The screaming man on deck didn’t have the spare time to continue arguing. Instead, he devoted himself to battling with the tentacles, refusing to pay any more attention to his irksome teammate. At the same time, the man on the mast suddenly stood up and, with the bow in one hand, reached into the arrow sack for a single arrow.
Qian Ai’s eyes widened unconsciously. “Geez, is he serious…”
The bowstring released, sending the arrow flying. It all happened in the span of a single breath, smooth and practised.
The arrow zoomed past the man’s teammates towards the railing opposite them, its head piercing the tentacle’s flesh deep and firm, sending tremors down the fleshy white object.
Xu Wang’s team witnessed this scene directly, considering they were facing them directly. Qian Ai was rendered speechless; it was the same weapon, yet in his hands, he’d fumbled more than a child playing with a rubber band—after all, a child wouldn’t have sprung the rubber band on his own hand—but in this man’s hands, it had become a proper weapon. More importantly, the image of that bow and arrow wielded against the backdrop of the sky looked so bloody epic and magnificent.
The man on the mast ignored them and continued shooting arrows out in such a lazy manner that it looked like he was simply entertaining himself just for the sake of it.
A second arrow flew out, piercing a tentacle once again. A third. A fourth.
The tentacle was like a living target decorated with arrows until it resembled a porcupine. By the time the sixth arrow entered its flesh, the tentacle finally gave in, flopping unceremoniously back into the sea with its newly collected “spines.”
The entire scene had occurred behind the other men’s backs; they had no idea the action they’d missed in the last few seconds. Their obliviousness frustrated Xu Wang, who had half a mind to reach down himself and twist their heads back. When it came to teammates that lacked manners when speaking, it was more important to witness their actual skill rather than just listen to them; quite frankly, if he only ever just listened to Wu Sheng’s blabbing, their team probably would’ve broken up a million times already.
But the other three men didn’t hear Xu Wang’s internal screaming and were instead still too busy dealing with that very first tentacle they’d been grappling with since the beginning. Thanks to their lacklustre efforts, the one tentacle had now become five.
It was unseemly to call your own teammates “idiots,” but things were really beginning to manifest as such.
Despite the fact that none of the men had any fighting ability, their mouths never stopped running. What did they do when the three of them couldn’t get rid of one tentacle? Rant.
And so rising above the sounds of the crashing waves came the sounds of their cantankerous ranting.
“What the hell is this?”
“I’m so fucking done with this place!”
“Fuck, I knew we shouldn’t have used all our items, and now we have nothing left!”
Xu Wang sighed. First they cursed the sea monster, then they cursed Owl, then they cursed each other out. They were really something. Compared to them, teammates like Wu Sheng, Qian Ai, and Kuang Jinxin were like angels.
There should’ve been more arrows left, but the man on the mast suddenly sat back down. Xu Wang couldn’t tell whether it was because he’d determined that he was only responsible for clearing one half of the deck, or because he could see that more and more tentacles were gathering along the railings and that the situation would be futile no matter how many arrows he sent flying.
All in all, the man sat back down, one leg crossed over the other as if he was simply lounging around.
Xu Wang was suddenly struck by the urge to observe the man’s face up close and turned for the telescope, but he found that he wasn’t the only one harbouring such curiousity. Kuang Jinxin was already peeping through the telescope.
“What?” Xu Wang asked, when he saw the boy’s eyes widen.
“He’s beautiful…” Kuang Jinxin sighed.
The answer came so out of the blue that for a second, Xu Wang thought that he and Kuang Jinxin weren’t on the same channel. “What are you looking at?”
“The arrow assassin up there,” Kuang Jinxin clarified, conveniently giving their opponent an enigmatic-sounding nickname. He stepped back from the telescope and pushed it towards Xu Wang. “Captain, look! For real, he’s like a painting!”
Xu Wang pressed himself up against the telescope disbelievingly, thinking the man must’ve used some item or another. How could a man be pretty? No matter how handsome he was, he could only be like Wu Sheng—
Alas, he was proven wrong for the second time that day.
It was difficult to describe the man’s features. His face transcended beyond what could possibly be fathomed into words in the material world, far surpassing vocabulary such as “handsome” and “pretty.” Those labels shriveled before this person—Kuang Jinxin’s “like a painting” was, in fact, quite an accurate description. The man was like a painting, not of this world.
Technically speaking, men that looked beautiful had a tendency to look feminine, but that was not the case for the man up on the mast. He was beautiful to a very precise degree—enough to preserve his physical masculinity, just short of full femininity. His skin was pale and there was a mole dotting the corner of one eye, giving him a classically vintage sort of air. Even if he was currently sitting high above, staring down at his teammates with absolute indifference and a stoic aloofness, he still resembled a young scholarly master, leisurely taking in the scenery.
Chi Yingxue. Xu Wang repeated this name silently in his head, filled with envy. If you were given a good name, you basically didn’t have to worry about your looks. A pool reflecting spring snow drifting down the tilted branch of a pear blossom tree.
Having thoroughly satisfied his curiousity, Xu Wang let go of the telescope, which was taken over once again by Kuang Jinxin, who apparently hadn’t had enough. Two seconds later, the boy jumped and said, “Captain, he smiled at me!”
Xu Wang looked up again. He couldn’t see the man’s face, but he could see his movements. At some point, the person had turned to face their direction, clearly having sensed their scrutiny. It was impossible to tell whether he was smiling, but the man raised an arm and gave them a slight wave.
His own teammates were literally on the verge of perishing, yet he was here just casually saying hi?
Xu Wang was speechless. Across the water, the sea monster had already tilted the ship to a dangerous degree. Then came an enormous wave, and the ship overturned completely.
The entire thing happened in the blink of an eye; none of the men on the ship even had the chance to shout for help. The ship lay upside down on the surface of the sea. The railings, the cabin, the deck, all of it disappeared, leaving only the bottom of the ship floating visibly in the water.
We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.
And soon, it disappeared as well. The sea monster brought the entire ship down to the bottom of the sea, leaving only a quiet serenity. The waves calmed, the wind died down, all evaporated into dense mist.
Xu Wang shuddered in the silent aftermath. If not for Qian Ai’s flaming wheel, the ones swallowed by the sea would probably have been them.
“He wasn’t waving hi at us,” Kuang Jinxin remarked all of a sudden. “He was waving farewell.”
Xu Wang, still horrified at what he’d just witnessed, took a while to react. “Who?”
“Arrow assassin,” Kuang Jinxin said.
“….”
Sometimes, the best antidote for terror is to break the atmosphere.
He and Kuang Jinxin reunited with the rest of their team on the deck, where Wu Sheng was staring in the direction of the sunken ship with a somber expression.
“What’s the point of choosing a route?” Qian Ai said, defeated. “I should just choose to go die.”
All of a sudden, Xu Wang was jolted out of his thoughts and scrambled to look down at his arm. The battle with the sea monster had made him forget the matter of choosing a route altogether.
Thankfully, the options were still scrolling across the screen. It was better than not being able to choose at all due to taking too long.
Dense fog condensed over the water in all directions. If a ship came towards them now, they wouldn’t even be able to see it through the telescope.
“Let’s hurry and pick,” Xu Wang said. “This fog is ominous.”
“I say the treasure cove,” Wu Sheng replied, retracting his gaze from the distance. “I have a feeling the flying island is able to change the destination coordinates.”
“Isn’t that better?” Kuang Jinxin asked.
Qian Ai rolled his eyes. “Bro, our bags are still in the airport lobby.”
Kuang Jinxin knit his brows together in frustration. “Owl is so capable, I don’t get why our bags can’t be dealt with somehow if there’s even a flying island to begin with.”
“I’m sure it’s capable, the question is whether it’s so considerate.” Qian Ai had lost all faith in this world.
“But even if we go to the treasure cove, we’re still moving away from our starting point,” Kuang Jinxin protested. He wasn’t trying to be intentionally contrary, but the situation called for genuine questioning.
“Considering the speed of this ship, we can’t get far in 4 to 5 hours.” Xu Wang finally understood Wu Sheng’s reasoning for choosing the treasure cove. “We can go to the treasure cove and get the treasure. After we’re back in the real world, we head back to the airport. The plane will have taken off, but we still need to at least get our bags back.”
Qian Ai frowned. “You think there’s really treasure at the treasure cove?”
“Of course,” said Xu Wang, “otherwise why call it that?”
The frown deepened on Qian Ai’s face. “Are you sure our bags will still be there when we go back to the airport?”
“Of course,” Kuang Jinxin replied, “our personal documents are in there, anyone who finds them will hand it in to lost and found.”
Qian Ai: “…” He had to thank fate for the fact that he was still miraculously alive in spite of having such a simpleminded, coarse team captain and such a blindly optimistic teammate.
Knock.
There came a sound from below decks.
Knock.
Knock knock.
It came without warning, and then continued without stopping. The sound was like a ghost knocking on a door in the middle of the night against the backdrop of this calm, silent ocean.
“Holy shit,” Qian Ai backed up against Wu Sheng, “please don’t tell me we got rid of the sea monster only to now have to deal with a siren…”
“No, a siren would be singing.” Wu Sheng’s reply was filled with logic and there seemed to be so much boldness in his tone, but in reality, his feet didn’t move forward even an inch. Instead, he arched an eyebrow and shouted towards the sea, “Who is it?”
Xu Wang, nonplussed, “Why are you acting like it’s someone at the door?”
“It’s me, Mao Qiping!”
Okay well, apparently someone answered.
The four of them peeked over the side railing in unison to the waves below. All they saw was a single floating ball that had, at some point, arrived beside their ship. The upper half of the ball was open, revealing a man in his mid-thirties sitting inside, currently looking up and waving at them fervently.
When their eyes met, the man stood up and stuck a hand out the opening of the ball and knocked against the wooden boards of their ship two times in succession. He was smiling, as if to say, Yes, that was me knocking just now, smart, huh?
“Is that a friend of yours?” Xu Wang asked Wu Sheng. It wasn’t impossible, considering the familiarity in the other man’s tone, the way he’d answered Wu Sheng so easily.
And yet, Wu Sheng was shaking his head.
Xu Wang studied him for a long while until finally accepting that the guy down below was no acquaintance of Wu Sheng’s. He turned back down to look at the man who called himself Mao Qiping. “Mate, as a stranger, shouldn’t you continue your introduction after telling us your name?”
The man slapped himself on the head in frustration. “I forgot!” And then he began digging around in a bag he had strapped on his body, whilst introducing himself. “I’m a longterm resident here, in short, I come here every night, except I’m the type that doesn’t join teams or pass stages. I could tell immediately that y’all are newbies here. I’m an information gatherer, I have everything you could possibly want to know. Guaranteed reliable and true, real prices only, no deceptions whatsoever.”
At last, he dug out the item he was looking for. He placed it on a stick-like object that looked suspiciously like chopsticks, which extended as soon as he pressed on it with a thumb. The stick traveled up to the four of them, finally delivering a parcel to them. “That’s a copy of my personal ID card, driver’s licence, and housing permit. I guarantee by character and conduct only trustworthy transactions!” Mao Qiping slapped a fist to his chest with his other hand.
Wu Sheng: “…”
Hljc Cl: “…”
Bejcu Alczlc: “…”
Xu Wang: “You’ve blurred out all the important information! How is that remotely trustworthy?”
“Nah, that was just for show, to make me look professional.” Mao Qiping slowly retracted the stick segment by segment, retrieves his personal documents, then stuffed them back into his bag. “But I can’t give you my real information in case you dox me. I have a family out in the real world, you know, I can’t just get my real life involved with this one.”
Coming here every night, not passing stages… for some reason, Xu Wang suddenly thought of Sun Jiang, their former teammate who was unwilling to go with them to Xiabei because he didn’t want to leave his family. If he never changed his thinking, he would just return to the snowfield night after night, passing the time alone.
The man down in the water, in contrast, was far more chipper and bright with his glowing face.
“This place is the Endless Sea, I’m sure you all got the notification in your cheat sheets already,” Mao Qiping said before any of them could respond, “it’s not a place that’s part of any stage. It’s an in-between, a transition zone between stages. If you leave your previous stage but haven’t yet reached the designated location of your new stage, you get transferred to this place. Those with teams have a ship, and those without are like me, with a ball.”
“Transition zone?” Wu Sheng zeroed in on the important words.
“Yes.” Mao Qiping’s gaze swept across them until he landed on his conversation partner. “The Endless Sea is partitioned by province. You get sucked into different parts of the sea based on which province you’re in at the time of entrance. But the part of the sea you end up isn’t connected to your specific location at the time of entrance. There’s only one section. Take Shaanxi for example; whether you’re in Xianyang, Xi’an, Hanzhong, or Yan’an, when you get sucked in, you end up in the exact same section of the sea—
“In order to keep the competition fair?” Wu Sheng finished.
“Smart!” Mao Qiping said. It was hard to tell whether his easy praise was genuine or just politeness. “The four lighthouses here are stationary. If different teams landed in different areas, wouldn’t it mean that teams closer to them got the advantage?”
“What happens at five?” Wu Sheng queried.
“You go back to where you entered. It doesn’t matter how far you travel out on the ocean here, in the real world, you end up back where you got sucked in,” Mao Qiping answered matter-of-factly. “This is how the Endless Sea and the stages differ.”
Wu Sheng followed up with another question: “What do the flying island and treasure cove have?”
Instead of answering, the other man dug around in his sack again. This time he was faster; in the blink of an eye, there were three sheets of paper in his hand, which is stuck on his extendable stick and delivered up to them.
They retrieves the papers and flicked through them. It was a list—
[Regarding Rules]
1. On designation coordinates. (RMB 50)
2. Yc lcpeglfr jcv vfjat. (EZD 100)
3. Yc lafwr. (EZD 100)
4. Yc atf gbrafg jcv mtfja rtffa. (EZD 100)
5. Yc rmbgfr. (EZD 100)
6. …..
[Regarding Stages]
1. Stage 1 Content & Strategies (RMB 20)
2. Stage 2 Content & Strategies (RMB 200)
3. Stage 3 Content & Strategies (RMB 300)
4. Stage 4 Content & Strategies (RMB 600)
5. Stage 5 Content & Strategies (RMB 1000)
6. Gjlis rajuf qjrrlcu jvnlmf jcv fzqfglfcmf (Zjgxfa qglmf)
Warning: Due to changes in stage content, strategies are not guaranteed to work.
[Regarding the Endless Sea]
1. What is the Endless Sea? (RMB 50)
2. Qtja jgf atf obeg ilutatberfr? (EZD 100)
3. Qtja vjcufgr vb fjmt bo atf obeg cjnlujalbc gbeafr qbrrfrr? (EZD 150)
4. Ktf yfra ragjafulfr obg fjmt gbeaf. (EZD 200 qfg gbeaf/jii obg EZD 700)
5. ….
Everything was, as the man promised, listed out clear as day.
However, compared with the other two sheets, the one about the stages included only six options and a warning. Only half the sheet was filled, the other half was completely empty.
“Why is the stage list only half-filled?” Xu Wang asked the man.
“I’ve only submitted two tasks,” Mao Qiping replied in a tone that indicated that life had not been easy on him, “the information about the other three stages, I got through my own transactions.”
“You didn’t buy any info on any stage past the fifth?” Xu Wang asked.
Mao Qiping shook his head.
“You really aren’t meant for sales,” Xu Wang sighed. “If you’re going into business, you’ve got be willing to make investments.”
Mao Qiping mimicked his sigh. “It’s not about the money.”
Xu Wang stiffened.
Staring up at him, Mao Qiping said, “Those who reach the fifth stage are people who’ve decided to fight head on with this place. No one is willing to exchange experience that they paid night after night of life and death battling for, for a mere bit of cash. If they sell it to me, then through me, that info will definitely end up in the hands of other players. If other players successfully zip through those stages and catch up to them, wouldn’t that make future stages harder for these people?”
In fact, Xu Wang hadn’t thought that far at all. Or rather, his experience up till now hadn’t forced him to even consider the stifling outlook of their future prospects in this game. Then, a question not on the sheets occurred to him. “After we pass 23 stages, are we set free from this place for good?”
“I don’t know—or rather, it’s more accurate to say that no one knows.” Mao Qiping laughed bitterly. “I’ve been coming in here for a year. The farthest I ever saw any team go on the roster was the thirteenth stage.”
“Just thirteen?” Xu Wang asked, his heart heavy.
“Yes. When the scoreboard is open again, you will see,” said Mao Qiping. Swirling mist coagulated around them so heavily that it was getting difficult to make out the man’s face. He quickly retracted his delivery stick as if the action could dispel the fog. “To be honest, uncertainty isn’t a terrible thing. Uncertainty represents possibility. It’s what motivates the brave ones who continue fighting on in the stages.”
Xu Wang arched an eyebrow. “Don’t presume that just by calling us courageous, you can get out of asking us for money.”
“And I was being so sincere, offering so much information about the Endless Sea!” Mao Qiping’s voice rose an octave, piercing through the thick fog. It was like he was afraid sound couldn’t travel up to their ears. “If you liked the preview I gave you, you should make a purchase!”
“…” At least the shrill voice successfully dispelled the choking feeling that had begun gathering in Xu Wang’s throat.
Christ, ‘selling information’ was the kind of stuff that sounded so mysterious and enigmatic in stories. Granted, no one was asking for a dramatic scene like in Infernal Affairs or anything, but at least be more obscure and secretive about it! And here the guy was selling info like fruits at the market, the hell.
T/N: Hi guys, sorry this update took so freaking long. I’ve been bombarded with work. I’m planning on taking one week or so off from posting to stack chapters. If stacking chapters takes me longer than expected, I’ll be sure to at least post 1 chapter a week. Thanks for being patient!
Thanks for the chapter! ❤
I think Mao Qiping is smart!
Thanks for the chapter! <3
Bye bye Arrow Assassin xDD
Thx for the ch (ㅅ˘ㅂ˘)
Thank you for the chapter! Please take your time 💖
For a moment I thought Arrow Assasin was the one knocking, To ask them if he could ride on the ship with them🤣
oh nooo i read it sksksk
thank you for the chapter!!(人´∀｀)｡ﾟ+
Arrow Assassin doesn’t look like a side character. I hope he falls in love with xu Wang!
I’m curious about “2. On injuries and death. (RMB 100)”. We already know that if you’re about to receive a fatal injury you’re sent home but the way this is written, does this mean that there’s a possibility of dying?
Thanks for the chapter!
I’m waiting for new Chapter !!! (╥﹏╥)❤️❤️
I hope this story gets updated soon
Will nobody pick this novel? It shows “Dropped”. I really hope it gets translated, this book is a gem!!!!(づ￣ ³￣)づ