Following the crystal casting process, Yang Yi lted the crystal, adding in pitch-black tar and an unknown liquid.
After thoroughly mixing it, he poured the solution into the mould, creating a rough cube with edges about thirty centiters long.
He intended to use the crystal cube to carve a one-of-a-kind statue, hoping it would be recognised by the Collector, who had a fondness for rare and unique items.
Success or failure didn’t matter much. The trade was already made; it was just a matter of how much he could get out of it.
And besides, Yang Yi didn’t have much else left to trade.
There was no way he was handing over his flintlock pistol or Ironbreaker!
So, he figured he could as well try, even though he didn’t have an ounce of artistic talent, and his drawing skills were on par with a third grader’s...
Still, Yang Yi prided himself on being well-read and worldly!
As long as he wasn’t trying to sculpt sothing precise, he was confident he could create sothing.
Crude? Sure. Awful craftsmanship? Definitely. But he was confident he could make sothing that would haunt soone with a weak mind for an entire night!
That much, he could guarantee.
Kind of like how people beca self-taught doctors after being sick for years. Yang Yi had had so many nightmares, he was pretty good at making other people have them too.
He glanced at the ti — three hours until sunrise.
He wasn’t aiming for intricate detail. With his limited skill, a rough, abstract outline would suffice.
anwhile, Suna was mixing potions, but from her tightly furrowed brow, it looked like things weren’t going smoothly.
Yang Yi didn’t plan to sculpt right there. He needed a quiet space to create, like the captain’s cabin.
He grabbed the crystal cube and left the cabin, crossed the deck, and entered the captain’s room.
The skull lantern inside was lit, but the light wasn’t enough, so he tossed a long-legged sardine from a bucket into the Life Furnace, igniting the remaining firewood. Then, he took out the Sea Serpent Fang and began carving.
He didn’t have a specific image in mind — he just wanted to make sothing eerie enough, preferably sothing the world had never seen before, to pique the Collector’s interest.
Images of the Spider Mother and the Charred Tree surfaced in his mind, but they were hazy.
It was probably a defense chanism of the brain, deliberately blurring things that surpassed human comprehension.
Even just recalling them caused his sanity to drop.
【You attempted to recall the image of a Great Being. Sanity -10.】
At the sa ti, he found the feeling he was looking for from those mories.
Originally, he had intended to carve one of them.
But when he started working, the blurry images of both rged in his mind, and he added in a dose of his own imagination.
Thus, a brand-new image was born, sothing that had never existed before!
During the process, Yang Yi’s clumsy hands and lack of control caused the crystal to crack and chip frequently.
That didn’t matter. Yang Yi thought the imperfections added authenticity.
He’d seen the pinnacle of art before.
That painting called “Charred” had only beco a masterpiece beyond human comprehension after being burned.
So, Yang Yi wanted to replicate that.
...
Two hours passed, and strange noises kept coming from his room.
The sound of chisels and blades, things being thrown, occasional bursts of laughter, and the thudding of fists when he was displeased.
At so point, Yang Yi had fully imrsed himself in his world, drowning in the euphoric sea of creation.
In that mont, he understood why Suna was so obsessed with dissecting aberrant creatures in pursuit of knowledge.
Because that feeling was truly addictive!
The once-spontaneous idea of making a crystal statue gradually took shape in his hands, and like an emotional outburst, he kept breaking and remodeling it again and again.
In the end, he was left holding a one-of-a-kind grotesque statue.
It seed to be a person.
Probably.
The statue’s facial features were twisted beyond recognition by agony, completely displaced from where they should’ve been.
One eyeball dangled from its socket, giving it a truly wretched appearance.
The longer one stared at the statue, the more an inexplicable feeling would creep in, as if it were smiling, its gaze full of scorn and mockery, utterly unfazed by physical suffering.
The face had clearly suffered blunt trauma, covered in cracks.
Beyond the basic human limbs, the figure had others that had no place on a human body, eagle wings, an elephant trunk, and octopus tentacles.
Yet without exception, all of these limbs, along with the entire statue, were blackened like charred bark.
That effect hadn’t co easy. Yang Yi had put in a great deal of effort to achieve it.
He’d rolled the statue through charcoal, stomped on it, slamd it, hacked at it with blades — finally producing the texture he wanted.
His inspiration ca from the Spider Mother and the Charred Tree. Yang Yi had successfully rged the two concepts and added his own imagined elents.
Even so, after it was finished, Yang Yi still felt like sothing was missing. Then he looked over at the burning Life Furnace and suddenly had an idea.
He tossed the crystal statue into the fire, letting it burn for several seconds. Once it began to lt slightly, he quickly fished it out using the Sea Serpent Fang.
It was just right.
On top of the existing texture, the statue bore a warped, half-lted look, as if it were trapped in extre heat. The visual impact was intense.
At last, Yang Yi was satisfied.
And just like the earlier painting, the object triggered a system notification:
【Na: Unknown Statue】
【Description: A figure sculpted by the artist Yang Yi, infused with madness and the despair of gazing upon a Great Being. Holds significant collector’s value.】
"Artist Yang Yi… looks like the system knows quality when it sees it!"
Yang Yi was genuinely pleased with his first piece. He just had to see if the Collector would accept it.
He stored the statue in his ring and stepped out of the room, just in ti to see Suna erging from the ship's interior, looking a bit… off.
After spending so much ti with her, Yang Yi had learned to read her micro-expressions.
"That’s... confusion?"
Suna walked straight over and handed him two vials of potion.
One of them was familiar. The other was unusual: murky, reddish-brown in color, with spherical granules floating inside, probably fire banana seeds.
【Na: Unknown Potion】
【Type: Consumable / Potion / Unique】【Quality: ?? 】【Description: You’ll only know what it does after drinking it... 】
With that, all items intended for the Collector were ready.
The two made their way to the foredeck, where the Collector was still sitting, seemingly having never moved.
Suna gave the Collector a thorough once-over, but from her perspective, there were no threads or strings of control. The robe was sheer darkness even firelight couldn’t penetrate.
Yang Yi sat down, just like before, and began submitting the items for trade one by one.
Each was accepted without issue.
Until the final item Yang Yi brought out the bizarre statue.
【A statue in extre pain and tornt. Sanity -10】
Suna looked surprised. She hadn’t expected Yang Yi to offer that as a trade.
“Yang Yi sculpted this? Then…”
Her expression turned grim.
The Collector paused for a second, then picked it up and examined it.
Almost simultaneously, Yang Yi picked a good angle and snapped a photo, capturing the statue, the seated Collector, and several nearby traded items in fra.
A few seconds later, a journal update popped up:
【The Collector is extrely pleased with the item. Remaining trades: 0】
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