I Shall Steal The Heavens

To my surprise, I wasn"t seasick either. In fact, I spent most of the journey comfortably asleep on a couch, waking up to train, practice or eat. Both Zhao Shi and Da Ge turned out to be great sparring partners, and I receved a lot of excellent advice from the two experienced veterans. If I were to join the Blood Blades, they would most likely be my seniors.

As it turned out, there was quite the group of seasoned mercenaries and aged martial artists who signed up for the mission. There were a couple of old men, who depite the age and white hair, were as muscular as someone half their age and as large as bears. There was a middle-aged mercenary with a scar across his face and an eyepatch, presumably to hide his wounded eye. He claimed that he had lost it during a fight with a demonic sect, but who knew if he was telling the truth. Accompanying him was a handsome spearman, and a lady in a seductive cheongsam and hat who smoked a similar pipe to Captain Chuan Zhang"s. There were also a team of three muscular guys from the Iron Mountain Sect, who somehow reminded me of the seniors who attacked me all those years ago in Wu Ling Academy, back when I was still in middle school.

Adding the four of us, the team totaled twelve. And that didn"t include the Mo Bi Di Ke"s crew, who numbered twenty. I was amazed that just that handful of them were able to keep such a large ship running at maximum efficiency.

These guys were amazing seahands. That was for sure.

"How long until we reach the Void Ring?"

The spearman, whose name was Qiang Zhe, complained.

"A…few days more…I supposed."

Mo Fa, his beautiful companion lazily replied as she blew rings from her pipe and leisurely gazed at the skies. Qiang Zhe muttered a complaint under his breath, but he obediently slumped down on the couch placed strategically across the deck.

"Why are you in such a hurry?" Du Yan chuckled, his scarred face twisting into an amused smile. He focused his single eye on Qiang Zhe before glancing appreciatively at Mo Fa, who had laid out to sunbathe in one of the white sun-chairs spread out on the deck. The only thing missing was a pool, but why would you need a swimming pool on the deck of a ship when we were surrounded by nothing but the sea?

"I just want to get this mission done and over with," Qiang Zhe grumbled. "And I need the money badly."

"Qiang Zhe…got into debt," Mo Fa explained. "His…bad gambling habits…sort of kicked in."

"Hey! No one asked you!" Qiang Zhe hastily snapped, but it was too late. The two old men were shaking their heads.

"Younglings these days…they"re really hopeless."

The bald one, who sported a rich, white beard and mustache that were at odds with his shiny dome of a scalp, was Lao Tou. As expected of someone of his age, he was always looking down conscendingly on the younger generation.

"Kids will be kids," Lao Ren replied with a laugh. He had longer hair, his neat, white hair tied stylishly into a bun by a ribbon, making him look like a xian of old. He gazed at us indulgently and chuckled.

"We"re not kids!" Qiang Zhe protested.

"In their eyes, we probably are. They"re about twice…or thrice our age."

Du Yan shook his head wryly. Lao Ren grinned.

"You got that right!"

"Well, we"re just kids," Zi Xiao Ji remarked cheerfully. "I"m only sixteen this year."

I glanded at Zhao Shi and Da Ge, but neither of them joined the conversation. Da Ge was the oldest of us, in his mid-twenties or so. I wasn"t sure how old Zhao Shi was, but at the very least she was a few years older than me. I should leave it at that, though. You know what they say, never ask a lady what her age was.

Since n.o.body asked me, I kept my mouth shut and retreated to the background. I preferred to keep a low profile if that was possible.

"Ha ha ha ha, glad to see that all of you are still in high spirits."

Chuan Zhang walked up to the deck, having emerged from his cabim after supervising the ship. The ship was on autopilot anyway, so he didn"t have to stand in front of it all the time. Furthermore, the First Mate, Hai Yuan, was taking his shift, so Chuan Zhang was free to go wherever he wanted for the moment, anyway.

"We"ll be reaching the Void Ring soon. So be prepared, everybody." Chaun Zhang dropped his voice. "This area is famous for all the disappearances of planes, ships and people. Every year, countless transports vanish in this zone, never to be seen again."

Sounded like the Bermuda Triangle in my original timeline…except that the Bermuda Triangle had been proven to be a baseless myth. There were no more disappearances that happened within the Bermuda Triangle than any part of the sea, and many of the rumors had been outright exaggerated or fabricated.

I doubted the same was true for this timeline. The reason was simple. The Void Ring was full of sea monsters and aquatic magical beasts. Evend ragons occasionally emerged from the depths to attack full battleships, and those divine monsters were capable of sinking entire fleets if there weren"t any strong martial artists among the crews.

I hope we don"t run into any dragons…

That remained to be seen. Hopes were flowers that grew on trees…in other words, things that rarely happened when you wished for it. Or maybe I was getting that whole idiom wrong. Who cares? You get what I mean, right?

The weather seemed fine, bright and sunny as the ship sailed underneath a clear skies. There was not a cloud in sight, and not liking the withering, superheated rays of the merciless sun, I retreated into the cabin. Getting a tan was not one of my objectives. Having purchased a pair of cheap swords for this mission, I took them out and began practicing Heavenly Draconic Meteor Swordsmanship while doing my best not to accidentally wreck the ship from within.

It was during that particular practice session when I felt the ship jerk somewhat to a stop, and overheard a panicked cry.

"Sea monster!"

The fl.u.s.tered voice belonged to one of the crew, and shortly after the warning, the alarm rang. Keeping my balance aboard the shuddering ship, I immediately raced out of the deck to see what was happening.

As the sailor had warned, there was an enormous sea monster right next to the ship. It resembled a gigantic goldfish, with razor-sharp fins and rows of piranhlike teeth in its mouth. Sunlight reflected off its glittering, crimson scales, giving the beast an angry look.

"That"s a Sea King!" one of the sailors yelled.

"Prepare torpedoes!" Captain Chuan Zhang ordered, but one of his sailors cut in.

"It"s too late, Captain! The Sea King is too close!"

"Hah, don"t worry about it. That"s what we"re here for!"

Gleeful at finally having something to do, Qiang Zhe produced his spear and leaped forward. Seemingly hovering in the air, he slashed with his spear and unleashed an immense arc of blood-red qi that clashed against the Sea King and sent it flailing backward.

"Sea King? I"ll show you who rules the s.p.a.ce around here!"

The Sea King bellowed as Qiang Zhe slashed it again, opening up another line of blood. The sea around the thrashing magical beast turned crimson as it floundered about helplessly. Enraged, it sought to bite Qiang Zhe out of the air, but he seemed to kick off on thin air and zoomed away, evading its attacks.

Unfortunately, the ship was not as lucky.

"Brace for impact!" Hai Yuan hollered.

"d.a.m.n it…" I cursed under my breath and glared at Qiang Zhe. The b.a.s.t.a.r.d was so busily showing off that he didn"t care that he was putting the rest of us in danger. Using Jin, I advanced forward and spun around in midair to deliver a devastating roundhouse kick that would have made any Lunar Rabbit proud.

Bam!

The Sea King jolted as my foot connected with its scaly cheek and the immense magical beast was flung back into the sea.

"Geez! Brother Wu! Why did you do that?!"

"…huh?"

As I landed back on the deck, using my footwork to return myself to safety, Zi Xiao Ji pouted and whined.

"You do realize that I just saved everyone…"

I shut up when I realized how absurd my reply was. n.o.body on the ship, aside from the hapless crew, needed saving. h.e.l.l, given Hai Yuan"s skills and Chuan Zhang"s strength – as well as their decades of experience – they should be able to protect the relatively amateurish new crewman who had just recently joined their ranks. Everyone here was a seasoned warrior, with enough strength to chop the poor Sea King several times over.

"…never mind. What"s the matter?"

"We finally have a chance to eat something new!" Zi Xiao Ji complained. "Aren"t you tired of eating the same old rations over and over again? Let"s catch that Sea King and have the chef cook it for tonight"s dinner! With that size, I"m sure it"ll be able to provide several meals! And it"ll be a refreshing change of menu!"

"The young lady has a point!" Lao Ren guffawed. "I was getting sick of the same old meat and vegetables…no offense to you, Chef Chu."

Chef Chu, a relatively new addition to Chuan Zhang"s crew, was too green to protest at their seeming rebuke of his culinary skills. He was crouched under a table, holding his head and looking as if he was on the verge of tears.

"Hey, Chef Chu, if we catch that Sea King, will you be able to cook it? You can cook seafood, right?"

Du Yan jerked a thumb toward the wounded Sea King, who had emerged from the sea once more and seeking revenge.

Chu stared at us, amazed that we could still think and talk about our stomachs during a time like this. Gulping and not trusting himself to speak, he nodded.

"Then it"s settled! Let"s go grab ourselves some seafood!"

Du Yan drew a sword and began advancing toward the edge of the ship. Meanwhile, Zi Xiao Ji turned to her bodyguards.

"Zhao Shi, Da Ge, can you capture that giant fish?"

I couldn"t believe she was asking the two Blood Blades so innocently. Zhao Shi smiled and nodded, drawing her short sword.

"Leave it to us!"

"You got it!" Da Ge agreed.

The two of them shot off the deck, pa.s.sing the stunned Du Yan, and launched themselves at the flailing Sea King. Engaging in movements too fast for the human eye to follow, Zhao Shi carved a b.l.o.o.d.y path through the surface of the shrieking Sea King, slicing away the scales and sending chunks of flesh dropping into the sea in big splashes.

"Make sure to grab them!" she shouted to the stunned crew, who were watching her with dropped jaws.

The Sea King twisted around and lunged at her, intent on seizing her with its jaws, but Da Ge intervened. Raising his huge broadsword above his head, he swung it down and cleaved the Sea King in half.

Holy…

I also gaped at the amazing scene before me. The Sea King was easily ten to twenty times the size of Da Ge, but he neatly cleaved it in half with just one strike. The two halves of the Sea King crashed back into the sea and drifted aimlessly, turning the waters red with blood.

"All right! Time to haul all that meat up!" Da Ge called out cheerfully to the stunned crew. They glanced at each other, still rooted to the spot, until Hai Yuan clapped his hands and made his way toward the edge.

"You heard the big brother! Get moving! We"ve a ton of seafood to collect! Stop gawking and get to work, people!"

Shaking their heads in disbelief, the crew got to work, rappelling down the hull of the huge ship and began tying ropes to the chunk of meats to haul them up.

That night, we all had a sumptuous feast of seafood. As Zi Xiao Ji and Lao Ren remarked, it was a refreshing change of menu.

*

The dangers atop the sea weren"t limited to sea monsters and magical beasts. A couple of days after the encounter with the Sea King, we ran into a different kind of threat.

Pirates.

A deathly silence fell upon us when we caught sight of a ship sailing rapidly toward us. Despite the powerful engine, the Mo Bi Di Ke was more of a cargo ship than a cruiser. It was not going to outrun the smaller but speedier ship that was charging straight at us.

The first sign that indicated trouble was the black flag fluttering at the top of the ship. A skull with crossbones underneath it.

…wait, what?

Are they seriously using that to identify themselves as pirates?

Worse, it wasn"t just the typical skull with crossbones. There was a hat on top of it, and a smoking pipe sticking out of the bony jaw. Apparently whoever designed the flag for the pirate crew had taken a leaf out of the manga One Piece or something.

Is there even One Piece in this timeline to begin with? No…even with such obvious signs, are they really pirates?

"Pirates!" one of the crew members hollered in horror when he caught sight of the flag, his eyes growing wide and his face paling in terror. "RUN!"

I got my answer.

"Run?" Qiang Zhe scoffed as he brandished his spear and planted the shaft firmly on the deck. "Let them come. I"ll slice them up real good."

"Hmm…isn"t that…the Smoker Pirates?" Mo Fa was frowning as she studied the flag. She drew a staff and leisurely leaned back in her seat, even as faint wisps of qi began to gather around the crown of the wooden weapon. "An…interesting opponent."

"Oh! I"ve heard of the Smokers before!" Du Yan sounded excited. "They"re notorious for their Smoke Strike martial arts! They"ve raided dozens of ships and have a high bounty on their heads! If we succeed in subduing them and bringing their heads back, we"ll have some extra gold!"

a.s.suming we survived the mission against the Void Whale and returned safely, of course. But I wasn"t one to dampen spirits, so I shut my mouth.

"So we fight?" Da Ge asked cheerily as he drew his broadsword and began polishing it. Zhao Shi moved closer to Zi Xiao Ji, so as to guard her.

"It"s inevitable. I don"t think the Mo Bi Di Ke can outrun that ship." Lao Tou sighed as he bowed his head and clasped his hands, his bald scalp gleaming in the sunlight. "And from what I"ve heard about the Smoker Pirates, they aren"t the type to let a prey go either."

"Their loss." Lao Ren was chuckling as he stroked his beard. "We"ll just ma.s.sacre and claim the bounty. Even if we somehow fail the Void Whale mission and are unable to bring it back, at least we won"t be returning to sh.o.r.e empty-handed."

"Oi, don"t jinx us, old men!" Du Yan glared at the elder, but the latter merely smiled back good-naturedly. "I have no intention of failing the main mission!"

"Neither do I, young man. Neither do I."

"Incoming!"

Hai Yuan"s voice sounded unusually tense as the pirate ship drew closer. Even from this distance, I could see a good amount of crew gathered atop the smaller ship"s deck. All of them were waving sabers or cutla.s.ses…typical pirate weapons. Qi glowed around them as they prepared to make the jump with their qigong.

They obviously hadn"t detected the martial artists on board what they thought was an ordinary ship. Man, they were going to be in for a rude surprise when they attempted to board and raid the Mo Bi Di Ke.

About twenty-five…no, thirty of them…

I did a quick headcount and saw that we were outnumbered about one to two point five. Not very good odds.

For the pirates, I mean.

"Get them!"

For some reason, the pirates weren"t firing cannons and bombarding our ships with long-range weapons. Then again, why would they? They wanted to board our ship and rob us. There was no point sinking the ship before they could get their filthy paws on the valuables on board it. They might be suicidal, but surely they weren"t that stupid…

"AAARGH…!"

The first pirate"s scream was cut off along with his head as Qiang Zhe eagerly tore into the fray, mowing down the vanguard with his spear. The pirates on either side of him collapsed, clutching their abdomens and struggling to hold their guts in. They didn"t need to bother, because Qiang Zhe"s next stroke took their heads off.

Beside him, Mo Fa tapped her staff against the deck, and tendrils of qi drifted past her to seize the stunned pirates. The pirates hacked and cut at the formless tendrils with their sabers and weapons, but the qi appendages merely dispersed harmlessly, only to reform near instantaneously and seize the poor pirates and hauled them up. They then tore the screaming pirates apart, reducing them into messy sacks of flesh and blood.

I looked away. I thought I had gotten used to such gruesome scenes, especially after suffering torture at the hands of Ba Yun. But obviously I had no reason to watch such carnage if I didn"t have to. Besides, I needed to focus on the battle before me.

"Brat!"

A priate lunged at me desperately, probably believing that I was easy prey, especially when compared to the older veterans fighting around me. I merely stepped to the side and then kicked him in his midriff, causing him to double over. As he coughed and wheezed, I s.n.a.t.c.hed the saber out of his hand and lopped of his head.

There was no need to dirty my new pair of swords (admittedly they were pretty cheap, though) with the blood of sc.u.m, after all.

Ducking to my right, I evaded another slash and answered with a riposte that tore my second a.s.sailant"s throat out. As he gurgled bloodily and crashed to the ground, clutching his neck, I spun around and parried a strike from a fourth pirate. He growled and exerted more of his qi into his blade, forcing me back.

I smiled.

Using the opportunity to test out my Heavenly Draconic Meteor Sword techniques, I unleashed a meteoric strike that smashed his saber and cut through his chest. My foe stared at me in disbelief, too stunned to realize that he was dead, and then the top half of his torso slid off and fell while the rest of his body was basically reduced to pulp, as if he had just been struck by a meteor.

"Whoops…"

I stared at my broken saber. The poor quality weapon was unable to handle my qi, the blade shattering when I infused a little too much energy into it. Discarding the useless saber, I looked for another opponent while thinking to myself.

I"ve to learn to control the output of my qi, or I"ll end up destroying my weapons. This is why I need a proper spirit armament, or I won"t be able to fight to my full potential. I really need to forge myself a spirit weapon soon…

"…eh?"

Blinking in shock, I realized that there was no longer any enemy. The last of them had desperately charged at Zi Xiao Ji, but Zhao Shi easily dispatched him. Her expression full of contempt, she stepped on his corpse and ground it down.

"Trash."

Looking around, I saw that the other martial artists had dealt with their enemies too. As I mentioned, the ratio was two and a half to one, so…the elders ended up stepping back and not doing anything. The trio from the Iron Mountain Sect had also stayed back, hanging around the cabin to protect the hapless crew from any pirate stragglers that might have broken free from the skirmish and thought it a good idea to take a hostage.

Seeing that we were done, the leader of the trio, Yi Shan, stepped forward and cracked his knuckles eagerly.

"Now it"s our turn!"

"Huh?" I gaped at him and his comrades. "Your turn to do what?"

"Board the ship, silly." Yi Shan grinned at me. "You can stay here. You guys did well in holding the fort. Me and my brothers will board the pirate ship and flush the rest out. We"ll also bring back whatever treasure and valuables they have onboard their vessel, and we"ll split them once we return."

"Split them?" I frowned. "Shouldn"t we…like, return those to the police?"

The silence that followed told me that I had just uttered something stupid. I guess common sense in my timeline was completely different from the rules that this world operated under. Finder keepers and all that, huh? It went against my moral values, so I made a note to surrender my share to the police when I returned.

Of course, I would later learn that the police was not interested in holding onto the valuable and finding their rightful owners, and would just tell me to keep them, but that was a story for another day.

"Good job, Shi and Ge!"

Zi Xiao Ji was praising her two bodyguards. They evidently did their job, preventing a ring of pirates from getting to their charge. When she caught me staring in her direction, she waved and winked at me.

"Good job, Brother Wu!"

"A…ah." I nodded in acknowledgement, and then turned to glance at the horizon. Was it my imagination, or were the skies getting darker? The heavens, which had been so clear and cloudless earlier, were now growing gloomier, swamped by ominous thunderclouds. Lightning lit up the gray fog occasionally, dancing across the surface of the sea in a violeny frenzy.

"The Void Ring," Captain Chuan Zhang declared as he emerged from the cabin after seeing the Iron Mountain Sect trio off to the pirate"s ship. He narrowed his eyes as he glared into the distance. "We"re finally here."