The Cursed Ship - Chapter 36

Chapter 36: No Slacking Off during Work

Zheng Yang told Rovni the cost of his sword, but he only got reimbursed 10000 pounds for it.

The English branch of the SPB had a considerably easier time now that they no longer had to worry about Desmond’s hellhound.

So Zheng Yang asked Ricky to be his coach and went with him to the shooting range, where he took his week’s worth of ammunition all out and started shooting, firing every single round in the box.

This was the first time in his two lifetimes that he’d gotten to fire a gun.

Thanks to Ricky’s instructions and his amplified physique, including sight, coordination, and power, as well as training seriously, it didn’t take long for him to familiarize himself with firearms and completely shake off his noob status as far as guns were concerned.

The sun had set by the time Zheng Yang walked out of the gun range.

Taking with him a bag of ammunition and the two wooden boxes that held his guns, Zheng Yang said goodbye to Ricky, left the bureau, and headed back to the sailboat docks.

“Not a single piece of information on spirit vessels in the entire information module in the SPB’s internal systems, eh?” Zheng Yang thought to himself.

That night, he searched the entire information module as he sat on the chair at the stern but found nothing. Be it information shared internally or information collected from other channels, there wasn’t a single piece of information that had anything to do with spirit vessels, magic formation upgrade scrolls, or spirit power cores.

But this was a good thing in the sense that few would find out about spirit vessels and wouldn’t link him to one. At the same time, it was also a bad thing in the sense that it would be even more difficult to find relevant information.

But then again, he nonetheless learned a great deal about metahumans by reading the posts.

Only those capable of manipulating spirit power were considered metahumans.

Spirit power was divided into a variety of types and attributes, which included power of light, power of darkness, protective power, burning power, power of nature, and so on. A person could master and hone these powers through training, as well as awakening their bloodline.

Of course, it went without saying that you needed to have the corresponding talents or bloodline to master these powers.

Even mystic medicine people like Emily had to be able to manipulate spirit power before they could concoct such medicines, as spirit power was needed to use spells to activate the mystical substances and mix the formulas into actual medicines. It wasn’t as simple as just following a recipe and throwing a bunch of ingredients into a pot.

It went without saying that the enchantment alchemy that Rovni practiced required her to cast enchantment spells using spirit power. She might even require certain materials and enchantment formulas to get the job done.

“Looks like I’ll need to find a way to browse the Arcane Coven’s encrypted channel all the same. The SPB might have overlooked certain information and neglected to post it here after all.

Then, there’s the question of whether it’s worth exposing my identity to Arcane Coven’s higher-ups. After all, there’s no telling if I’ll be able to find what I’m looking for on the coven’s forum.

The bug spirit vessel was having a great time feeding on other bugs and mosquitos nearby, preventing Zheng Yang from being disturbed by any insects.

Unable to find what he was looking for, he got up and returned to the cabin. There, he took out his guns, taking them apart and putting them back together again and again, just to familiarize himself with the workings of the firearms. The fact that Ricky was able to deftly and quickly assemble and disassemble guns with his eyes closed didn’t sit well with Zheng Yang, and he swore that he would surpass him.

In truth, however, Zheng Yang knew that he still had a lot to learn from Ricky. Gunfights were more than just pointing a gun and pulling the trigger. Putting Ricky’s unnecessarily flashy draw moves aside, it would take Zheng Yang a long time to have the kind of tactical knowledge about gunfights that Ricky had.

Strategies and tactics were very important. Zheng Yang had no knowledge of these things, but after listening to Ricky’s brief introduction of them earlier that afternoon, he’d realized their importance.

Strategies and tactics incorporated a lot of profound physiological and psychological knowledge. Not only would learning them increase one’s efficiency when engaged in a gunfight, but such knowledge would allow one to even confuse and disorient opponents, which might play a key role in securing victory.

Practice made perfect. With his increased speed and agility, which were twice that of an average person, Zheng Yang became faster and more accurate at assembling and disassembling the guns after training hard.

This allowed him to—in Ricky’s words—acquire a “sense of firearms.”

Zheng Yang reported to the SPB on time the next morning.

Other than the clerical workers, the metahumans actually worked flexible hours. They were required to show up when something happened, no matter the hour, but they didn’t need to show up from nine to five every day when there was nothing going on.

The reason Zheng Yang arrived at the bureau early was that he had an appointment with Ricky to learn about strategies and tactics.

Ricky didn’t bother hoarding all his knowledge to himself. The way he saw it, if Zheng Yang didn’t perform adequately in the field, he would probably be more of a liability than an asset to the team, and he might end up getting in his way.

Despite his enhanced physique and spirit power boost, by noon, Zheng Yang was thoroughly exhausted. However, he was nonetheless able to remember the standard moves when working in different environments, and he could always practice on his own later to hone his skills.

Ricky suggested that Zheng Yang sign up for short-term training in a real environment just like he did, but Zheng Yang refused. He had no intentions of becoming a professional gunman, after all.

When he left the training ground on the top floor and came downstairs, he saw that Rovni and Venar were also there. There seemed to be more personnel in the bureau than yesterday.

Rovni looked Zheng Yang, who was drenched in sweat, up and down before calling everyone over to do the introductions.

Zheng Yang learned that other than the Rovni trio, there was another trio of metahumans in the English branch that also consisted of two men and a woman. They were Moxley the gentleman, Salevar the middle-aged thick-beard, and Syalari the curvy beauty.

With Zheng Yang added to the fold, there were still only seven metahumans at the bureau. Even with Emily, who was considered a partial member of the SPB, the team was still apparently rather weak since there were only seven and a half of them.

After doing the introductions, Rovni said, “Desmond has been missing for more than three days now, and we still have no idea who was behind the mosquito. We need to act faster.

“Zheng Yang, you’re involved in this somehow. What do you think?”

“Miss, I was only involved in the killing of the dog back at the docks,” Zheng Yang thought. “I have nothing to do whatsoever with Desmond’s disappearance. I’m even an absolute outsider as far as knowledge of the English side of the occult goes, and you wanna know what I think?”

Zheng Yang simply answered honestly: “No thoughts whatsoever.”

Rovni had only asked him his thoughts in order to bring up the subject. She didn’t actually expect him to say anything useful. Yet, the speed at which Zheng Yang answered “no thoughts whatsoever” caused her to look at him with a suspicious look on her face.

Zheng Yang read that “I don’t believe you, now hurry up and come clean” look in her eyes and felt his head ache right away. The way he’d denied being a metahuman when they’d first met, and then denied that he’d killed the hellhound over and over again later on, had caused Rovni to instinctively doubt whatever he said.

She then turned to look at Ricky and said, “Ricky, what have you got?”

Ricky answered like how Zheng Yang did earlier, with a quick and clean “nothing.”

Rovni rubbed her forehead, feeling that her lustrous, wavy hair was going to get very messy soon enough.

“Boss, I don’t think the mosquito should be our focus,” Salevar said. “If the suspect has already taken Desmond away, then they’re definitely up to something. Instead of focusing on the suspect’s identity, perhaps we should try to analyze the suspect’s motive instead.

“What do you call that in psychological terms again?” Salevar picked at the hairs on his chin as he pondered.

Moxley the young gentleman then added, “I agree. I’ve been thinking about the suspect’s motive for the past few days. Were they just rescuing Desmond? That’s indeed a possibility, but Desmond has been in a rough spot before this. Would someone take on the SPB head-on only for the sake of rescuing him, then? The second possibility would then rule out the first—the suspect’s motive wasn’t just to rescue Desmond, which means…”

“I believe that they wouldn’t have done this just for the sole purpose of getting on our nerves. It’s more likely that they thought Desmond would be useful to them somehow.”

“Now, what kind of purpose would Desmond serve?”

The voluptuous Syalari swayed her alluring hips about as she walked over to a whiteboard and began to list the possibilities they’d come up with.