Did being a good person mean getting a screwdriver pointed at your head?

After listening to Zhu Yu's tearful account.

Qin Mao's face darkened completely.

"So the woman among the four escapees executed two days ago was your wife?"

"Yeah..."

"So she was an adult, she ran knowing the consequences, and you blame me for her death?"

"Yeah..."

"So you hate Wang Tai, but you can't deal with his gun, so you decided to take it out on me?"

"Yeah..."

"So you blame me for fixing the Hope?"

"Yeah..."

"In other words, your little group hates Wang Tai's murderous rule but doesn't dare resist him, so you wanted to wait for the ship to sink and take him down with you? And because I can repair the ship, I've made your miserable lives stretch on with no end in sight?!"

Qin Mao rattled off his questions, and sure enough, all he got in return was another muffled "Yeah."

What kind of insane logic was that?

He suddenly felt utterly drained.

"Between me and Wang Tai, who do you think is the good person?"

Zhu Yu hesitated, images of Qin Mao clubbing fish and Wang Tai killing people flashing through his mind.

After struggling with himself, he answered, "You."

"Then why stick a screwdriver into my head instead of his?"

This time, Zhu Yu sounded perfectly justified.

"Because you're a good person!"

Seeing his shameless, nothing-to-lose attitude, Qin Mao finally laughed in anger.

His face was as black as the bottom of a pot.

"Fine, fine, fine! Good people deserve to die, and good people deserve to get screwdrivers jammed into their heads?!"

Zhu Yu fell silent.

A long while passed.

"Well, you're the one who knows how to repair ships..." His voice was feeble.

Qin Mao could no longer hold back. Slaps rained down as though they cost him nothing.

"What's wrong with a dedicated Shipwright doing his job and repairing a ship? What law says I can't repair ships?"

"Ptoo!"

Zhu Yu spat out a mouthful of bloody saliva and glared at him.

"You haven't suffered what we have! Does being a Transcendent give you the right to look down on us? I'm telling you! We made our peace with dying together long ago!"

"...Then why don't you scuttle the ship?"

"Sink it, and wouldn't that settle everything?"

"Uh, well..."

Zhu Yu quickly lowered his head and fell silent again.

"A bunch of spineless cowards afraid to die!"

Qin Mao shot him a contemptuous glare.

Still not satisfied, he slapped him twice more.

All the while, he was thinking about how to wrap up tonight's little incident.

Finally, he looked at the other man with a faint, ambiguous smile and said:

"All right, get lost!"

In his eyes, this man was already dead.

Unaware of Qin Mao's thoughts, Zhu Yu was surprised by this decision.

So... that was it?

"First Mate Qin... thank you... as for you killing my wife... let's call it even. I won't attack you again."

"But please stop helping that tyrant do evil! Wang Tai secretly killed the dying old captain and stole his sidearm. Heaven will punish him sooner or later!"

With that, he got up to leave.

"Stop! Why tonight?"

Zhu Yu stopped and turned around.

He pointed at the dry plant leaves beneath the bed, looking a little aggrieved.

"Because you were too cautious. I couldn't find a better opportunity."

"First Mate Qin, you... if you can escape tomorrow, do it! This ship is cursed. The fourteen days are almost up, and everyone might die when the time comes."

"What fourteen days?! Explain yourself!"

He still hadn't figured out the seven days, and now there were fourteen?

The door opened.

Zhu Yu turned a deaf ear to his calls.

He hurried out through the light of the flashlight, which was growing dimmer as its battery ran low.

Like the male lead at the end of many a movie, stepping into the light to embrace a new life.

But he had dared attack him...

Qin Mao lightened his steps, hurried forward, and swiftly closed in behind him.

Squelch-

The screwdriver struck the major artery in his neck three times in succession, drawing three sprays of blood.

Then Qin Mao turned back into the room with a cold expression and shut the door.

After blocking the door with the small wooden table, he lay back down on the bed.

He had gotten everything he could out of him. As for what he shouldn't ask, forcing him wouldn't get any answers either.

Then he might as well send him on to his next life sooner.

"I'm a Transcendent! Treating ordinary people like ants is normal. Being timid would only make people suspicious."

Qin Mao lay on the bed, his expression serene.

Had that idiot Zhu Yu been brain-damaged before the apocalypse, or had he only gotten worse afterward?

Either way, after drifting at sea for a year without enough food or clothing, constantly avoiding uncanny beings and guarding against the captain using him as ammunition, his mental state and worldview were bound to go wrong sooner or later.

And people who had gone mad like that.

Zhu Yu clearly wasn't the only one aboard.

"This fucking apocalypse!"

Many people probably went mad or were driven to death by that endless pressure before uncanny beings ever killed them.

But his final words before leaving still gave Qin Mao endless food for thought.

"Fourteen days..."

After thinking for a long time without coming up with anything, he decided to sleep.

Lying in bed, filled with fear of the unknown and his heart still pounding from having just killed someone, Qin Mao took a long time to drift into a hazy sleep.

The next day.

Qin Mao got up, fetched water, collected his supplies, and took care of his personal hygiene himself.

His little attendant Zhu Yu was gone.

The others watched him fearfully. No one dared approach him anymore.

The ship was only so big. Even someone secretly gnawing on fish bones in the middle of the night because they couldn't bear their hunger would get found out.

Not to mention how much noise there had been last night.

Soon, one version of events spread among the Hope's survivors.

It said Qin Mao had a penchant for torture and murder.

In the dead of night, he had threatened Zhu Yu into going to his room to be tortured. Zhu Yu's stifled cries of pain had drifted out intermittently, and in the end, Qin Mao had killed him.

The story was told in vivid detail, as though those spreading it had seen everything themselves.

Given another couple of days, it would probably evolve into another version involving unspeakable things between men.

At eleven that morning, the fleet approached a small island.

On its eastern side stood a huge black rock shaped like an ape.

Wang Tai took out a crumpled booklet and compared it against the island, his face lighting up.

"Good, good! It really is Stone Ape Island!"

"You've been here before?" Qin Mao gave the booklet another look.

"Yes! The Hope Fleet records the islands and uncanny beings it encounters along the way in this logbook."

Wang Tai ordered people to prepare sacks to take ashore.

"There's a plant called mulberry stalk on Stone Ape Island. Its stems can be boiled down for plenty of starch. It makes an excellent food reserve!"

"And the uncanny beings here are rule-based. As long as we ignore them and pretend we can't see them, they won't pose a threat."

"It's fine if we accidentally provoke one, too. They aren't strong anyway, but we should save bullets wherever we can."

Wang Tai gathered everyone and quickly made all the arrangements.

He also explained the precautions for going ashore.

He stressed repeatedly that everyone was to keep their heads down and gather supplies, without talking, looking around, or interacting with unknown creatures.

Thirty minutes later, the Hope anchored off Stone Ape Island's eastern coast.

Everyone went ashore one after another.

"Remember! Don't interact with anything on the island. If any of you attract an uncanny being and drag the group into it, hmph... I've still got several empty slots in this gun!"

After emphasizing his warning viciously once more, Wang Tai waved his hand.

"Get to work!"

Mulberry stalk grew in vast patches in the jungle on the island's eastern side.

It looked somewhat like sugarcane with lots of thick branches and broad leaves.

Harvesting it required tearing off and discarding the side branches and leaves along the grain, leaving only the thickest central stalk.

For a time.

The jungle filled with the overlapping cracks and snaps of plant tissue being broken.

Qin Mao and Wang Tai harvested in the very middle of the group, surrounded by several of Wang Tai's trusted men.

Even when Qin Mao went to relieve himself properly on the island, Wang Tai sent someone with him.

It was both to protect him and to keep him from running away because he felt too little attachment to the group.

Lunatic. This island's only so big. Where could I run?

He cursed inwardly.

After thinking it over, Qin Mao felt that the seven days and fourteen days were probably different ways of referring to the same point in time.

It never hurt to be careful.

No matter what, he decided to escape before then-in other words, before tomorrow morning.

As he worked gathering mulberry stalk, he refined his escape plan in his head.

His only regret was that he hadn't learned any useful way to become a Sequence Transcendent.

Wang Tai didn't know much either.

He had only told him that most Sequence Transcendents awakened naturally, with no pattern to follow.

A very few used Sequence Potions.

Those were treasures everyone at sea fought over, something one could only find by chance.

In other words, they were expensive, and unavailable even if you had the money.

At the end, he had even asked why Qin Mao cared about such questions when he was a Transcendent who had already awakened.

Qin Mao could only feign nonchalance and say he was simply curious.

That had gotten him through.

They had safely gathered half the supplies, and everyone was starting to let their guard down.

At the edge of the mulberry stalk grove, a strange figure approached the Hope's survivors.

"Hey, friend. Fresh coconuts... want one?"