As per usual, Suo Jia spent the entire night in his room in that same silent and blank daze. However, this time, Nicole didn’t leave her quarters either. Although nobody knew what exactly she was doing inside, it was clearly not training.
It was afternoon the next day. Roger and Xiang Yun were currently sitting across each other at the bow of the ship, with all kinds of delicious dishes and fine liquor spread out before them for lunch. However, there was no way they could finish all that food between just the two of them.
Roger raised his glass and downed it in one gulp. With somewhat replenished energy, he bitterly asked, “What exactly has been going on recently? The atmosphere on the ship has become downright stifling, to the point where I feel like I’ll start struggling to breathe. This is a horrible situation!”
Xiang Yun’s expression didn’t change as he silently downed his own glass and reached to pour himself another. He obviously knew the answer to this question, but had no way of responding. Some things were harder to face the longer one waited. Xiang Yun didn’t dare think of how exactly Nicole would react when she found out that the one Suo Jia fancied wasn’t her.
“Hm?” Roger suddenly let out a cry of astonishment, breaking Xiang Yun’s thoughts. “Xiang Yun, look over there! What is that small black speck over on the water there? Is that a reef? If it is, we should hurry up and turn the ship around. Otherwise, we’ll crash into it!”
Xiang Yun put down his drink and turned to look in the direction Roger was pointing at. There were indeed a few faint black specks appearing along the distant horizon.
Xiang Yun closed his eyes and focused all his inner energy on his eyes. When he reopened his eyes, his vision had sharpened, and he could immediately tell what those black specks before them were.
“This is bad!” Xiang Yun shouted and stood up hurriedly. “That isn’t a reef, those are ships!”
“Huh?” Roger was bewildered. “So what if those are ships, what is there to be alarmed about? Come, come…sit back down and enjoy the drinks!”
Xiang Yun huffed back in frustration, “Of course I wouldn’t care if those were just ordinary ships. But those are all medium-sized sailing ships….and they all have skulls on their sails!”
“What?!” Roger jumped up at these words and exclaimed, “You’re saying that those are pirate ships?”
Xiang Yun nodded solemnly and replied with absolute certainty, “That’s right, those are definitely pirate ships. Although they’re still a decent distance away and I can’t discern any exact details, it looks to me like those ships are at least ten times larger than ours!”
“Heavens!” Roger couldn’t take his eyes off the slowly nearing black specks as he replied in astonishment, “Doesn’t that mean that if they have six ships, they’d have at least 500 people?!”
He couldn’t help but shudder at this thought and he quickly turned to start running to the pilot station as he shouted back, “Hurry up and help me spread the word, we have to immediately change course!”
Shhhing! Xiang Yun abruptly unsheathed the largest war blade on his back and frigidly declared, “No need. If they dare to come at us, we should just face them!”
“My god…” Roger shook his head and bitterly answered, “What are you thinking? Even if we were on land right now, it would be hard for us to fight against them. And now, we’re on a ship…you do realise that fighting on water requires completely different skills from fighting on land, right? There’s no way we could beat them!”
Xiang Yun calmly nodded. “I already know everything you’re saying. But do you not know that mid-sized sailing ships are at least twice as fast as our small sailboat is? Do you really think we could outrun them?”
“That’s…” Roger struggled to reply, before helplessly sighing, “What exactly is all this? Suo Jia and Nicole are basically disabled at this point, and have absolutely no will to fight. The only ones left are me and you; how could we possibly stand up against 500 or more opponents?”
Xiang Yun cleaned his blade with a cloth and nonchalantly answered, “This is a battle we cannot avoid no matter what. Besides, there’s no fight in this world that has absolutely zero chance of victory!”
He turned and looked in the direction of Suo Jia’s and Nicole’s rooms. “Just believe in them. They’ll definitely recover when it’s really critical.”
In this short amount of time, the pirate ships had already come close enough to distinctly see that, while they were indeed mid-sized sailing ships, they seemed like massive skyscrapers. In comparison, their own small sailboat was like a tiny leaf floating atop the water.
放肆的大笑声，从为首的一个海盗船上响了起来。
“Ah! Hahaha!” The six enormous sailing boats soon surrounded Suo Jia’s small sailboat. At the same time, a loud, unbridled laugh rang out from the head pirate ship.
Xiang Yun and Roger stood side by side on the bow of their ship, coldly glaring over at the ship the laughter had come from. A fatty was standing atop the prow of the four-story ship, currently laughing out loud at them, clearly pleased at himself.
The fatty then abruptly stopped laughing and lowered his head. He stretched his right hand to point at Xiang Yun and Roger and arrogantly declared, “Listen up. I’m the pirate that has ravaged through eight hundred miles of waters: Whale! Hand over all your possessions this instant. Otherwise, you’ll all be killed without question!”
As he declared this, a huge number of archers suddenly appeared on the surrounding ships, at least 600 of them in total, aimed and ready to shoot at Xiang Yun and Roger. A single slip-up would be enough for the archers to instantly fire!
Despite the situation, Roger and Xiang Yun didn’t seem the slightest bit flustered. Roger smiled at Xiang Yun and asked, “What do you think? Of all these arrows, how many can you confidently say you’d be able to successfully evade?”
Xiang Yun confidently chuckled, “All of them!” He suddenly crouched down and suddenly, a vast amount of inner energy burst out from his legs. His body was instantly propelled into the air, towards the top of the ship.
Of course, the first target was always the head of the group. Since that damn fatty had clearly expressed his intentions already, there was no reason to hold back. As long as he could take the fatty down, the enemy would definitely be defeated, no matter how many there were!
Upon seeing Xiang Yun take action, Roger naturally understood his intent. To relieve some of Xiang Yun’s burden, Roger turned to leap over at another ship, drawing half the firepower towards him.
Although the fatty was momentarily taken aback by their actions, he soon began laughing again. Facing the approaching Xiang Yun, the fatty suddenly reached behind him. An immense cudgel made from a wolf’s fang!
This cudgel was entirely different from any such weapon used on land; it wasn’t cylindrical in shape. Instead, it had a thick and solid body connected to a large sphere at least a meter in diameter, with hundreds of long and sharp thorns covering the entire surface. The weapon was undoubtedly extremely heavy as well. A single blow would riddle even an entire ship full of holes, let alone a person! This was clearly a weapon specialized for naval warfare!
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