The Cursed Black Sail

Somewhere in the deep sea, aboard a somewhat battered ship, countless skeletons seemed to sense something all at once and broke into strange laughter.

"More gold coins have appeared at sea. Lifting the curse is finally within reach. Set sail."

A wreck-like, dilapidated vessel began rising toward the surface. It was the Black Sail, the so-called ghost ship.

When the Black Sail burst through the surface, the ruined vessel swiftly underwent a dramatic transformation.

Sunlight washed over its hull, and the Black Sail changed from a battered wreck into a complete four-masted sailing ship. It was black from bow to stern, even its sails black, while the skeletons aboard transformed into ordinary humans.

However, unlike the pirates aboard the Undead, they were the most traditional sort of pirates—ragged clothes, yellowed teeth, bodies covered in grime as though they had not bathed in ages.

This was what pirates normally looked like. Not every pirate ship had a Mage capable of gathering fresh water, ensuring the ship would never lack it.

A pirate Captain wearing a captain's hat, missing one leg, with a mouthful of large gold teeth and a scar across his face, drew the saber at his waist and shouted.

"Thirty helm points southwest! Move out, lads!"

"Woo~" The pirates shouted in response and quickly maneuvered the ship in the direction their Captain pointed.

But the Black Sail was still quite far from the Undead. Catching up would not take merely a day or two.

Thus, Yang Mu once again entered a period of boredom. There was nothing he could do; he no longer had any research projects on hand. He had already revised the Dark Forge Meditation several times, and the Transcendental Material bought from the Ocean Hut had long since been used up.

He was bored enough to teach the crew on deck.

"Come on, let's continue. This is the Biesher Thought Structure Model, the foundational structure behind most spell models. To make it easier to remember, we need to break it down into..."

A Mage's teaching style was simple: whether you understood or not, he had taught it. How much you learned was no longer his problem.

There were two reasons for this. First, a Mage's time was valuable. Even Mages who taught at the Academy only did so to complete assignments; they left as soon as the lesson ended. Want questions answered? Fine—pay separately, and it would not be cheap.

Second, it was a way to identify Apprentices with strong learning ability for focused cultivation. Any Apprentice who could keep up under such circumstances possessed exceptional talent for learning.

The Mages teaching them would pay attention to such people, either as an investment or with the intention of taking them as students.

Yang Mu himself was a product of this kind of education. His teaching style was easy to imagine.

The crew below understood almost none of it. They merely kept taking notes, looking exactly like a bunch of terrible students.

This was already the fifteenth day of Yang Mu's lessons. They had grown used to this teaching style. Even if they had not, there was nothing they could do—this was the only kind available.

Yang Mu had finished teaching the Apprentice portion of the Dark Forge Meditation in five days. He had even taught several different versions, allowing different crew members to study different versions.

Jack and Higgs could barely understand this part. Although Yang Mu's explanations were mixed with plenty of other knowledge, his understanding of the Dark Forge Meditation still benefited them greatly.

As for everything after that, they were no different from the others. Their hands kept writing notes on paper, yet even they did not know what they were writing.

"They're finally here? At last, something interesting."

Yang Mu stopped teaching and turned to look at the black dot growing larger on the horizon.

The Black Sail had arrived!

As the Black Sail drew closer, the sky rapidly darkened. The Undead had only just released its black mist when black rain began to fall from the sky, and fierce winds swept through, trying to disperse the Undead's mist.

When encountering ads such as "Are you a real person?", there was no need to pay attention to them. Just close them. Do not scan codes or send text messages!

"There's something wrong with this rain. Get inside the cabin!"

The instant the black rain touched their bodies, waves of intense pain struck them. Black spots appeared on the skin wherever the raindrops landed, and crew members immediately cried out.

Although Yang Mu had been teaching them the Dark Forge Meditation over the past dozen days, truly getting started was not something that could be accomplished in just a few days.

The only reason Higgs and Jack had entered so quickly was because Yang Mu had directly used mental infusion to instill the Dark Forge Meditation into them. If they had relied on themselves, they would not have managed it in several months.

A layer of mental barrier appeared around Yang Mu's body. The black rain slid down the barrier and was absorbed by the Undead.

Jack and Higgs did the same, mental barriers appearing around their bodies. The only difference was how sturdy those barriers were.

As for the undead, they were enjoying the rare rain mixed with death energy.

Not only did the rain have no negative effect on them, it strengthened their undead cores.

The Undead was the same. It welcomed every drop of rain and absorbed it all, even letting out a contented low hum within Yang Mu's sea of consciousness.

On the rapidly approaching Black Sail, both the Captain and crew witnessed this bizarre sight. Their initially excited expressions turned solemn.

They had originally thought that some unlucky fool had taken their Cursed Coins out to sea, where they had been snatched by someone ignorant, causing the aura of the Demon Sea Gold Coins to leak out and alert them.

It had been more than eighty years since they were cursed. The more satisfying it had been to spend gold back then, the more miserable it had become to collect gold afterward. Many people knew of their existence, and quite a few had even brought Demon Sea Gold Coins to trade with them.

Using Demon Sea Gold Coins as payment, those people asked them to do certain things. Yet those people did not dare set foot on the ocean themselves.

Although they had been cursed by the Demon Sea Gold Coins and could never set foot on land, they were exceptionally powerful at sea.

The curse prevented them from stepping onto land, stripped away all positive sensations, and turned them into a special kind of undead—but it also made them immortal and indestructible.

That sounded good, did it not? Immortal and indestructible—an alternative form of eternal life.

But they constantly felt hunger, thirst, and cold. They were forever trapped in the most agonizing moments before starving to death, dying of thirst, or freezing to death, yet could not go mad. They remained rational forever, enduring the pain.

No food or alcohol, not even standing directly in flames, could ease their suffering.

This was a curse, not a blessing. Though they looked no different from ordinary people under sunlight, at night and in the deep sea, their skeletal forms were their true appearance.

But when they saw the undead aboard the Undead, creatures even more undead than themselves, they knew the other side had not leaked the aura of the Demon Sea Gold Coins out of ignorance and drawn them here.

The other side had deliberately lured them over. Compared to their Black Sail, the ship opposite them, with eight tentacles growing from it, was even more bizarre.

"Holy shit, boss, why do I feel like they're the cursed ship? What do we do? Open fire?"

"Get lost. Let me take a look first."

The Captain of the Black Sail used his remaining foot to kick the man before him flying, then walked to the edge of the deck and shouted toward the nearby Undead.

"Trade, or war?"

Although the other side was bizarre and had most likely been cursed by something as well, they would not back down when it came to the Demon Sea Gold Coins.

If the other side truly could kill them, they would not only bear no grudge—they would even be deeply grateful.