Chapter 129: The Sea of Wandering 22
The cruise ship sailed away from the Tranquil Sea.
A new morning. New breakfast was laid out on time in the dining hall, but the diners were few and far between. Even Qing Gang ate with an expression of hopelessness, sighing that this game really didn’t need to be so realistic.
When sailing the ocean, the food on the ship was truly lackluster. What was supposed to be dry was hard, what was supposed to be soft was mushy. Yellowing cured meat and sickly sweet jam were all hard to swallow. Only bread and sausages were barely edible, but not every single day. So even though mealtime had passed, Zhuang Ningyu remained curled up on the sofa without moving, only sucking on a packet of nutritional supplement dangling from his mouth. As the ship shifted, a beam of sunlight shone through the porthole, making him squint slightly. Before he could move, a gentle, dry hand covered his eyelids first. Immediately after, the empty packet of nutritional supplement was taken away, replaced by a wet, hot French kiss.
A grape-flavored kiss.
Yi Ke had once felt that this new “fruit series” nutritional supplement developed by the logistics department tasted like a chaotic mix of plastic, penicillin, and artificial flavoring—as weird as it could get. He even suspected the taste tester had a terminal case of pica. But now, tasting the clear, sweet, and soft alluring flavor between lips and teeth, he admitted the logistics department indeed had some skills.
Their recent morning kisses were always excessively lingering and extremely tender. Zhuang Ningyu leaned back; in this posture, he couldn’t leverage any strength, so he could only hook his arms around the other’s neck, seeking a bit of security. Yi Ke held his waist tightly with both hands, feeling his nose filled with warm fragrance. So he buried his head in that fair neck and inhaled deeply before picking the person up and tidying the shirt he had crumpled, lest colleagues notice any clues.
The golden poetry anthology spread open on the table was shining. Because the Prophet had successfully changed hands, a new narrative passage appeared on the page just now—
“The crystal ball shines like stars,
The brave Prophet will gain eternal freedom!
The King was furious because of this,
To quell the ally’s anger,
The mermaid clan decided to set sail again,
Sailing to the Vortex of Reincarnation!
That great Goddess of Fate,
Will favor the King once more,
Granting him his heart’s desire.”
More than ten minutes later, the team members who finished eating arrived at Room 103 one after another.
Fan Xiaoying had drawn the Fate card back then. So, the “Goddess of Fate” in this new poem… she asked hesitantly, “Will it be me?”
“Based on the fixed pattern that whatever those two unlucky King and Queen want will eventually belong to us, I think so,” Du Bai said with reasonable evidence.
“Are there any item cards related to fate in the database?” Ye Jiaoyue asked.
“Many cards mention the word ‘fate,’ but there are too many, making it hard to judge,” Yi Ke said. “And there are no obvious features, unlike the crystal ball, which clearly belongs to the Prophet at a glance.”
Indeed, this game liked using “fate.” Even the Prophet’s crystal ball was called “Eye of Destiny.”
“Let’s follow this poem first and go to that place called ‘Vortex of Reincarnation’ to see,” Zhuang Ningyu suggested. “If there really is a ready-made ‘Goddess of Fate’ there, we can just use her item as a reference, saving us the brainpower to figure it out.”
Read as “reference,” written as “snatch it directly.” Perhaps because people get a bit of Caribbean temperament once at sea, everyone expressed agreement to do just that.
Zhuang Ningyu didn’t let the skeleton crew continue acting as the cruise ship’s motor. Instead, he called them all onto the deck to rest. Anyway, a pile of light bone sticks didn’t take up much weight. The powerless ship spun in the waves. Five minutes later, the mermaid clan indeed popped up again. Thinking they were moving silently, they stuck to the ship’s bottom one after another like barnacles, swaying their huge tails and continuing to swim towards the deep sea.
“See, our Captain Zhuang never lets his own people suffer losses,” Qing Gang lamented. “Nor lets his own skeletons suffer losses.”
Having followed the right leader on the right path, the sailor skeletons no longer needed to do physical labor. They collectively basked comfortably in the sun. After sunning for a while, they lay on the railing, stretching their necks to look down curiously. The seawater in this area was very clear. The mermaid clan, “huffing and puffing” dragging the boat, felt the hollow gazes from above. Raising their heads, their already unpresentable faces became even paler and uglier when refracted by the shimmering seawater.
Inside the railing, the sailor skeletons, wearing plastic fake flowers on their heads, holding champagne glasses in their hands, and wrapped in beautiful floral scarves on their shoulders, bared their teeth in unison, displaying friendly smiles unique to leisurely old money aristocrats at them.
Mermaid Clan: “?”
A second ago, they were even secretly delighted about successfully controlling this ship again!
After a moment of silent staring, a mermaid suddenly leaped out of the water. Opening its big mouth in mid-air, it viciously bit towards the nearest skeleton, determined to drag that hateful giggling skull into the abyss and chew it to pieces! Filthy sharp teeth first emitted an asphalt-like sticky luster under the sun, then clamped the upper and lower jaws heavily—but didn’t taste the imagined crispy texture. A golden light, like a sharp arrow shot by a god in ancient Greek mythology, turned that bold mermaid into a pile of wet gravel in an instant.
Yi Ke opened his hand and coolly caught the poetry anthology flying back: “You’re welcome,” he said politely.
The sailor skeletons reattached their mandibles, which had fallen off from shock, and applauded him one after another. The scene was filled with harmonious “click-clack” sounds.
Intimidated by the poetry anthology, the mermaid clan dared not launch sneak attacks without martial virtue anymore and could only continue to endure humiliation while being watched. inside the room, Ningyu said, “Didn’t expect you to be quite friendly to them.”
“Mmh.” Yi Ke pressed his whole body against him. “Praise me.”
Zhuang Ningyu rubbed his head twice and praised as requested: “Awesome.”
Then he fished out a banana-flavored rice cracker from the mixed snack bag nearby: “Here.”
Yi Ke bit it away, lying on his wife’s stomach munching, not feeling anything wrong. After finishing, Zhuang Ningyu fed him another one, this time strawberry flavor. Third one, melon flavor. Fourth one, chocolate flavor… Chocolate is a no-go. Zhuang Ningyu withdrew his hand: “You can’t eat this one.”
“…” Yi Ke first puzzled over why he couldn’t eat chocolate, then realized, pouncing wer. Zhuang Ningyu curled up laughing. His phone fell to the ground, the short video about dietary precautions for puppies still playing halfway. The chocolate-flavored rice cracker ended up halved between them—Yi Ke actively bit off half, while Zhuang Ningyu was forced to open his mouth and eat the other half. Ordinary kittens and puppies indeed couldn’t eat chocolate, but evolved ones were a different matter.
On the deck, Fan Xiaoying sat cross-legged in the shade, holding her laptop, still carefully looking through all hints related to “fate” in the data package. She was the most junior among this batch of team members. Although she had been employed longer than Yi Ke, Yi Ke was S-rank, and she was only A-rank. The reason she was selected for the Capital Action Team this time was entirely because of her super accurate spatial sense and positioning ability—since the first two batches of rescue team members entering the Wandering Sea disappeared without a trace, the white mist on the sea seemed to have become a super maze-like existence, so the leader thought of her immediately.
Unexpectedly, the Rule Zone after entry wasn’t a maze. The compass worked normally all along. She didn’t even need to help position the ship at sea; mermaids and skeletons were already taking everyone to the designated target.
“Here, drink some water.” Alice sat next to her.
“Thanks.” Fan Xiaoying took off her thick glasses, covering her sore eyes with both hands. “God, this stuff is just too messy.”
“Just look through once to get a general impression; no need to memorize it all,” Alice said. “We didn’t evolve a brain like Xiao Yi’s; no need to make things difficult for ourselves.”
“That’s true.” Fan Xiaoying put the black-rimmed glasses back on, saying with a bitter face, “But Captain Ye and the others are too strong. I don’t want to drag the whole team down.”
“How could that be?” Alice spread her hands. “If we really compare like this, look at me and Xiao Bai. Holding the glittering poetry anthology and excerpt notebook, we thought we could kill in all directions. In the end, we more than dragged the team down; we almost sent the whole team away. Didn’t we get through it too?”
“But Captain Zhuang and Xiao Yi appeared in time. You and Xiao Bai did your best to wait for them to come, causing no bad consequences. In the context of the whole team, this performance is completely qualified,” Fan Xiaoying emphasized. “But no one will come to take over for me. If I fail, the whole team’s progress will drop the ball here with me.”
“You really are… stubborn.” Alice couldn’t persuade her anymore, only giving a precise one-word comment.
Inside the cabin, Zhuang Ningyu was also looking through Fan Xiaoying’s profile. This was a new application he sent to the Capital Investigation Team, further refining the original teammate information, totaling dozens of pages. A large part of it was pre-employment interviews.
Moderate caution could indeed avoid many major errors and catastrophic risks, but excessive caution often made people miss opportunities, forming a fate trajectory of “always missing out.” Fan Xiaoying was the standard interpretation of this “missing out.” From birth to now, she had almost never been truly favored by fate.
“What do you mean?” Yi Ke didn’t understand. “A-rank evolution, Capital household registration, stable job. Wifey, I don’t think this can be called ‘never truly favored by fate,’ but rather being held, kissed, and run away with by fate.”
“Not referring to that.” Zhuang Ningyu rephrased. “I mean, the choices she made at all major life nodes brushed past what she truly wanted. Even the Action Team job was the result of settling for the second best after failing the Investigation Team exam. So even if objectively speaking, her life is already luckier than ninety percent of her peers, from Fan Xiaoying’s subjective perspective, she is indeed ‘chosen by fate’ every time, instead of ‘actively choosing fate’.”
More dramatically, for many things, if she hadn’t tried hard, she would have gotten the result she wanted. Like a diligent student in an exam room using a dozen complex formulas to calculate a wrong result, when the full score clearly only required the addition equation of 1+1=2.
Yi Ke was convinced: “Looking at it this way, that is indeed a bit unlucky.”
“The more cautious, the more wrong; the more wrong, the more cautious. The flaw in her personality is actually very obvious.” Zhuang Ningyu looked at the worried teammate outside the window. “I don’t know if she can get what she wants when facing fate this time.”
Late the next night, the ship successfully arrived at the destination, the Vortex of Reincarnation.
The Goddess of Fate slowly lifted her heavy head, about to welcome new travelers.
