Chapter 254
Looking at the island that had emerged on the sea’s surface, Tang Yu’an did not immediately steer the ship toward it.
He couldn’t be sure if the island was inhabited, and if there were people living there, whether they would welcome them.
After all, this ship was something he had bought with his points—it wasn’t a mobile home, just a simple vessel with no special functions beyond navigation.
In other words, unlike the last time when he went to Lin Hai Town, he couldn’t simply charge in unimpeded.
Tang Yu’an recalled the mechanical insects he had sent in different directions and reassigned them all toward the island for a more thorough and detailed reconnaissance.
He hoped this was an uninhabited island so that he could directly establish a branch here as a teleportation point—The area they were in was still within the range of remote item retrieval, allowing him to take materials from the home warehouse.
Of course, if the island was inhabited, then it could serve as a new potential customer base.
Watching the mechanical insects fly toward the island, Tang Yu’an momentarily shifted his attention back to the map, looking at Lin Hai Town.
*
In the meantime, Hai Jing had already arrived at Guanyu Village and reunited with his daughter.
In fact, the moment he received Tang Yu’an’s task and learned that he could reunite with his daughter first, he had rushed back overnight.
Thanks to Lin Hai Town’s wealth, there were existing roads maintained for tax collection and patrols. Although rough and uneven, they were at least passable for vehicles.
By the time night fell, he had already reached the outskirts of Guanyu Village. However, fearing he might alarm the villagers, he waited until morning to drive to the village entrance.
The steel behemoth of a vehicle quickly caught the villagers’ attention, but what comforted Hai Jing was that the people of Guanyu Village did not show any hostility toward the “God of Commerce.”
This meant that they bore no ill will toward the deity.
Before long, Hai Jing found his daughter, Little Hai Lan.
She had grown thinner from malnourishment and constant fear, losing the bit of weight she had managed to gain earlier. But at least she was alive and well.
Holding his lost-and-found daughter in his arms, Hai Jing’s eyes welled with tears, his heart filled with gratitude toward the divine messenger.
Meanwhile, Liu Laoqi, the man who had betrayed him, ran over and immediately knelt before Hai Jing, begging for forgiveness with tears streaming down his face.
Hai Jing could understand why he had done what he did, but that didn’t mean he could completely let go of his resentment.
If not for the divine messenger’s timely intervention, he might have already fallen into the hands of Lin Hai Town’s rulers, facing an uncertain and terrifying fate.
So, he simply shook his head and said, “I understand you, but I don’t want to see you again.”
Liu Laoqi wanted to say more, but Hai Jing cut him off. “I only hold you accountable. I don’t care about your family.”
After hearing that, Liu Laoqi had nothing left to say. He knocked his head against the ground a few times before slinking away.
Without lingering on the matter, Hai Jing took out his goods and began trading with the villagers. At the same time, he briefly explained the situation to them.
When they heard that Lin Hai Town’s ruler, Li Zhentian, and his men had been wiped out by the followers of the God of Commerce, none of them could believe it.
But as they looked at the steel monster of a vehicle behind Hai Jing, the doubters quickly fell silent.
“From now on, you won’t need to conduct trade in secret anymore,” Hai Jing declared. “And you don’t have to worry about being implicated by me. I’ve hired people to protect you.”
“I will be leaving soon to go to the town center. If you have any goods to trade, you can find me there.”
“I will return periodically, but I can’t say exactly when. So if you have salt stored at home, bring it out and trade it now!”
At his words, the villagers hurried back to their homes to gather their salt.
Since it had only been a few days since Hai Jing was taken, their stockpiles were still untouched. They quickly brought everything out to trade.
By the time Hai Jing finished this round of trading, Tang Yu’an received a total of 36,000 points in revenue!
It was with this 36,000 points, along with a discount voucher from the marketplace, that he purchased the ship they were currently on.
With so much salt collected, Hai Jing stored it at home and listed it for sale in the forum’s trade section.
The moment he posted the listing, the message board exploded.
[Public Message Board]
[Qingxue (Wen Qingqing)]: Whoa, who just put up a whole ton of salt for sale?!
[Little Noisy]: 666!
[Morning Light]: 15 points per 500 grams? That’s so cheap!
[Sky Stone]: This is sea salt, right? I think it usually goes for 25 points per 500 grams.
[Razor]: Still a steal!
[Laundry Detergent]: Agreed!
[Pan Shi]: How much is a ton?
[Fish in the Water]: 1 ton = 2000 jin, 1 jin = 500 grams, 1 gram = 1 point.
[Pan Shi]: So how many scoops is that?
[Fish in the Water ]: 1,000,000 scoops.
[Reed]: That’s a LOT of zeros!
As the discussion heated up, Hai Jing kept receiving transaction notifications.
It was only after seeing the messages that he realized—elsewhere, salt was being sold by the gram!
And because it was a necessity, people had no choice but to accept those exorbitant prices.
Salt was a highly profitable business, yet due to Li Zhentian’s monopoly, ordinary people in Lin Hai Town had been forced to live in hardship…
Thinking about the young men lost at sea, the wife he had buried while he was away—Hai Jing’s heart burned with resentment.
But then he remembered that Li Zhentian and his lackeys had already been dealt with by the divine messengers, and his emotions settled once more.
Even after learning the price differences elsewhere, he chose not to raise his own prices.
He had already gained plenty from the Church of Commerce.
He was not exceptional—his advantage came solely from being in Lin Hai Town, a region with strategic importance.
If he became too greedy, the divine messengers might cast him aside.
After all, Lin Hai Town had thousands of people who could take his place. The more he studied the mandatory education courses, the more he understood his position.
Now that he had reunited with his daughter, it was time to complete the mission assigned to him.
Back on the ship, Tang Yu’an saw that Hai Jing and Little Hai Lan were on their way back to the town center, and he turned his attention to Zhou Qi.
Zhou Qi was still asleep in the bathtub, half of his fish tail exposed due to the tub’s small size.
In the ocean, he had been as beautiful and otherworldly as a siren, but even here, in the enclosed room, that ethereal beauty remained unchanged.
Tang Yu’an stared in a daze for a while before pulling out his light-brain and snapping a series of photos.
Would Zhou Qi still be able to turn into a mermaid after he fully absorbed the Water Spirit Bug…?
After indulging in his photo spree, he turned to the control panel. The screen now displayed a close-up of the island.
Unfortunately, mechanical insects couldn’t update his system’s map, so the area ahead was still covered in fog.
But one thing was clear—The island was inhabited.
Lush greenery indicated the presence of forests, and through one of the mechanical insects’ lenses, he even saw a wisp of rising smoke.
More importantly, surrounding the island was a towering wall, enclosing it like…
A fortress?
Tang Yu’an was stunned. A fortress in the middle of the ocean?
Instead of moving closer, he ordered an insect to survey the perimeter. Even at the signal limit, there was still no end to the wall.
The island was huge.
But what was truly strange was the water level difference inside and outside the walls…
Otherwise, how did this height difference form?
Just as Tang Yu’an was about to send the mechanical insects deeper into the island, another camera captured a different scene—
A boat appeared on the sea, with several people wearing strange masks sitting aboard. There was also a large mutated sea fish on the boat.
According to the mechanical insect’s analysis, the fish was over two meters long.
The people on the boat were all soaked, suggesting they had dived into the sea to fight this mutated fish, which was evident from the wounds on its body.
After a while, another fishing boat returned, followed by more, totaling around dozens.
Just this fleet alone had about three to four hundred people, meaning the island’s population was much larger.
The mechanical insect followed the fishing boats to the base of the fortress wall.
Above the wall, there was a platform, and soon, ropes with hooks were lowered from it. The crew members hooked them onto their boats, secured them, and then called out to the people above.
Then, the ropes slowly lifted the entire boat toward the platform, where it was pulled horizontally into the fortress.
Other boats in line also entered using the same method.
As Tang Yu’an watched the footage captured from different angles, he finally sensed something was off.
These fishing boats remained unscathed beneath the fortress walls, as if they were in a safe zone.
But where in the ocean is there such a thing as a safe zone?
He had just been playing in the sea with Zhou Qi, and even though sea creatures avoided them, there were so many that they still frequently had to dodge out of the way.
Tang Yu’an frowned as he watched the boats.
If this island had some way to repel mutated sea creatures, then why did these people still seem so tense?
Instead of immediately checking inside the fortress, he continued to observe.
As the last boat was pulled onto the platform, the sky darkened, and at that moment, Tang Yu’an noticed that the footage from the mechanical insects had become unstable.
What was happening?
He quickly recalled the mechanical insects, but within just ten seconds, aside from the two on the outermost perimeter that managed to escape, all the other cameras went black.
At first, Tang Yu’an thought the islanders had discovered the mechanical insects, but to his surprise, the last two remaining also went offline minutes later.
Their final footage captured… a faint purple glow?
Soon, as the daylight faded rapidly, Tang Yu’an saw the scene with his own eyes—
Under the night sky, the sea in front of the ship was glowing with an endless stretch of blue-violet light.
The glow was breathtaking, resembling the aurora, painting the entire night sky in a shade of purple.
Tang Yu’an stared blankly through the glass window, instinctively wanting to step outside to take a closer look.
Before he could, a curtain of water suddenly materialized before him, blocking his way.
He turned around and saw that Zhou Qi had woken up at some point.
“Brother Qi, you’re awake?”
He abandoned the idea of leaving the cabin and walked over to Zhou Qi.
Zhou Qi gripped his hand tightly.
Tang Yu’an held his hand back and pointed at the purple glow outside, asking, “Brother Qi, do you know what’s happening out there?”
Zhou Qi shook his head.
“Do you think it’s dangerous?”
When he saw Zhou Qi nod, Tang Yu’an completely gave up on the idea of leaving the cabin.
At that moment, he noticed something and walked over to the control panel, pressing a few buttons, but there was no response. He then took out his light-brain, which also wouldn’t turn on.
“It looks like all electrical equipment has malfunctioned.”
Tang Yu’an returned to Zhou Qi’s side, pulled up a chair, and sat down. Although he couldn’t leave the cabin or use his light-brain to record, he had other means.
He extended his spiritual sense, and the scene outside appeared in his mind.
The purple glow was coming from the seawater, and within the water—he saw countless jellyfish swimming.
They were densely packed, covering the entire sea, stretching from the ship’s location outward. Even at the farthest edge of his spiritual sense, the jellyfish were still there, emitting their eerie glow.
Judging by the footage from earlier, this cluster of jellyfish likely extended all the way around the island.
“Why didn’t I notice them during the day?” Tang Yu’an muttered.
Retracting his spiritual sense, he noticed that a four-to-five-meter radius of water around the ship was dark, devoid of glowing jellyfish.
It was as if there was an invisible barrier—like a vacuum zone that all the jellyfish avoided.
Was it because of Brother Qi?
Even though he wasn’t submerged in the sea, did he still exert a deterrent force over marine life?
Tang Yu’an retracted his spiritual sense and looked at the mermaid youth in the bathtub.
Zhou Qi had closed his eyes and drifted back to sleep, but his hand still gripped Tang Yu’an’s tightly, as if afraid he would disappear.
Tang Yu’an understood the feeling.
When he first arrived in this world, he had been terrified that Brother Qi would leave him. No matter where he went, he would follow, and he could only sleep soundly while holding onto him at night…
Was Brother Qi remembering that time?
Tang Yu’an gently lifted Zhou Qi’s hand and, mimicking what Zhou Qi had done to him the past few days, pressed his cheek against the back of Zhou Qi’s hand and rubbed lightly.
Zhou Qi’s eyelashes fluttered slightly, but he didn’t wake up.
Then, Tang Yu’an switched from a chair to a sofa, curled up beside Zhou Qi, and draped a blanket over himself.
He wasn’t sleepy yet; he simply wanted to accompany Zhou Qi in silence, watching the purple glow outside the ship.
Occasionally, streaks of violet lightning flickered—perhaps these jellyfish were emitting electricity, which could explain why the electrical equipment had malfunctioned.
Only when he started to feel drowsy did Tang Yu’an pull out a Shadow Cloak and let it hover above them. He then touched Green Gem wrapped around his hair.
“If anything unusual happens, wake me up immediately.”
The vine lightly brushed against his finger in response.
Satisfied, Tang Yu’an drifted off to sleep.
When he woke up again, the sky was already dimly lit with dawn. The night had passed without incident.
Seeing that Zhou Qi was still sleeping soundly in the bathtub, Tang Yu’an carefully pried open his fingers before walking over to the glass window.
The purple glow had already faded, and as the sun fully rose above the horizon, the jellyfish in the water had turned completely transparent.
“No wonder I didn’t see them yesterday.”
Tang Yu’an murmured, when suddenly, an idea flashed through his mind.
He quickly opened the message board and sent a message to Old Li.
[Message Board (Store Channel)]
[Eastern Sweet Tang: Grandpa, I remember you mentioned visiting a fortress called Purple Sky before? Was that fortress located on the sea?]
