty meters per second of air thrust was about the limit.

For a boat, that was a speed of 108 kilometers per hour, nearly a hundred knots.

Ordinary warships only reached twenty knots. He could fire the canisters that fast, but propelling the boat was more questionable. At sea, it was still manageable...

Underwater, a boat would definitely fall apart at that speed. Although it could still be driven after breaking apart, when traveling underwater, it was better to maintain a speed of only a few meters per second.

"Looks like I'll have to live on the boat for a few days. I've prepared food and water too. Let's set off..."