Old Acquaintance

On the radar, Su Ming clearly saw the "onlookers" change course in a panic, trying to flee.

They first turned southwest and slowed to seven knots, then tried to escape south by southwest with the wind at a sixty-degree angle. Su Ming gave them no quarter, keeping his course pointed straight at them and making it clear that he could see them at all times!

Even Zijin felt a little sorry for the enemy. With such overwhelming superiority in information technology and ship performance, any struggle looked ridiculous.

With no other choice, the three ships split up, one fleeing west, one southwest, and one south.

Su Ming labeled them "Onlooker One," "Onlooker Two," and "Onlooker Three," in that order.

"They've given up already." Zijin was a little disappointed. In naval warfare, scattering and fleeing like this carried an unspoken meaning: it was understood that all these ships had permission to surrender.

She would hardly need to do anything.

But Su Ming had run into a problem. He calculated for a while. "We can only chase one," he told Zijin.

At the Zhiyuan's speed, it wasn't impossible to attack one ship and then turn on a second. The problem was that Su Ming had already spotted a new fleet on the radar, approaching from the south.

Judging by their shape, they were the Pearl Duchy's coastal frigates: six Mabe Class ships, the same kind of five-hundred-ton warships they had fought while breaking through at Cui'an Sea Cliff a few days ago. They were splitting into three groups and rapidly closing in on the reconnaissance ships.

Presumably, their gunnery officers had already updated the upper limits on their slide rules and artillery firing tables.

This wasn't the main battlefield, so Su Ming had no need to get tangled up with the Mabe Class ships. They only needed to take out one reconnaissance ship and leave before the Pearl Duchy Navy arrived.

"Which reconnaissance ship should we pick?" Su Ming asked.

"Which one is easiest to catch?" Zijin asked in return.

Su Ming thought for a moment, then pointed to the middle one heading southwest, "Onlooker Two."

"Actually, Number Three, the one heading south, is easiest to catch," Su Ming said. "But this isn't the right time to reveal the Zhiyuan's sailing capabilities."

Heading south meant the Zhiyuan would be sailing into the wind at a forty-five-degree angle. All sailing ships could do that, but only very slowly. The Zhiyuan's speed, however, would shatter everyone in this world's understanding.

Zijin understood that it would consume more fuel and accepted the choice.

In the sixth hour after setting sail, Su Ming closed the distance to "Onlooker Two" to ten kilometers. Zijin set up a reclining chair on the bridge and rested, occasionally looking up to see how close they had gotten.

The other ship acted decisively, immediately firing three white signal flares to surrender. Zijin raised a hand and sent out two yellow earth-element magic balls and one green wind-element magic ball in reply.

"That means we accept their surrender and are telling them to abandon ship," she explained the signal to Su Ming.

The people on the other ship were quick about it. By the time the Zhiyuan came within a kilometer, they had lowered their lifeboat, put on their life jackets, gathered their belongings, and crowded aboard in a rush.

The sailors were methodical and orderly. They carried their personal belongings in bundles of all sizes, and even the white flag at the bow of the lifeboat had been properly secured.

Su Ming slowed down in advance and folded away all the Zhiyuan's skeleton sails.

He had originally intended to stop the steam engine, but Zijin stopped him.

"You can't let them see your sails," she explained. "It would be trouble if they managed to copy them! They can't copy the steam engine, so it doesn't matter if they see it."

Su Ming said he understood.

"Which one of you is the captain? Step forward." Zijin sat sideways on her broom and flew over casually, calling out with a voice-amplifying spell.

A middle-aged man stood up in the lifeboat when he heard her.

"Are there any mages? Throw him over here," she continued.

The sailors shook their heads. When the Zhiyuan came after them, all the mages had fled to the other two ships in advance.

Zijin was cautious. She told the captain to swim over himself, but he hesitated after looking at the waves, which were nearly four meters high.

The girl raised her hand. Light Cut!

Four enormous blades of light sliced the reconnaissance ship into nine pieces, leaving only the rune tower in the middle intact. The reconnaissance ship quickly broke apart, its pieces slipping into the water and slowly sinking.

The captain immediately grabbed a lifebuoy and jumped into the sea with a splash.

Zijin first fished out a piece of the hull and threw it onto the deck, where she had the zombies process and dismantle it. Then she salvaged the rune tower, keeping it as intact as possible, and gently set it on the ship.

"Is this little tower worth a lot?" Su Ming was used to this by now.

"Several times more than the bounty on my head," Zijin replied. "How much of this wooden hull can we carry?"

Su Ming calculated the weight distribution. It was only three hundred tons; the Zhiyuan could handle it.

"We can take all of it for fuel," Su Ming replied. "It won't affect our speed."

Zijin immediately put the zombies to work and helped with Levitation herself. It took a full half hour to salvage everything.

The captain had barely made it halfway through the enormous waves, and he was visibly struggling.

She raised her hand and tossed him onto the ship from a distance, then sealed, bound, and blindfolded him in one smooth sequence. She was so quick about it that Su Ming began to wonder just how practiced this scholar was at doing these things.

Before either of them could question him, the captain hurriedly spilled everything he knew.

His ship was called the Four-Eyed Jenny and belonged to the Kalo Magic Guild. It had been hired by the Temple of Light to help in the battle and had formed a Far-Seeing Array with the other two reconnaissance ships, which were directly under the temple.

"But we never expected you to be so fast. Gods! Twenty knots for six straight hours!" the captain babbled.

Zijin picked up a random stick from the deck and struck him on the head. "Cut the nonsense. Stick to what matters."

The captain hurriedly got back on topic. The Far-Seeing Array was the Magic Guild's latest maritime detection technology, and the Four-Eyed Jenny was its main ship. Now that it had been destroyed, the other two could no longer work together.

The captain offered a few more bits and pieces, but none were useful, so Zijin motioned for him to shut up.

She was just about to have the zombies lock him in the lower hold when Russell, the white skeleton, walked over and handed her a book. Su Ming glanced at it. Its cover was wet, so it had clearly been salvaged along with the wreckage. Written on the cover were the words "Green Bamboo Slips and Rue Book Wrappers."

On closer inspection, however, the whole thing had the sheen of an alchemical creation. It was no ordinary book.

Zijin took the book, and her face changed the moment she felt its weight. "Katharine Osha! This belongs to her!"

The captain's heart skipped a beat. "We're from the Magic Guild. Lady Katharine left that with me for maintenance," he explained.

The scholar knocked the captain to the floor with a blow, then slammed the stick down beside his ear, leaving a small dent in the floor. "You won't be honest, will you? Still trying to hide something?"