The salty, fishy smell of seawater-soaked wood drying in the sun hit him. Even the wind blowing against his shirt seemed to leave grains of salt behind, stirring up an almost hallucinatory itch.
As the darkness slowly receded and his vision settled, Qi Si realized he was standing at the bow, treading on broken, battered planks and leaning against the wooden rail.
Before him stretched an endless expanse of sea. Dark yellow waves rolled on and on. The surface looked pristine, as if the wind and rain had washed it clean. There were no reefs, nor any other ships.
The sky met the sea at the horizon. Above him, the amber hues of dusk were mottled like fish scales. Clusters of yellow clouds gathered near and far, motionless and silent.
As usual, the Identity Card for "Humanoid Evil Spirit" hung in the upper-right corner of his vision. Between its writhing black tentacles, crimson eyes glistened—brighter and more vivid than the ones he had seen as a beginner.
Rolling mist poured from it, its edges threaded with gilded patterns. A faint air of holiness mingled with its eerie aura.
A new prompt flashed in the item bar along the bottom of his vision, informing Qi Si that he could store items larger than one cubic decimeter, rather than having to hold or wear them.
Unfortunately, the only item on Qi Si that met the size requirement was the tape recorder he had taken from the bus in the Carnivore instance.
[Instance Name: Sea of Hopelessness] [Instance Type: Multiplayer Survival] [Preliminary Hint: What you see with your own eyes may not be true]
Only two lines of text had appeared on the system interface. There was no main quest, and the preliminary hint was particularly cryptic.
The description "multiplayer survival"