The Cursed Ship - Chapter 38

Chapter 38: Found It

The moon was only half full that night, which meant there wasn’t much moonlight, but that night at the farm was comfortable nonetheless. The boundless meadows emanated an air of freshness that was rather mesmerizing.

The old cowboy and one of his workers were roasting a goat on the other side of the building, cutting off the cooked parts and serving them to Zheng Yang and Ricky on plates.

Just by looking at the amount of food Ricky ate, Zheng Yang was able to tell that he definitely practiced some form of spirit power. There was definitely no way he could have stomached that much meat otherwise. But even so, Zheng Yang didn’t ask Ricky about his powers, as that was something he would know sooner or later anyway.

The goat the old cowboy and his employee were roasting was a fairly large one, with the meat alone weighing near 20 kilograms. Both of them ate nearly 10 kilograms of meat each, and even planned to pack up the rest as supper, which made the old cowboy’s jaw drop in astonishment.

After filling their bellies, Zheng Yang and Ricky toured around the pen in separate directions.

Two other workers on the farm were keeping watch that night as well.

The four of them were spread out outside the pen, which had a circumference of over 100 meters, with each person standing 30 to 40 meters away from the next. However, considering that the culprit still hadn’t been caught even though surveillance cameras were set up around the perimeter, it didn’t seem that the number of personnel mattered that much.

The roasted goat had smelled delicious, but the stench from the live goats in the pen was awful, which made the mutton he’d eaten no longer seem remotely appetizing. So, he distanced himself from the pen and went to the meadows instead.

He was able to cover more area with his enhanced sight after moving over 50 meters away from the pen. He played with the Desert Eagle in his hand as he scanned the pen with his eyes, which were twice as sharp as average folks’.

They couldn’t shine any light, as that would affect the goats’ sleep and cause a series of health problems for them.

Under the dim moonlight, Zheng Yang could clearly see what the other three were doing.

Nothing happened between eight in the evening and one in the morning.

But at 1:30 am, Zheng Yang suddenly turned around, cocked his gun, and peered deep into the farm.

He received a warning from his spirit vessel that an eldritch entity was approaching.

Sure enough, an ordinary animal hadn’t reduced those goats into dried corpses after all, which meant Zheng Yang’s curse would actually work in his favor.

However, he remained incapable of sighting any enemy.

“This isn’t right. I can even see ethereal entities like ghosts. Just what kind of eldritch entity can actually escape my sight?” he thought.

“Does that mean that thing can turn invisible?”

Zheng Yang siphoned some spirit power and amplified all his physical attributes to three times those of average folks.

He heard a slight buzzing sound and immediately sensed that intense danger was lurking around, causing him to subconsciously perform a tactical maneuver and immediately spin to the side. He sensed something slamming down on the spot where he was just standing, and then charge again since it had missed him. That thing, which was as huge as a grown man, was moving very quickly.

“Not bad! That maneuver that I’ve drilled into my bones has actually become reflex!” he thought. However, that nonetheless had something to do with his reaction time and reflexes far exceeding those of average folk.

After spinning to the side, he turned around, pointed his gun where he sensed the creature to be, and fired.

Boom!

That Desert Eagle emitted a deafening boom, the sound traveling far and wide throughout the farm. Ricky, who was standing guard near the pen, immediately raised his guns, putting his guard up, and glanced at Zheng Yang.

“Find anything?”

The bullet hit the target before Zheng Yang could reply.

Ricky had told Zheng Yang the day before that if he became sufficiently proficient with a gun, he would develop a mystical link with firearms, enabling him to sense if his bullet hit his target.

Zheng Yang definitely hadn’t developed that mystical link that Ricky had told him about. He knew that the bullet had hit the target simply because of his uncanny sense of sight, hearing, smell, and other attributes, all of which were three times those of average folks. It could be said that he had developed some other kind of sensory perception thanks to that as well.

He sensed that the target was bleeding, and he even managed to perceive the motion of the blood dripping from its wound all the way to the ground, which led him to realize that the target was leaving at his right.

“D*mn,” he thought. “Too bad I didn’t bring that shotgun with me.”

The whole process took place in less than a second, and Zheng Yang fired yet another decisive shot as soon as he detected his target’s movements.

Boom!

Zheng Yang sensed his target shudder—a sign that he’d hit it.

The target became even slower, which allowed him to better sense its movements. As such, he gave chase right away.

“I should have used enchanted ammo,” he thought. “After all, I could have asked for a refill after using it all. Why the h*ll did I bother saving any, eh?” Zheng Yang cursed at his own stupidity, feeling that he acted just like he did in his past life when he was playing games—subconsciously saving his most powerful trump card for last

Furthermore, because Rovni had said that enchanting things was tiring and had asked him to save those bullets, he was instinctively reluctant to use them.

He realized that he still had a lot to learn. Lions pounce at full strength even when hunting rabbits, after all. As such, he reflected on his mistake as he switched the magazine to the one that held the enchanted rounds.

Boom!

The gunshot sounded like a cannon going off. Even though he was three times as strong as an average person, he felt his hands trembling slightly from the recoil all the same.

On the other side of the farm, Ricky actually fired a decisive shot in a certain direction, since Zheng Yang wasn’t answering his question, and confirmed that the boy had truly found the target. Then, he moved in the other direction, taking a detour as he quickly approached Zheng Yang.

He had only been running for over a dozen meters when he heard that cannon-like rumble.

“The kid is actually using enchanted rounds?” he thought.

In truth, Ricky didn’t carry two guns just to look cool. Each of his guns held regular rounds and enchanted rounds, but because he had developed a habit of only drawing the gun with enchanted rounds when the situation called for it, he only held one gun with both hands when engaging in combat.

As soon as Zheng Yang’s gun went off, Ricky saw a silhouette appear out of nowhere on the moon-lit meadows. The silhouette was covered in flames and was struggling.

The bullet Zheng Yang had shot off was an incendiary round. Not only had it exposed the target, but it had also set the target ablaze.

Ricky was thoroughly shocked. The case with the farm had given them all a lot of headache, yet Zheng Yang had found the culprit as soon as he arrived, and it seemed like the boy was about to kill it.

He wondered if this was due to luck or actual skill.

Zheng Yang, on the other hand, was astonished by the might of the enchanted round, but he was even more surprised by the eldritch entity, which grew increasingly weaker as it struggled.

It was indeed a mosquito, just as Venar had speculated.

It was about the size of a human and had six wings. Its body was consumed by the flames until only its lower segments and wing struts remained. The mosquito’s proboscis was sharp and was over 30 centimeters long, and it extended and retracted as the flames burned, while its legs flailed about like spears.

“Not only are there mosquitos as large as humans in this world,” Zheng Yang thought, “but they can also turn invisible! That makes them very dangerous.”

Zheng Yang noted that whenever he ran into any eldritch entities in the future, he needed to give it his all right at the start in order to kill them as quickly as possible.

He wondered if a mosquito of that size could actually suck four to five goats dry all by itself, or if there were actually other mosquitos around.

“Ricky, take a picture of this thing. It’s gonna burn until there’s nothing left of it.”

Zheng Yang pointed his gun at it with two hands, still keeping his guard up. That thing was the culprit, and he couldn’t afford to just holster his gun and take out his phone.

…

In the mountains over a dozen kilometers away from the farm where the woods were dense, there were frustrated shouts. “Sh**, sh**, sh**! What the hell is that thing? Why did my six-winged mosquito lose control and attack that thing when it got within a hundred meters of it?”

The next moment, yet another massive mosquito left the woods and blitzed over to the farm.