Shen Guanquan didn’t respond to Zhao. He simply turned and headed towards the Hope.

Zhao followed closely behind, and in no time, the two arrived in front of it.

The ship had undergone a dramatic transformation, changing from a wooden sailing vessel into an ironclad steamship.

It had been upgraded to level five, likely the first one at sea, all thanks to Shen Guanquan discovering a resource called magic stone.

The energy crystal had been found inside a stranded, wrecked ship.

Normally inert, it required extremely high temperatures to ignite, emitting intense light and heat.

He hadn’t acquired much of it, so after upgrading his ship, only a few units remained.

Inside the captain’s cabin.

Shen Guanquan smoked half a cigarette before finally speaking.

"I actually followed your suggestion."

"My suggestion?" Zhao looked confused.

"You were right. Most powerful players do have issues, " he pointed to his own head, “so they’re not ideal recruits. That’s why I need to find a way to train and empower my own soldiers."

"But you’ve gone too far. Those people who died were living, breathing human beings!" Zhao retorted.

Some of the dead included brothers he had drunk with the night before.

"Their deaths were a necessary sacrifice. If we don’t act now, then the future death toll won’t stop at 200. It’ll be 2,000… or even 20,000. All of us."

Shen Guanquan’s tone was solemn.

"Surviving on these unpredictable seas is no easy task! Everything I’m doing is to pave the road for the future, for all of our futures!" he declared passionately.

Zhao, hearing this, couldn’t help but feel persuaded. He almost fully bought into the reasoning.

However, he had a special talent.

[Stubborn Streak: At times, your Mental stat can be treated as your base Mental +3.]

He couldn’t argue with Shen Guanquan’s words, and he didn’t even think the logic was wrong. Still, deep down, something told him Shen Guanquan’s actions weren’t humane.

At the Iron Brotherhood’s location.

Over 300 ships surrounded an island, bombarding it with relentless fire.

Leading the assault was a steel warship covered in gun turrets, the Iron Will.

Yu Dawei sat comfortably in the elevated bridge with a great view, sipping instant coffee brewed by his assistant, Zhang Zhigang, while watching the ruined island.

"That thing’s got some serious patience. I wanna see how long it can hold out," Yu Dawei grumbled as he finished his coffee, which along with instant noodles, was part of their scarce starting supplies.

"It should come out soon," said Zhang Zhi calmly, standing nearby.

With clean clothes and glasses, his polished appearance was a sharp contrast to Yu Dawei’s scruffy beard and bulging belly.

The island was hiding a giant beast, likely lurking in a cave somewhere, as two brothers who had gone ashore were bitten to death.

Some crew wanted to storm the island in vengeance, weapons in hand, but Yu Dawei stopped them.

It was far too risky of an action.

It was better to reduce the island to rubble and flush the beast out, then kill it.

Thirty minutes later, the island was completely obliterated by firepower. Yet, the giant beast never revealed itself.

Yu Dawei was puzzled.

"That beast’s got even more grit than we thought. Maybe it swam away beneath the sea."

But Zhang Zhi frowned, messaging other team members privately before turning to Yu Dawei.

"Someone reported a leopard’s corpse floating in the water behind us. Its fur was vividly colourful, but the body was torn into pieces. The size’s hard to tell. What we are sure about is that its head was roughly one metre."

Elsewhere, aboard the Nightmare Star.

That afternoon, Yang Yi didn’t continue training. Instead, he started fishing.

Given the sea conditions, there was no real need to do so, as even just tossing a random bucket into the sea with your eyes closed would guarantee catching several fish.

So, he was fishing only because he felt like doing so.

Besides, it was a chance to see what he could catch in the white seawater.

He used the Pale Worm Fishing Rod, which guaranteed a bite on the first cast.

After picking a spot, Yang Yi cast his line, and the small pale worm arced through the air and landed in the sea, instantly latching onto a fat pomfret.

"Damn!" Yang Yi grumbled.

He hadn’t expected the worm to grab a fish at the surface, which kind of defeated the rod’s purpose…

Still, he didn’t let it go to waste. He hauled the pomfret onto the deck, as Suna needed live fish for her experiments anyway.

And so, Yang Yi kept fishing.

In less than an hour, three fish were caught, along with a black iron resource treasure chest.

The resources inside turned out to be surprising. It actually contained a single unit of Crystal Diamond.

【Name: Crystal Diamond】

【Description: A pure and flawless crystal with extremely high hardness, requiring exquisite craftsmanship to process. It is a precious material.】

It was a high-level resource similar to Sea Silver and Demon Stone. In the future, upgrading the ship could require such rare and difficult-to-obtain advanced materials.

Without them, even if you had a large amount of basic materials, upgrading would be impossible, and it would leave you at a bottleneck.

There were two fat fish, but also a normal one, which happened to be an old acquaintance of Yang Yi’s, the Long-legged Sardine!

Surprisingly, it had not become fat, and its vitality was quite good.

“Could it be that because of the curse, I’m able to catch normal abyssal fish species within the influence zone of the Bountiful Sea?” Yang Yi speculated.

But the next catch was a fat Long-legged Sardine, which broke his guess.

“It’s probably a matter of probability. Still, these unfattened fish can be used as emergency food.”

After catching another wriggling chunk of meat, Yang Yi stopped fishing and switched to continuing his training…

By evening, Yang Yi’s energy had dropped to the low 30s, so he stopped and began checking the chat channels instead.

As expected, the safe zone was likely to disappear completely at night.

Most players were prepared to face the Bountiful Sea, and some had even started to get excited.

“This time the system is really acting out of character. I thought it would be like the Extreme Winter Sea, launching a surprise attack to speed up the sea’s spread! But so far, nothing unexpected has happened.”

“Yeah, it’s kind of throwing me off!”

“But isn’t that a good thing? Would you rather the system do a sneak attack?”

“The sneak attack will probably come. Maybe the system is holding back some big move!”

Immune to the Werewolf Disease: “Recruit vampire teammates.”

“.........”

Yang Yi changed his title, hoping to gain information related to vampires. But vampires were rare, and neither bounties nor luring attempts worked.

Suddenly, he received a private message from a stranger.

“You think you’re funny?”

Yang Yi was about to reply but found he had already been blocked by the other party.

“Looks like I’ll have to start with the Rotten Whale after all...” he judged, a bit troubled, since it was not easy to deal with.

However, the matter of upgrading couldn’t be delayed any longer; several special ships had already upgraded to level four, and most of them were ships from large fleets.

They didn’t hide it but instead used it as a recruitment banner to loudly advertise for new members.

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