38: Chapter 38 Now you believe it?

"You think you're the Lord of the Fate Altar." He finished the sentence himself.

Then, the color drained from his face.

The person in front of him had leaped over from nearly two nautical miles away, landing in flip-flops on the rotten wooden planks without even cracking them.

His attitude had been calm and unhurried from start to finish, speaking of one million karma points as if they were a single dollar. Across the entire Magic Sea, he could think of the only possible person—the one and only person—who could treat a million karma points like pocket change.

The creator of the Cause and Effect Fate Platform.

Number one on the individual merit leaderboard.

Five hundred and fifty million merit points.

Zhao Kang's gaze fell back onto Yang Hang.

The man who was discussed day and night by the 1.4 billion Yanhuang Civilization survivors, the subject of endless speculation, the person countless people longed to meet but never could—the most mysterious of the mysterious—

The Fate Master?

Zhao Kang's wooden stick slipped from his hand, clattered onto the deck, bounced twice, and rolled into the sea. He didn't even look. His eyes were locked onto that silver mask, his legs went weak, and his voice began to stutter.

"Y-y-y-you... you are..." He swallowed hard, his face turning from flushed to beet red, unsure if it was from excitement, fear, or both. "Are you the Fate Master?"

Yang Hang did not remove his mask.

Beneath the silver Ultraman mask, the corners of his mouth twitched, emitting a very soft syllable.

"Mm."

Just one word.

Zhao Kang's knees gave way.

It wasn't a metaphor; they genuinely gave way. He grabbed the cabin wall behind him, his fingernails digging into the rotten wood grain to keep from collapsing on the spot. His mouth hung open, his Adam's apple bobbed twice, and his voice squeezed out from deep within his throat, cracking.

"Y-you... you really are..."

"I just said so." Yang Hang took half a step back to give him some mental space, his tone identical to when they were discussing business just moments ago. "I don't hit people, I talk business, so don't be nervous."

Zhao Kang's brain was buzzing.

He stared at the man in flip-flops in front of him, his hands and feet icy, his back drenched in sweat. The name that all 1.4 billion people on the Fate Platform had been discussing for three days, that monster with 550 million merit points, the existence revered as a god by countless people and questioned by just as many—

Was now standing on his dilapidated, rotten wooden boat.

Stepping on his deck.

Chatting with him.

Zhao Kang swallowed. His sanity still held onto one last thread, a thread called "What if he's a fraud?"

"Uhm..." His voice dropped extremely low, as if afraid to disturb something, every word trembling. "B-Big Boss, it's not that I don't believe you, but... could you... provide some proof?"

He regretted the words the moment they left his mouth and quickly added: "I absolutely don't mean to offend! It's just... it's all too sudden, I'm afraid I'm dreaming..."

Yang Hang glanced at him.

He couldn't see the gaze behind the mask, but Zhao Kang felt the pressure of being watched clearly.

Then, Yang Hang raised his right hand.

The movement was casual. Like shooing away a fly.

With his palm facing backward, he gave a light wave.

The wind came.

It wasn't a sea breeze. It was a blast of Qi erupting from Yang Hang's palm, carrying a power that far exceeded physical laws, crushing outward in all directions. Zhao Kang's hair was blown back, his eyes forced shut, and his entire body was pinned against the cabin wall, unable to move.

The sea exploded.

With their rotten wooden boat as the center, the surrounding seawater was violently torn open as if by an invisible giant hand—towering waves rose in all directions, reaching tens of meters high, blocking out the sky.

But the boat didn't move.

This dilapidated, rotten wooden boat, which could fall apart at any moment, remained completely motionless amidst this frenzy capable of capsizing an aircraft carrier. Not even the deck planks wobbled.

The gale and rain crashed down.

Three seconds later, the wind stopped.

Zhao Kang opened his eyes.

Then his pupils dilated.

His gaze drifted past Yang Hang's shoulder, seeing the sea surface directly behind him—no, not the sea surface.

The sea had vanished.

A crack.

No... not a crack.

It was a void.

Accompanied by a rainbow beneath the brilliant sunshine.

A massive deep-sea void, stretching as far as the eye could see, had been torn open in the sea area behind Yang Hang. It was at least several kilometers wide, extending to the horizon, as if someone had used a blade to split the ocean in half.

And the depth—

Zhao Kang glanced down.

That one glance nearly killed him.

Bottomless.

He saw the cross-section of the seawater. The blue-black cross-section of the ocean looked like a wall several kilometers high, exposing the layers of the deep sea—the shallow blue-green seaweed belt, the pitch-black mid-level waters, and the phosphorescence of unknown creatures occasionally flashing in the deeper depths.

Seawater was rushing into the void from all directions, forming countless waterfall-like curtains of water, the roaring sound deafening.

But those torrents poured in as if pouring water into a bottomless pit.

The void remained unchanged.

Zhao Kang's legs lost all strength.

He collapsed onto the deck, his hands bracing against the planks behind him, his whole body trembling. It wasn't from the cold, but that instinctive fear of facing the abyss—similar to the feeling of standing on the edge of a ten-thousand-meter cliff looking down, but ten thousand times more terrifying.

"God..."

His lips quivered.

"Sure enough... this isn't something a human can do..."

Yang Hang withdrew his hand and turned around.

The silver eye sockets on the mask looked down at the collapsed Zhao Kang. Behind him lay that apocalyptic rift, enough to plunge anyone into thalassophobia. He stood at the edge of the rift, his flip-flops less than a foot from the abyss.

"Believe me now?"

His tone remained calm.

As if confirming whether a food delivery had arrived.

Zhao Kang nodded frantically. He wanted to speak, but his tongue was tied, and he could only produce incoherent syllables. He tried to stand up, but his legs wouldn't obey, and he failed twice.

Yang Hang didn't rush him. He waited for about ten seconds as the deep-sea void slowly closed behind him, the surrounding seawater rushing back in to fill it, churning for a while before finally returning to calm.

As if nothing had ever happened.

Zhao Kang knelt on the deck, gasping for air. His forehead was drenched in cold sweat, and the goosebumps on his skin hadn't faded. He looked up at the man in the Ultraman mask, his eyes reddening.

He didn't know if it was from fear or shock.

Then he scrambled up.

He was fast. He didn't even mind the pain as his knees hit the deck. He darted into the cabin, rummaged out a broken bowl, scooped up half a bowl of slightly yellowed fresh water, and offered it to Yang Hang with both hands.

"Water, water, please have some water."

Yang Hang looked down at the bowl of water. There was a layer of sand at the bottom.

"...Thank you." Then he took it and drank a mouthful seriously.

"Come, eat some fish!" Zhao Kang, face full of excitement, hurriedly turned to grab those two salted fish, only to remember they had been blown into the sea by the wind just now. He turned back, his face filled with the misery of "I'm such a poor wretch that I don't even have anything to entertain an honored guest."

Yang Hang adjusted his mask and couldn't help but chuckle.

"Let's talk business." He pointed to the fishing spot. "Are we still doing the trade?"

Zhao Kang paused.

He looked at Yang Hang, then at the fishing spot. The image of that abyss was still replaying in his mind; his thought processes had been completely reshaped.

"Do it! We must!" He patted his chest. "But Fate Master, one million is too much! I'm just a salted fish player on a rotten wooden boat; how could I be worth one million?"

He rubbed his hands, his tone sincere to the bone. "How about you give me... five hundred? No, no, no, three hundred is fine. Three hundred karma points is enough for me to recharge my compass for a year and trade for some food. You keep the rest; with such a large Fate Platform to maintain, your karma points must also be... also quite tight, right?"

Yang Hang stared at him for two seconds.

Zhao Kang couldn't see the expression behind the mask, but those two seconds of silence made his heart drum—it's over, did I say the wrong thing? How could the Fate Master's karma points be tight? Isn't that implying he's poor?

Just as he was about to correct himself, Yang Hang spoke.

"No regrets? What if you open a high-Rank treasure chest?"

Zhao Kang almost laughed out loud.

He had just seen a man split thousands of meters of ocean with a wave of his hand. If this person told him he wanted his chest-opening opportunity, and he was still here agonizing over whether to gamble on the less-than-one-in-ten-thousand chance of opening a gold or silver treasure chest, then his brain really should be fed to the Iron-Clad Crab.

"No regrets." Zhao Kang gritted his teeth.

Yang Hang looked at him.

This guy had been pointing a sharp wooden stick at him earlier, shouting that one million karma points was a joke. Now it was the other way around; he was trying to save him money.

Interesting.

"Then do you want me to tell you what Rank of treasure chest I'm going to open?" Yang Hang asked.

Zhao Kang froze.