P.S. Today is Lunar New Year's Eve. Tuifei would like to wish all you brothers and sisters an early Happy New Year! May all your wishes come true in the coming year, and may you enjoy good fortune, longevity, health, and peace~~~~
"What did you run into?" Seeing Luo De's unusually grave expression, Zhang Yao grew tense as well. In truth, this was the first time in the month he had known Luo De that he had seen him look so serious.
"Pirates! Undead pirates! Nothing but skeletons, yet they still sailed ships that should have sunk long ago and kept on plundering!" Luo De said, stressing every word. "Before we set out, that old sailor warned us not to go there. He said countless vengeful souls and undead infested those waters, and anyone who ventured in would certainly die! We all treated it as a joke back then. None of us believed him. Only when we ran into them ourselves did we realize he hadn't been lying."
"We thought we were finished, but who would have guessed that a sudden storm would save us? It let us escape those damned waters! Ever since then, everyone except the captain has treated that place as a taboo-one none of us wants to mention!"
"The captain still refused to give up. He believed those undead could be defeated! So he did everything he could, constantly searching for information and documents about the undead and asking around about them! Hard work rewards a determined heart, and the captain finally found a way to deal with them from a priest. As creatures of death, the undead have none of the emotions they possessed in life. All that remains is an instinctive hatred of the living. Holy magic, or weapons blessed with holy magic, can effectively harm them. Without either, the only option is to smash them until their bodies and bones are utterly shattered."
"The captain was overjoyed to learn this. He immediately spent a fortune buying several bottles of holy water and commissioned quite a few pieces of enchanted equipment! Then we set out again! This time, we were fully prepared and brimming with confidence, but we all underestimated the Death Sea. There were simply too many undead there! If some of our brothers hadn't sacrificed their lives to cover our retreat, none of us would have made it out!"
"After we returned, the captain realized that forcing our way into those undead waters with just one pirate crew would be far too difficult, so he decided to contact other crews we were on good terms with and go together. Of the crews in these nearby waters, we had a fairly good relationship with the Sea Wolf Pirates, so the captain sent me to arrange an alliance with them and venture into the Death Sea together! You already know most of what happened after that."
"So that's what happened!" After hearing Luo De's account, Zhang Yao finally understood the whole chain of events, clearing away the doubts in his heart.
"Things don't look very promising for Captain Wells's next trip to the Death Sea!" Putting Luo De's account together with his horrified reaction when he heard that Wells intended to return there, as well as Amelia's grief, Zhang Yao couldn't help sighing. He had little hope for this voyage.
"Mm. Otherwise, why would the captain have entrusted Amelia to us? He's afraid that... ah, the captain is a good man in every way, but that stubborn determination weighs far too heavily on his heart!" Luo De nodded and couldn't help sighing, his face filled with boundless worry.
"Don't worry, Luo De! Since they escaped disaster the last two times, I believe Wells and everyone aboard the Freedom will return safely this time, too!" Zhang Yao patted Luo De's shoulder and comforted him. "All right, what you need to do now is take a good bath, have a cup of hot tea, and then get a lovely night's sleep! When you wake up tomorrow, you'll discover just how wonderful the world is!"
"Heh, Zhang Yao, your words of comfort are so corny! But thanks anyway! When are you leaving?" Amused by Zhang Yao's attempt to comfort him, Luo De chuckled.
"I'm leaving tomorrow morning. Don't worry, I'll be back soon!"
"All right. Be careful out there," Luo De reminded him with a nod.
"Heh, what's there to worry about with me? You're the one who has Amelia to look after now. That's much more worrying!" Zhang Yao shook his head with a smile, assuring Luo De that he would be perfectly fine while pointing out that Luo De was the one who really needed to take care.
"I have faith in you, so you should have faith in me, too! Stop treating me like a child who couldn't even truss a chicken, all right? I, Luo De, am very strong!" As he spoke, Luo De raised both arms and flexed them hard, showing off his muscles to prove he wasn't making empty claims. Unfortunately, he was so scrawny that even squeezing him all over wouldn't yield a couple of ounces of flesh. Rather than show off any muscle, the pose only made him look even more like a bag of bones.
"All right, all right, I know you're impressive, okay? Just stop posing like that." Zhang Yao held his forehead with one hand and pointed at Luo De with the other, urging him to drop the pose that made anyone who saw it want to laugh.
"Hmph, as long as you know how impressive I am!" Luo De knew he looked rather ridiculous, but he refused to concede aloud.
"Heh, all right, let's get some rest! Looks like we'll have to sleep in the sitting room tonight!" Worried that something might happen to Amelia if she stayed alone in her room, Luo De had earlier asked the innkeeper for two sets of bedding so they could sleep on the sitting-room floor.
"Ah, we'll just have to put up with it!" Luo De sighed as he moved the table and chairs aside. The mournful look on his face alone showed how deeply attached he was to sleeping in a bed.
"It makes no difference to me. I'll be cultivating tonight anyway, so anywhere will do!" Zhang Yao shrugged indifferently. For the past month, aside from eating and using the toilet, he had spent every day cultivating. He had even replaced sleep with cultivation. He truly didn't care where he rested at night.
"Tch, cultivation maniac! Good night!" Luo De made a scornful gesture at Zhang Yao, then rolled over and burrowed beneath his covers.
"Mm, good night!" Zhang Yao replied, then sat cross-legged, ready to begin another round of cultivation.
A familiar sensation spread through his heart as countless streams of spiritual energy came surging into his body. They split into two currents, one flowing into his dantian and the other into his heart. As more and more spiritual energy entered his body, that swelling ache in his dantian returned.
Despite the swelling ache, Zhang Yao did not stop. Instead, he continued cultivating. Over the past month, he had discovered that the longer this ache lasted, the more it benefited the expansion and nourishment of his dantian. So even though the pain persisted, he kept going. Only when he truly couldn't endure it any longer did he exhale, open his eyes, and stop cultivating his true qi, preparing to begin practicing the Concealment Technique and battle qi.
Although these two skills had reached their limits and could no longer level up, Zhang Yao still hadn't given up practicing them. For one thing, he genuinely needed their help to speed up his true qi cultivation. For another, he still remembered what Shopkeeper Sun of the Spacetime Shop had told him: to advance a low-tier skill into a high-tier one, he had to keep practicing. Heaven rewarded diligence.
And so he used his skills to expend his true qi, then cultivated to replenish it once it ran out. When his dantian began to ache and swell, he used his skills to expend his true qi again. After several cycles of cultivation, time slipped by unnoticed, and the sky had begun to grow faintly light.
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