413: Chapter 413 A Wrecked Boat Encounters in Turbulent Waters, Surviving Merchants' Heartbreaking Tale

The rainwater on the bluestone path had not yet dried on the soles of his shoes when Zhou Wannian took his second step, landing firmly in the vast and boundless pitch-black Chaotic Star Sea.

The dense, gentle sound of spring rain in the Jiangnan water towns, along with the smoky scent of distiller's grains, was utterly erased the moment he stepped across the dimensional barrier by an unreasonable, dead silence. What rushed to meet him was the freezing airflow from the depths of the Chaotic Star Sea, cold enough to freeze one's very breath.

Zhou Wannian lowered the corner of the cyan curtain he had just lifted. It wasn't actually a physical curtain, but rather the refraction of light and shadow created at the junction of two dimensions. He folded his hands behind his back once more, his deep eyes gazing into this pitch-black, empty Void Realm that lacked any sense of up, down, left, or right.

The Chaotic Star Sea was exactly as its name suggested, filled with violent spatial turbulence and the aimlessly drifting wreckage of stars.

Without the light of any stars to shine upon it, the surroundings were as dark as a bottomless dry well. Occasionally, faint starlight refracted from unknown galaxies, twisted by the turbulence of the Void Realm, turned into long, eerie, pale white bands of light that barely outlined the contours of some floating boulders.

Following the guidance of the star map in his Sea of Consciousness, Zhou Wannian walked unhurriedly toward the coordinates on the outskirts of the Taiwu Ancestral Court.

His spotless cyan cloth shoes stepped onto invisible stairs in the Void Realm. With every step he took, the Great Perfection Space Law automatically smoothed out the violent turbulence beneath his feet, forcefully carving a flat path through this dead zone where even light would be torn to shreds.

The surroundings were quiet enough to hear his own heartbeat.

This silence lasted for an unknown amount of time, until a trace of chaotic resistance suddenly appeared in the previously smooth airflow of the Void Realm ahead.

Zhou Wannian stopped and slightly lifted his chin.

No sound came, as sound waves cannot travel in a vacuum. However, into the pure, freezing scent unique to the Chaotic Star Sea, there was suddenly mixed a hint of burnt wood, along with a metallic stench similar to that released when iron blocks are quenched in a Mortal blacksmith shop.

He looked in the direction from which the scent drifted.

In a shadow hundreds of miles away, a massive object lay silently.

It was a ship.

A cross-boundary merchant ship used for traveling between different Major Thousand Worlds to trade goods.

The ship's skeleton was crafted from a type of ironwood that grew at the bottom of the abyss, which should have been incredibly sturdy, and it was encased in bronze armor engraved with defensive Formation patterns. The cross-boundary sails hanging from the masts were tanned from the hide of adult Starry Sky Beasts.

But at this moment, this merchant ship, which should have been riding the winds and waves, lay like a gutted dead fish, floating silently in the pitch-black star sea.

Zhou Wannian took a step; it looked slow, but he was actually using Shrinking the Earth to an Inch, and within a few breaths, he arrived in front of the merchant ship.

The closer he got, the more pungent the smell of burning and blood became.

The miserable state of the merchant ship was fully exposed under the faint starlight.

The massive hull was broken into two pieces from the middle.

Zhou Wannian's gaze fell upon the fractured cross-section. A glimmer of thought flashed through his eyes, which were as calm as an ancient well.

This cut was not right.

Damage caused by Void Realm turbulence was usually tearing, twisting, and uneven. Even if they encountered space bandits, the Flying Sword and Magic Treasure attacks from those Cultivators would leave radial explosive marks and uneven craters on the ship's hull.

But the break on this merchant ship was as smooth as a freshly polished mirror.

The grain of the ironwood, the bronze armor plates, and even the Spirit Stone drive cores hidden inside the ship's cabin were all split in two on this same cross-section. There were no burrs, no charring from any energy detonation. This was an absolutely perfect planar cut, and the angle of the cross-section was a ninety-degree right angle, precise down to the slightest fraction.

Zhou Wannian lifted his foot, and his spotless cloth shoe landed gently on the tilted deck of the merchant ship.

"Click."

The contact between the sole of his shoe and the deck produced a soft, muffled sound. The invisible Domain within three feet of Zhou Wannian forcefully simulated the Law of gravity and airflow in this small space.

The scene on the deck was shocking.

Having lost the protection of the Formation, the air on the ship had long since been drained, and all liquids had been frozen instantly.

Floating in mid-air were countless red ice crystals. These were the blood sprayed by the crew, which had formed perfect spheres in the weightless environment, and were then frozen into ruby-like solids by absolute zero.

Corpses lay scattered across the deck, some even floating among the wreckage of the masts.

Zhou Wannian walked past the corpse of a guard. The guard was still clutching an unsheathed Flying Sword, his face frozen in the astonishment of his final moments. The guard's body had been neatly sliced open at the waist; his upper and lower body were separated by a distance of a zhang, and the cut was as smooth as a mirror, with even his internal organs frozen into a flat surface.

There were no signs of a struggle, no residue of Spells clashing.

This slaughter was one-sided, cold, and efficient.

The merchant ship's prized cargo—the rare Spiritual Plants and extraterrestrial meteoric iron stored in mustard seed bags—had mostly vanished into nothingness along with the cabin during that smooth cut, leaving only a few scattered empty wooden crates slowly spinning in the microgravity.

Zhou Wannian walked toward the core of the ship's superstructure with his hands behind his back, stepping on the wood shavings and ice crystals covering the ground.

"Creak..."

The wooden planks beneath his feet groaned under the unbearable weight.

Just as he passed a collapsed, thick cabin door, an extremely weak, intermittent vibration traveled through the deck to the soles of his shoes.

Zhou Wannian stopped.

He turned around, his gaze falling upon the ruins of the cabin door, which was pinned beneath some kind of heavy metal plate.

In the dead silence of space, there was no conduction of sound, but this weak physical vibration could not escape the perception of the Great Perfection Space Law. It was the frequency of a heartbeat, as weak as a candle flickering in the wind, liable to be extinguished at any moment.

Zhou Wannian extended his right foot, clad in a cyan cloth sleeve, and pressed the tip of his shoe against the bronze armor plate, which weighed ten thousand jin.

Without any brilliance of released True Qi, he just casually flicked it upward.

The bronze plate flew backward into the dark Void Realm without a sound, like a light, withered leaf, under the reverse action of Absolute Mass.

Beneath the ruins, a figure that had been crushed out of shape was revealed.

This was a corpulent middle-aged merchant. He was wearing a golden silk robe that should have been quite luxurious, but it had long been mostly scorched, and the remaining parts were frozen into a hard, stiff shell.

The merchant's left leg had been severed, the cut also being that same perfect plane. His abdomen was pierced by a wooden splinter, and a section of his intestines had spilled out, covered in white frost. One of his hands was tightly guarding his chest, clutching a White Jade Abacus that had been broken in two.

His chest was still rising and falling with an extremely weak amplitude.

The cold of the Void Realm had invaded his heart meridians, and his internal organs were rapidly freezing.

Zhou Wannian looked at this Mortal merchant who was about to breathe his last; he had not intended to meddle in other people's affairs. In this Chaotic Star Sea, countless merchant ships sank every day; life and death were simply the norm of the Universe.

However, he had developed a bit of interest in verifying the cutting marks left on this ship.

Zhou Wannian slowly extended his right hand.

He slightly bent his index finger, and a pure, vibrant emerald green light, filled with vitality, lit up at his fingertip. This was the vitality of Wood from the Five Elements, representing the origin of life, carrying no violent aggression, only pure restoration and nourishment.

He pointed his finger in the air just above the merchant's glabella.

The green halo transformed into thousands of invisible threads, which, like spring rain soaking into the earth, followed the merchant's glabella and burrowed into his limbs and bones.

These green threads of vitality domineeringly dispelled the Void Realm cold that had invaded his bone marrow, melting the blood that had frozen into ice. Like pairs of nimble hands, they forcibly pulled and stitched together the torn flesh of the merchant's abdomen, and even sprouted a layer of flesh membrane over the smooth stump of his severed leg, temporarily sealing off the escaping vitality.

The merchant's originally ashen complexion recovered a trace of a living person's color, visible to the naked eye.

"Cough... cough cough..."

[part:gemini-3.0-flash]

As his heart and lungs began to beat again, the merchant violently coughed up a mouthful of black blood that had been trapped in his chest.

The black blood hit the deck with a wet thud.

The merchant's body convulsed several times before his tightly closed eyes slowly fluttered open. His dilated pupils gradually regained their focus within the light simulated by the three-foot Domain around Zhou Wannian.

A piercing pain surged through him like a tide, causing the merchant's features to twist in agony as he sucked in a sharp breath of cold air.

He gasped for air, greedily breathing in the hard-won oxygen within this square inch of space. When he clearly saw the green-robed man standing before him, looking down from above, his eyes were filled with confusion and terror.

"You... I..." The merchant's lips trembled, his words coming out in broken fragments, his voice as raspy as sandpaper rubbing together.

"Save your strength for breathing."

Zhou Wannian clasped his hands behind his back again, his tone calm and devoid of any arrogance from having saved a life.

"Your ship was blocking my path. Everyone else aboard is dead; you're the only one left breathing."

The merchant was stunned.

His memory was still stuck at the moment the disaster occurred. He turned his head blankly to look around.

The hull of the ship had been snapped in two.

Red ice crystals floated in mid-air.

And then there were the workers and guards, cut in half, with terror still frozen on their faces.

"Gone... they're all gone..."

The merchant's eyes instantly became bloodshot, and two lines of murky tears rolled down, mixing with the blood on his face. He let out a shrill wail, his hands clawing desperately at the wood grain of the deck, not even feeling the pain as his fingernails snapped off.

"My goods... I borrowed capital from three Merchant Firms, a whole ship of Cold Star Iron! It's all ruined! Old Three, Ah Si—they all have wives and children waiting at home!"

As he wept, he slammed his head violently against the deck, venting the despair in his heart.

Zhou Wannian watched him wail in silence, offering no words of comfort. In his deep eyes, he had seen this drama of families being destroyed by sudden disaster countless times.

He waited until the merchant's voice had gone hoarse from crying and he no longer had the strength to bang his head, only lying on the ground dry-heaving.

Only then did Zhou Wannian slowly speak.

"Did you encounter Starry Sky Bandits?"

Upon hearing those words, the merchant's entire body shuddered. He looked up, and on his tear-streaked, blood-stained face, a fear deeper than despair emerged.

He gripped the broken White Jade Abacus tightly, his knuckles turning white from the force.

He shook his head frantically, his teeth biting into his lower lip until blood appeared.

"No... it wasn't bandits..."

The merchant's voice was shaking, his pupils contracting violently as he recalled the scene.

"Bandits want money; they would first use cannons to shatter our Formation, then board the ship to kill and loot. Bandits also leave survivors for ransom!"

He swallowed a mouthful of bloody saliva, his chest heaving.

"We... we were traveling along the merchant route and were just about to bypass that Mist Zone known as the Dead Land. Suddenly, without a sound, not even the Alarm Formation went off."

The merchant stared intently into Zhou Wannian's eyes, as if trying to draw some sense of security from his savior.

"The Void Realm ahead was like a piece of cloth, torn open by something."

"What emerged from within was not a bandit's flying boat at all! It wasn't a ship!"

The merchant gestured with his hands, his words incoherent.

"They were boxes! Iron boxes! And pointed... triangular iron towers! They just hung there in the Void Realm; there was no wood or Formation on their surfaces at all, just flashing white lights!"

Hearing this, Zhou Wannian's eyes narrowed slightly, a cold light of 'as expected' flashing deep within them.

"They didn't hail us, and they didn't demand the goods."

The merchant's body shook like a leaf, and tears began to flow again.

"From the middle of that triangular iron tower, there was just a flash of white light. No sound, no sound at all. When the light swept over, the head guard—along with his sword—was... was just split down the middle!"

"That light cut straight through. Cargo, deck, keel—anything it touched simply vanished! It was as if they were being erased. They weren't looting; they were... they were stepping on us like ants!"

The merchant broke down in tears.

"Those weren't Magic Treasures refined by Human Cultivators, nor were they the Demonic Techniques of the Yao Race. They were monsters... a group of square, faceless monsters..."

"Geometric Lifeforms."

Zhou Wannian's calm voice interrupted the merchant's lament.

The merchant froze, staring blankly at Zhou Wannian. He didn't understand the meaning of the term, but he instinctively felt that the green-robed man before him seemed to know what those things that slaughtered them were.

Zhou Wannian turned his head and looked in the direction the merchant had pointed.

That was precisely his destination.

The Grey Mist on the outskirts of the Taiwu Ancestral Court.

Earlier, through a Star Chart Projection, he had sensed a sophisticated death trap laid outside the mist. He had been wondering if it was the Death Qi of the Forbidden Ground itself at work, or if someone had done it intentionally.

Now, the encounter of this broken merchant ship had given him the most direct answer.

"A bunch of tin cans; they never learn their lesson even after suffering a loss."

Zhou Wannian clasped his hands behind his back again, a bone-chilling mockery appearing on his handsome face.

The Absolute Truth Realm.

These high-dimensional mechanical lives, with geometric shapes for bodies and underlying code for Souls, had not given up their exploration of this starry sky despite the destruction of the Immortal-Demon Great World and the death of The Angler.

On the contrary.

They had dispatched a fleet.

Not projections, but a real, fully-armed Truth Realm Geometric Warship Fleet had descended upon this Star Domain.

This unlucky Inter-realm Merchant Ship had been subjected to silent erasure by the Truth Realm fleet simply because its route had brought it close to that Mist Zone.

For those bean-counters, any variable that approached their target area without permission—be it a meteorite or a merchant ship full of Mortals—was handled in only one way: absolute partition and erasure on a physical level.

A blockade.

A clearing of the area.

They had established a Death Alert Line composed of Death Light and geometric warships on the outskirts of the Taiwu Ancestral Court.

"It seems they've found something interesting in that mud pit and are afraid someone else might snatch it."

Zhou Wannian looked at the dark, deep starry sky.

A new storm was indeed brewing within this Void Realm turbulence.

Those tin cans were not only researching how to crack the defenses of the Taiwu Ancestral Court but were also trying to block any eyes that might draw near. And the data packet sent out by The Angler before his death must have already reached the fleet command center.

They were waiting ahead.

Waiting for him, the variable who had broken their fish pond, to walk right into their trap.

Zhou Wannian retracted his gaze.

He glanced at the merchant, who was still lying on the deck and trembling.

"Your life is saved. I have calmed the Void Realm turbulence in this area; as long as you don't wander off, you can survive for ten days to half a month on the residual Spiritual Qi in the ship's hull. When the next merchant ship passes by, you'll live."

Zhou Wannian dusted off his sleeves, not wasting another word.

He stepped forward, his spotless green cloth shoes leaving the blood-stained deck and stepping back onto the invisible Void Stairs.

"Benefactor... where... where are you going?" the merchant couldn't help but shout with a trembling voice as he watched Zhou Wannian's receding back. "Ahead... ahead is the Dead Land! Those monsters are still there!"

Zhou Wannian did not look back.

His green robes whipped in the Void Realm turbulence.

He walked at a steady pace, his steps as calm as if he were strolling in his own backyard.

"Since they've blocked the road..."

Zhou Wannian's calm, languid voice drifted back to the broken merchant ship on the wind.

"As a passerby, I'll have to go reason with them and get them to move their scrap metal out of the way."