Chapter 106: Connected, Finally
Translator: Pluto Editor: Tehrn
There was something annoying, but not life-threatening, about living in Hyperthermal Hell. Due to the high temperatures during the day, no one could do anything but find a place to sleep. However, no matter where it was, the harsh brightness made it difficult for anyone to sleep well.
Thus, when Lin Sanjiu found herself in this dark, quiet environment, she suddenly found a happiness she had not felt for a long time. The surrounding darkness was like a mother’s womb, gently wrapping around her, providing her a peaceful and restful sleep.
She slept so deeply that she could turn a deaf ear at the anxious "Guh, guh" sound beside her. Shen Lianqi had been tied up and was dangling from the ceiling of the passenger boat. As his mouth had also been stuffed, he couldn’t make a noise. He thrashed about noisily, hitting his pair of tails against the walls of the boat. The sounds reverberated far throughout the empty steel ship and echoed for quite some time before it finally woke Lin Sanjiu.
"Oh, you’re awake." Lin Sanjiu rubbed her eyes. She yawned while she took out the gag from his mouth but showed no sign of releasing him. As Shen Lianqi had gills on both sides of his cheek, he didn’t have any difficulties breathing even with something in his mouth. The first thing that he blurted from his mouth was, "Where are Miss Hannah and the others?"
Lin Sanjiu crossed her arms and stared at him for a long time before she slowly answered, "Shen Lianqi. Shen Lianqi… I’m really impressed by you. I really don’t know what to say. Even if you become a merman, do you lack the sense of aesthetics? I don’t understand how you could fall for that duoluozhong."
Shen Lianqi blushed even though he was hanging from a beam, "Don’t put it that way. Even though Miss Hannah’s skin is a little loose, she is very kind… Miss Lin, I’m not joking with you. Where are they? Really."
"They’re dead. They were frozen solid, I kicked them, and they shattered into a dozen big and small pieces." There was a hint of cruelty in her voice as she purposely described the entire process clearly. "After they became ice, they looked way better. At least, they no longer looked gooey and they stopped dripping their corpse gunk everywhere."
From the description on the card, mermaids are unable to process any sort of negative feelings. Lin Sanjiu wanted to see how Shen Lianqi’s remaining human side would deal with the situation. The hanging merman looked at her vacantly, without saying a word.
"I don’t believe you. Is she really dead?" Shen Lianqi asked after quite a while.
"Do you want me to retrieve one of their remains from the sea? Oh, but that won’t do. They were frozen then defrost by the warm sea so they probably already dissolved into the seawater." Lin Sanjiu answered descriptively without any sense of discretion. At the same time, she stared hard at Shen Lianqi, not knowing how he would react.
—
Despite how scheming the three duoluozhongs were, they probably didn’t have much practical fighting experience once they awakened in the New World, so she settled the three duoluozhongs within half of that 5-minutes limitation that her Pygmalion Choker had, leaving them as broken fragments rolling around on the deck.
This ‘instant freeze’ ability described by B.Rabbit was really quite powerful and Lin Sanjiu couldn’t help feeling envious of the people who had practical combat abilities from the start. Even now, whenever she needed to fight, she had to engage in hand-to-hand combat. How can she still be considered a Posthuman?
After sweeping all the hardened pieces of dead flesh into the sea, she used the silver light from her [Ability Polishing Agent] and found the unconscious Shen Lianqi floating on the surface of the sea above the tail of the ship.
Luckily, he had his fish body so his body floated up to the surface when he fainted. Otherwise, it would be hard to say if he could still survive...
Lin Sanjiu spent quite a lot of effort trying to pull him back up on the ship as she did not really know how to swim and because she couldn’t touch his skin. After thinking about the problem for some time, she wrapped her hands with some cloth and found some ropes, which were used for tying the drape curtains in the ship. She tied the ropes tightly around Shen Lianqi, pulled him out and then hung him from a beam.
She did this also as a preventive measure as she didn’t know if Shen Lianqi would suddenly react emotionally if he heard that Hannah was dead.
—
However, Lin Sanjiu did not expect the following reaction. Shen Lianqi remained silent for some time with his head lowered, then he sighed and actually smiled, "Anyway, nothing can be done about it now. Everyone must die someday. Non-mermaids can’t live long. That’s why being a merman is great."
[That was it?] Lin Sanjiu was stunned. [That isn’t optimism, that is being totally heartless!] Although she knew that Hannah wasn’t a saint, Lin Sanjiu didn’t know why she felt a little indignant on her behalf, "Hey, let me tell you something. I don’t plan on untying you. I already decided that you will stay on the wall for the remaining of the 14 months here."
"What should I do if I need to eat?" Shen Lianqi asked, crooking his head. He was neither worried nor angry.
"I’ll feed you."
"Oh, thank you! I’ll be counting on you!" Shen Lianqi laughed with ease, showing not even a bit of hatred for Lin Sanjiu.
"Don’t talk to me. I’m afraid that I would punch you," she warned acerbically as she turned to leave.
Shen Lianqi’s thought process, at that point, was basically very different from a normal human. Lin Sanjiu couldn't help feeling angry just looking at him. Ignoring him, she went deeper into the ship. Now, she faced a new problem. She had to find for potable water.
There was no way they were going to drink any more of that ‘cultivation drink’. Logically speaking, there should be potable water stored in such a large ship. She raised her [Ability Polishing Agent] like a flashlight and searched every inch of the ship that was not underwater. She found nothing other than a big mess. She only found the storage room of ship after diving into the water.
Every cloud has a silver lining. Even though all the glass bottles have been shattered, there were still many crates of plastic mineral water bottle. Though the plastic bottles have already become soft after being soaked in warm water for such a long time, the crates provided some protection so they were still somewhat intact. From the amount of water, it should last them for a few months if they did some careful rationing.
After she made multiple trips to the storage room to bring out the potable water, Lin Sanjiu sighed as she walked past the bridge of the ship once more. Suddenly, she had an idea and she walked in.
She looked around the bridge with her 'flashlight' and realized that the cardboard box used for storing the ‘Mermaid Cultivating Drink’ was undamaged. On the exterior of the box, there was a picture of a pair of peculiar-looking merman and mermaid swimming while holding each other hands...
She actually considered herself quite lucky because the drink was only effective if consumed in large amounts. Furthermore, it was slow-acting. Lin Sanjiu couldn’t help shuddering when she remembered finding a patch of dangling fish scales on her elbow.
She really did not like that item but she stuffed the remaining 68 bottles of mermaid cultivation drink back into the cardboard box and stored everything into a card.
After fully exploring the ship, she fed Shen Lianqi a bit of water and suddenly found that she had nothing to do. This was the first time she actually felt this way ever since the New World descended.
After contemplating for a while, she looked for a place where she couldn’t hear Shen Lian nagging, then she sat down cross-legged and quietly examined her abilities and items. She realized that she had quite a few special items.
[Pygmalion Choker]: The item will grant its user an ability described by another person. The effect will last for 5 minutes.
[That spring, when the cherry blossoms fell, your sweet laughter melted my world]: The author uses this to accumulate word count and males who hear it will lose all ill intentions. The number of times this item can be used is dependent on how many times the user had been in love.
[A bag of cat litter]: Even though it is bright orange, it is a great tool to cover user’s tracks.
[Oh My God! My wallet is missing!]: This will freeze the target’s Special Items for 1 hour. The target will not be able to use their Special Items for 1 hour. [1]
[Teru Teru Bozu Defense System]: Once hung on a ceiling, it will watch over the user like a security guard, but the noise it makes is horrible.
[Tape Recorder]: It is basically what it is.
[Another/Way - A Mermaid Cultivation Drink]: Long-term consumption will cause a human to turn into a mermaid, but not a beautiful one...
[Ability Polishing Agent]: It only states that it can polish abilities and the rest of the description is incomprehensible. It is now relegated to Lin Sanjiu’s flashlight.
She gave the remaining prizes that she won from the Red vs. White Challenge to Hai Tianqing and the others, giving them two items each. With eight items in hand, she suddenly felt like a Nouveau Riche. In stark contrast to her line-up of special items, her abilities really look quite insignificant.
She had three active ability.
[Planar World]: Planar World (Level up count: 1) allows Lin Sanjiu to convert up to 8 items every day. There is no limitation to the number of times these items can be revert to their original form or converted back to cards. The larger the mass of the item, the harder it is to convert into a card. The user will also need to use more energy for conversion. With Lin Sanjiu’s current stats, she is unable to convert anything with a mass above one ton. As her physical capabilities improve, the upper limit of this ability would also gradually change.
Lin Sanjiu can control the speed and direction of the converted card if it is within 35m from her hand. The card is bound by the law of gravity once it is further than 35m.
Planar World also allows Lin Sanjiu to summon one Diary card. The Diary card would record everything that happens within a five-meter radius for up to three hours. Once it has recorded up to three hours of information, it has to be retrieved and erase before it can start a new recording.
Lin Sanjiu counted the cards she had in her deck. Other than her special items, she had a [Mouthpart] card. It was extraordinarily long and very sharp. Lately, this has become the item she used most frequently and one of her most useful weapons. Even though she liked using the whip-like weapon, she was unwilling to take it out unless a situation was too dire. After all, it was part of a duoluozhong’s face so it was starting to smell bad as the remaining internal tissues within the mouthpart was rotting. It was also not that easy to use as it had no handle.
Lin Sanjiu had thrown away the police baton, small knives, and other makeshift weapons long ago as she did not need them anymore. There was also a [Rob the Poor to feed the Rich box] card in her deck, it was a one-time use item. The rest of her cards are all her daily necessities: an extra pair of combat pants, the remaining coffee and chocolate, some sanitary items and underwear, and Ren Nan’s corpse...
"Wait! That is not a daily necessity!" Lin Sanjiu drew out her [Ren Nan's Corpse] card. She had nearly forgotten that this card even exists. Looking at it now, she had a vague feeling as if the events happened in another lifetime.
Apart from her Planar World, her two other active abilities were [No coincidence. No story] and [A Twinkle in the Sky] — it was that latter ability which allowed her to sent her companions flying so they all managed to escape from Puppeteer.
Even though the combat value of her abilities was quite low, she wasn’t worried about them. Instead, when she thought of her [School of Higher Consciousness], she couldn’t help frowning.
"Should I just meditate and enter that mindscape to see what is going on?" she sighed, "I need to find a way to activate it agai— "
Before she finished her mumbling, she heard a buzzing sound from afar, it radiated out quickly like water ripples.
[Is it a duoluozhong?] She leaped up and looked around cautiously but she did not spot anyone. She listened a little more carefully and felt that the sound wasn’t like that of a duoluozhong. The thing which produced that sound seemed small...
She got her answer very quickly.
She spotted a bird-like thing which was only about the size of a palm. It flapped its wings at high speed and flew toward her at a rapidly, growing from a small dot in a distance to its actual size, until it was just before her eyes. It was only then that Lin Sanjiu had a clear view of it. It was a small white paper crane.
The paper crane stopped in front of her, almost as if it was using its two hand-drawn eyes to confirm Lin Sanjiu’s identity. After that, she heard an unfamiliar female voice, "It's all because I want to be with Brother Hai. Otherwise, I wouldn’t waste one of my paper cranes to look for a woman I don’t know! Do you know how expensive this paper crane is? It uses a pay-per-use model. In the Twelve World Centrum...Oh no? It is already recording! No! Brother Hai can’t speak to her! Alright, B.Rabbit. Ok. Quick! You can talk to— "
[What the hell is this?]
Just when Lin Sanjiu was feeling very puzzled, she suddenly heard B.Rabbit’s voice coming from the paper crane: "Xiao Jiu, where the hell are you? Finding you is so hard! Hey, let me tell you something. I've already found and eaten some fresh vegetables, what about you? Are you still licking that melted chocolate? HAHAHA!"
"Get to the point!" Hu Changzai shouted impatiently from the background.
"Oh, yeah… This, uh, this paper crane will record your voice and we will hear it when it comes back to us. If you are not unconscious or dead, please leave a message after the ‘beep’! There is so much I want to tell you! Hehehe! Did you know that Hai Tianqing…"
"Shut up!"
Hai Tianqing’s furious voice rang out and B.rabbit’s voice was immediately cut off. Then, the paper crane made a "beep".
Lin Sanjiu was stunned.