Bloodfang Warthog

Led by the Hope, the fleet sailed straight northeast and, by noon, did indeed reach an ordinary little round island.

It appeared to be less than a kilometer in diameter.

The island was lush with vegetation and overgrown with weeds, with two small peaks standing in its center.

"As expected of the Navigator Sequence!"

Being able to find islands easily meant being able to gather more supplies.

A ship like Wang Tai's depended entirely on luck to find islands and could only drift at sea like rootless duckweed.

The fleet dropped anchor and stopped.

Most of the survivors chose to go ashore to gather supplies.

They searched for coconuts, wild fruit, plant roots and stems, or fresh water.

"Watch the ship properly. Don't let anyone aboard to wreck things!"

"Eat... eat..."

Qin Mao kicked the mainmast, then dropped anchor and disembarked without caring whether the tree understood him.

He glanced at the other three ships. Most of the survivors didn't want to sit around until their supplies ran out and had chosen to gather supplies on the island.

Those alone carried bags and kept a wary eye on either side; those traveling with companions were few and far between; those with families found it hard to part.

Qin Mao now saw the couple he had slapped twice yesterday. The woman clutched Red Scarf and Black Shirt, tears streaming down her face, while the man held a canvas bag and said a few quiet words before walking into the crowd with a resolute expression.

"Darling, you have to come back..."

"Son, please be careful..."

To avoid alerting the eerie creatures, everyone kept their voices low even when giving parting reminders... no, perhaps their last words.

Qin Mao had seen scenes like this far too many times.

Everyone who had survived the apocalypse knew how lucky they were to return alive after leaving a shelter to gather supplies.

Although they had now left the mainland, all sorts of eerie creatures still lurked on the islands.

Qin Mao gave his shoulders a slight heave and joined the crowd with a patched backpack on his back.

There were over a hundred people aboard the ships, and seventy or eighty had come ashore.

They quickly spread out, though they didn't dare stray too far, and began gathering supplies.

But... if someone had looked down from above at that moment and counted them, they would have discovered that two extra people had appeared out of nowhere among those who had landed.

Yet no one noticed.

The island was small. To avoid attracting the eerie creatures' attention as much as possible, the group didn't dare venture deeper and searched only along the edges.

There were no coconut trees on this island, nor any Green Fruit or mulberry stalk. All they could see were weeds and shrubs.

It really was quite desolate.

After walking about two hundred meters, Qin Mao's eyes suddenly lit up.

A small blue flower caught his attention.

The little flower had five petals, and its leaves resembled both chives and wild grass, growing in clumps.

He leaned over and sniffed it, delight appearing on his face. It really was the bluegrass Wang Tai had mentioned in conversation!

It looked unremarkable, but it had well-developed roots rich in starch, kept well, and made a good reserve food.

Qin Mao immediately crouched down, pulled out a flat piece of wood, and began digging.

A moment later, he dug out an entire bluegrass root, gave it a quick shake to remove the dirt, tossed it into his backpack, and kept digging.

"What a shame about Wang Tai's ship's log! It must have recorded information on plenty of edible plants. That was precious, lifesaving experience!"

The log had vanished in the explosion, so all he could do was lament its loss as he dug.

The survivors nearby who were still searching for edible supplies had had no idea what to look for. Seeing someone take the lead, they threw caution to the wind and joined in digging up bluegrass.

Qin Mao didn't mind. There was a whole patch of it, after all.

As a transcendent, he was strong and dug with extraordinary efficiency. His only headache was that the wooden piece wasn't durable and wore down badly.

Later, he had to break branches off the shrubs to dig with, but the thin branches snapped easily, so he switched to the Ram's Horn Hammer he carried on him.

Under the sunlight, Qin Mao worked remarkably fast and soon figured out how the bluegrass roots grew.

Using the pointed side of the Ram's Horn Hammer to dig into the soil with a little extra force, he could generally dig up a plant in two strikes.

Before long, his backpack was almost full.

While Qin Mao was happily digging away at the front, something eerie happened at the rear of the group.

Wang Lao'er was carefully digging up bluegrass with a fruit knife. He didn't dare use too much force for fear of chipping the blade. Knives were scarce resources in the apocalypse, after all.

The bluegrass patch was large, but there were too many survivors. Seventy or eighty people swept through like locusts, digging up broad swathes at a time.

As they dug, Wang Laosan suddenly stood up beside him.

Wang Lao'er didn't look up, assuming he had finished digging the plants in front of him and was going to dig farther ahead on either side.

But a glance out of the corner of his eye immediately told him something was wrong.

"Laosan, why are you going back there?"

"You idiot! We've already dug everything up back there. There's jack shit left for you!"

Wang Laosan ignored him and kept walking stiffly toward the rear.

"Wang Laosan, stop! Can't you hear me talking?"

Wang Lao'er shouted in a lowered voice.

But Wang Laosan acted as though he hadn't heard and kept walking back, step by step, soon reaching the beach.

The seawater rose and fell, lapping against his calves, but he paid it no attention and kept going...

It was as though he were possessed.

Now Wang Lao'er was truly frightened. In broad daylight, a chill shot up his spine to the crown of his head.

What was most common in the apocalypse? Eerie creatures!

He suspected that Wang Laosan's current state was very likely the result of encountering one!

"C-Captain!"

Wang Lao'er stumbled over to Yang Fan, pointing toward Wang Laosan with his right hand, his voice trembling.

"Captain Yang, Wang Laosan's possessed. He, he-he..."

He was so nervous that he stammered for ages without getting another word out, unsure how to describe it. Finally, he slapped his thigh and cried out.

"...Oh, just look for yourself!"

Everyone looked in the direction he was pointing. Half of Wang Laosan's body was already in the sea.

The next moment, a wave rolled in, and his remaining upper body vanished from sight as well.

A living person had just inexplicably walked into the sea and killed himself right in front of everyone?!

Everyone who witnessed the scene felt their throat tighten, their expressions turning extremely ugly.

Yang Fan quickly stood and looked around.

"Uncle Zhang, take a head count. See if anything's happened to anyone else."

The kindly, square-faced older man beside him immediately nodded.

The results came back soon.

Besides Wang Lao'er, a woman named Zhao Cuihua was also missing.

A survivor said that the last time they had seen Zhao Cuihua, she had also been heading toward the shore. They had assumed she was going back to drop off supplies and hadn't paid attention.

Two lives had been lost without them even seeing the eerie creature. Everyone was terrified.

Yang Fan gestured for them to return. "Everyone retreat. Back to..."

Before he could finish, in the center of the island...

An eerie creature covered in black and gray suddenly leaped out of the shrubs between the two small hills!

Its body was enormous and heavy, black vapor rising from it, and its four tusks gleamed with bloody light. It stood two meters tall.

It looked much like a warthog, but far larger.

What stood out most was that this eerie creature didn't walk on all fours. Instead, it stood upside down and bounced on its snout.

As though it were on spring-loaded stilts, it hopped forward on its thick snout.

With its enormous, heavy body, every landing of its snout made the ground tremble slightly.

Together with that unknown eerie creature, there were two of them!

"Back to the ships, now!"

Yang Fan shouted to the crowd. Everyone recognized an eerie creature when they saw one and quickly retreated without needing a reminder.

Clutching their backpacks, they ran desperately toward the ships.

But the ground had been dug full of holes, and several survivors tripped and fell just as they started running.

The Bloodfang Warthog wrinkled its snout, black drool streaming down its teeth, and sprang high into the air toward the nearest crew member.

Splat!

The snout descended from above and crushed the man against the ground. His body burst from within like a ruptured bubble.

An agonized scream rang through the sky.

Qin Mao zipped up his backpack and broke into a run.

If there had been only this one eerie creature, he could have tried fighting alongside everyone else. But with two, staying alive came first.

This was his first time running on land since awakening his transcendent powers. Everything around him seemed to fly past, and his speed was astonishing. The Eerie Coconut was only two or three hundred meters away, and he reached it almost in the blink of an eye.

The other survivors behind him had covered less than a third of the distance. Even Yang Fan and Ye Xuanyin had run less than halfway.

Standing at the bow, Qin Mao caught his breath and instinctively pulled out [Just Verdict], intending to give the strange warthog a vicious shot from two hundred meters away.

"Aim carefully... hopefully I won't miss..."

But the next moment, he suddenly scratched his head and looked oddly at [Just Verdict] in his hand.

It was as though he had remembered something.

"How strange. Why am I holding a toy gun?"

"This little thing is completely useless against eerie creatures! Qin Mao, you've really lost your head in a panic!"

With that, he put the gun back into his pocket.