Bang!
Bang~
Bang.
Gunshots rang out one after another, but each sounded slightly different.
Yang Yi was practicing his marksmanship.
The flintlock was unreliable, so he had to improve his accuracy to make up for that shortcoming.
A piece of wood hung from the stern, while Yang Yi stood at the bow and fired at it.
He fired once a minute. Misfires did not matter; he was only practicing anyway.
A fishing rod lay beside him, and he glanced at the sea from time to time to see if anything had bitten.
An entire morning passed, and he had only landed a dozen or so shots. He was still a million miles from being a sharpshooter!
Yang Yi ate a Long-Legged Sardine.
He had grown used to eating them now and discovered that Long-Legged Sardines had an excellent texture, especially their four long legs. They were crunchy and tasted like chicken!
In one more day, the storm the system had mentioned would arrive.
Yang Yi had stockpiled ten Eyeball Fruits, one loaf of black bread, 6 L of fresh water, and a dozen or so Long-Legged Sardines.
During that time, he had also caught a big one, a full half meter long!
[Name: Red-Lipped Eel] [Type: Food] [Description: A fine pair of fiery red lips. Too bad they grew on a fish's mouth! Would you like a passionate French kiss with it? An Abyssal Fish. Edible, non-toxic, with tender lips.]
The fish had given him quite a fright when it first appeared.
Eating it raw would mean having to gnaw on those fiery red lips. Even Yang Yi found it difficult to bring himself to take a bite... unless he was truly hungry.
The sight of those fiery red lips reminded Yang Yi of last night's nightmare.
The dream was still fresh in his memory. In it, a red-eyed woman had held a gun to his head.
Those vivid, almost dripping red eyes had sent a chill through him...
[You feel unnerved. Sanity decreased by 8.]
Yang Yi was very familiar with the gun in the woman's hand, too. It was his own flintlock, though he had no idea why it had ended up in her hands...
Just thinking about it filled him with lingering fear.
Thanks to that, Yang Yi had slept poorly again, leaving thick, dark circles around his eyes...
Fortunately, the corpse poison in his body had already been cleared, and his wounds had mostly healed. His health was at 76; it was just that his energy recovered too slowly.
A night's sleep only restored around 30 energy, severely limiting his daytime activities.
This absolutely could not go on.
He needed to find a way to restore energy quickly to offset this drawback.
Holy Water, for instance, could restore energy, but it was too expensive, and its recovery effect was not very strong...
As he mulled it over, he suddenly received an anonymous message.
"Look to the upper right. There's an island there!"
"Who are you?"
Yang Yi sent a reply, but the other person did not respond again.
In this world, to initiate a private chat with someone, you had to know at least their ship's name. If it was not a special ship, you also had to know the person's name.
But Yang Yi had never volunteered his information.
How had this person found out?
Did they have cheats?
After thinking it over for a while, he reached two conclusions.
1. The other person might have a special skill, had spotted him, and had learned his ship's name. This person was also not far from him!
2. This was a special quest issued by the system.
He walked a full circuit of the ship but saw no suspicious ships.
There was indeed an island to the upper right.
The island was small, with flecks of green. There were probably trees on it.
Those trees could most likely be cut down for wood.
There might also be other things to gain on the island.
If he had happened to discover it himself, he probably would have gone ashore to take a look.
But now that someone had pointed it out, he felt uncertain instead.
In the end, Yang Yi decided to circle the island first and observe it.
If there were no other ships or signs of player activity, he would choose a suitable spot to go ashore and take a look.
The gun in his hand gave him confidence.
At this stage, almost no players had guns. At least, he had not seen any in the chat channel.
As the ship drew closer, Yang Yi got a clear view of the whole island.
It was a tropical island about three kilometers in diameter, not particularly large.
Golden beaches lined its edges, with some shellfish and crabs moving about on them. To Yang Yi, these were all protein!
But what attracted Yang Yi most were the coconut palms on the island.
The tallest of them even had a bronze treasure chest hanging from it.
There were also no signs of players having come ashore.
No one had touched these coconuts!
After hesitating for a while, Yang Yi decided to go ashore after all.
He chose a suitable spot to drop anchor, then brought the ship to shore and disembarked.
The moment he set foot on land, Yang Yi felt as though a lifetime had passed.
Yet he had only spent a few days at sea.
He gathered some food on the beach, such as mud crabs, clams, and scallops.
[Name: Mud Crab] [Type: Food] [Description: A common crab. All-natural and pollution-free, with rich, succulent meat.] [Name: Clam] [Type: Ingredient] [Description: A common edible shellfish. Can be made into delicious clam soup.] [Name: Scallop] [Type: Food] [Description: If you have minced garlic and glass noodles, grill a few of these for a taste you will never forget!]
Yang Yi gathered a pile and tossed them into the cabin, planning to eat them later.
Next came the main event: a whole stand of lush green coconut palms.
Most of these trees were seven or eight meters tall, while the tallest reached well over ten meters, laden with heavy coconuts.
These were an important source of fresh water, and they kept well. The flesh could also provide dietary fiber.
They tasted good, too.
They were treasures he absolutely could not pass up once he found them!
But Yang Yi was not good at climbing trees. If he lost his footing, he might even break a leg or his spine.
He had no way to treat injuries, so he could not take that risk.
Shooting them down with his gun... would be convenient, but far too loud. If there were monsters on the island, that would be trouble.
He walked around near the trees, and some stones of various sizes caught his attention.
[Name: Stone] [Type: Material] [Description: Can be collected as stone for crafting. For large rocks, you had better have a pickaxe ready.]
Yang Yi simply gathered a pile of medium-sized stones and placed them on the shore.
Then he swam aboard the Nightmare, adjusted its position, and used the grappling hook to haul them aboard.
After two trips, he had collected a total of 25 units of stone.
Crafting a crude stone axe required 5 units of stone and 5 units of wood.
This was a built-in crafting function in the logbook, which could make some of the most basic tools, including fishing rods, spears, bows, and arrows.
The quality was certainly poor, though. After all, they did not even display stats and were inferior even to ordinary equipment.
He disembarked with a stone axe in hand and walked toward the tallest coconut palm.
More than ten large coconuts hung from it, along with a bronze treasure chest.
This was the first tree he planned to chop down.
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