An Alliance

The air reeked of gunpowder and blood.

Xia Lun strode steadily out of the white smoke, but he was nowhere near as healthy as he looked. He was badly wounded.

Pain swept through his nerves like a tide, but the tolerance he had built up through years of serious illness let him keep his expression calm, even cold.

The instant the gunfire began, he had activated Heightened Focus for the last time he could safely use it that day. But Heightened Focus did not stop time. Dodging a storm of bullets at close range was simply impossible.

Of the six bullets, he dodged three. One of the remaining three grazed his cheek; another struck his sword and partially dislocated his wrist; the last passed through his upper abdomen. Xia Lun had no idea exactly how much damage it had done.

Xia Lun silently called up the Information Panel and glanced at it.

[Mental Health: Serenity]

[Physical Health: Serious illness; critical injuries (graze, dislocated wrist, fractured rib, hemothorax [alleviated by Underwater Breathing Potion], internal bleeding)]

The situation had reached another stalemate. Xia Lun and the monster were both afraid to make a move.

The monster was thoroughly terrified. Unaware that Xia Lun was badly wounded, it did not even dare reload. Xia Lun, in turn, was too injured to attack and could not afford to show the slightest sign of weakness.

Boom—

A muffled thunderclap came from the deck, and the ship lurched sharply to one side. At most, it had half an hour before it sank completely.

Worse, the walking corpses' moans were drawing closer. If Geliide had not been fighting them off with her last burst of strength, they would have joined the battle already.

I can't drag this out. I have to use Symptom Reading to get Transcendent Regeneration now!

Xia Lun's eyes turned cold. He made his decision in an instant.

With that, he took out the Prayerbook of the Drowned, torn in two, right in front of the monster.

The monster started and retreated two steps like a spooked bird when it saw him move.

Then it saw Xia Lun openly take out a book and begin to read. Its first thought was that this had to be a trap!

Suspicion, hesitation, and fear gripped the monster.

It dared neither fight to the death nor turn and flee. Instead, it made the most foolish choice: wait for the walking corpses to arrive, then continue its escape.

And so Xia Lun opened the Prayerbook of the Drowned in plain sight. Its slick, cold wax pages were still packed with tadpole-like writing he could not recognize. This time, following what Doctor had once told him, he tried to look past the words and sense the text's meaning directly.

One second, two seconds, three seconds...

For an instant, Xia Lun's mind went hazy. Then the writing on the page seemed to move.

At some point, a layer of red fluorescence had appeared across the book. Though it was a single, pure color, the light felt profoundly unclean, as though invisible mold and maggots crawled within it. A single glance seemed enough to make someone sick.

He looked up and found darkness all around him. A few bubbles slowly escaped his nose and drifted upward...

For a moment, it was as though he had been plunged into the sunless depths of the sea.

The next instant, the characters leaped. Their outlines trembled, blocks of color fell away, and lines and colors recombined, twisting into row after row of Chinese characters.

Xia Lun was about to read them closely when every character shot off the page like a black arrow and plunged into his eyes. They burrowed along his optic nerves into his brain, becoming fine tendrils that slowly writhed and limped through its folds...

Itching, hallucinations, excruciating pain!

Xia Lun drew a deep breath. He focused his will and forced himself to ignore the discomfort.

Boom!

The hallucination vanished. The Prayerbook of the Drowned shrieked in Xia Lun's hands, and several cracks opened in its cover. Countless tiny bubbles, like those in soda, poured out. Within half a second, the entire book dissolved into a puddle of filthy water.

The dirty water streamed through Xia Lun's fingers. Half a second later, even the dampness was gone. Every trace that the Prayerbook of the Drowned had existed had vanished.

Countless scarlet messages flashed madly across the corner of Xia Lun's vision.

[Warning: Your mental state has deteriorated significantly!]

[Current Mental Health: Serenity]

[You have acquired the Secret Art Specialty Transcendent Regeneration!]

[Transcendent Regeneration: A wound is a breach in the surface, and a shortcut to the depths; but every wise person knows that the surface is the depths.]

[When you fall ill or are injured, you will gain extraordinary regenerative ability. As a cost, your mental state will rapidly deteriorate.]

[Specialization progress!]

[Symptom Reading (Beginner) (1% → 80%): Grimoires exist in all times and places at once, and Symptom Reading is the only path to Secret Arts. But even within Symptom Reading, there are right and wrong ways to read. Reading incorrectly will drive a person completely mad.]

[Warning: Your mental state has deteriorated significantly!]

[Current Mental Health: Serenity]

The next instant, Xia Lun felt an itch on his cheek. He touched it without thinking and found, to his astonishment, that the graze had already healed.

Pat.

Then he heard flesh rustling as it moved. Looking down, he saw countless bud-like growths of muscle appear around the wound in his upper abdomen. They joined together and slowly sealed it. His gunshot wound was healing before his eyes!

That's incredible! This can definitely cure my terminal illness! Joy surged through Xia Lun.

But then he felt that the healing inside his chest was sluggish. After a moment's thought, he realized that the hemothorax caused by his fractured rib was far more complicated than a surface wound.

Maybe I can give it a little medical help?

Xia Lun hesitated, then made up his mind.

He thrust his hand into the wound. After feeling for the broken rib, he gripped the displaced bone and wrenched it outward.

Crack!

With a bone-splitting sound that set teeth on edge, foamy blood spurted from beneath Xia Lun's clothes like a geyser. The monster stared at him, dumbstruck, as he set his own rib. It was so frightened that even its tentacles stopped swaying.

Was... was that right? it could not help asking itself.

But as his body healed at breakneck speed, Xia Lun's vision began to blur. Weakness seeped through him like mist. Then an indescribable hunger struck.

Xia Lun had visibly shrunk. He looked impossibly frail, his once sharply defined face now gaunt for lack of fat, like a dried corpse.

Only his black eyes remained piercingly bright, as though all the flesh in his body had burned away to fuel the light in those sunken sockets.

"So healing doesn't create energy and nutrients out of nothing after all," Xia Lun muttered. He raised his eyes to the monster across from him, which resembled a Black Sea Cucumber. "I still need to replenish my energy."

His nose twitched. Beneath the reek of gunpowder and blood, Xia Lun caught the rich aroma of cooked protein. It smelled like steaming meat broth sprinkled with turnips, celery, and crumbled cheese. His mouth watered.

The smell roused a primal hunger that washed against his reason like a tide. He swallowed.

Then Xia Lun drew a deep breath. Using Meditation to sense the movement of his stomach and intestines, he barely managed to suppress the ravenous craving.

The Black Sea Cucumber looked delicious, but it had once been human. He should not eat it.

But...

A sudden, agonized cough sounded behind him, followed by the sound of blood being spat up.

Xia Lun froze, then tore himself free of the hunger and turned.

In the nearby room, Geliide's battle with the walking corpses was also drawing to an end.

Before the orange firelight lay the shattered remains of walking corpses. Geliide knelt weakly on the floor, a long-handled axe with a badly notched blade resting on her shoulder. The flames cast her shadow far behind her.

She was coughing painfully. Within a few breaths, she had vomited up a mass of pieces of her own organs. Her last burst of strength could only last so long. She could not hold out anymore.

A dozen or so walking corpses that had risen again staggered toward her. Geliide snorted and wiped her mouth, then reached into her jacket. Her hand came up empty.

"Shit. Shouldn't have stepped on my pipe just to look cool." She coughed and staggered back to her feet. "That really came back to bite me."

She dropped the axe and watched the approaching corpses with a cold smile.

Clang. The axe hit the floor with a dull thud.

Hope suddenly stirred in the monster's heart. It had been on the brink of despair, but now it realized it still had a chance.

As an ascended being transformed into an Abyssal Hand, it could survive underwater for a short time. Xia Lun, plainly, could not.

In other words, if it could stall until the ship sank, it could still win!

And stalling would not be hard. The ship was full of corpses it could transform!

The next instant, its plan fell apart before it could even begin.

Geliide, the bald woman captain, shakily pulled a piece of flint from her pocket. Without a moment's hesitation, she used it to light the fuse of a Gunpowder Barrel beside her!

"Why?" Xia Lun could not help asking. "Geliide, this isn't your revenge. You don't have to go this far!"

Sparks scattered from the fuse like dancing fireflies. Geliide turned her head, the flames reflected in her chestnut eyes.

Geliide grinned, showing a mouthful of rotten teeth stained yellow by tobacco.

"Because we're allies!"

[Recognition! You have earned the recognition of the pirate captain Geliide. You gain 300 Memory Points.]

The fuse burned down. In an instant, a blinding white light burst forth!

Boom!

Amid the deafening explosion, the shock wave and flames reduced the walking corpses to ash!

"You're all insane!" the monster shrieked in despair. "Why? Why are every one of you so insane?! Stay away!"

Its voice abruptly cut off. Xia Lun lunged at it and, with a few strokes of his sword, finished off the monster, which had no will left to resist.

[Kill! You have slain the supernatural monster Abyssal Hand. You gain 1,500 Memory Points!]

And then it was all over.