89: Chapter 88 You must have awakened a very powerful talent!
Tom Baker had just experienced the feeling of being helped and having someone hold an umbrella for him in the rain, so he naturally felt very eager to pass on that warmth.
Plus, with the restrictions of the Fate Platform rules, he wasn't too worried about his own safety, and helping others could also earn merit points—killing three birds with one stone...
So, he quickly paddled his boat over.
That yellow dot was flickering on and off, unstable, indicating that the person's vital signs were extremely weak. He was afraid that by the time he arrived, the person would be gone.
A thin layer of morning mist floated over the surface of the sea.
Tom paddled for about ten minutes and finally saw the target corresponding to the yellow light spot.
He gasped.
It was a scene of shattered wreckage—fragments of a Rotten Wood Class Houseboat were scattered over nearly a hundred meters of the sea surface; broken wooden planks, torn canvas, and overturned pots looked like a silent funeral.
And in the center of this wreckage, a person was lying prone on a raft less than two square meters in size.
Tom paddled closer and saw the person's appearance clearly, his heart constricting violently.
It was a young white man, probably in his early twenties. His clothes had been shredded into rags, barely hanging onto his body. His entire body was covered in dried blood, forming black-red scabs that looked like a layer of ugly armor.
But none of this was the most shocking part.
What made Tom's pupils constrict the most were his left hand and right leg.
His left arm was completely gone from below the elbow. The stump had been crudely wrapped with a few layers of torn fabric, which had long been soaked through with blood, turning a dark brown. The skin around the edges of the wound was black and purple—signs of severe infection and prolonged soaking in seawater.
The right leg was the same, missing from below the knee. The pant leg hung empty, and the bandage on the stump was even sloppier than the one on the left arm, with a few broken wooden splinters serving as makeshift splints, haphazardly tied with vines.
He lay there on that narrow raft, like a broken toy that had been torn apart and discarded at will.
Tom's breathing quickened.
He had seen tragic sights before, and knew there were worse ones, but seeing it right in front of him, the visual impact of such misery was still quite powerful.
"Hey! Brother!" Tom brought his boat alongside the raft, crouched down, and reached out to check the man's breath.
A faint, barely perceptible warmth brushed against his knuckles.
He was still alive.
Tom breathed a sigh of relief and quickly took action. He secured the two boats together with ropes, then carefully dragged the white survivor from the raft onto the deck of his own Houseboat.
The man's body was unbelievably light, as if only a skeleton remained.
Tom turned him over to lie flat. His face was covered in blood and mud, his lips were cracked like a riverbed in the dry season, and his eye sockets were deeply sunken.
Tom took out his waterskin, unscrewed the cap, gently pried open the man's lips, and slowly poured fresh water inside.
The water trickled down the corner of his mouth, mixed with streaks of blood.
The white survivor's Adam's apple bobbed violently, like someone who had been walking in the desert for days and had finally encountered an oasis. He began to swallow desperately, his throat making muffled gurgling sounds.
"Slow down, slow down." Tom lowered his voice, supported the back of his head, and fed him water a little at a time.
After half a waterskin, the man's eyelids began to flutter.
Then, they snapped open.
They were a pair of gray-blue eyes, the pupils somewhat unfocused from prolonged weakness. But at this moment, those eyes were filled with fear and vigilance, like a wild beast cornered in a desperate situation.
He gasped for air, his body instinctively trying to shrink back, but his severed left arm and right leg made it impossible for him to exert any strength, leaving him to lie limply on the deck.
"Don't be afraid, don't be afraid." Tom raised his hands to show he had no malice, his voice very soft. "I am a survivor too, from the Fog City Camp. I saw you drifting on the sea and came over to see if I could help."
The white survivor stared at him for a full five seconds, his eyes quickly scanning Tom's face, the sea behind him, and the furnishings on the boat.
His tense body relaxed slightly, but the wariness in his eyes did not dissipate.
"You... you saved me?" His voice was so hoarse it was almost inaudible, like sandpaper rubbing against glass.
"You could say that." Tom nodded and turned to rummage through the cabin, pulling out a small wooden box of antiseptic sea salt—something he had learned to make in the Fate Platform Help Realm—along with a few small rags.
He crouched beside the white survivor and pointed to his severed arm and leg. "This bandage of yours won't do; you'll die if it gets infected. Let me treat it for you again."
The white survivor looked down at his own severed limbs, his pupils constricting violently, his breathing suddenly quickening.
It was as if he had only just truly realized what he had lost.
His left hand was gone. His right leg was gone too.
His lips trembled violently, his Adam's apple bobbed up and down, and he let out a whimper like a beast being strangled.
Tom didn't rush him, nor did he say any nonsense like "it will get better."
He just knelt quietly on the deck, carefully unwrapping the blood-soaked rags.
The wound was exposed to the air.
The muscle tissue at the stump had turned black, and white bone fragments were vaguely visible. The swelling caused by soaking in seawater made the entire end of the severed limb appear a terrifying purplish-black, and some tiny marine worms were attached to the edges of the wound.
Tom frowned but did not flinch. He first carefully cleaned the wound with antiseptic sea salt dissolved in fresh water he had collected and boiled, then quickly used a method from a lifestyle post in the Fate Platform Help Realm to build a wooden frame to start a fire.
He needed to use fire to boil the rags for sterilization, and then cauterize the wound to stop the bleeding before he could bandage it.
Throughout the whole process, the white survivor gritted his teeth and didn't make a sound, but the bulging veins on his forehead and the beads of sweat the size of peas betrayed the pain he was enduring.
By the time Tom finished, his face was as white as paper.
"Thanks... brother." The white survivor gasped for air, leaning against the cabin wall, his gray-blue eyes filled with lingering fear and the daze of having barely escaped death. "Last night... it was simply Hell."
He closed his eyes, as if recalling some terrifying scene, his voice intermittent.
"I encountered a... a strange fish with three rows of teeth. It was too fast; I couldn't see it clearly at all. My Houseboat was smashed, and I fell into the water... that beast bit my left hand..."
His voice choked off.
Tom didn't speak, but handed him a bowl of warm water.
The white survivor took the bowl with his only remaining hand, his fingers trembling violently, spilling half the water. He took a big gulp and waited a while before continuing.
"I fought with all my might to pull my hand out of its mouth... but it was already severed. Blood was gushing out like a fountain. I wrapped my clothes around the wound and tried to swim to a safe place... then another sea beast rushed up from below and bit my right leg..."
He looked down at his empty pant leg, his voice becoming hollow.
"This time, I didn't even have the strength to fight back. I thought I would die. I don't know how long I soaked... then day broke, and for some reason, the sea beasts all retreated. I just... lay on that broken wooden plank, drifting."
He looked up and sized Tom up from head to toe. His gaze landed on Tom's clothes, which, although stained with some blood, were still intact; his rosy complexion; and the bronze harpoon leaning against the gunwale.
The harpoon faintly gleamed with a cold light, and fresh fish blood was still stained on it.
"You... you're in such good condition." There was a hint of envy, and even a trace of sycophancy, in the white survivor's tone. "You can even get hold of bronze weapons. You must be a survivor who has awakened a very powerful talent, right? How many sea beasts did you kill last night?"
Tom shook his head and added a handful of firewood to the fire. He had just casually set up another pot, with the white-spined pufferfish he had just hunted boiling inside; the fish meat tumbled, and the milky-white broth bubbled away.
"I'm no expert." Tom shook his head and scooped a bowl of fish soup to hand over. "My Houseboat is also Rotten Wood Class, just like yours. I'm an ordinary survivor, and I haven't awakened any powerful talent."