Yue Shi spread the 《Record of Cultivating Character and Prolonging Life》 across his knees, leaning back in his chair with his legs crossed high.
He flipped through the pages one by one, his gaze sweeping over the ancient characters with a rare sense of serious focus.
In the chair opposite him, the pickpocket dared only to sit on the very edge, his muscles tensed tight. He looked like a startled cat, his face pale and his eyes frozen in their sockets, not daring to look around.
He didn't dare look at the ceiling.
But he knew what was there.
Many things were hanging from the restaurant's ceiling.
To be more precise, they were swallowed by it.
Members of the Ghost Face Pirates, the entertainment ship's staff, and unfortunate tourists.
They were all hanging upside down.
The lower halves of their calves were embedded in the ceiling's construction materials, as if they were clipping through a game's geometry.
There was no blood, nor any signs of violent destruction. It was as if they had tried to pass through the wall halfway and gotten stuck.
Some were already dead, their skin ashen, their eyes clouded, and their arms hanging limp.
Some still had a breath left in them, wheezing sounds escaping their throats and their fingertips twitching slightly, though whether from pain or fear was unclear.
The quietest and most bizarre of them all was the captain of the Ghost Face Pirates.
He was suspended in the very center, his silver mask tilted to one side to reveal half of a gaunt face. His eyes were tightly shut, his brow furrowed into a knot, and his lips moved as if muttering something.
His body was undergoing a terrifying transformation.
From the elbow down, the skin of his exposed right arm was rapidly losing its color, turning a dry, bluish-black.
His fingertips were gradually becoming needle-like, and a mass of swollen veins moved beneath the skin on the back of his hand. The whole limb seemed to be turning into a strange piece of equipment.
A living tattoo ink needle.
The pickpocket took one look and felt his stomach churn, hurriedly shifting his gaze back to the table.
His eyes didn't dare look, but his mind couldn't stop replaying everything that had just happened.
Ten minutes ago, he had been chatting with Yue Shi about the Bewitching Beauty Painting Workshop.
The pickpocket couldn't remember what he had been saying—just some hearsay and gossip.
Yue Shi had his eyes half-closed, occasionally peeling a nut and stacking them into a wobbly little tower on the table, seemingly indifferent to the conversation.
Then, Yue Shi had suddenly stopped his movements.
One nut hadn't been placed steadily and rolled toward the edge of the table, only to be pinned down by the snow leopard's paw.
Yue Shi turned his head and spoke. “This ship is mine now. No damaging my property.”
The pickpocket had been stunned at the time.
What did that mean? Who was he talking to?
In the next second, he saw it.
Yue Shi raised his right hand, his fingers curling inward in a casual gesture.
A ripple flashed through the air, and space was disturbed, creating a slight displacement.
Then, people came flooding in from all directions.
It was as if they had been plucked from where they stood.
The pickpocket couldn't see the process at all.
He only knew that the restaurant was suddenly packed with people.
Some were clutching handfuls of gold coins, some were in the middle of a sword strike, and some were screaming at the top of their lungs.
They were all stuffed into the restaurant, like a child who had grown bored of his toys and grabbed them all to shove into a single drawer.
A few seconds.
In just a few seconds.
The originally spacious restaurant was suddenly crowded with nearly a hundred people.
Pirates, crew members, and tourists, along with dead bodies, were all squeezed together in a chaotic mess.
At the very front was the Ghost Face Captain.
Having been suddenly transferred, he was unsteady on his feet and dropped to one knee, supporting himself with one hand while his mask slipped to the side.
The half of his face that was exposed showed initial confusion, which quickly tightened into a fierce, ruthless look of shock.
He stood up, his gaze cutting through the noisy crowd to look straight toward the window.
“It's you.”
“You're the one pulling the strings.”
The Ghost Face Captain's voice was raspy—not a question, but a confirmation.
There was only one person who looked completely out of place, being exceptionally calm and composed.
Yue Shi looked up and glanced at him. There was no denial in his eyes, no mockery, and no extra emotion.
The Ghost Face Captain didn't say another word, skipping the communication and negotiation phase entirely.
He jerked his right arm, his sleeve exploding into fragments as the limb rapidly mutated. His five fingers turned into five ink needles of varying thickness, their tips aimed at Yue Shi.
He lunged at Yue Shi, putting everything he had into the strike. Although he knew his chances of winning were slim since the opponent seemed to manipulate space at will, he wanted to seize the initiative.
And then.
The pickpocket didn't see Yue Shi make any move, nor did he know what happened in that instant.
He only heard the sound of the Ghost Face Captain's charge suddenly vanish about three meters away from Yue Shi.
And the Ghost Face Captain himself vanished along with it.
Space inverted, and the Ghost Face Captain was hung upside down from the ceiling, his legs from the calves down embedded directly into the material of the suspended ceiling.
His body arched back, and his arms flailed wildly as he tried to grab onto something.
But it was useless.
He was like a fly stuck to a piece of tape, his wings struggling in vain while his legs were fixed in place, unable to escape.
The pickpocket heard the sound of his own teeth chattering.
He slid out of his chair and crouched under the table.
By the time he regained his composure and peeked out with half a head, the restaurant had become a forest of upside-down human bodies.
Tourists, crew, and pirates were all hanging from the ceiling. The Ghost Face Captain was suspended in the center, his right arm continuing its mutation, his five ink-needle fingertips frozen in mid-air.
Yue Shi finally stood up and walked slowly to a spot beneath the Ghost Face Captain.
“Why did you rob this ship?”
The Ghost Face Captain hung his head, the upside-down posture causing blood to rush to his brain. His face turned purple, and his lips were pressed into a thin line.
He didn't speak.
“What is your name?”
Still silence.
“Where did your power come from?”
The Ghost Face Captain's chin trembled slightly as if he had something to say.
But the words he spoke were not an answer to Yue Shi's questions.
“From the moment I decided to be a pirate, I knew this day would come.”
“I can kill others, and others can kill me. The winner takes all and the loser is the villain; it's the way of the world. If you can't win, you have to take the loss.”
“I don't know what your goal is, but there's no logic to be found on the sea. Kill me if you want. Don't think I'll get on my knees and beg for mercy like those useless cowards.”
He panted heavily, every word a struggle, yet a grin spread across his face.
Yue Shi looked at him without saying a word. He reached out, took the 《Record of Cultivating Character and Prolonging Life》 from where the pirate had hidden it, and sat back in his chair to flip through it slowly.
The Ghost Face Captain stopped looking at Yue Shi.
He turned his head, his gaze passing over his comrades whose fates were unknown and looking out the porthole at the churning waves, toward a very, very distant direction.
Perhaps because he was about to die, his life began to flash before his eyes.
He wasn't born a pirate. Once, he was just an ordinary fishing village boy, thin as a rail, lazy, and unable to even mend a fishing net properly.
That fishing village had no name. It was tucked among the reefs on the eastern side of a small archipelago, home to about a hundred families who had lived off the sea for generations.
Every typhoon season, the houses of some unlucky souls would be swept away, and occasionally people would lose their lives at sea. The survivors would dig the bodies out from the crevices in the reefs, bury them in the mass grave on the leeward slope, and continue harvesting the sea year after year.
Then one day, a storm hit. it was more severe than any typhoon season in the past, and it came so suddenly that everyone was caught off guard.
His family's boat was smashed by the waves. His father's body didn't wash up on the western beach until three days later, with half of his torso eaten away by fish.
His mother was heartbroken and soon jumped into the sea to her death.
He didn't cry. In such a bitter life, dying early was a blessing.
He buried his parents side by side at the very back of the mass grave, using two reef rocks worn smooth by the waves to weigh down the mound, then turned and went back to the broken ship.
The ship was shattered, but the bottom hold was still there. He had to salvage the tools inside, or he would starve to death in the winter.
In the stagnant water of the bottom hold, he felt something.
A box, seemingly made of pure gold, perfectly sealed with no keyhole or seams, only irregular pits and hollows on the surface.
He pried at it with a knife. The blade was blunt, and he worked for a long time before finally prying a crack in the gold container.
He used both hands to force it open.
There were no jewels inside, nor was it anything that should have changed his fate for the better.
It was a severed arm.
From the elbow down, the cut was clean. The flesh had long since dried and shriveled, clinging tight to the bone, the whole thing a bluish-black color. The five fingers were curled, with very long nails.
Before he could even feel confused, the severed arm moved.
Like a dormant venomous snake scenting a living thing, the arm sprang up, its fingertips piercing his right palm.
He remembered that feeling.
It hurt immensely, as if something were being forced into his body.
Countless ink-like spots flooded out from the cut of the severed arm, burrowing into his blood vessels and climbing up the inner side of his arm. Skin accepted skin; bone fused with bone.
Then he fainted.
By the time he regained consciousness, his right hand was no longer entirely his own.
With a light touch of his fingertips, a black fingerprint would be left on the wooden planks of the ship's rail.
When he tried to concentrate his will, his fingers could transform into a long, thin needle.
In that moment, he suddenly understood.
That severed arm contained a power he couldn't comprehend.
He had accidentally opened the gold container and obtained this power.
What happened after was simple.
With power in hand, who would want to stay in a destitute little fishing village?
The gold box served as his starting capital, and he successfully left the village.
He discovered he could use the ink needle to leave permanent tattoos on others and use them to control their will.
He gathered his first group of outlaws, inscribed them with the Ghost Face tattoo, and told them that from then on, they could only listen to him.
When they robbed their first ship, he killed seven crew members, and he nearly had his own stomach pierced by a blade.
He shoved his intestines back in, sealed the wound with the ink needle, and continued the robbery the next day.
Robbery was the fastest way to amass wealth.
He gradually built a reputation. To maintain a level of mystery, he put on a mask, and the name of the Ghost Face was spread far and wide.
His most famous feat was raiding a large merchant ship that had several crew members trained in martial arts. They were very difficult to deal with.
He used the ink needle to carve a complete ghost face onto the captain's chest. The captain knelt on the spot and turned to kill his own companions.
From then on, no one dared to look down on him, the orphan.
But he knew there was a price for all of it.
Every time he used the ink needle, he could clearly feel his life slipping away.
The thing lodged in his right arm was becoming more and more restless. He was slowly turning from a living man into a walking corpse.
He began to frantically search for anything related to extending his life.
The Tide Auction, anonymous buyers, ancient cultivator relics unearthed from deep-sea ruins, the 《Record of Cultivating Character and Prolonging Life》...
He had finally found it.
And then, he had fallen here.
Memories were like the receding tide, gone in an instant.
The Ghost Face Captain withdrew his gaze and hung there quietly, allowing his right arm to continue its mutation.
Yue Shi carefully read the 《Record of Cultivating Character and Prolonging Life》. The vertical eye on his forehead opened, and the infinity symbol appeared in all three of his eyes.
The more he read, the stranger his expression became.
The 《Record of Cultivating Character and Prolonging Life》 was also known as the 《Record of Fleshy Excrescence Longevity》. The entire text was an explanation of how to ingest the essence of the Five Excrescences to achieve longevity.
The text was somewhat obscure, but not very difficult to understand.
“The pine lives for a thousand years, its resin condensing into divinity; it enters the earth, hiding its name and changing its surname, abandoning its origin to become great, forming from its roots, named Wei Xi.”
“Parasitic lice nourish the body, maintaining color and returning years; one character, sesame, originally from Dawan, contains the essence of water, warding off wind and removing cold, named Great Excellence.”
The so-called Five Excrescences referred to Great Excellence, Wei Xi, Sichuan Pepper, Calamus, and Dried Ginger.
Great Excellence was black sesame, Wei Xi was Poria, and Sichuan pepper, calamus, and dried ginger were even more common. How could ingesting these things grant longevity?
They were more like seasonings.
“Hey, can you understand the records in that ancient book?” the Ghost Face Captain suddenly spoke.
He was very weak now and could die at any moment.
But he was somewhat unwilling to let go. He had gone through immense hardship to find the manual, only for it to be a blur to him, and now he was giving it away on a silver platter to someone else.
Even in death, he wanted to be a ghost who understood.
Yue Shi said, “The characters in this ancient book are very special. Anyone who looks at it can understand the words. Probably only a pure illiterate who hasn't been contaminated by any knowledge would fail to understand it.”
“I'm not illiterate!” the Ghost Face Captain shouted back.
Before becoming a pirate, he was indeed illiterate and didn't know a single character. But after becoming a pirate, he was very ambitious and would take time every day to teach himself.
He could already solve quadratic equations!
Yue Shi: “I wasn't talking about you, what are you getting worked up for?”
The Ghost Face Captain took a deep breath and brought the topic back on track. “I know every word in that book, but when they're put together, I just don't understand!”
“Is it possible it's fake? That it's actually just a cookbook?”
Yue Shi asked him, “Where did this ancient book originally come from?”
The Ghost Face Captain answered truthfully: salvaged from deep-sea ruins by an adventure group, passed through several hands before being obtained by the Tide Auction, bought by an anonymous buyer, and finally appearing on this ship.
Yue Shi nodded. “Perhaps this 《Record of Cultivating Character and Prolonging Life》 is a fake.”
“If it were a true secret manual for immortality, do you think the people at the Tide Auction would sell it?”
“Why wouldn't they practice the longevity arts themselves instead of putting it up as an auction item?”
Hearing this, the Ghost Face Captain's eyes widened. He had never considered the problem from that perspective.
But he soon shook his head.
“No, no, that's not it. The ancient book must be real.”
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