Chapter 20: Resentment Hard to Settle

Qi Shanshan stood up straight only after she had completely bandaged Li Weiyi's wrist. As she set down the scissors, she quipped, "I ate her!"

Qin Ke, standing behind her, was startled.

Recently, she had often heard expedition members remark that food supplies would soon dwindle, and there was even talk of cannibalism in the future.

Qi Shanshan turned around to face Li Weiyi, who was calmly observing her. "All you ever care about is your Senior Sister Cai," she grumbled playfully. "I'm starting to get jealous! Don't worry, she's perfectly safe."

Of course, she knew Li Weiyi wasn't asking idly.

He was testing her.

So she replied seriously, adding, "None of you have any foresight. Days ago, I noticed Xie Tianshu and Kong Fan frequently meeting. This morning, after the ghostly mist cleared, you were all engrossed in studying ancient scripts, while those two sneaked into the kitchen shed."

"I didn't dare follow them, and I couldn't be sure what they were planning, but I knew something was definitely amiss. To be on the safe side, I grabbed Yu Tong and we hid."

"It's best if nothing happens, but if it does, at least we'll have a head start to hide."

Li Weiyi found no flicker of deception in Qi Shanshan's eyes or expression, and her answers were impeccable. He quickly stood up, chuckling, "Don't answer so seriously; it feels like an interrogation."

"Weren't you interrogating me?"

Feigning a touch of anger, Qi Shanshan turned and walked out of the medical tent.

Li Weiyi followed her, intending to apologize. After all, she had saved his life when they first crash-landed on the bronze vessel. And earlier, during their clash with Laboratory 705, if she hadn't thrown the cross pendant to assist them, it was hard to say whether he or Han Qin would have survived.

Qi Shanshan suddenly turned around, colliding squarely with the approaching Li Weiyi. She let out a delicate "Ouch!" and, frowning, lightly slapped his chest. "Why are you walking so fast?" she admonished. "You bumped into me and it hurt!"

"I still have something to tell you. Your senior brother's injuries are severe. Both his arm and kneecap suffered comminuted fractures, and his blood vessels and nerves are badly damaged. Given the current medical facilities on board... you need to brace yourself. Even if he pulls through, he might be confined to bed for the rest of his life."

Despite the soft, warm body in his embrace and the woman's apparent reluctance to move, Li Weiyi was in no mood for dalliance. He quickly returned to the medical tent, directing the scorching qi flow from the sole of his right foot into his palm, intending to try injecting it into his senior brother's wounds.

But just as his hand pressed against the wound, he stopped.

The scorching qi flow could only course through silver trace veins. His senior brother had no such veins in his body, so injecting it would likely cause further injury.

It would be like striking his senior brother with a palm force.

"My senior brother also learned the Yuxu Breathing Technique. If he awakens and continues to practice it, perhaps he can cultivate that mysterious, scorching qi flow himself. But..."

"With his legs so severely broken, could the scorching qi flow still be generated from the soles of his feet?"

Li Weiyi felt a painful tightness in his chest, as if an enormous boulder weighed upon him. In an instant, a torrent of thoughts flooded his mind. Among them was the idea of giving his senior brother black jiao blood, which might heal his injuries completely.

But recalling Xie Tianshu's monstrous appearance, he simply couldn't bring himself to make that decision for his senior brother.

Just then.

From outside the medical tent, toward the bow, the faint, ethereal singing of a woman drifted through the air.

"A wide river, with its rolling waves,The wind carries the scent of rice blossoms from both banks.My home stands on its shore,Accustomed to the boatman's song,And to the white sails on the boats..."

Who was singing?

Li Weiyi and Qi Shanshan exchanged bewildered glances.

Qin Ke suddenly remembered something. "It's Liu Ying! We looked for her earlier but couldn't find her. We all assumed she had hidden in the ghostly mist graveyard..."

"Oh no."

Li Weiyi and Qi Shanshan immediately dashed out of the medical tent, one after the other.

Liu Ying was wrapped in a filthy blanket, sitting on the gunwale at the bow of the ship, her legs dangling in the air.

Her face, legs, and the shoulders and arms exposed from the blanket were covered in bruises and scars.

Her eyes held a hollow despair, filled with memories of her home, her parents, and the stable, lawful world she once knew. Tears streamed down her cheeks, and the sea wind whipped her long hair about, making her sorrowful song grow hoarser and deeper. Finally, she was almost just uttering the lyrics: "Everywhere... there is... the sunshine of peace..."

Rushing footsteps echoed behind them.

Without a hint of hesitation, she leaped.

Li Weiyi watched her leap with his own eyes. Though they were only a dozen steps away, the gunwale was already empty.

Qi Shanshan and Qin Ke caught up, panting heavily.

Qin Ke rushed to the gunwale but dared not look down, already knowing Liu Ying was being torn apart by the lingering souls in the seawater below. Tears streamed down her face, uncontrollable as rain.

Qi Shanshan walked over to comfort her. "After what she endured, how could she possibly live? It's alright, don't be afraid. With Li Weiyi here, nothing like that will ever happen on this ship again. He'll protect us."

Li Weiyi, his mood heavy and indignant, gripped his long sword and walked in silence towards the graveyard shrouded in ghostly mist.

Passing the dying Chen Hong, Li Weiyi abandoned any thought of leaving him for his senior brother to take personal revenge. He landed a punch, piercing Chen Hong's chest. Then, he picked up the body and tossed it into the sea, as if discarding a piece of trash.

Were they even human?

They were worse than trash.

Apart from Xie Jin, the other four who had escaped were all apprehended in the graveyard.

Some had buried themselves in the grave soil, leaving only their mouths and noses exposed.

But their breathing and heartbeats remained, and at close enough range, they couldn't evade Li Weiyi's acute hearing.

Upon learning that Liu Ying had jumped into the sea, Gao Huan and Professor Xu's students beat the two security team members who had tormented Liu Ying almost to death. Finally, in a fit of collective fury, they shoved them into the Sea of Souls.

Faintly, Li Weiyi again heard the camel bells within the graveyard. He immediately performed the Yuxu Breathing Technique, allowing his consciousness to regain its crystal clarity, and a deep sense of doubt arose within him.

As for the remaining two, they naturally didn't escape a severe beating either.

But they were not thrown into the Sea of Souls.

Someone proposed using them for experiments.

After Xie Tianshu's grotesque dragon-like transformation, although his appearance became grotesque and frightening, he acquired genuine superhuman strength. It was even speculated that he might now possess longevity, living for hundreds, or even several hundreds of years, much like a legendary demon.

Compared to superhuman strength and longevity, what was the sacrifice of a normal human appearance?

The powerful never suffer from body image issues.

Li Weiyi did not object; his view aligned with Zhao Meng's.

Once a person bares their fangs, they are no longer human!

This wasn't about the dragon slayer eventually becoming a dragon; it was about showing no mercy or leniency towards enemies. They wouldn't appreciate it; they would merely harbor resentment and, when you were weak, ensure you met a terrible end.

Moreover, Li Weiyi also wanted to assess the possibility of saving his senior brother by experimenting with the black jiao's corpse blood.

Too much had happened in a single day.

All the bodies were either thrown into the sea or buried. By the time they finished, everyone was utterly exhausted.

Initially,

No one could sleep. They lit bonfires and huddled together, fearful of another outbreak of unrest.

Furthermore, Xie Jin remained at large, a persistent thorn in their side, leaving them feeling unsettled.

But by the latter half of the night, sheer exhaustion took over. Apart from the two assigned to night watch, everyone else collapsed and slept by the bonfire.

Li Weiyi went alone to the other end of the bronze vessel, moving beneath the black jiao's remains.

On his left thumb, he wore the dragon-patterned thumb ring as he stroked the jiao blood that had solidified into purplish-red ice crystals at the severed part of the remains. Instantly, the frigid air coated his fingers with a layer of white frost.

The dragon-patterned thumb ring indeed reacted; the dragon scale patterns on its surface subtly glowed.

After Xie Tianshu's grotesque dragon-like transformation, his first words were: "This severed arm of mine, thanks to you, cannot be regenerated by either the black jiao's corpse blood or the dragon-patterned thumb ring."

Li Weiyi had surmised then that Xie Tianshu's monstrous transformation into a demon must have been aided by the dragon-patterned thumb ring.

That afternoon, his suspicion was confirmed when he experimented on the two expedition members.

The first subject, not wearing the dragon-patterned thumb ring, drank the jiao blood, and his skin quickly burst open.

He ultimately died from excessive bleeding.

The second subject, wearing the dragon-patterned thumb ring, drank the jiao blood and successfully survived. When his blood was used to saturate the ring, it wasn't long before he began a jiao-like mutation.

Naturally, no one dared allow him to fully transform into a demon. As he approached full transformation, the dragon-patterned thumb ring was immediately removed.

With the mutation interrupted, he died an even more gruesome death than the first subject.

His flesh and blood had almost entirely burst open.

"Regardless, this is one way to save my senior brother," Li Weiyi murmured to himself.

The ghostly mist swirled ominously.

The graveyard of stone tablets before him, illuminated by the distant golden crow's remains, exuded an eerie tranquility.

A familiar scent of perfume drifted on the wind.

Though Li Weiyi's current sense of smell wasn't as extraordinary as the Ghost Bear Emperor's, it was still far superior to that of an average person.

He knew exactly who had arrived!

His waiting here was precisely for her.

Li Weiyi silently concealed himself behind the massive black jiao carcass. Gradually, light footsteps grew audible, and a tall, slender figure passed the carcass, quickening her pace towards the nine-story vessel tower.

As Li Weiyi emerged from the shadows and looked,

That familiar, graceful figure had already entered the passage between the vessel tower and the gunwale, heading towards the stern.

The yard-wide passage within the vessel tower was lined with numerous human-shaped stone figures, each with a different expression. The pervasive ghostly mist intensified the unsettling atmosphere. Yet, Qi Shanshan showed no fear, moving through with ease.

On the first level of the vessel tower, all cabin doors were cast from bronze, standing over ten feet tall. Their immense weight made them impossible for human strength to open.

Halfway down the passage,

The ghostly mist gradually dissipated.

And in its place, a hazy, ethereal glow, like smoke and silk, began to shimmer.

This bronze vessel, once resembling a ghostly ship of the dead, seemed to transform, as if becoming an immortal's jade palace barge.

The stern and the bow were two entirely different worlds.