Yang Fan's deductions

A fine drizzle began falling over the sea as Fu Qingshi spoke.

Qin Mao felt an eager stirring inside.

The corpse before him had been a scientist in life and might have known a great deal of inside information about this apocalypse.

"A scientist? Then can you tell me..." He was itching to ask, feeling that the truth might be close at hand.

"Shh-" Fu Qingshi raised his index finger to his lips, signaling for silence.

"Don't ask. I know what you want to ask." He slowly shook his head.

"I'm already dead. It's only my remaining Transcendent Power and the Chang-Driving Pufferfish that have left me half-dead like this."

"Your question... has no answer in what remains of my memories."

The drizzle felt cool against his face, but Fu Qingshi made no attempt to avoid it, calmly meeting Qin Mao's gaze in the rain.

"My friend, don't reach beyond your grasp. This world has nothing to do with ants below Sequence 9..."

Halfway through, Fu Qingshi suddenly turned his head and glanced toward the Hope in surprise.

He sounded rather taken aback. "You actually saw through my mental overlay? Your companions have some skills too."

"Damn it, that filthy beast is demanding flesh again!"

Fu Qingshi glared at the sea in disgust, then turned back and pointed at the gun in Qin Mao's hand.

"Shoot, my friend."

"Coming back to life for a little while was interesting, but I've had enough."

"Remember to stockpile supplies as soon as you get back ashore! If I remember correctly, next year is 2040. Things on land might be unsettled for a while then."

He closed his eyes, ready to die.

But the confusion on Qin Mao's face only deepened.

"Wait, are you sure you've got that right? Isn't it already 2040? The land's been completely overrun by anomalies! It was already August 2040 when I set sail!"

"What?! 2040?!"

Fu Qingshi's eyes widened.

He looked around in disbelief. "I've been dead... for over a year?! Did the world still end up..."

"I thought I'd only died yesterday!"

A helpless expression uglier than tears crossed his face. Countless thoughts flashed through his mind in an instant, and he silently raised his head, tears streaming down his face.

So many things seemed to make sense, yet so many others no longer did. The more he thought, the more tangled his thoughts became, until his head felt ready to split.

"No! Then now... has it already... in the end, it still... Impossible! I don't believe it! You're lying to me, aren't you?!"

He roared at Qin Mao, overcome with agitation.

Qin Mao stepped back and pointed at the sky with his left hand. "Why would I lie to you? Look at the moon! Was the moon this green in 2039?"

Fu Qingshi looked up, then lowered his head dejectedly a moment later.

"Everything I see... is black and white."

"Perhaps I really did die long ago."

"Shoot, my friend. Science allows no room for carelessness. I must see the truth!"

Qin Mao pressed his lips together.

He knew nothing of this man's life or character, yet subconsciously felt that he wasn't a bad person.

Even their hostility was due to the Chang-Driving Pufferfish's control over him.

Judging by his current mental state, Qin Mao probably wouldn't get any useful information out of him.

"All right, my friend. As you wish."

He placed heavy emphasis on "my friend."

Bang-

The thunderous gunshot rang through the night sky, booming over the sea.

[Just Verdict] Ability 3: Resonant Blast. Wherever the gunshot reaches, it can briefly dispel confusion and restore clarity.

Along with the deafening gunshot, three layers of invisible mental barriers shattered in the minds of everyone in the fleet.

Fu Qingshi's [Mind Veiling]... broken!

The Chang-Driving Pufferfish's [Chang Ghost Binding]... broken!

Fu Qingshi's [Impression Replacement]... broken!

Aboard the [Rose] and the [Hope], two seemingly ordinary survivors slowly shed their disguises, revealing their most skeletal side and setting off a series of screams.

Fu Qingshi sat quietly where he was, a fishbone bullet having passed through his head.

He turned his neck and lowered his head, watching his skin and flesh gradually fade from his body like an illusion, until only stark white bones remained.

After taking two bullets from an epic-grade wondrous item, even a Sequence 4 remnant soul could no longer hold on.

The skeleton in tattered clothes moved his jaw slightly before Qin Mao.

"Ha! So... I really have been dead this long!"

He rummaged inside his abdominal cavity with a bony hand, shakily pulled out a square metal plate, and casually tossed it to Qin Mao. Then he lost consciousness completely and fell under the pull of gravity.

"Thank you... keep it safe. Don't let any... know..."

[Ding-you killed a transcendent remnant soul and gained 1,500 Kill Points]

The rain over the sea grew into a downpour.

Qin Mao stood quietly with his gun in hand, his thoughts unknown.

Thud, thud, thud!

Three figures arrived on the deck of the Ten-Thousand-Li Divine Radiance one after another.

"Hey, buddy, were you the one who fired just now?"

Yan Qi wiped the water from his face with his sleeve and looked at the gun in Qin Mao's hand.

"Yes. It's a wondrous item that can briefly break mental control."

Qin Mao slipped the square metal plate into his pocket without drawing attention and answered openly.

"Oh, great! If you could break mental control, why didn't you use it sooner? Look at the mess we ended up in!"

Ye Xuanyin planted her hands on her hips, puffing up in indignation.

"I'm guessing Brother Qin didn't refuse to use it. He couldn't."

Yang Fan joined the conversation as he jumped down from the boarding ladder, panting, the last to reach the deck of the Ten-Thousand-Li Divine Radiance.

"We saw that pufferfish eating people in the sea earlier. Based on my deductions, either a transcendent with mental or anomaly-controlling abilities was working hand in glove with it, or the Chang-Driving Pufferfish was commanding the corpse of a human mental-type transcendent."

"Based on Brother Qin's description, I deduced that corpses controlled by the Chang-Driving Pufferfish regain self-awareness and look no different from living people on the surface. If they were transcendents, they could even use the Transcendent Power they had in life."

"So, aside from killing the corpses it commands, the simplest way to deal with a Chang-Driving Pufferfish is to directly interrupt its mental control! But all four of us overlooked that at the time. That's far too abnormal! The Chang-Driving Pufferfish doesn't have that ability itself, so it must have been because of that transcendent corpse."

"So that should also be why Brother Qin forgot to use his gun... That corpse was really powerful, able to effortlessly suppress our thoughts of acting against it and our use of wondrous items on a mental level!"

Qin Mao was rather surprised by Yang Fan's well-reasoned deductions.

"Captain Yang, that's one sharp brain you've got! All you're missing is a voice-changing bow tie and a tranquilizer watch!"

He hadn't expected this unremarkable-looking boy to be so meticulous, his reasoning even more comprehensive than that of someone like himself who had already been out in society.

No wonder a young man with little combat ability had become the fleet's captain, with so many people aboard accepting his leadership willingly and without objection.

He had thought it was because of his transcendent abilities, but now it seemed the Navigator Sequence was only part of the reason.

Ye Xuanyin also caught on, realization dawning on her.

"No wonder! Thinking back, what kind of garbage questions have I been asking the Book of Answers these past two days? So it was mental interference!"

Yan Qi also took out his Yinling Orb and slapped his thigh angrily.

"The Chang-Driving Pufferfish can control corpses, and corpses have bones. Couldn't I just have tried my skill on each crew member? Damn it, why didn't I think of that sooner!"

Ignoring their displays of frustration, Qin Mao looked toward the other three ships. "Captain Yang, judging by how quickly you got here, you've already dealt with the other corpses aboard?"

"Yes, all done. They were corpses revived by an anomaly, after all. They were bound to give themselves away."

Yang Fan nodded, then pointed at the skeleton in ragged clothes on the deck of the Ten-Thousand-Li Divine Radiance.

"What about yours? Taken care of too?"

"Taken care of. He tried to catch me off guard and push me into the sea, but I noticed."

In the end, Qin Mao decided to conceal the two personal matters Fu Qingshi had entrusted to him, along with the square metal plate.

"Qin Mao, you have no idea how cool Captain Yang was just now! Those two corpses were like they had a layer of fog around them. Everyone was fooled into thinking they belonged to our fleet, but Captain Yang identified the suspects from nothing but rainwater traces!"

Ye Xuanyin recounted it excitedly, then immediately corrected herself. "Oh, no! The suspect corpses!"

"Rainwater traces?"

Qin Mao's interest was piqued, and he asked what had happened.

Yang Fan scratched his head a little bashfully.

"It was nothing much. Those two were just ordinary human corpses. Apart from blending into the fleet perfectly, they didn't have any special abilities."

"The people who went overboard weren't under mental control either. Those two corpses pushed living people into the sea when no one nearby was paying attention, then immediately left the scene and blended into the crowd."

"But they forgot that when someone runs fast through the rain, only the front of their clothes gets wet, while the back stays dry. That was far too big and obvious a giveaway."

Qin Mao couldn't help giving him a thumbs-up. "Sharp! Seriously sharp! I'm impressed!"

Who had nothing better to do than check whether other people's clothes were evenly wet? This kid was practically cheating. He could give a certain elementary schooler a run for his money.

If the Chang-Driving Pufferfish possessed intelligence, it would probably have cursed, "Motherfucker!"

Suddenly.

Boom! Boom!

The Ten-Thousand-Li Divine Radiance rocked violently. Something was ramming it from below.

Caught off guard, the other two tumbled to the deck in a heap. Only Yang Fan and Qin Mao remained standing, gripping the railing.

The former had grabbed it in advance; the latter relied purely on his doubled physical attributes and reaction speed.

Qin Mao looked out at the sea and sneered savagely. "A beast doing another's dirty work. Just right for some damn target practice!"

Yang Fan shouted too, "Just now-I was just about to warn you! Once all the corpses controlled by the Chang-Driving Pufferfish are dead, it'll most likely attack the ships itself!"

Ye Xuanyin and Yan Qi: "..."

"Captain Yang! Say that sooner next time!"

"Hey, buddy! Everyone's already full, and only now do you bring out the lamb!"