The light lasted only a short while before fading away, and the sky returned once more to pitch-black darkness.
The Nightmare Star remained near the cross-shaped intersection of the Sanctuary, not sailing far off, clearly intending to stay here for a while.
With the light gone, the black fog from other parts of the Sanctuary began to spread back at a visible pace.
The fog moved quickly across flat surfaces, but much more slowly upward. For the ti being, the lighthouse, which rose higher than its surroundings, would not be swallowed by the darkness.
Yang Yi didn’t pay it much attention. His focus had already shifted because it was almost 11 p.m.
With the Nightmare Star no longer troubled by darkness, Yang Yi lay down directly on the bed in the captain’s cabin, waiting for the world chat channel to open.
The mattress carried a stale sll, as if it had been left unused for a long ti, and it wasn’t soft either.
But in the current environnt, no one would care about things like that.
11 p.m. arrived quickly, and the world chat channel lit up again.
More than a week had passed since the version update, and a great deal of information had been further uncovered.
Yang Yi soon found intel. So players had intercepted one of the guild’s ships.
“Robbing native rchant ships is seriously satisfying. Huge profit in one go!”
“The Golden Chamber of Comrce?”
“Yep!”
“Then you’re done for. That chamber has deep roots, branches everywhere. It’s a major power among the natives.”
“Huh?”
Soone had also found the world map and posted it directly in the chat.
He might not have been the first player to obtain the map, but he was clearly one of the earliest to make it public.
“I spent a massive two hundred shell coins buying the world map from the natives. See attached image for details!”
(Attached image: identical to the world map Yang Yi possessed but sold at a much lower price.)
“Holy crap, you’re a hero!”
“Now we can all share coordinates and figure out where we are!”
“Is that thing in the middle an island? That area is huge!”
“Is this really a world map? Why do I feel like I’m outside it…”
Yang Yi contacted Song Yingwen directly, sending over information about hostead mice and the shadowy figures, along with details about the light containers.
These were indispensable supplies in the Lightless Sea.
“If it’s the weekly issue, it should be out again in four or five days. Most of the mbers from the major newspapers on my side have regrouped successfully.
I’ll transfer the paynt for this intel to you shortly.”
Song Yingwen replied quickly, informing Yang Yi that the weekly publication was about to resu.
“Can you provide a graphic version? There’s serious delay with trading on my end.”
“No problem. There won’t be any delay. My press ship has been upgraded. You’ll understand when the ti cos. Let keep it a surprise for now.”
Since the other party put it that way, Yang Yi didn’t press further.
While browsing other bits of information, he suddenly received a private ssage from a player who wanted to buy the engineering gloves.
Yang Yi had priced those gloves very high, at 7,999 shell coins, and only now had they finally sold.
The buyer didn’t know there was a six-day delay when trading with Yang Yi. If they had known, they might not have gone through with it.
The transaction completed smoothly, and the shell coins were credited instantly.
An hour passed in the blink of an eye.
Yang Yi sat up on the bed, feeling a little hungry.
He took out a piece of super-delicious cake and ate it.
The cake had technically gone bad, given how long it had been stored, but the flavor was as good as ever.
Yang Yi even felt a bit lightheaded, almost euphoric.
He didn’t continue eating, though. Suppressing the urge, he checked how much cake was left.
It should last about another week.
“Hopefully, the gourt potted plant can produce a substitute. Otherwise, I’ll have to try eating fertiliser or fish bait.
Suna might still have so gourt materials left. That mutated pale grub should probably be edible too…”
Yang Yi shook his head, stopping himself from thinking any further along those lines.
After finishing the cake, he prepared to eat sothing else. Not long ago, he had gotten his hands on a pile of black-skinned potatoes.
He took out a pot he hadn’t used in a long ti, peeled and chopped the potatoes, and tasted a lump along the way to check the flavor.
It was astringent, even numbing to the mouth, and after swallowing, his throat felt slightly bitter.
If the system hadn’t explicitly stated that the potatoes were edible, Yang Yi would have assud they were poisonous.
He finished cutting the potatoes, poured in fresh water, and added so dried salted fish.
After boiling for a while, he ended up with a pot of potato and salted fish soup.
He took a sip and found it acceptable. The bitterness had faded quite a bit.
He ate more than half the pot, then ladled out a bowl of the remainder, planning to give it to Suna.
…
Inside the witch’s laboratory.
Suna had successfully kept two hostead mice alive.
There had originally been three. One of them had its fur shaved off and was thrown into a bottle filled with black fog, after which it… aged rapidly and died.
So, the reason these mice could move around in the darkness was the black fur covering their bodies.
If that fur were made into clothing or gloves, it might grant so resistance to darkness as well.
Suna planned to try it, but for now there wasn’t enough fur to run any tests.
Using the tentacles of the pale grub, she had successfully kept two hostead mice alive.
These mice were parasitic creatures, but they weren’t very picky about their hosts. They could parasatise chunks of flesh or even corpses, including the pale grub’s tentacles.
They would bite open a hole, burrow inside, consu the tissue within until they carved out a suitable cavity, then settle there, leaving only a mouse head exposed outside…
As for the pale grub itself.
It was kept in a thick glass tank. It didn’t need much oxygen, only a small amount of white seawater added periodically.
Suna had stockpiled plenty of white sugar cubes earlier in the Fertile Sea. Dissolving them produced white seawater, so supplies weren’t a concern in the short term.
The pale grub also seed to have been thoroughly tad. It no longer resisted and usually lay there as if at the rcy of whoever handled it, perhaps having given up on thinking altogether.
Yang Yi walked in carrying a bowl and set the potato and salted fish soup down on the tal table.
“Give it a try. It’s not bad,” he said to Suna.
She didn’t react much. When Yang Yi said sothing “wasn’t bad”, it usually ant it was extrely hard to eat.
Yang Yi’s attention was quickly drawn to the two mice burrowing hos into the pale grub’s tentacles. Without thinking, he reached back to touch his own back.
The burns hadn’t fully healed yet, and he could still feel so uneven scars.
If he hadn’t used fla-based healing back then, his back might now be ho to several hostead mice as well. Just thinking about it made his skin crawl.
“By the way,” he said, changing the subject.
“You ntioned earlier that you were developing a new ntal potion. Did you manage to make it?”
“Almost,” Suna replied. “But once the materials were mixed, it exploded. It couldn’t exist in a stable form.”
“Exploded?”
“Yes.” She nodded and continued, “So I changed the plan. I’ll split it into dose A and dose B. You drink them separately, and it shouldn’t explode.”
“…Won’t it explode inside the stomach?” Yang Yi asked, clearly worried. After all, he would be the first one drinking it.
“It probably won’t,” Suna said after a pause. “The environnt is different once it’s inside the human body.”
That was not a very reassuring answer.
Yang Yi imdiately regretted asking the question.
After that, Suna caught him again and drew nearly half a pound of fresh blood, saying she would produce a sample as soon as possible.
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