The Bearded Pirate Who Volunteered His Loyalty (Part 1)

Pei Chao stood there with his mouth hanging open, looking utterly dumbfounded.

He stared blankly at Feng Buzhi's severed arm as it turned purple, festered, and bubbled. He stared blankly as Feng Buzhi used spider silk to bind his right arm tight, then used his teeth to help tie the knot. Then he stared blankly as Feng Buzhi collapsed to the ground, convulsing.

Feng Buzhi was trying to get back on his feet, but his convulsing body simply would not cooperate.

Pei Chao found it difficult to describe how he felt.

He asked himself whether he could make such a desperate, life-or-death gamble. He probably could. But reaching Feng Buzhi's level was clearly impossible.

Especially the self-mutilating act of forcibly tearing off his own right arm. Combined with how Feng Buzhi had earlier rubbed his fingers against the wall to form bone blades, it made Pei Chao's scalp go numb.

A great torrent of blood gushed from the severed arm, staining even the Giant Spider in swathes of vivid red.

Yet Feng Buzhi had not uttered a single cry of pain, and the expression on his face had not changed in the slightest!

Did this man not feel pain!?

He was not human at all, was he!!?

"Holy shit, you... you—what the hell are you? A man or a ghost?"

It was quite a while before Pei Chao finally came back to his senses and shouted at Feng Buzhi, who was drenched head to toe in blood.

Feng Buzhi seemed not to hear him. He continued trying to control his body and rise from the ground, but every time he had just gotten up, his body would collapse out of control again.

This time, it was not that he was deliberately ignoring Pei Chao. He simply had not heard him.

After repeatedly breaking through his shackles and exhausting his body too severely, the backlash from this breakthrough was even greater. It was as if two great bells had appeared in his ears, their hum ringing without end.

The deafening roar seemed intent on knocking him unconscious, but Feng Buzhi did not allow it. He stubbornly maintained his clarity.

It felt as though his eyes were covered by three layers of sunglasses. Everything around him was pitch-black, and he could only vaguely make out the outlines of nearby objects.

Yet he could still clearly hear the Eerie Whisper permeating the Mist, and it had become even more distinct.

The weaker my body becomes, the clearer the whispers in the Mist?

Feng Buzhi continued moving without pause.

It was not that he was wasting the energy in his body. Rather, by continuously moving his convulsing body, he could recover faster and make the spasms stop sooner.

Several minutes passed. The convulsions gradually subsided, though he still felt too weak to exert any strength. The three layers of sunglasses over his eyes slowly became one, and the ringing in his ears weakened considerably.

Then, as he tried to stand once more, someone supported his body.

The numbness in Pei Chao's legs had finally worn off. He helped Feng Buzhi up whenever he fell, adjusted his position, and hoisted Feng Buzhi onto his back.

"I'll carry you!"

Pei Chao's attitude changed once again.

There was even a faint trace of admiration in the way he looked at Feng Buzhi.

Just as Pei Chao thought Feng Buzhi still would not acknowledge him, Feng Buzhi spoke.

"Put me near the spider's head."

Pei Chao frowned. Though Feng Buzhi's voice sounded fairly smooth, both its volume and the faint tremor between his words showed how difficult speaking was for him at the moment.

Without saying anything more, Pei Chao obediently set Feng Buzhi down.

After that, Pei Chao watched Feng Buzhi crawl toward the spider's corpse and suck the green fluid flowing from its head.

"Poison... holy shit, you..."

Pei Chao cried out again, then stopped, silently watching Feng Buzhi suck up the spider's brain matter.

Clearly, there was no poison in the spider's brain matter. Otherwise, Feng Buzhi would have been poisoned to death long ago.

While keeping an eye on Feng Buzhi from the corner of his eye, Pei Chao watched the cave entrance vigilantly. He gathered some spider silk and braided it into a three-meter-long rope. If another Giant Spider came, perhaps he could use the rope to do something.

The spider's venomous fangs were truly formidable. He had to deal with them carefully; perhaps the rope could be used against those fangs.

As he thought, Pei Chao worked the spider silk in both hands, imagining how he should strike when the time came.

By now, Pei Chao had no choice but to admit that he had underestimated the giant spider.

If he had a knife, he might have been able to kill the Giant Spider, but there was also a good chance that it would bite him.

And if it bit him even once, he would be dead for certain.

"You don't need to stay so tense. There should be no more spider Monsters near this cave."

Pei Chao suddenly heard someone speak amid his thoughts. It was Feng Buzhi, who had been sucking the spider's brain matter. At some point, Feng Buzhi had already finished it.

Feng Buzhi had recovered somewhat by then. At the very least, he could barely use his hearing and vision again.

Pei Chao asked doubtfully, "How do you know?"

Feng Buzhi said, "Listen to the whispers in the Mist with your heart, and you will be able to sense it."

Perhaps because his body was weakened, not only had the whispers in the Mist become clearer, but the range of his sonar had also extended much farther. Feng Buzhi could sense everything within two hundred meters outside the cave.

Within that range, there was not a single other living creature.

"Listen with my heart?"

Pei Chao nodded and began listening carefully to the whispers in the Mist as well. It would have been better if he had not listened closely. After listening for a while, he felt incredibly irritated, as if he wanted to find someone and have a huge fight.

Muttering a few irritated words, Pei Chao jogged over to Feng Buzhi and helped him up again.

While he had been listening to the whispers, Feng Buzhi had once more begun his repeated cycle of standing, falling, standing...

"I already said I'd carry you." Pei Chao slung Feng Buzhi onto his back. "Your injuries are serious. We should head back as soon as possible. The town square has a [Repair] function; it should be able to heal your injuries. Oh, before we go back, I'll retrieve my knife first. It won't be much of a detour. If we run into Green-skinned Dwarves or those big spiders, it'll be easier for me to chop them to death."

Feng Buzhi said, "All right."

Carrying Feng Buzhi on his back, Pei Chao quickly left the Spider Cave.

The sky outside had darkened, and night had fallen upon this world.

Night in this world was not completely black. It had a deep gray cast to it, and they could still see the things around them.

Following the route where the spider had dragged them earlier, Pei Chao advanced through the woods, constantly poking around with a stick he had picked up to avoid stumbling into another spider-silk trap.

Pei Chao sped up as much as possible. The Mist was more dangerous at night, and the Monsters within it became more frenzied.

On the way back, Pei Chao took the initiative to talk about his identity: a Chinese-descended pirate of the Caribbean Sea.

He could not be called a good man, but he had also done plenty of robbing the rich to aid the poor.

He had been through dozens of battles, large and small. He had suffered betrayal from his own men, and he had endured a storm that left him stranded on a deserted island, fighting desperately to survive.

Pei Chao spoke in a somewhat boastful tone, trying to use his past experiences to pique Feng Buzhi's interest and make Feng Buzhi think more highly of him.

Unfortunately, Pei Chao's plan came to nothing.

From beginning to end, Feng Buzhi did not ask Pei Chao a single question. He had barely even said a few words...