A new ship is born

Fire flashed across the endlessly whispering sea.

The crystallization of human civilization burst into brilliant fireworks beneath the green moonlight, briefly illuminating these waters.

Qin Mao wanted to say that time bombs were actually very easy to make.

A small bomb stolen from the ammunition hold, the little alarm clock in his room with its dead battery, 300 Kill Points... plus the five seconds when Wang Tai had turned his head and wasn't looking.

That was enough.

[Ding-you killed an ordinary human. Gained 500 Kill Points.]

[Ding-you killed an ordinary human. Gained 500 Kill Points.]

[Ding-you killed a fish. Gained 8 Kill Points.]

...The system notifications rang out without end.

At first, Qin Mao counted them in his head, but later he couldn't keep track of how many times they had sounded.

Until he couldn't hold his breath any longer.

His face flushed red as he surfaced and sucked in a deep breath.

The sea was calm, with only slight ripples.

Apart from the broken, burning, or charred planks floating everywhere, and the small remaining portion of a sailboat blazing in the distance...

There was nothing else.

Thinking of the boatful of people who had been laughing and talking just last night, now separated from him forever, Qin Mao felt an inexplicable trace of melancholy.

A bunch of pitiful wretches who'd lost themselves, spending every day groveling and living in fear...

I helped free them from their suffering. What boundless merit!

Qin Mao wiped the cold seawater from his face and let out several deep breaths.

No choice. Better them than me.

He was only a survivor struggling with everything he had to stay alive in the apocalypse.

The old crisis was resolved, but the new crisis out on the sea demanded immediate attention.

The large raft was nowhere near safe enough.

To guard against monsters that might emerge from the sea at any moment, he had to upgrade it into a real ship capable of protecting him as soon as possible!

First, he quickly located the large raft, swam over, and untied the oars.

He rowed while collecting the planks scattered across the sea.

Large or small, broken, fitted with iron nails or plates, burned... he turned none of them away.

He collected them one by one and piled them on the large raft.

Broken masts, burned sails, ropes of varying lengths... he retrieved everything in sight without leaving a single piece behind!

Soon.

A tall heap of junk had formed on the large raft, nearly four meters wide and eight meters long.

With the thought of "one more raw material means one less Kill Point spent," he never tired of it.

To make the raft carry more materials, he even had to consider how to interlock and stack them:

First, he used several long planks to make a simple "fence," then packed more planks into every available gap.

Qin Mao felt as though he were picking strawberries in an orchard: "Twenty a basket, stuff in as much as you like."

It also felt like his university days, picking out ingredients at Shuxiang Maocai: "Eleven a basket, as much as you can fit."

Gradually, he got into it, experimenting, adjusting, picking things up, fitting them in, treating it all as a game.

Eventually, the seawater had chilled his hands to the bone.

There was no longer any room for him on the large raft, so he could only stay in the water to collect the remaining wood.

"The bigger the boat, the better my chances of survival!"

He gritted his teeth and persevered, and, deciding to give it a try, pushed the boat little by little toward what remained of the Hope.

It was very difficult at first, but after a long time, he finally pushed it over with the help of the current.

Then he joined several lengths of rope and loosely lashed the small remaining section of the hull to the raft.

Even a random wave could have broken them apart.

But at least they looked like a single whole on the surface.

As far as he could see, a few scattered planks and pieces of mulberry stalk still floated in the distance.

They were too far away, and he was utterly exhausted, so he couldn't be bothered to swim over and collect them.

All he wanted now was to finish upgrading the boat, then lie aboard and sleep for a full day and night before considering anything else.

Dragging his exhausted body along, Qin Mao finally dared to relax. He pressed a hand against the raft, about to upgrade it.

But.

At the very moment he was most relaxed and least on guard.

Suddenly! A dark figure leaped from the half-burned ship, whose flames were gradually dying, clutching a wooden spike and stabbing straight down at his eyes!

The figure's timing could not have been better.

It was precisely when Qin Mao had exhausted his strength, when he was weakest and most relaxed!

"Shit!"

He struggled desperately to dodge, but only managed to move his head and neck out of danger.

The tip of the wooden spike, as thick as his arm, still plunged savagely into his shoulder, while he punched the dark figure away.

"Haha, hahaha! Hahahaha!"

Wang Tai laughed with abandon, his eyes full of mockery.

"You really are my good brother! Even our decisions to blow up the ship were exactly the same!"

"Kid, you destroyed my future and the Hope. Bet you didn't expect it to end like this, did you?"

"All alone on this sea, with a badly wounded shoulder... even if you have a boat, how will you turn the rudder? Handle the sails? Gather supplies? Deal with an infected wound?"

"Qin Mao, you're dead! Hahaha! Getting to drag you and this whole shipful of people down with me before I die makes it worth it!"

Holding on to the remaining half of the burning ship, he laughed maniacally out at sea.

Qin Mao put some distance between them, looking grimly at the wound in his left shoulder.

He didn't dare pull out the wooden spike. Even if the wound didn't get infected, he would die from excessive blood loss.

He really had no idea how Wang Tai had survived such a massive explosion.

Did he have some other means of saving his life that Qin Mao didn't know about?

It seemed he couldn't afford to underestimate anyone on this sea, not even a little!

At this point, he could only take a gamble.

Keeping an eye on Wang Tai, he endured the pain and continued calling on the system through his shivering.

"Sy... system, upgrade!"

[Ding-multiple ship materials detected. Repair/upgrade?]

"Upgrade!"

[Ding-host's Kill Points balance: 21,400. Spend 10,000 points to upgrade ship materials?]

"Why so expensive! Whatever, hurry up!"

[Upgrading...]

By now, his whole body was almost frozen stiff, and he was showing symptoms of hypothermia. Even staying afloat was very difficult.

He desperately needed a boat!

An invisible wind swept across the sea and over the pile of materials.

The miraculous scene from before unfolded again. That uncanny craftsmanship and wondrous transformation made even Wang Tai stop laughing and widen his eyes once more.

"No way... he's not trying to build a ship right here, is he... how is that possible..."

This time took much longer than before.

Previously, it had taken half a minute at most. This time, it took more than a full quarter of an hour.

During that time, Wang Tai tried several times to close in and attack, but Qin Mao quickly put distance between them.

Soon.

The large raft, the materials piled on top of it, and the half-burned wooden ship vanished completely.

In their place appeared a new wooden ship twenty meters long.

It was a single-masted, fore-and-aft-rigged sailboat.

Its yellow-and-black mottled surface resembled a half-charred block of wood washed into the sea.

The hull looked like remains that had rolled and struggled through hellfire before finally solidifying, covered in twisted, cracked patterns like the charred blood vessels of a living creature, mingled with the decaying scent of ash and scorching.

Its lines were smooth. Beneath the uneven scorch marks on the hull, an eerie dark red showed through in irregular patches, like lava that had not fully solidified, or embers still smoldering beneath skin.

That dark red pulsed faintly beneath the emerald moonlight. Touching it sent a cold, strangely burning sting through the fingertips.

Shivering, Qin Mao squeezed out the last of his strength, climbed up the detachable wooden ladder, and lay on the deck, gasping for breath.

Only after a long while did a little sensation return to his body.

Then he slowly moved to the bow and looked down over the side.

On the sea.

Wang Tai looked grim, his mouth hanging wide open as he clung to a plank and bobbed with the waves.

"Goddamn it, you've got to be kidding..."

"Impossible. I've never heard of a Shipwright like this. You're not a Shipwright, not from the Shipwright Sequence..."

He muttered in disbelief in the water.

"At least not a Shipwright Sequence 1 Repair Apprentice!"

"To create a twenty-meter ship out of thin air so quickly, wouldn't that take Sequence 4 or Sequence 5?!"

"Could it be the Designer Sequence? The Printer Sequence? Or the Visionary Sequence?"

Wang Tai was not a Beyonder. Everything he knew about Beyonders came from scraps of information revealed in conversations between the Beyonders of the Hope Fleet.

But even so, he could still sense how inconceivable Qin Mao was.

"Qin... Brother Qin, saving a life is better than building a seven-story pagoda. Look, do you think there's still a chance for me?"

With immense difficulty, he forced a smile onto his face.