Wow...

Wow...

Wow...

The monotonous sound of water waves kept ringing, and the cold and biting pain on his skin woke Stuart up from his nightmare.

The unlucky man suddenly turned over and tried to sit up, but almost lost his balance and fell into the water. Fortunately, one foot was tied between the wooden stakes and he managed to save his life after choking on two pieces of water.

But then, Stuart started retching for a while, and it was a tragic sound that almost vomited out the intestines and stomach. After a while, his distracted eyes caught Gray and me again, and asked in a voice that was choked by the sea water.

Said: "I...why am I here..."

He slowly came back to his senses and looked at the undulating sea around him, looking at us as if he was in a daze.

"Stop talking and clean out the water plants in your mouth first."

I stood at the front of the simple raft, looking into the distance of the dim world, and reminded me kindly.

"You were lying on the ground imitating an ostrich just now, and you wanted to practice the alchemy of turning sand into glass in your stomach. We were afraid that you would die suddenly, so we put something in your mouth to prevent you from biting your tongue and committing suicide on the spot."

Stuart was dazed for a while, then retched again, spitting out a puddle of black water from his stomach, and said with difficulty: "Then why am I...vomiting...my stomach feels so uncomfortable..."

Gray, who was rowing hard at the stern of the boat, said: "Because the speed of our traffic has never been as fast as yours..."

You can’t blame me for this!

His mouth is like a paper shredder. He can eat as much as he puts in. We can't feed him rotten wood and stones, so we can only dig up some strange black and purple plants on the beach and feed them to him bit by bit.

, until the whole person is numb.

Hmm... the various herbs in the town have strong paralysis properties. Have you not forgotten this setting?

"Don't worry about such trivial matters as what you ate. You should be glad that you don't have a big appetite. Otherwise... have you seen my pair of rubber shoes?"

Stewart immediately shuddered, probably because he had been soaked in seawater for a long time, and wisely shut up and stopped asking further questions.

"You have been soaked in cold water for so long, your body must be stiff."

I noticed that Stewart was shivering more and more, as if the cold was quickly attacking his thinly-clothed body after the paralysis effect slowly dissipated, so I said with concern.

Stewart reluctantly said with some emotion: "Thank you, Sheriff, for your concern...I...huh...I can still hold on...don't worry about me..."

"Don't force yourself to hold on, your health is important."

Facing Stewart's grateful eyes, I looked again, determined my position, and handed Stewart a simple wooden paddle.

"Come on, row harder, it will just restore your body temperature!"

Stewart: "..."

…………

It can be seen that Stuart, who had woken up, was very curious about the stage of memory loss just now, but he was intimidated by the silent atmosphere before Gray and I and did not dare to speak, so we could only paddle silently together, against the violent storm above our heads,

Fighting against the turbulent waves besieging all sides.

Regarding what we just saw, we only told him that at the last moment when the dark stone pillars rose from the bottom of the sea, we collected the supplies available on the beach (including, of course, the originally locked warehouse of Zach’s house), and finally made a breakthrough.

A barely navigable raft led him to row desperately against the ocean current, and then he escaped to the sea.

But we all tacitly refused to disclose other details to him, and Stuart could only find some topics elsewhere to add some fun to this painful journey.

"The wood of this raft seems a little different..."

Stuart touched the raft under his butt and suddenly said: "It seems to be an old fir tree... Sheriff, where did you find it?"

Gray replied: "On the beach, these pieces of wood are floating to the shore. It should be very common. What's wrong?"

Stuart frowned and said: "Common? If this kind of wood were common, there would be no precious wood in the world!"

"Huh? It sounds like you know a lot about wood from this tone?" I asked absently.

Stuart took turns exerting force in the left and right directions, paddling the wooden paddle in his hand: "Of course, my family is a traditional wood merchant, and I have been familiar with rare wood since I was a child. In my father's room, there is a palm-sized piece of wood.

It’s made of this kind of material. And it’s said that our ancestors spent three times the volume of gold to buy it!”

"Is it so precious?" I looked at the rotten wood, obviously in disbelief.

Gray also dug into the wood with his hands, probably wanting to see from the inside how it could be worth more than gold.

Stuart expressed great indignation at our questioning.

"This is not an ordinary fir, but a kind of fir that has been extinct for a long time. After being buried in the mud and sand under the water for countless years, this kind of wood evolved into the wood you see, also known as ghost wood.

"

…Isn’t this description just like a gloomy wood? I caught one last time I went fishing, and I carved it into a statue of Gatling Bodhisattva.

Seeing that we still didn't believe it, his tone became a little lower and he told what he had heard.

"In the elegy circulated in the southern archipelago, the body of Harald, the legendary overlord of the ocean, sank into the sea on a raft made of ghost wood and turned into a ghost wandering on the ocean..."

I quickly stopped: "Tingting, uh, no, stop! You mean, we are out to sea in a spiritual boat, and we are surfing on the grave..."

Brother, have you considered becoming a spokesperson for Teacher Luo Yonghao?

Stuart said nonchalantly: "This is just a story about the origin of ghost wood, and it may just be a misinformation about burial at sea. According to later research, marine cultures in the primitive period all had the tradition of burial at sea, and this oil content

Sufficient wood is the best material. I have personally seen the locals in the South Island tie up the boat-shaped coffin with thin fir wood slices, and coat the outside with flammable substances mixed with wax and sulfur. After praying, the fir wood thin slices are lit.

, sending the dead into the dark sea amidst the raging fire.”

I turned the wooden paddle in my hand aside, put my hand into the water, felt the flow of the sea water, and found that the resistance of the water flow around me gradually decreased.

"Although your speech is very materialistic, what we are doing is chasing the footsteps of the God of Death to find a way out. If you guessed correctly, we have now reached the center of the eye of the storm..."

Although the wind and rain gradually weakened here, in the world illuminated by lightning, thick walls of cumulonimbus clouds formed on both sides, and the ground was as dark as a dark prison. We relied on brute force to forcefully pass through the vortex area and windy area of ​​the tropical storm.

, finally came to the temporary paradise world...

"Eye of the storm?! What are we doing here?!!"

With a dark face, Gray also threw away the paddle in his hand, slowly calming down his body. When the rain poured on him, a ball of high-temperature water mist would suddenly rise, and it would evaporate before it could slide.

All done.

"Of course it's to chase a lunatic who got sick earlier than us... I really don't know what's wrong with this guy Kai's brain..."

That is to say, relying on Gray's performance to upgrade this fir raft to the level of a nuclear-powered kayak, he was able to reach this place dangerously...

The dark cloud wall blocked too much light, making our search in the fog very difficult and blind. Stuart also noticed our goal, which was probably consistent with his purpose of finding his fiancée, so he worked extra hard to help us find her.

direction.

"Stuart, I see you are very skilled in your movements...Have you ever done sailing before?"

Stuart regretfully said: "I first studied navigation in college. Unfortunately, I was too seasick and failed the internship in the first semester, so I had to transfer to the maritime history major in the adjacent liberal arts college..."

He looked at the wooden oar in his hand with a self-deprecating look, "I really didn't expect that my first 'personal voyage' would be on a raft..."

...I almost forgot that this guy is severely seasick. To make a living at sea is equivalent to having half of his foot in the coffin - and the other half is equivalent to staying in the cannibal tribe.

"What happened next?" I asked curiously.

Stuart touched the bridge of his nose.

"Later, the college organized a scientific expedition to Antarctica, and I was eliminated again, so I had to drop out and go back to inherit the family business. However, it was a blessing in disguise. The scientific expedition that I failed to participate in had an accident, and half of the participants died.

, it would probably be very bad if I went there..."

My heart skipped a beat when I heard about this seemingly immediate accident and behavior.

"Uh... may I ask, what is the full name of your school..."
Chapter completed!