Visitor

Su Ming nodded in understanding. That was also why he had stopped using the sails over the past few days.

Then there were the issues of low-visibility paint for the hull and the exhaust smoke. The Zhiyuan was still the natural color of bone, making it easy to spot at sea. The black smoke produced by the steam engines would also greatly increase the distance at which it could be spotted.

Zijin, however, said, "We don't need to worry about enemies spotting the Zhiyuan for now."

"Why?" Su Ming asked, puzzled.

"Because it's a low priority. We've entered the open sea, where it's difficult for a large navy to surround and attack us."

"What about the local powers?" Su Ming asked.

"The powers here are mostly merchant associations." Zijin pointed at the nautical chart. "This sea is called the Central Ocean Sea. The Central Ocean Archipelago ahead of us is the most important transfer and resupply point on the trade route between the Eastern and Western Continents."

The Central Ocean's armed forces consisted mainly of mercenaries, organized into scattered groups. Their main business was fighting pirates and escorting merchant ships.

The region was too far from the continents on either side. Given the otherworld's level of seafaring, neither could station a sizable regular army here.

As Zijin explained, Su Ming studied the chart and gained a general understanding of the situation.

"Isn't there still a bounty on you? What about those mercenaries, then?" he asked, raising another question.

"Pay them no mind. No matter how big the bounty is, no one would dare provoke us." Zijin clapped her hands. "I'm not very good at politics and all that scheming, but I understand that the strong prey on the weak, and people seek profit and avoid danger. We escaped an encirclement by five regular naval fleets, defeated the strongest battleship, the UFO, and crippled the Fusang. What blind mercenary do you think would dare pull a tiger's whiskers?"

Su Ming thought about it and suddenly realized: were they strong?

Ever since crossing over to the otherworld, he had been rushing from one crisis to the next, facing nothing but the highest-level powers in this world. Only now did he belatedly realize that those powers regarded their side as an equal threat.

"Oh, right, your magic power," Su Ming said. "That six-pointed spell?"

"That power was borrowed from your fellow countrymen," Zijin answered. "Without the deathrattle amplification, Six-Pointed Star · Divine Edict probably has about half its power left, and it can't lock onto targets at extreme range."

That was still very powerful. Unless the target was a great battleship, one shot would sink an ordinary ship with power to spare, Su Ming calculated. The White Bone Mark took about ten days to recover, while Miss Scholar herself could restore her magic power to full in two or three days when healthy.

Reconnaissance, mobility, firepower-in the Central Ocean Archipelago, where there were no tigers in the mountains, they truly existed on another level.

Su Ming continued organizing his thoughts and listing the work ahead. He suddenly thought how nice it was to work in a factory: at most, it took physical effort, not mental effort, and there was even a paycheck.

Why did so many people want to cross over to another world?

And then there were those who wanted to become nobles or ministers and build their own factions. Managing people was always the hardest part. With that kind of workload, hadn't they had enough of working 996?

In the end, Su Ming wrote down the two most important tasks: gathering materials and shielding their undead fluctuations.

Materials were the key to their survival. Earth had countless useful things, but for lack of materials, they couldn't make use of most of them. As long as they could solve the materials problem, their combat power would leap forward.

And the undead fluctuations from him and Zijin were the fundamental reason they had always been on the back foot.

"Was the UFO's inward-sloping armor meant to shield it from magical detection?" Su Ming asked.

"Yes. It has a special coating that can greatly conceal magical fluctuations," Zijin answered.

"They also seriously affected the radar." Su Ming pondered the connection. "Is there a way to get a piece?"

Zijin thought for a moment. "I think we already have some." She had a servant fetch several fragments from the cabin. They were pieces of the UFO's hull. "I picked them up on the way."

Su Ming took a closer look and found that they were made of an extremely hard wood encased in steel. The outside was coated in several layers of an unknown material that shimmered faintly with purple specks of light.

He noticed the girl staring blankly at the fragments in her hands. "What's wrong?"

"When I picked up these fragments, I think I picked up some other fellow too." Zijin frowned. "I just can't remember."

"Take your time. There's no rush."

After such a long discussion, Miss Scholar was getting sleepy. She had yet to fully recover from overexerting herself earlier. She laid her chair flat and took an afternoon nap.

The radar suddenly sounded an alert, detecting activity from airborne targets. As he became more familiar with the radar, Su Ming had learned to adjust its settings in greater detail.

He looked at the screen. Several small dots had appeared a hundred kilometers away, at an altitude of around two hundred meters. Judging by their signals, they were probably flying beasts. They were sweeping the sea in a search pattern, apparently looking for something.

After their earlier discussion, Su Ming was no longer worried. He set the radar to warn him when anything came within fifty kilometers, then connected to Little Spiky Head.

It was the lunch break, and all the employees at the merchant's warehouse had gone to eat. Su Ming guided Little Spiky Head into the warehouse office. He had taken a set of work clothes earlier, so he walked straight in.

He found the computer with practiced ease and ran a search, but found no long-wave radar. Sure enough, no one in the civilian maritime market used that kind of equipment.

Great, I'll need to find someone else to fleece, Su Ming thought.

He printed a list of the goods he had taken, wrapped it around a fifty-gram gold bar he had previously swiped from the nursing home director's house, and slipped it into the owner's drawer as payment for everything over the past few days. An employee appeared in his psychic vision, and Su Ming calmly avoided them and left.

There were quite a few people outside. Su Ming once again found a corner in the industrial park and settled in, charging his phone and power bank while making calls to inquire about secondhand steamships.

Su Ming needed many things, and nothing was cheaper than buying old equipment. He could also acquire the equipment aboard a ship along with it, all ready to use and properly adjusted. That way, he could cross several tasks off his list in one go.

With Su Ming's magical repair abilities, old equipment could be almost as good as new in his hands. Newer things, on the other hand, were troublesome to use without the materials and the support of Earth's entire industrial system.

Things went fairly smoothly this time. He contacted a used-ship dealer who said he had a ten-year-old ship with a displacement of 8,000 tons, powered by two steam-engine units.

He had just written down the address when the Zhiyuan's radar sounded an alarm. Su Ming hurriedly switched his view back to the control room and found that a target really had appeared within fifty kilometers.

Su Ming mentally calculated the other party's speed and woke Zijin.

"At that flying speed, they can only be scouts riding dragon eagles." Miss Scholar yawned. "At a distance of fifty kilometers, they've already seen us." She thought for a moment, then raised her hand and released two yellow and one blue magical signal balls into the sky above the Zhiyuan.

The signal meant: Warning! You have entered a restricted zone!