Clothes

"You need to know my bust and underbust measurements too?"

In the sitting room, Zijin had just finished setting up the table. She narrowed her eyes slightly at Su Ming, who had come wandering over again with a measuring tape, and gave him a hostile look.

"Uh, the salesperson asked me for them." Su Ming looked innocent.

"A girl's body measurements are private!"

"It can't be helped, can it?" Su Ming replied. "This is my first time buying clothes for a girl."

Zijin took a deep breath, measured herself and gave him the numbers. "Forget them afterward!"

"OK! But I also need your thigh circumference."

"Hmm?" The girl glared at him. "I thought you picked out a skirt for me?"

"I swear, it really is a measurement needed for the clothes," Su Ming replied.

"Thirty-nine centimeters." This time, Zijin gave him the measurement outright, then turned away and ignored him.

Su Ming didn't mind. He had indeed slipped in a personal preference when choosing the clothes. In any case, with all the measurements gathered, the delivery guy picked up the clothes and took them to the specified location.

"Just leave them on the ground?" The delivery guy had reached the industrial park but couldn't see the customer who was supposed to meet him, so he sent a message to ask.

"Yes, just put them on the ground and you can go."

"All right, please confirm receipt, and be sure to give me a five-star review." The delivery guy guessed that this might be someone with a special fetish who was embarrassed to meet him in person, so he didn't press the issue.

"No problem!"

Having secured the clothes, Su Ming began preparing materials aboard the Zhiyuan. Naturally, he couldn't touch Zijin's clothes, so he could only rummage through a box for his own. When he salvaged the Four-Eyed Jenny a few days ago, he had brought up its sails too. Su Ming cut off a piece and dragged over a hemp rope as well.

But that still wasn't enough. Su Ming remembered the captured captain of the Four-Eyed Jenny. The fabric of the clothes he wore looked quite high-end, so Su Ming sent a burly zombie to strip them off him.

The zombie carried out the job a little too thoroughly. Su Ming picked out what he could use and had it take the rest back.

With the materials assembled, Su Ming began the summoning, adjusting the size of the suit dress during the process. When the light of the runes faded, a pile of assorted clothes appeared before him.

Su Ming tried his own clothes first. They fit well, and the black looked cool too. He had liked wearing camouflage at the factory; the multitude of small pockets were useful for all sorts of odds and ends, making it easy to stash nuts and tools. They were more practical than work clothes. As a result, he was often mistaken for a security guard, but this outfit's fabric and cut were much more upscale-if someone mistook him this time, he'd at least pass for the head of security, right? he thought.

Next were Zijin's clothes. Su Ming packed them into a bag and carried them all over to her.

The girl accepted them casually. She looked at the fully furnished sitting room and decided to take a bath first.

Finding that all the preparations were complete and there were still more than two hours before the visitors arrived, Su Ming suddenly felt at leisure. With the wind on his face and the blue water before him, he felt a sudden sense of boundless freedom.

And his eyelids began to droop.

So Su Ming built a lounge chair out of bones, put up a sunshade, and caught up on sleep.

"Su Ming!" Zijin's voice startled him awake. He turned his head and saw the girl walking toward him through the dazzling whiteness of the sea breeze. Her hair was tied in a side ponytail, and she wore a paneled beige-gray suit dress with white thigh-high stockings.

For a moment, Su Ming had the illusion that he had returned to Earth and run into a high-scoring beauty on a fashionable street. But when he saw her casually snap a long, thick bone club off the railing, he quickly rolled out of the lounge chair and scrambled away on all fours. Sure enough, the chair was smashed to pieces the next moment.

Zijin had once said she wasn't good at melee combat, and Su Ming had naively believed her at the time, until he saw her fight Yise and deftly cut Yise into the sea with a greatsword in one hand-maybe she was "not good at it," but she could instantly kill a hundred Su Mings without a problem!

Su Ming rolled to his feet without delay, cast a shield on himself, and summoned a bone wall in front of him. To improve his ability to respond to attacks, Zijin would "train" Su Ming like this whenever she had the chance. After taking several harsh beatings, Su Ming had learned to behave himself.

Boom! Smack!

The next moment, bone fragments flew. Zijin's side kick shattered the bone wall and carried through into Su Ming. He skidded more than ten meters across the deck and only stopped when he slammed into a wall.

Amid the fluttering hem of her skirt, Su Ming even glimpsed the exposed lace trim of her stockings and her light-colored safety shorts.

"The pleated skirt part makes it easy to move." Zijin walked up to Su Ming, her face impassive and frosty. "I like this outfit very much, but the other things, these stockings, the underwear-there's nothing fishy about them, is there, Mr. Su Ming?" she said, enunciating every word.

Behind Su Ming, a zombie had already fallen apart. Just now, he had seized control of the zombie from the White Bone Mark and designated it as the target of Damage Transfer.

Thud. The bone club struck the deck beside Su Ming's ear.

"No, I just thought you'd look good dressed like that." Su Ming swallowed.

"...Really?"

"Really!"

Zijin paused, then dropped the bone club and turned around.

"I'm hungry."

"I'll cook right away!" Su Ming hurried to his feet, tucked his phone back into his pocket, and ran for the kitchen.

Dinner was still seaweed soup and fish, though they had switched to a different kind of seaweed.

After eating it for so many days, both of them were getting a little sick of the sight of fish. Thinking that they could ask for supplies when they met with the people from the Four Seas Chamber of Commerce and that their days of monotonous meals would soon be over, they grew all the more eager for the visitors to arrive. But they waited and waited on the bridge, and by the time night fell, no ships had appeared at sea.

Zijin activated Omniscient Vision and glanced at the radar. "Why are they even farther away from us now?"

Su Ming thought for a moment and slapped his forehead. "I've been going at thirteen knots. They can't catch up."

The girl smiled. "I forgot I'm the fastest ship on the sea now."

"Then I'll go stop the ship," Su Ming said.

But Zijin stopped him. "No need. Let them chase us." She continued, "We'll slow down tomorrow morning. Whoever's coming must be here to negotiate, so we might as well start by showing them who's boss."

Su Ming nodded and lay back on the deck, watching the stars begin to appear overhead. The moon had yet to rise, and the black night sky belonged to the stars.

"We're safe now, right?" Su Ming asked.

"Mm, as long as we don't court death ourselves." Zijin brushed aside a strand of hair the wind had blown out of place. "Next, we'll strengthen ourselves and improve our chances of survival step by step. Then we can start gathering materials for the planar portal."

"Sounds good."

Su Ming closed his eyes and switched over to Little Spiky Head.

First, they had to look at the secondhand ship. Based on the address, it was about 1,700 kilometers away, and nightfall was just the right time to travel.

Su Ming opened the railway website with practiced ease and searched the timetables. The troublesome part was that there were no high-speed trains along this stretch at night. They would have to take an EMU train first, then transfer to a regular express.

Including the time spent waiting for trains and transferring, the earliest they could reach their destination was tomorrow morning.

After explaining the route to Miao Xin, Su Ming took out his phone again and opened a shopping platform.

"Hi, dear! What can we help you with this time?" The customer service representative at the ship design studio was very enthusiastic upon seeing a returning customer.

This was the same shop that had made the wing sails for him last time. Su Ming had cut off contact with the shop that originally designed the Zhiyuan at the first opportunity.

"I need a catamaran designed," Su Ming said, presenting his new request. "The faster it can go, the better."

"No problem!" the representative replied. "We're very good at that!"

This was quite a substantial job, and the representative was delighted.

But when the representative saw Su Ming's specific requirements, questions piled up. "Why steam power again? Dear, a diesel internal combustion engine has much better overall performance!"

"Does your diesel come with free shipping?"

"Um, dear, we don't sell diesel."

"Then a steam engine."

Early the next morning, Su Ming stopped the ship as planned. A black skeleton servant followed him into the control room and began learning some basic operations.

The propeller gradually slowed. Su Ming checked the wind speed: less than ten knots. That meant the Four Directions Chamber of Commerce's sailing ship could make five knots at most, so it would be dark by the time they caught up.

Having grown accustomed to racing alongside naval fleets, Su Ming found it hard to adjust to the sudden drop in speed. The thought of another day of fish and seaweed didn't improve his mood.

Miao Xin contacted him: the task was complete, and she had brought Little Spiky Head to the target dockyard.

Su Ming leaned back in his chair and switched his vision to Earth.