Chapter 113: Crop Top
Finding the Lilithians was easy, but then again, it really wasn’t.
But if you said it was difficult, well, that certainly wasn’t enough to stump the people of Blue Sea.
The current situation in the Kingdom of Lilith was that roughly 1,200 people were currently somewhere in a certain stretch of ocean, having used floating boards to cobble together a crude land-based kingdom.
Another roughly 2,000 people had been scattered during the previous attack by the pirate Kansidang, and their fate was unknown.
The 1,200 were relatively easy to find. Lilith had originally said that she could spend around seven days drawing a magical map on-site, using the crystal to point the way.
But a group of Blue Sea residents had already accidentally stumbled upon the Kingdom of Lilith ahead of them, saving them the trouble.
With the believers’ locations available, Cheng Qisheng only needed to direct the nearest large ship to go pick them up.
The real challenge was figuring out how to locate the Lilithians who had been scattered.
In terms of appearance, there was virtually no difference between Lilithians and Blue Sea people.
They couldn’t even name any particularly important distinguishing characteristics of their own civilization.
It was like a Blue Sea person encountering an alien with three stomachs. If they didn’t already know that fact, they wouldn’t say, “My distinguishing feature is that I only have one stomach.”
Fortunately, Blue Sea had a complete medical examination process.
After a round of examinations, they quickly identified a characteristic unique to the Lilithian civilization.
First of all, the structure of the Lilithians’ brains was somewhat different from that of Blue Sea residents. The difference wasn’t particularly large, however; it was a case of being similar in essence but different in form.
But not every Blue Sea resident could lug an X-ray computed tomography scanner around with them, so when it came to finding Lilithians, the most important identifying feature was something visible on the outside.
Every Lilithian had a red mole on their abdomen.
That was their civilization’s distinguishing characteristic.
Energy detection showed that the red moles on the other Lilithians looked exactly like ordinary moles.
However, when Lilith used magic, energy detection could detect energy fluctuations coming from the red mole on her abdomen.
Cheng Qisheng felt that it was probably something akin to the legendary “dantian”.
That wasn’t a mole at all. It was clearly a magic core.
She couldn’t help but wonder: if the red mole represented a magic core, and every Lilithian had one on their abdomen, did that mean every Lilithian had the potential to become a mage?
It was just that, due to environmental limitations, only the most gifted Lilith, at present, was capable of using magic.
It was just like how ability users only appeared after a Safe City reached Tier 2. Perhaps one day, after Blue Sea Safe City had been upgraded to a certain level, these Lilithians would also be able to become mages.
Mages, even!
Just imagine Blue Sea producing one magical product after another, while countless mages took part in infrastructure projects, combat, and improving the floating devices as part of their daily lives…
The great Blue Sea Creator God was already looking forward to it.
The natives of Green Billow Star had already begun to sense that something was wrong.
The rules for survival on Green Billow Star had always been brutally simple.
Just two words:
Stay alive.
In order to survive, aside from the time they spent sleeping, they spent every other moment catching fish, repairing hulls damaged for various reasons, reinforcing their ships as much as possible, and fighting off all kinds of pirates.
In such a dangerous environment, other living people were another kind of danger.
After all, who could guarantee that the other party meant no harm?
So under normal circumstances, ordinary ships on Green Billow Star never interacted with one another.
It was much like the city lords of the Safe Cities: unless absolutely necessary, they wouldn’t meet privately either.
When an ordinary ship spotted another ship from a distance, its first reaction was to turn around and change course.
Anyone who saw another ship and deliberately approached it was generally a pirate.
But over the past few days, this unspoken rule had begun to change.
First of all, it seemed like they hadn’t encountered any pirates in quite some time.
Secondly, some strange people had started appearing.
“Hi!!”
—The local ship Dangyang had come face-to-face with a ship twice its size.
And now, more than a dozen tall, muscular people who clearly looked like they could put up a serious fight had disembarked from that ship.
They were all smiles and extremely polite.
“Excuse me, may we take a look at your stomachs?”
The captain of the Dangyang smiled in response.
“Oh! Of course, my friends. You can look at whatever you want.”
After all, the only reason the two ships had gotten this close was because the Dangyang had spent the entire time trying to flee while they chased after it, and they had eventually caught up.
The other ship was larger, and they had more people. What could the Dangyang do?
The captain spent only one second choosing between “fight to the death” and “go along with them for now” before choosing the latter.
Since he was a man, and the Blue Sea person asking the question was also a man, the captain now had a complicated look on his face as he lifted his shirt.
The group opposite him took a very careful look, then stepped back.
“Thank you. We’ve finished looking.”
Someone held up a lively, flapping fish and enthusiastically tried to sell it to them.
“Would you like to buy something?”
Everyone aboard the Dangyang: “……”
You chased us for half a day just to take a look at our stomachs and sell us fish?
In the end, the Dangyang inexplicably spent some energy crystals and came away with a pile of dried fish that, by Green Billow Star standards, could honestly be considered quite reasonably priced.
Even after the other ship had sailed away, the people aboard the Dangyang were still staring at the dried fish, unable to comprehend what exactly had just happened.
Only after cautiously confirming that the dried fish really was fish, and that it hadn’t been poisoned, did everyone aboard the Dangyang continue sailing with a baffled feeling in their hearts.
Two days later, they encountered two people sitting on wooden planks, their ship having apparently broken apart.
The moment the Dangyang spotted them, the two immediately grabbed the long wooden planks they had with them and began paddling toward the ship with all their strength.
This was fairly normal.
After all, simply living on a wooden plank wasn’t a viable way to survive for long. So when survivors whose ships had broken apart but who had somehow managed to stay alive spotted an intact ship, they would naturally see it as a lifeline.
While the people aboard the Dangyang were still voting on whether to take these two unfortunate souls aboard, the two survivors reached the ship and shouted:
“Hello! I’m coming aboard!”
Then—
Whoosh!
As the long bamboo pole on their wooden plank sprang upright, one of them was launched onto the Dangyang.
“Hello! I’m coming aboard too!”
—Whoosh!
The next second, the other person landed aboard as well.
Everyone aboard the Dangyang: “……”
Pirates attacking?!!!
This time, it was eight against two, so they naturally fought for their lives.
And then they lost.
The two had astonishing strength and strange abilities. One of them could manipulate wood. In less than twenty minutes, all eight of them had been subdued.
The good news was that their opponents had deliberately held back. Although they had lost the fight, no one was bleeding, and nobody had suffered any broken limbs.
The two strangers who had securely tied up all eight of them looked hostile.
“You’re pirates?”
Everyone aboard the Dangyang: What a fine case of turning the tables!
“We’re not pirates!”
“Then why did you attack us?”
The Dangyang’s captain was completely dumbfounded. The other side’s utterly righteous attitude even made him wonder whether he had overreacted.
“You used grappling hooks and ropes to come straight onto our ship! You’re the ones who look like pirates! We were defending ourselves against your invasion!”
The two Blue Sea residents, who had left Blue Sea for the first time, were rather puzzled.
“But we said hello.”
If the other side didn’t agree, shouldn’t they have kicked them back down while they were still in midair?
The Dangyang’s captain: “……”
“It’s like this. You moved too fast. We didn’t have time to react.”
The two Blue Sea residents looked around the ship and, indeed, felt that these people didn’t look like pirates at all. They hurriedly untied them.
“Sorry about that. You started fighting us the moment we came aboard, so we thought you were pirates. Here, here, let me help you up. We’re really sorry. This was our first time encountering outsiders, so we didn’t have any experience. It won’t happen again. Oh, and here’s a sea monster tentacle. It’s edible. Consider it an apology.”
The people aboard the Dangyang had barely gotten to their feet when the other side politely asked:
“Excuse me, may we take a look at your stomachs?”
Everyone aboard the Dangyang: “……”
Five minutes later, after once again having their stomachs inspected, the entire crew of the Dangyang watched as the two people who could clearly have simply taken their ship by force jumped back onto their wooden plank and paddled away with their crude “oars,” wobbling along as they went.
Three more days passed.
This time, they encountered a large ship battling a giant sea monster.
As soon as the Dangyang approached, the captain took one look at the ship’s design from a distance and immediately sensed that something was wrong. He turned the ship around and prepared to flee.
Fortunately, both the large ship and the sea monster were deeply engaged in battle, which conveniently gave them an opportunity to escape.
But then the captain was stunned to discover that the large ship had somehow shackled the sea monster with a strange chain and was towing it along with the ship, chasing after the Dangyang.
The sea monster was clearly still struggling desperately, trying to pull in the opposite direction. But the large ship had plenty of power, so all it could do was be dragged helplessly behind.
The Dangyang’s captain: “……”
When they finally caught up, and the people who boarded his ship asked, “May we take a look at your stomach?”, he wasn’t even surprised anymore.
What the hell is going on with Green Billow Star lately?!!
And what the hell is going on with everyone’s obsession with stomachs?!!
The captain began to think that perhaps he should alter his clothes into crop tops.
And at that very moment, the crop-top-wearing captain of the Dangyang lost his ship in a violent storm.
He and his crew desperately clung to what remained of the ship, struggling for their lives beneath a torrential downpour mixed with hail.
Under normal circumstances, people aboard a damaged ship caught in a storm at night had little chance of surviving until the storm passed.
Before the new day arrived, they would usually be swept into the depths of the sea along with the broken half of their ship by the suddenly surging waves.
And in weather like this, no ships would be sailing. Most would remain where they were, waiting for the storm to pass.
So the chances of the crew of the Dangyang being rescued were 0%.
“Hey!! Friends! Are you all right?!”
The captain of the Dangyang was hanging from one corner of the wrecked hull, with raging waves directly beneath him. When he heard that voice, he almost thought he had been poisoned by a sea monster’s mist and was hallucinating.
But the next second, he saw it clearly.
A ship with its lights on was silently approaching them through the darkness.
The chances of the crew of a wrecked ship being rescued in the middle of a nighttime storm had now risen to 1%.
Someone aboard the ship that was stubbornly continuing to sail through the storm threw down a lifeline.
And accompanying the lifeline was that familiar request:
“Excuse me, may we take a look at your stomachs… Oh! Your stomachs are already exposed! How convenient!”
A Blue Sea resident easily picked up an unconscious crew member from the Dangyang. Looking at his crop top, the Blue Sea resident’s expression filled with admiration.
“Even in conditions like this, you’re still committed to fashion?”
Sure enough, the apocalypse couldn’t defeat humanity.
Humanity from another world was no different.
…
Compared to the Dangyang, which had had its crew’s stomachs inspected repeatedly without ever producing any results, it had at least suffered no mistreatment despite the whole experience being utterly baffling.
Meanwhile, in another stretch of ocean, two Blue Sea ships intercepted a sl*ve ship.
That’s right. They had deliberately gone looking for a sl*ve ship, and they had targeted it specifically.
After all, if the missing Lilithians were still alive, the place they were most likely to end up was a sl*ve ship.
—The captain of the sl*ve ship stared at the dark cannon muzzles pointed at him and, just like the captain of the Dangyang, began to wonder whether he was hallucinating.
“That thing… is that a warship?”
