The Fat Captain had a kindly face and seemed extremely good-tempered, but everyone aboard this Mining Ship was clearly afraid of him.
It was not because of the half-meter-long saber with which he was trimming his nails so delicately.
Back on the Chaotian Continent, he had seldom killed anyone, or even met anyone, yet everyone had respected and feared him, just as they did now.
After leaving that bamboo chair, Cao Yuan had headed without hesitation toward the place with the most stars, and so he had encountered the humans of the Galaxy Alliance sooner than Xilai.
Perhaps because Mining Ships were the most numerous vessels in the universe, his first contact with the civilization of the Galaxy Alliance had, by coincidence, happened in the same way.
What followed, however, had been entirely different from Xilai's story.
The Mining Ship he encountered was very dilapidated, bought with money pooled by twenty-odd miners hoping to strike it rich. Those miners had never expected that the ore they had spent their life savings mining and transporting would be plundered by space pirates.
The miners were driven into a desperate corner. In their anger and despair, quite a few were even preparing to become space pirates themselves.
Cao Yuan could bear to listen no longer. With some difficulty, he squeezed out through the ore hold's doorway and began earnestly urging them not to do so.
Everyone aboard the Mining Ship was astonished, wondering where this fat man had come from.
A few of the most vicious men took him for a thief, grabbed their weapons, and prepared to kill him.
The outcome was easy to imagine.
Cao Yuan did not use force. He continued patiently persuading them, and before long, he actually convinced them all.
Of course, everyone, himself included, knew that the