Flying Against the Wind

It wasn't hard to guess that something was wrong with Stanton. No one carried cake and strawberries into a serious battle; if they brought food at all, it should have been rations suitable for eating in flight. That was what had first made Su Ming suspicious.

With that assumption, Stanton and Zijin had reached an unspoken understanding on the battlefield. The scholar had delayed the College of Bishops pursuing them from behind, while Stanton had opened up some distance and used illusions to put on a show, letting the White Bone Fortress go without arousing suspicion.

He had also fallen into the sea, "gravely injured," holding up his teammates while they rescued him. That made everything that had happened fit.

Working backward from there, Stanton had set the mountain on fire while the zombies were collecting fuel to deliberately obscure their vision. Clearly, Stanton hadn't understood how important the vegetation was. Fortunately, there had been shipwrecks in the sea, or Su Ming and the scholar's escape plan would have failed right then.

It made Su Ming want to punch him.

So what had Stanton come all that way to do? Just deliver information on the defenses?

"That's right, we can't count on him this time," Zijin replied. "Stanton and I are close, though no one else knows about our relationship."

"No wonder that bone dragon appeared out of nowhere and disappeared so quickly. I thought Russell, the holy archmage, had really come," Su Ming said. "I was nearly scared to death. We'd only just killed his student Galio."

A smile tugged at the corners of Zijin's mouth.

"What is it?" Su Ming asked, puzzled.

"You've met Russell before," Zijin replied. "I don't mean in the White Bone Mark's illusion. I mean in real life."

"Hey, you're adding another riddle?"

"No, I'm just giving you information," Zijin said. "Since you've already got a plan, I'll get back to engraving the magic arrays." She suddenly reached out and covered her hair with a spell.

Light flowed over her hair, and its purple disguise vanished, revealing its original teal-brown color. Her purple eyes turned a deep blue as well.

"Changing colors for a change of mood?" Su Ming asked.

Zijin shook her head. "There's no point in hiding anymore. Katharine has come, so the Temple of Light already knows who I was as a human."

"Wait a moment." He stopped her, reached into his pocket, and handed her something.

Zijin took it and found an exquisite hair tie. Flax-colored silk satin had been woven tightly and securely, and more than a dozen sparkling crystals dangled from it in the shape of a moth orchid.

"Don't let the skeleton take my data cable again, Miss Zijin," Su Ming said. "It'll be a real problem if it happens to draw something useful."

"Thank you!" The scholar slipped the hair tie onto her wrist, turned to leave, and waved behind her. "See you."

"See you."

Eleven hours after they set sail, night had fallen over the sea. As Su Ming had hoped, he had left both reconnaissance ships more than seventy kilometers behind, taking the Zhiyuan out of the Eye of Insight's field of view.

Su Ming began adjusting the Zhiyuan's heading, increasing the steam engine's output and the propeller's speed.

As he worked, the Zhiyuan gradually changed course at high speed. What had been a crosswind relative to the ship gradually became a headwind.

"Are you starting?" Zijin asked from atop the deckhouse. She had just tied up her hair with the hair tie and shaken her head from side to side. It felt good, neither too tight nor too loose.

"That's right, time to let loose!" Su Ming replied.

"Wind off the starboard bow, forty-five degrees ahead. Sea wind speed, twenty-seven knots." Su Ming read the data and began adjusting the sail angle.

"I think I understand a little of what you meant by static-pressure propulsion," Zijin said, looking at the streamlined sail towering into the wind against the night sky. "But I still don't understand why the best course is into the wind. Wouldn't the resistance push us backward?"

"It's to increase the relative wind speed," Su Ming explained. "When we're sailing into the wind, the faster the ship goes, the greater the increase in apparent wind. And the stronger the apparent wind, the greater the static pressure."

Zijin didn't understand at all, but reality soon gave her a lesson. Sailing into the wind at a forty-five-degree angle, the Zhiyuan went faster and faster. Soon she could barely keep her eyes open and had to put on goggles.

In the end, she was forced to crouch down and summon a bone wall in front of her to block the wind.

The Zhiyuan's current speed was twenty-six knots, and the apparent wind was forty-four knots!

Zijin was being blasted by a force-nine gale!

"Su Ming, this is ridiculous!" Excitement colored the scholar's voice. "The faster the ship goes, the stronger the thrust from the headwind?"

"To a certain extent, yes."

The scholar murmured, "Earth science is terrifying. Such amazing technology, and all of it counterintuitive!"

"It's just as incomprehensible to most people on Earth," Su Ming replied.

That included Su Ming himself. In middle school, when he had learned that a wind-powered single-person sailboat had set a speed record of sixty-four knots in a twenty-five-knot sea wind, his understanding of the world had been shattered too.

"So does this cycle keep increasing forever?" Zijin suddenly asked. "The faster the ship, the stronger the wind-and the stronger the wind, the faster the ship!"

"That depends on the wind resistance on the windward side of the sail and the water resistance against the hull. If resistance is low enough, then mathematically, it'll keep increasing forever!" Su Ming said. "The steam engine is already at maximum power, though, and we can only reach twenty-six knots."

The enemy ships were less than a hundred kilometers away. At their current speed, Su Ming estimated they would reach the blockade in two hours.

For most of the first half hour, the "squirrel battle group" and the "Aircraft Carrier Battle Group" held their courses, continuing toward where they predicted the Zhiyuan would be. All remained peaceful as each went about its business.

When the distance closed to around seventy kilometers, the encirclement fleet suddenly reacted and began taking a series of countermeasures.

"The Jade Sea and Tang Valley has enhanced detection capabilities too," Su Ming said. This was expected. The good news was that, unlike the Four-Eyed Jenny, it had no ability to combine and stack those capabilities, and could only detect enemies at a distance of seventy kilometers.

The Jade Sea and Tang Valley and the Songstress Class ships changed course, heading straight north for the interception line, while the "squirrel battle group" quickly headed south. However, the "Aircraft Carrier Battle Group" had the wind at an angle behind it and could sail at full canvas and full speed, reaching thirteen knots. The "squirrel battle group" had the wind fifty degrees off its bow and could only manage four knots.

Su Ming found it a little strange. The Jade Sea and Tang Valley and the Songstress Class ships certainly had magical propulsion, but judging from the radar, they hadn't activated it.

Even Zijin frowned, beginning to suspect something was afoot.

But soon, several traces of clutter flashed across the radar in succession, and the three warships of the "Aircraft Carrier Battle Group" abruptly accelerated. Only then did the two of them relax.

Time continued to pass. About another hour later, the speeding Zhiyuan was only thirty kilometers from the interception line, while the nearest Songstress Class ship heading north from below had only just reached a position fifteen kilometers from it.

The "squirrel battle group" on the other side was still forty kilometers from the battlefield. It clearly wasn't going to make it in time.

The Jade Sea and Tang Valley, however, had already closed to thirty kilometers. Facing a flying-beast carrier, that wasn't a distance that guaranteed their safety.

Zijin looked up at the night sky, abruptly raised a shield, and summoned the Divine Favor Scepter.

"Are they here?" Su Ming asked.

"Yes. I can smell that nasty Temple Watcher scent," Zijin replied.

She suddenly raised her hand, sending a succession of magic orbs shooting out to spread a barrage across the southeastern night sky.

The spells were a jumble, and Su Ming couldn't make sense of the battle at all. All he saw was a riot of colors in the sky as a figure riding a Sea Eagle Beast at high speed appeared amid the aftereffects of the magic.