A mont later.
Suna was steering the ship.
Yang Yi, holding a fishing rod, walked to the deck to fish.
The pale worm bait he had for the day was almost finished, but it had brought him a whole sand shark leg earlier.
From there on, fishing would depend purely on skill and luck.
Yang Yi was following the chat channel, where so avid fishers were sharing their tips.
They had been constantly testing various types of bait to see which worked best for fishing in this fog-covered Extre Winter Sea.
The final test result: pale worms.
Using fragnts of pale worm corpses as bait significantly increased the catch rate in the Extre Winter Sea.
Yang Yi was now verifying whether this conclusion was true.
He had tried for several days already but hadn’t caught anything.
Then, he changed his approach and asked Suna for a piece of absolutely fresh bait — a tiny tentacle segnt from a pale worm larva, one that was still wriggling!
These little creatures were tenacious, with tentacles that could regenerate infinitely and an appetite for anything. They were kept in the witch's laboratory as live specins.
Yang Yi fished for three hours but still hadn’t caught anything.
"Are these fishing guys ssing with ?"
Yang Yi began to doubt.
Suddenly, the Nightmare Star stopped.
From the bow, Suna’s voice called out.
"Yang Yi, co take a look!"
Yang Yi's expression tightened. He set the fishing rod down and rushed over, already drawing his weapon.
"This is..."
Yang Yi stopped, a look of surprise on his face.
Ahead of the bow, a vast sheet of ice had appeared, its extent unclear because of the dense fog.
It wasn’t a thin layer of floating ice on the sea but a solid glacier, blocking the Nightmare Star’s path.
"Which way should we go around it?" Suna asked.
She couldn’t see through the fog and didn’t know how large the glacier was, so she turned to Yang Yi, expecting him to use his third eye.
Yang Yi understood imdiately and removed the eyepatch over his left eye. Instantly, the fog vanished from his view, revealing a far-reaching vista.
Two nautical miles away, he spotted a ship frozen within the glacier.
It was an ordinary sailboat he had seen not long ago, its deck once filled with bonfires. The ship was charred, as if scorched by intense flas.
All the flas had been extinguished. A layer of frost covered the ship’s surface, as though it had been left overnight in an ultra-low-temperature freezer. The entire vessel was frozen solid.
Yang Yi was just about to take a closer look when he noticed movent on the deck behind him. The fishing rod was being dragged by sothing and fell into the sea.
"Damn it, a bite now of all tis!"
He scanned the entire glacier with his third eye but found no imdiate danger. Without hesitation, he sprinted back, quickly shedding his boots and down jacket before diving into the icy sea.
If he didn’t act fast, the fishing rod could be lost for good!
Fortunately, Yang Yi moved quickly and was a strong swimr. Once in the water, he imdiately spotted the fishing rod.
After letting the reel spin freely, he bit down on the rod and climbed back onto the ship.
"Suna!" He called out.
She got the ssage instantly and ran over to grab the fishing rod from him.
anwhile, Yang Yi grabbed his down jacket and boots from the deck and rushed into the captain’s cabin. He changed into a backup set of woolen clothes at record speed.
Standing around soaking wet in this sub-zero environnt was too dangerous; he needed to change imdiately.
As for his underwear, it was made from coarse fabric crafted using a simple synthesis function that required only a small amount of materials.
Once he finished changing, he pushed open the door to the captain’s cabin and stepped out.
By then, Suna was still struggling with the fish in the sea.
It looked like she had hooked a big one!
Yang Yi imdiately took over and prepared to draw his gun just in case.
If it turned out to be a seal, he was ready to fire.
After nearly half an hour of tugging, Yang Yi finally reeled in the "fish."
Judging by its shadow, it seed to be a three-tre-long creature covered in black seaweed.
Yang Yi had never seen a fish like that before, so he imdiately pulled the trigger.
Bang!
The bullet hit the fish’s head, and so black, tar-like blood floated to the surface of the sea.
Then, a mass of black, hair-like seaweed erged from the water and lunged towards Yang Yi, trying to entangle him.
"What?"
Yang Yi was utterly shocked. He hadn’t expected the fish to control seaweed, let alone move so fast.
By the ti he dropped the fishing rod and pulled out his Sea Serpent Fang, the black seaweed had already wrapped around his hands and neck.
Fortunately, Yang Yi was strong and had been on guard, so he wasn’t dragged into the water.
Once Suna joined the fray, the black seaweed was quickly severed, and Yang Yi broke free of its grasp.
"Ugh, gross!"
The slimy, cold seaweed had made its way into Yang Yi’s mouth.
He took aim at the fish’s shadow and fired again.
Bang!
The target shifted to the fish’s body, and the result was extraordinary.
A strange screech echoed from the sea as waves churned violently, and then the fish stopped moving entirely.
Yang Yi gave the fishing rod a tug and finally saw the fish in its full form.
It was truly a skeletal fish, with no scales, made up of several tightly interlocked pieces of white bone armor.
There was no flesh on it, only hollow eye sockets, and its fins were just skeletal structures, as if it had been dead for a long ti.
However, from its empty eye sockets and the gaps between the bone plates, nurous fine, black thread-like strands erged, resembling strands of a woman’s long hair but much tougher.
Yang Yi’s first shot had left a hole in the fish’s head, but it seed he hadn’t hit a critical point.
The second shot, however, had successfully killed the unknown creature hidden within the skeletal fish.
After confirming its death, Yang Yi pulled it onto the deck. When he pried open the shield-like bone plates, he finally saw its true form — and goosebumps ran all over his body.
Inside was an enormous, plump caterpillar. The black threads were actually its hair, and they were shockingly long.
The creature used its hair to manipulate the fish bones, imitating the movents of a living fish, making the skeletal fish seem like it had co back to life.
Yang Yi’s first shot had pierced through the fish’s head but didn’t harm the main body. Instead, it severed many of the black threads, which oozed black liquid at the breaks.
The second shot, aid directly at the fish’s body, had struck the caterpillar curled up in the skeletal fish’s chest cavity, killing it.
【Na: Black-Thread Parasite Worm】
【Description: A unique parasite from the Abyss. It typically prefers to infest marine creatures with hard shells. Once it matures, it kills its host, consus the host’s flesh, and uses the black threads on its body to manipulate the host’s bones, mimicking its movents to hunt other fish. The black threads are edible, highly nutritious, and considered a delicacy with hair-growth properties. The internal organs are mildly toxic.】
"Delicacy?"
Yang Yi looked at the grotesque caterpillar, unable to connect it with the word "delicacy" no matter how he tried.
He threw the fish bones and the parasite worm into the ship’s hold, deciding to deal with it later.
There were more pressing matters to attend to — the glacier and the frozen ship on it.
Yang Yi explained everything he had seen to Suna.
"This glacier is massive, about four nautical miles in diatre," Yang Yi said.
His third eye didn’t rely on light for sight, so a telescope was practically useless to him. Thankfully, his unique vision extended up to ten nautical miles.
At the centre of the glacier rested a ship, completely frozen.
"It seems like sothing happened to that ship, and it got trapped in the ice," Yang Yi continued.
"And its crew…they’re all dead," he confird after one last look before putting his eyepatch back on.
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