Shackles of Humanity

After he was done, Luo Kai stood up and looked around. Nanya Island was no longer visible in the distance. White seabirds circled the transport ship, and the surrounding water was a vast expanse of azure blue, filling him with a sense of joy. He had finally escaped!

Inside the pilothouse, Fat Dragon’s face was grim. He lowered his voice and asked Grant, who was beside him, ”Are you confident?”

Grant shook his head. ”I’m not. And there’s no need.”

”Fine. Once we get back to the Sea of Shattered Stars, we’ll have plenty of ways to deal with them. If I can’t make them serve me, I’ll just kill them all!”

Just as Fat Dragon uttered those murderous words, Shisan’s expression darkened on the deck. He walked over to Luo Kai and said softly, ”We need to find a way off this ship soon!”

Luo Kai asked, confused, ”What’s wrong?”

”They’re heading for Broken Star Island, the main base of the South Sea Pirates. Those pirates are vicious and cruel. Teaming up with them is probably more dangerous than staying in prison!”

”Then what should we do?”

Shisan paced the deck, then said in a low voice, ”There should be small boats in the hold. In a little while, we’ll see if we can get one. They have firearms, so if a fight breaks out, you jump into the sea. Leave this to me!”

The words had barely left his mouth when a commotion erupted from within the ship. The two exchanged a look and walked toward the noise. By the steam boiler in the pilothouse, Fat Dragon and the others were ashen-faced, with fear even visible in the eyes of a few.

”What’s wrong?” Luo Kai couldn’t help but ask.

Li Gui’s wrinkled face was twisted in a knot. Usually calm, he now looked utterly hopeless. ”We’re done for. There’s no coal in the bunker! The coal in the boiler is about to run out.”

This was a steam-powered transport ship. No coal meant no power. They were still too close to Nanya Island. If they were caught, the consequences would be dire.

Everyone was terrified. The thought of how the prison dealt with escapees made them all shudder.

Only Shisan remained composed. After a moment’s thought, he said, ”Burn any wood you can rip out of the ship. That should keep us going for a while. After that, whether we escape or not is up to fate.”

Everyone’s eyes lit up. They all scrambled to find tools and began tearing up the ship’s wooden planks. Shipbuilding in this world was clearly still quite primitive; the transport ship was mostly constructed of wooden planks clad in sheet iron. It didn’t take long for them to rip out a large pile.

Unfortunately, the heat from the wood was no match for coal, and the ship’s speed dropped noticeably.

Time ticked by. Luo Kai leaned against the ship’s rail, gazing at the scenery. Seabirds occasionally flew across the sky, and the azure water was so clear he could see fish swimming below. A sudden feeling of being adrift washed over him. ’Now that he had escaped prison, where should he go?’

An unknown amount of time passed before Shisan’s hoarse voice rang out. ”They’re here!”

First, a few small steam-powered launches appeared on the sea, followed by a large ironclad ship. Thick black smoke billowed from the ironclad, making it look like a life-stealing Black Dragon.

The distance between them closed rapidly. They could faintly make out a row of large cannons lining the ironclad’s rails. Their own commandeered transport ship, however, was completely unarmed.

Panic swept through the men on board. They could only futilely stuff more wood into the steam engine’s boiler, hoping to make the ship go faster. But panic only leads to mistakes. They crammed too much wood into the boiler, preventing it from burning properly. The heat output plummeted, and the transport ship’s speed, contrary to their hopes, began to drop even further!

Li Gui gave a bitter laugh. ”And here we thought we were as free as birds in the sky. Who knew one small oversight would be our undoing? It seems this old man’s life is going to end right here.”

The roar of cannons echoed as several black cannonballs flew toward them. They exploded in the water around the transport ship, and the resulting waves drenched everyone on deck, chilling them to the bone. The enemy had started firing from a distance, clearly not intending to leave any of them alive!

”Look! The boss and his men are getting away on a small boat!” a prisoner on deck suddenly shouted, pointing at the sea.

Fat Dragon and his cronies had already lowered a small boat into the sea. It was a small lifeboat with three people on board. Fat Dragon himself took up nearly half the space, while Grant and Dicky rowed frantically.

”Fuck! That backstabbing bastard, Fat Dragon!” Eagle cursed furiously.

”Right, go see if there are any more boats!”

The pursuers drew closer, and their cannon fire grew more accurate. A solid shot scored a direct hit on the transport ship’s port side, tearing a huge gash in the hull. The explosion sent sheet iron, wood splinters, and shrapnel flying, and everyone on deck scrambled for cover.

A moment later, another cannonball struck the hold. The transport ship lurched violently and began to list.

The steam-powered launches were getting closer, and volley after volley of bullets rained down on the transport ship. Shisan hesitated no longer. ”Xiaokai, jump!” he yelled to Luo Kai.

”Yeah!”

Luo Kai followed Shisan and plunged into the sea. Above, shrapnel flew through the air; below, everything was quiet. The slightly chilly water gave him a strange sense of intimacy, as if the ocean were his true home.

There had only been one lifeboat on the transport ship. Eagle and his group had no choice but to jump into the sea as well. Staying on the ship meant certain death, but being adrift in the open ocean was just as hopeless. Right now, however, they couldn’t worry about that. They would survive for as long as they could.

Shisan and Luo Kai were both in excellent physical condition. They could swim nearly a hundred meters on a single breath. They kept going until they were exhausted, and when they finally stopped and looked back, the large ship had shrunk to a tiny dot.

Luo Kai breathed a sigh of relief. He floated on his back, gasping for air. Now that the tension had subsided, the seawater soaking the wound on his shoulder—where the dead flesh had just been cut away—sent waves of excruciating pain through him, making him suck in a sharp breath.

Shisan wasn’t as skilled a swimmer as Luo Kai; he had to constantly paddle with his four arms to keep from sinking. He had just taken a couple of breaths when his expression suddenly changed. ”That old man actually kept up with us!”

Luo Kai was stunned. He looked around but saw no one, so he turned to Shisan in confusion.

Shisan copied Luo Kai and floated on his back. He began to lecture, ”Relax your body and mind. Carefully perceive the changes in the water’s surface. I told you before that Skin Refining, Refining Tendons, and Bone Refining all belong to Body Refining. But there is another stage called Refining Spirit, which is the Cultivation of the profound and mysterious Spiritual World.

”A person’s heart rate affects the Perception of their nerve endings, and consciousness has its own frequency as well. By extension, all things in the world follow certain frequencies. If you can unify the frequencies of your body, you can more clearly perceive the frequencies of all things in Heaven and Earth, achieving a state of unity between body and mind. This is Refining Spirit! Learning to perceive the world with your heart is the first step of Refining Spirit!”

Over the past few days, Luo Kai had gradually come to understand the power of Body Techniques. He took a deep breath, and his heartbeat and thoughts slowly calmed. He carefully sensed the vibrations on the water’s surface. In a trance, the seawater around him seemed to become a part of his own body, constantly transmitting all kinds of sound waves and vibrations into his mind.

In an instant, he sensed something unusual in the water not far away. He turned his head and saw a pale figure in the clear water. With a white beard and white hair and an ancient face, it was none other than Li Gui.