The Extraordinary Must Not Be Insulted

At night, Qin Mao slept soundly in the Captain's Quarters.

A familiar skill swept over and landed on him.

The instant it landed, [Yearning for Freedom]'s mental resistance nullified it outright.

But the fluctuation, which likewise operated on the soul, still woke him.

"Again! Once every day. Do you want to raise my affection for you that badly?"

He had taken four casts of [Heart Link] over four days. The affection vanished as soon as it increased, nullified by [Yearning for Freedom] every time.

Qin Mao muttered a few words, got up, and quietly peered out over the windowsill.

Sure enough, Su Miaomiao's furtive figure had boarded the ship again.

She probably also had a skill similar to concealment.

She made no sound, gave no sign. Without the skill notification, he would never have noticed her sneaking aboard the Eerie Coconut.

Su Miaomiao had no idea her skill had absolutely no effect on Qin Mao.

[Heart Link] could increase three targets' affection each day. Each application was weak, but its strength lay in the fact that the affection stacked, and it could even be used on eerie entities.

Often, thanks to that tiny scrap of affection the skill provided,

an eerie entity that had been about to hunt her down would switch its target to another human.

It was also thanks to this skill that, despite being a weak woman, she was well-liked aboard the ship and could quietly resolve any trouble she encountered.

And now, after meeting Qin Mao, who had returned alive, she had thought long and hard and made a bold decision.

She would make Qin Mao... and his ship her private property!

"It's already been four days. Eleven more days. Eleven days before I can make this Anomalous Object Vehicle change owners..."

As Su Miaomiao thought, she frowned and endured the pain of slitting her wrist again, spilling blood over it as though it cost nothing.

"Logically, he doesn't know someone's competing with him for the anomalous object, so he probably doesn't feed it much blood each day. My chances of succeeding should be pretty good, right?"

Su Miaomiao pondered.

"No, to be safe, I'd better give it some more!"

Even as an extraordinary, her body could not withstand repeatedly losing so much blood. Her face was haggard, her lips pale, and her energy and spirits had dwindled considerably.

She had originally sensed an opportunity to advance to Sequence 2, but with her body continually weakening, that advancement would probably have to be postponed.

If she hadn't still been able to trick Zhou Hao into giving her extra food, she would not have been able to keep going.

Several times, she had wanted to simply kill Qin Mao and seize the ship, but for one thing, she feared the other extraordinaries would discover it, and for another, she couldn't bear to give up an extraordinary puppet.

When Qin Mao had been an ordinary person, he had been a burden. Now that he was an extraordinary, he had become a prized catch in her eyes again.

"Little boat, little boat, eat up. Fill your tummy and come into Mommy's arms soon~"

Her voice was tender as water, her gaze burning.

Hardening her heart, she squeezed her arm and increased the flow of blood.

Perhaps the Thousand-Faced Eerie Coconut had grown familiar with this new provider, for it greedily gulped down the fresh blood through its trunk, neither making a sound nor attacking.

To Su Miaomiao, this was tangible proof that feeding it blood was "working."

The woman thought herself clever, unaware that Qin Mao could see her every move clearly through the gap in the window.

Well, well! How did I never notice how ruthless this woman was before? That's got to be over 800 ml, right?

An ordinary person donating more than 400 ml at once would get dizzy, suffer palpitations, or even faint. Even if she's an extraordinary, this is too... damn... she's really ruthless with herself!

Qin Mao marveled inwardly.

How would she react when, after contributing so much blood, she discovered in the end that he had been playing her?

Keep feeding it, Su Miaomiao.

Qin Mao fought back the urge to blow her head off, taking out [Just Verdict] before putting it away again.

He bit his tongue, using the piercing pain to force his hatred down like a spring, compressing it deep in his heart.

He would not merely make her a sacrifice to the Eerie Coconut.

He would also make her crumble into despair, little by little.

Until, on the fifteenth day, he released that spring of resentment, letting his fury become a roaring evil dragon that tore her apart without leaving a scrap!

Glancing at his watch, he quietly turned another page in the countdown to this vicious woman's death.

The next day, everyone in the fleet got up two hours late.

After fleeing with terror dogging their every step over the previous two days, the survivors relaxed their taut nerves and enjoyed a good lie-in.

After washing up, Qin Mao turned on the induction cooker in the sunlight and took out the Delicious Wok to boil just under half a wok of water.

Several packs of self-heating hot pot were damaged, their heating packs ruptured and no longer capable of heating the ingredients, so he simply took one out to cook.

Unfortunately, he had no mooncakes. Those things were pure mixtures of sugar and oil, packing a frightening number of calories into a tiny piece-perfect for the apocalypse.

He poured the broad hot pot noodles, wood ear mushrooms, lotus root slices, potato slices, meatballs, little sausages, and other ingredients into the boiling water, then squeezed in the hot pot base. Feeling the portion was too small, he added a small handful of dried noodles to cook with them.

Five minutes later, the spicy little hot pot was ready.

Although they were ordinary ingredients full of all sorts of additives, they were an exceedingly rare delicacy in the apocalypse. Enhanced by the Delicious Wok, they were especially savory, fragrant, spicy, and numbing.

"Yes! Finally, I can eat my fill!"

Qin Mao alternated mouthfuls of noodles and meatballs, slurped up every last drop of broth, then poured in warm water and drank even the wok-rinsing water clean.

His Sequence taboo had already refreshed yesterday.

For the next three days, his [Free Person] Sequence taboo was: no lying.

It was quite a troublesome taboo.

Who didn't lie when talking to other people? Say whatever came to mind, and your mouth would get you into trouble before you even knew how you had died.

Qin Mao decided to keep his mouth shut as much as possible for these three days.

Less talking, less chatting, lest he find himself in some dilemma.

The fleet did not linger. It set sail at a quarter past eleven, sailing across the sea with the wind.

At noon, he heard some news.

Red Scarf's mother had jumped into the sea holding Red Scarf, from the railing where Black Shirt had fallen overboard.

The incident sparked another wave of panic aboard the ship.

The survivors were like birds startled by a bowstring. Thinking the eerie entity that had made people unknowingly jump into the sea two days earlier had returned, they cried and wailed in terror.

Only when Yang Fan personally dispelled the rumor, saying the mother and son had committed suicide,

did the spread of fear stop.

Qin Mao maintained that he was innocent.

He had merely been watching the commotion aboard the Yaximu

and said, "The ship's already traveled so far. What's the point of jumping in and searching the wrong spot?" only to immediately suffer an attack and abuse from Red Scarf's father.

"It's all your fault! You demon!"

The man pointed at Qin Mao, his expression vicious, wishing he could hack him into pieces.

"What does it have to do with me? Wasn't it you two old bastards who spoiled them?"

"When siblings don't get along, it's usually because their parents lack virtue. Haven't you heard that?"

Qin Mao shot back on the spot.

"How is it not your fault?!" the man roared in anguish on the deck.

"If you hadn't played that rock-paper-scissors game, Lele wouldn't have hated Xuanxuan or blamed his little brother for stealing his parents' love! Our family was happy and harmonious. They would always have been good children!"

"Huh? Is that so? Why do I remember your wife taking the water your older son won at rock-paper-scissors that day and giving it to your younger son first, leaving the older one only the dregs?"

"Friend, if you can't bear to discipline your own children, and society does it for you, then just take it!"

Qin Mao curled his lips, his tone unruffled, arguing with the man in quite a gentlemanly fashion.

Anyone seeing him like this would have thought the young man had a fairly mild temper.

But only Su Miaomiao, who understood him best, knew this was a sign that Qin Mao was suppressing himself to the extreme.

In the wrong and left speechless by the retort, the man still stubbornly yelled and shouted.

"You're the one who set it off, anyway! You heartless bastard! Why don't you go die?!"

His wife was dead, and both his sons were dead, by suicide at that. He no longer wanted to care about right or wrong. He only wanted to vent his overwhelming pain and regret to his heart's content.

"I don't care! It's all your fault, you demon! Someone like you becoming an extraordinary is an insult to extraordinaries! From now on, Xuanxuan's and Lele's wronged souls will haunt you every night..."

Bang-

A gunshot rang out without warning. The fishbone bullet exploded inside the man's chest, and half his chest cavity vanished.

Amid the terrified cries of "Murder!" around them, Qin Mao gently pushed his shoulder with the gun barrel. "Noisy!"

"You... how dare you... kill..."

With profound disbelief, the corpse with its mangled heart tipped backward, then fell straight into the sea.

"There! Sent your whole family off for a reunion. I really am just too kind."

He sighed softly.

The crowd erupted, then grew furious.

"Murder! An extraordinary has killed someone!"

"We demand that the murderer be punished!"

"Ordinary lives matter!"

"Ordinary people help ordinary people!"

"This is a civilized society! Even if he was wrong to insult you, you can't kill him! No extraordinary privileges! Captain Yang, Captain Yan, Captain Ye, give us all an explanation!"

Soon, a new message spread like the wind to every survivor's ears:

The Hope Fleet's third iron law: the extraordinary must not be insulted!

This iron law took effect immediately.

It was added after [Absolute Obedience] and [Survival Above All]. Together, the three iron laws stood above every shipboard rule.