When Zhang Lisheng and the thin man conversed with each other, all of the prisoners had already escaped from the prison and naturally gathered around a hefty middle-aged man with a square nose and a broad mouth.
“That is our Captain Anduki, one of the best navigators in Venis City’s Bailile Trading Company.” Seeing that his companions had escaped, the skinny man pointed to the middle-aged man not far away and explained to Zhang Lisheng in a slightly odd tone.
“I don’t care whether he’s a navigator or a captain. What’s most important now is to escape! Tell them to stop standing like an idiot and follow me!” The young man curled his lips and turned to head towards the depth of the jungle quietly.
In Zhang Lisheng’s mind, these mainlanders should have already died in the sea after encountering a shipwreck but had been rescued by the Wizard Li tribe created by him. In that case, the lives of these people would no longer belong to their own but to him instead. It was just a matter of course that they became his stepping stone to get the nautical chart of the Hellfire sea region.
If it was not because he was worried that the hatred between the mainlanders and the Hellfire tribesmen that had been going on since a long time ago would make these people choose death instead of obeying him and that the tattered nautical chart that he got was not even one-tenth of the entire Hellfire sea region, he would have long used brutal means to torture these people to get a whole sea chart.
Now that he had chosen to fish the big fish, these stepping stones were very useful to him before he reached his goal. For this reason, the young man understandingly slowed down his pace and let those mainlanders walk stably and safely with his own blurry figure leading through the dark jungle.
Unfortunately, despite slowing down his pace, the prisoners, who had just escaped, still managed to come across many accidents in the forest. It’s either the roots of the tree would scratch them or they would fall and break their arms. The number of wounded slowly increased and in the end, the entire troop came to a halt.
At this time, a fat woman suggested timidly, “Light a torch! Sirs, please, if we don’t light a torch, we won’t be able to walk out of this jungle at all.”
“Light a torch? Do you want to become the target for the Hellfire people’s spears?” Even though Zhang Lisheng already had the intention to light a torch so that these fugitives could walk properly, he, who was walking at the frontmost, still came to a stop and turned around to oppose deliberately.
Right now, the position he had in this troop was very special. The instant he opened his mouth, everybody became silent and after a while, Anduki chimed in. “We’re the ‘cows and sheep’ in the eyes of those Hellfire people. We’re locked up in the prisons with nobody guarding us. It’s already late at night and all of them are already asleep so no one will notice it. How about this? We’ll light a torch in the jungle, and when we get a glimpse of moonlight after getting out of the jungle, we’ll extinguish it right away.”
As he was speaking, this middle-aged captain, who seemed to have rich experience in camping on an island, grabbed a handful of dried branches from the forest floor and soon, he miraculously lit several torches by drilling wood.
When the fire was lit up in the dark jungle, it immediately made the fugitives’ hearts turn inexplicably warmer. The feeling of extreme tension seemed to ease a lot. Only Zhang Lisheng continued to pretend and whispered to the skinny man who could catch up to him, “We’re escaping! We can live if we can persist and we’ll die if we can’t! Now there’s suddenly a saint in the troop who put everybody’s lives to risk just to save those who can’t persist on. I’m kinda regretting saving you guys out now.”
“Captain Anduki has always been like this. It’s too late even if you regret,” the skinny man became silent for a while before answering in a whisper. “The torch is lit up now so let us continue our journey in a hurry.”
“In a hurry? To death?” Zhang Lisheng pretended to curse under his breath and then turned to walk towards the beach.
Now that there was light, the team’s moving speed increased a lot. The refugees did not know that the reason they did not encounter any danger along the way because there were tens of thousands of native warriors riding giant spiders who were quietly guarding around them so that ferocious beasts and poisonous bugs dared not get close. Finally, they managed to get out of the jungle before dawn and looked down at the sea rippling under the moonlight in the distance.
“We’re saved! We’re saved…” At that moment when they saw the ocean, many people in the troop were so excited that they either clenched their fists or bit their lips as they shouted in a whisper.
At this time, Anduki and the skinny man saw the giant wooden ships that were over 100 meters long parked in the natural harbor of the sea in the distance and felt their jaws drop in bafflement. “Impossible! Impossible! It’s impossible for the Hellfire people to build such a good-quality ship! They m-must have looted from some big trading company’s fleets…”
“Captain Anduki, we don’t have to care whether those midgets built those ships or looted them. All in all, it’s impossible for us to steal that kind of ship. Follow me, there’s a deserted port there and there are several old ships that have been abandoned. Let’s hurry!” Zhang Lisheng said in a low voice.
After the young man reminded them, the fugitives finally realized that the journey of terror was still far from over, and it was not the time to celebrate their victory or let their imaginations run wild. Hastily, they followed Zhang Lisheng and continued their escape journey while walking beside the jungle.
After a long period, when many people could no longer continue to go on and were just being pulled along by their companions staggeringly and swayingly, a lonely port built on a deserted beach suddenly entered the mainlanders’ sight.
When they saw that their destination was close at hand, their exhausted body suddenly seemed to be instantly filled with spirit. Soon, the fugitives quickly sneaked into the port.
When they saw that the old wooden house in the port looked like it had long been vacated, they could not help but breathe a sigh of relief at the same time. Anduki immediately ordered loudly, “Young Master Annete, Miss Helena, follow Mr. Hanino and Madam Esera and wait right there. As for the rest of you, all women will go to the house to find out if there is anything useful, be it silk, iron, wooden barrels, or whatever. Men, follow me onboard. We have to pick a ship and set off as fast as possible. I think just like me, all of you would rather die at sea rather than being locked up in prison and then end up in the Hellfire people’s stomachs so…hurry!”
It was as though Anduki was immediately granted with the decisiveness and wisdom that a leader should have as soon as he got close to a ship.
Under the command of the captain, the mainlanders began to make their moves. The over ten ragged surviving women hurried into the wooden house next to the port, and rummaged around, getting their hands on many tattered miscellaneous items within a short timeframe.
The men, on the other hand, ran towards the beach, grabbed the ropes hanging down from the old ships docked by the shore and climbed onto the deck on all fours, trying to pick a suitable ship.
The only idle people were Zhang Lisheng and the skinny man left on the coast; the teenager, who had once praised Zhang Lisheng for being powerful and his old teacher together; the tall lanky woman, who seemed to be very seductive with her words in the stone prison, and another unkempt young girl standing by her side.
“Who are these two little fellows and the old man who seems to have quite a brain and that old woman who is always good with her words beside them? Why does it seem like they have a special status?” Zhang Lisheng curiously pointed to the young girl and boy not far away who was trying to wash their hair and faces using seawater.
“You mean Young Master Annete and Miss Helena? They’re the direct descendants of the Bailile family, so they have a special status,” the skinny man replied. “The person accompanying Young Master Annete is his tutor, Mr. Hanino while the person accompanying Miss Helena is her governess, Madam Esera. I’ll give you a piece of advice, young man, don’t ever call them by ‘little fellows,”old man,’ or ‘old woman’. By the way, my name is Hanoo, not skinny guy.”
“None of you give a damn about how I call you when you guys were locked in the prison,” Zhang Lisheng curled his lips and sat on the beach. Looking at the vast ocean, he whispered, “Have you guys turned now before you even got on the ship? Well then, it doesn’t matter, anyway. Since I’ve already taken it easy now. Just turn if you guys want to.”
“Taken it easy?” Hanoo laughed out of the blue when he heard this sentence. “You’re only so young and you dare to say that you’re taking things easy?”
“This has nothing to do with age,” Zhang Lisheng became silent for a while before answering. “Just think about it. I give up my comfortable wooden bed, delicious breakfast, and dangerous yet stable life to rescue a group of shipwreck victims to steal a wooden ship that has no supply, so I can traverse the vast sea to the so-called civilized world. Tell me, what is this if not taking it easy?”
It stunned Hanoo. He carefully studied the young man by his leg and fell into a moment of silence before answering, “You look so superficial and simple and so hesitant when you do things, but I didn’t expect you to have given it so much of your thoughts.”
“Hanoo, I’ve pondered it for a full 12 days before I decided to take the risk to save all of you. What is there that I haven’t figured out?” Zhang Lisheng chuckled in a deep voice. “Stop talking about me. Let’s talk about you instead. You look like an old sailor and a brainy one too, but why didn’t you go help them pick a ship? Don’t tell me you’re a big shot person as well?”
“I’m not a big shot person. I’m just a small navigator. My only responsibility onboard is to provide the captain with information on the waters ahead and sum up all available routes for the captain to choose. Other than this, I don’t have to do anything else,” Hanoo, who claimed that he was not a big shot, suddenly had a proud look on his face. In the end, he added, “My status is only under the captain.”
Upon hearing his words, Zhang Lisheng could feel a jolt in his heart as ecstasy began to fill him. Lowering his head to look at the gravel on the ground, he could not help but say in a strange tone, “It sounds like your work is amazing, Hanoo. You must be very, very familiar with this sea region, and can even be called a living ‘nautical chart’.”
“Well, since you have already given a thought to everything, I have nothing to hide from you too. If it’s the vast sea regions of the cities along the coast of the Kattaman City State, or even the country of sugar, Indona, that is far in the south, or the country of iron, Vinadi, at the north, you can say that I’m very familiar with it, but when it comes to the Hellfire sea region…”
“You’re not familiar with the Hellfire sea region?” Zhang Lisheng interrupted the words of the skinny man with a gloomy tone.
When Zhang Lisheng and the thin man conversed with each other, all of the prisoners had already escaped from the prison and naturally gathered around a hefty middle-aged man with a square nose and a broad mouth.
“That is our Captain Anduki, one of the best navigators in Venis City’s Bailile Trading Company.” Seeing that his companions had escaped, the skinny man pointed to the middle-aged man not far away and explained to Zhang Lisheng in a slightly odd tone.
“I don’t care whether he’s a navigator or a captain. What’s most important now is to escape! Tell them to stop standing like an idiot and follow me!” The young man curled his lips and turned to head towards the depth of the jungle quietly.
In Zhang Lisheng’s mind, these mainlanders should have already died in the sea after encountering a shipwreck but had been rescued by the Wizard Li tribe created by him. In that case, the lives of these people would no longer belong to their own but to him instead. It was just a matter of course that they became his stepping stone to get the nautical chart of the Hellfire sea region.
If it was not because he was worried that the hatred between the mainlanders and the Hellfire tribesmen that had been going on since a long time ago would make these people choose death instead of obeying him and that the tattered nautical chart that he got was not even one-tenth of the entire Hellfire sea region, he would have long used brutal means to torture these people to get a whole sea chart.
Now that he had chosen to fish the big fish, these stepping stones were very useful to him before he reached his goal. For this reason, the young man understandingly slowed down his pace and let those mainlanders walk stably and safely with his own blurry figure leading through the dark jungle.
Unfortunately, despite slowing down his pace, the prisoners, who had just escaped, still managed to come across many accidents in the forest. It’s either the roots of the tree would scratch them or they would fall and break their arms. The number of wounded slowly increased and in the end, the entire troop came to a halt.
At this time, a fat woman suggested timidly, “Light a torch! Sirs, please, if we don’t light a torch, we won’t be able to walk out of this jungle at all.”
“Light a torch? Do you want to become the target for the Hellfire people’s spears?” Even though Zhang Lisheng already had the intention to light a torch so that these fugitives could walk properly, he, who was walking at the frontmost, still came to a stop and turned around to oppose deliberately.
Right now, the position he had in this troop was very special. The instant he opened his mouth, everybody became silent and after a while, Anduki chimed in. “We’re the ‘cows and sheep’ in the eyes of those Hellfire people. We’re locked up in the prisons with nobody guarding us. It’s already late at night and all of them are already asleep so no one will notice it. How about this? We’ll light a torch in the jungle, and when we get a glimpse of moonlight after getting out of the jungle, we’ll extinguish it right away.”
As he was speaking, this middle-aged captain, who seemed to have rich experience in camping on an island, grabbed a handful of dried branches from the forest floor and soon, he miraculously lit several torches by drilling wood.
When the fire was lit up in the dark jungle, it immediately made the fugitives’ hearts turn inexplicably warmer. The feeling of extreme tension seemed to ease a lot. Only Zhang Lisheng continued to pretend and whispered to the skinny man who could catch up to him, “We’re escaping! We can live if we can persist and we’ll die if we can’t! Now there’s suddenly a saint in the troop who put everybody’s lives to risk just to save those who can’t persist on. I’m kinda regretting saving you guys out now.”
“Captain Anduki has always been like this. It’s too late even if you regret,” the skinny man became silent for a while before answering in a whisper. “The torch is lit up now so let us continue our journey in a hurry.”
“In a hurry? To death?” Zhang Lisheng pretended to curse under his breath and then turned to walk towards the beach.
Now that there was light, the team’s moving speed increased a lot. The refugees did not know that the reason they did not encounter any danger along the way because there were tens of thousands of native warriors riding giant spiders who were quietly guarding around them so that ferocious beasts and poisonous bugs dared not get close. Finally, they managed to get out of the jungle before dawn and looked down at the sea rippling under the moonlight in the distance.
“We’re saved! We’re saved…” At that moment when they saw the ocean, many people in the troop were so excited that they either clenched their fists or bit their lips as they shouted in a whisper.
At this time, Anduki and the skinny man saw the giant wooden ships that were over 100 meters long parked in the natural harbor of the sea in the distance and felt their jaws drop in bafflement. “Impossible! Impossible! It’s impossible for the Hellfire people to build such a good-quality ship! They m-must have looted from some big trading company’s fleets…”
“Captain Anduki, we don’t have to care whether those midgets built those ships or looted them. All in all, it’s impossible for us to steal that kind of ship. Follow me, there’s a deserted port there and there are several old ships that have been abandoned. Let’s hurry!” Zhang Lisheng said in a low voice.
After the young man reminded them, the fugitives finally realized that the journey of terror was still far from over, and it was not the time to celebrate their victory or let their imaginations run wild. Hastily, they followed Zhang Lisheng and continued their escape journey while walking beside the jungle.
After a long period, when many people could no longer continue to go on and were just being pulled along by their companions staggeringly and swayingly, a lonely port built on a deserted beach suddenly entered the mainlanders’ sight.
When they saw that their destination was close at hand, their exhausted body suddenly seemed to be instantly filled with spirit. Soon, the fugitives quickly sneaked into the port.
When they saw that the old wooden house in the port looked like it had long been vacated, they could not help but breathe a sigh of relief at the same time. Anduki immediately ordered loudly, “Young Master Annete, Miss Helena, follow Mr. Hanino and Madam Esera and wait right there. As for the rest of you, all women will go to the house to find out if there is anything useful, be it silk, iron, wooden barrels, or whatever. Men, follow me onboard. We have to pick a ship and set off as fast as possible. I think just like me, all of you would rather die at sea rather than being locked up in prison and then end up in the Hellfire people’s stomachs so…hurry!”
It was as though Anduki was immediately granted with the decisiveness and wisdom that a leader should have as soon as he got close to a ship.
Under the command of the captain, the mainlanders began to make their moves. The over ten ragged surviving women hurried into the wooden house next to the port, and rummaged around, getting their hands on many tattered miscellaneous items within a short timeframe.
The men, on the other hand, ran towards the beach, grabbed the ropes hanging down from the old ships docked by the shore and climbed onto the deck on all fours, trying to pick a suitable ship.
The only idle people were Zhang Lisheng and the skinny man left on the coast; the teenager, who had once praised Zhang Lisheng for being powerful and his old teacher together; the tall lanky woman, who seemed to be very seductive with her words in the stone prison, and another unkempt young girl standing by her side.
“Who are these two little fellows and the old man who seems to have quite a brain and that old woman who is always good with her words beside them? Why does it seem like they have a special status?” Zhang Lisheng curiously pointed to the young girl and boy not far away who was trying to wash their hair and faces using seawater.
“You mean Young Master Annete and Miss Helena? They’re the direct descendants of the Bailile family, so they have a special status,” the skinny man replied. “The person accompanying Young Master Annete is his tutor, Mr. Hanino while the person accompanying Miss Helena is her governess, Madam Esera. I’ll give you a piece of advice, young man, don’t ever call them by ‘little fellows,”old man,’ or ‘old woman’. By the way, my name is Hanoo, not skinny guy.”
“None of you give a damn about how I call you when you guys were locked in the prison,” Zhang Lisheng curled his lips and sat on the beach. Looking at the vast ocean, he whispered, “Have you guys turned now before you even got on the ship? Well then, it doesn’t matter, anyway. Since I’ve already taken it easy now. Just turn if you guys want to.”
“Taken it easy?” Hanoo laughed out of the blue when he heard this sentence. “You’re only so young and you dare to say that you’re taking things easy?”
“This has nothing to do with age,” Zhang Lisheng became silent for a while before answering. “Just think about it. I give up my comfortable wooden bed, delicious breakfast, and dangerous yet stable life to rescue a group of shipwreck victims to steal a wooden ship that has no supply, so I can traverse the vast sea to the so-called civilized world. Tell me, what is this if not taking it easy?”
It stunned Hanoo. He carefully studied the young man by his leg and fell into a moment of silence before answering, “You look so superficial and simple and so hesitant when you do things, but I didn’t expect you to have given it so much of your thoughts.”
“Hanoo, I’ve pondered it for a full 12 days before I decided to take the risk to save all of you. What is there that I haven’t figured out?” Zhang Lisheng chuckled in a deep voice. “Stop talking about me. Let’s talk about you instead. You look like an old sailor and a brainy one too, but why didn’t you go help them pick a ship? Don’t tell me you’re a big shot person as well?”
“I’m not a big shot person. I’m just a small navigator. My only responsibility onboard is to provide the captain with information on the waters ahead and sum up all available routes for the captain to choose. Other than this, I don’t have to do anything else,” Hanoo, who claimed that he was not a big shot, suddenly had a proud look on his face. In the end, he added, “My status is only under the captain.”
Upon hearing his words, Zhang Lisheng could feel a jolt in his heart as ecstasy began to fill him. Lowering his head to look at the gravel on the ground, he could not help but say in a strange tone, “It sounds like your work is amazing, Hanoo. You must be very, very familiar with this sea region, and can even be called a living ‘nautical chart’.”
“Well, since you have already given a thought to everything, I have nothing to hide from you too. If it’s the vast sea regions of the cities along the coast of the Kattaman City State, or even the country of sugar, Indona, that is far in the south, or the country of iron, Vinadi, at the north, you can say that I’m very familiar with it, but when it comes to the Hellfire sea region…”
“You’re not familiar with the Hellfire sea region?” Zhang Lisheng interrupted the words of the skinny man with a gloomy tone.
