Chapter 30 The Polyhedron from the Killer Whale
When that piece of wreckage, already unworthy of being called the Killer Whale, arrived on shore with its passengers, Vivienne’s thoughts were in turmoil.
Her emotions began to fray; she just wanted to open a can of the beer she had just received and drink deeply to relieve the stress.
She had thought she would face a grim enemy with a terrible attitude and ruthless means, but unexpectedly, the figure that appeared before her was a guy with tattered clothes, covered in dirt and seaweed.
His appearance looked no better than the corpses she usually fished out of the sea.
Indeed, Vivienne often fished bodies from the ocean, or rather, many unemployed individuals in the Free City engaged in similar activities.
With the Night Alliance completely abandoning their intervention in the Free City, chaos in the city intensified, and nearly every day a large number of bodies were thrown into the canals of the Free City, with the flowing water quickly erasing all traces related to their deaths.
Before these bodies were devoured by marine life in the sea, they always underwent a strange hand’s “baptism” first.
According to some unwritten and somewhat illegal rules, when bodies that died from m*rder or s*icide fell into the sea, those who discovered them first had the right to dispose of them…
Thus, those unemployed drifters would gradually gather like seagulls scenting fries, competing for the remaining benefits of those bodies.
A wallet, a watch, or a ring…
Those guys could always find something of value, and if they found nothing, they could still get some usable “parts” by sending the bodies to a certain underground clinic on South Street before the seawater had corroded them. That could earn them a nice profit.
And those drifters never felt ashamed of their vile deeds; they even beautified it with the term: recycling waste.
As a member of that group, the only difference for Vivienne was that if she found a certain unfortunate guy was not completely dead, she would easily pull him ashore, and whether he ended up dead or alive would completely depend on luck.
Or, after taking their belongings, she would resolutely offer a prayer for expiation, and which sect’s prayer it was would depend on her mood, not the deceased’s beliefs in life.
It was common for her to use Sanskrit from the land of Tenzhu to perform rites for the deceased who were obviously followers of the Holy Light Sect.
Thus, after seeing countless corpses pulled from the water, when she saw this seemingly drowning guy in front of her, Vivienne actually did not care about his life or d*ath; what she truly cared about was the item hidden on the Killer Whale that stored her power.
And that item did not seem to be on this young handsome guy…
With her arms crossed over her chest, she watched the strange cat turn the young handsome guy’s body over and over, frowning and impatiently urging, “Horace, how is it? Did you find anything?”
“Nothing!” the strange cat looked at Vivienne, “He has nothing on him but a wad of cash, but I found something interesting.”
“What is it?” Vivienne frowned.
The strange cat glanced at Vivienne, lifted its furry front paw, and hit the young guy’s body hard; he flew up in the air, flipped over and landed face down, crashing heavily onto the beach.
“Black Sun Totem?” Through the torn clothing, Vivienne vaguely saw the tattoo on the young guy’s back, and her pupils trembled slightly, “He is a member of the Solar Eclipse Society?”
As she spoke, her expression became complicated.
“Yes, he is one of those guys’ subordinates!” the strange cat showed a disdainful face, “Now that you know his identity, how do you plan to deal with him, dear Miss Vivienne?”
Saying that, the strange cat jumped onto Vivienne’s shoulder, close to her ear, and continued, “I see he doesn’t have anything valuable on him, so how about…we send him to that underground clinic on South Street? While he is still alive, we should be able to take quite a few parts and sell them for a good price.”
“Stop trying your demon whispering on me!” Vivienne glared at the strange cat angrily, and after sizing up the young guy’s back, her gaze fell on the odd red dot next to the Black Sun Totem.
Why is there a red dot there?
Although it looked like a somewhat large mole, it just happened to be in that position.
That was the position of Mars, also known as Ying Huo…
Could it just be a coincidence?
After pondering for a moment, Vivienne turned her head to the strange cat on her shoulder and said, “Horace, I think I should take him back.”
“What? Are you planning to save him? Are you out of your mind?” the strange cat exclaimed loudly, “Do you know how much a guy like him, without obvious external injuries and not completely dead yet, could sell for at the underground clinic on South Street?”
“Wait! You aren’t developing a crush on him, are you? That shouldn’t be the case, even though his looks and body are pretty good, it’s not to the point of being stunning, is it?”
Seemingly ignoring the strange cat’s ramblings, Vivienne stepped forward and helped the young handsome guy get up, “Shut up, Horace, I’m bringing him back because there’s something about him that concerns me; once I clear up all the doubts, I’ll throw him out at the first opportunity.”
“Is that so?” the strange cat tilted its head, “But I still think it’s a waste to throw him out; why not sell him to South Street…”
“Stop talking nonsense and come help!”
After some discussion, one human and one cat came to a conclusion, deciding to move Luxianbei while the Nanling Yaohua, full of worry, witnessed some events and quietly noted their actions.
————
Before experiencing a real shipwreck, Luxianbei, having just acquired Cataclysm Grade power, began to hide and seek under the special care of various Spirit Energy Organizations, not having had the chance to familiarize himself with his powers, some understanding even came from the information in the Wordless Book.
And when he was riding the continuously breaking Killer Whale, cleaving waves to escape, and finally lost consciousness, he realized one thing—calamity easily dissolves in seawater.
A series of reactions triggered when excessive seawater entered his mouth, nostrils, and pores was truly uncomfortable!
It was like a Devil Fruit user falling into the sea, feeling utterly weak and sluggish in Spirit Energy.
Of course, the appearance of these uncomfortable symptoms in his body might not have been due to the seawater, but rather from the influence of that ghastly thing hidden in the Killer Whale’s power chamber.
When the Killer Whale was destroyed by the giant waves kicked up by Charybdis, almost completely disintegrating, that thing fell out of the Killer Whale’s power chamber.
It was about the size of an adult’s fist, made entirely of a peculiar rose-colored metal, surrounded by deep red substances that resembled flesh, forming a regular and complex polyhedron, with hundreds to thousands of tiny facets etched with oddly shaped characters.
Those strange characters flickered and pulsed with a low Spirit Energy fluctuation, creating ripples in the seawater, giving the impression of a heartbeat from some organism.
The level of exquisiteness suggested it was something that would typically appear in soft sci-fi novels, an alchemical power furnace or some specially designed mechanical core.
In any case, one could tell at a glance that it was undoubtedly a good item!
When Luxianbei discovered that thing, he instinctively believed it to be the core of the Killer Whale’s urban legend…
This also explained why he had failed to summon an alchemical ship modeled after the Killer Whale.
The special ability of [Heroic Spirit Type Spirit Patterns: Roland’s Horn] is to summon used vehicles, but items that possess self-life cannot be considered vehicles.
If the Killer Whale was an urban legend with a core, then it was reasonable for him to fail in the summoning, just as it made sense that he couldn’t summon his old Big Cousin and Jiang Li.
However, when Luxianbei utilized the hook function of his mechanical prosthetic to pull the gradually drifting polyhedron closer, he discovered that it didn’t seem to be the urban legend core.
It had no activation, no life force, and its Spirit Energy fluctuations were extremely weak, even less than those of an unranked urban legend.
However, an unranked urban legend does not have an urban legend core.
What else could it be if it’s not the urban legend core? Luxianbei wondered.
However, before he could reach a new conclusion, his consciousness became hazy under the relentless assault of the raging seawater.
In the moment before losing consciousness, he controlled the alchemical prosthetic to lock onto the polyhedron’s metallic form from inside the Killer Whale.
Then.
He saw some incomprehensible images.
Endless seawater enveloping his body, constantly sinking.
As if returning to his mother’s body, like a baby “breathing” in amniotic fluid, he felt like a water-dwelling creature in the deep sea, completely unaware of suffocation.
Something ominous projected a red light from unknown origins above, through the flowing ocean, obscured and moving further away until darkness swallowed it entirely, and his consciousness returned to silence…
————
After an indeterminate amount of time, Luxianbei finally regained some consciousness.
In a daze, he felt he was lying on a beach, with a faint salty smell of seawater echoing in his nostrils.
Where is this? A nameless, unknown deserted island?
Before even opening his eyes, Luxianbei’s mind began to turn.
Soon, he noticed something was off.
He felt warmth; though the sensation was not great, it certainly felt like lying on a bed.
What the heck?
Could it be such a coincidence that he just floated to the Free City and then was picked up and brought home?
Luxianbei was quite aware of his luck; most of the “miracles” of power accompanied the God Realm Yumen and remained on the vast Gobi Desert, making it nearly impossible for him to arrive at the Free City after an unexpected attack.
To have miraculously preserved his life and washed up on a somewhat distant island from the Free City was already a simple difficulty start.
If he truly arrived at the Free City like a “miracle,” it might just be a hidden mode hell start, with even greater troubles than “survival on a deserted island” awaiting him.
Just thinking about it gave him a headache.
“Wake up! Are you alive?”
A strange voice sounded near his ear, seemingly from a female, with a slightly husky, raspy tone that made it hard to discern her exact age.
Opening his eyes, once his pupils adjusted to the warm light that was streaming in from somewhere, Luxianbei discovered he was in a shabby room.
It seemed to be an older studio apartment, not very spacious, with dirty wallpaper on the four walls showing signs of peeling, and he lay on a single bed far from the window, next to which sat an old television and two single sofas.
On the wall behind the single sofa hung a digital clock, showing the time.
The time was 11:27.
Nearly six hours had passed since he fell into the sea, and faint gray sunlight filtered through the blind slits, spilling onto the gloomy carpet.
After secretly surveying the room, Luxianbei noticed the red-haired girl in a deep green jacket beside him.
“Good, you’re awake; you must have just come down from the Killer Whale, right? I want to ask you a few questions.”
The girl seemed to realize that Luxianbei had awakened and leaned down to look at him, her deep green eyes as profound as a lake hidden in the mountains.
She leaned lower and lower until she squatted by the bed, a strong smell of alcohol wafting over.
She looked good, had a great figure, generous in her endowment, and smelled heavily of liquor, like she had just crawled out of a barrel…
This was the information Luxianbei gathered from a brief glance at the girl’s appearance, feeling like a legendary drunkard vagabond often seen in M Country, but in a cute girl version.
Additionally, through his spiritual sense, he sensed Spirit Energy fluctuations from the girl and the strange cat on her shoulder, the former maxing out at D+, and the latter barely reaching a C rank, seemingly not particularly powerful characters.
Having made such judgments, Luxianbei closed his eyes again.
He still felt quite weak and needed to rest a bit longer.
Since the girl posed no threat to him, it implied that even if he pretended to be foolish, she could do nothing about it; he might even use her…
He felt that the girl had no malice toward him for the time being.
If that were not the case, she wouldn’t have brought him home and let him sleep quietly for several hours.
Furthermore, if a D-rank Spirit Ability User wanted to know what happened on the Killer Whale, the only way to achieve that would be to wait for him to wake up; as for methods like torture, coercion with benefits, or reading memories, they simply would not work in the face of absolute Spirit Energy suppression.
As for what the girl may have done while he was unconscious…
He could simply ask Xiao Hua about it after she left, Luxianbei thought, glancing at the somber-faced Nanling Yaohua behind the girl.
(Still not fully recovered today; I couldn’t write much, I’m very sorry, sob sob sob…)
