Chapter 801: Parasitic Fish (2/2, please subscribe)

The game is connected to reality.

If something happens in the game, reality suffers along with it.

Jing Yan understood this point, which is why he was so terrified at this moment.

"Calm down!"

Fang Yue roared, but Jing Yan couldn't hear a word of it.

"Ye—Ye Ge! Am I going to die? Am I really going to die? R-Right, the system, the system! I want to see my personal status!"

The moment the words fell, Jing Yan suddenly seemed to see something, froze for a beat, then slowly raised his head to look at Fang Yue and said blankly, "I—I've been cursed! Ye Ge, I've been hit! Save me!"

Saying this, Jing Yan crawled to Fang Yue's side, grabbed at Fang Yue's clothes, and thrashed about in panic.

Fang Yue's face darkened. With a sharp slap, he struck Jing Yan across the face, sending him crashing to the ground, with a -1 damage prompt popping up above his head.

"Ye—Ye Ge?!"

Jing Yan lay on the ground, clutching his face, staring blankly at Fang Yue.

"Calm down! It's just a curse—I've still got one floating over my own head right now, and look, am I dead? First tell me, after you finished clearing the remains of the Red-Eyed Monster Fish, what did you do? Tell me everything, every detail. I'll have someone gather everyone else in the meantime, and we'll figure out how to fix your problem."

"Oh… oh!"

Clutching his slightly swollen cheek, Jing Yan finally calmed down a little.

Shaking, he told Fang Yue about how, after clearing the Red-Eyed Monster Fish, he had gone back to his room to rest.

But after listening carefully, Fang Yue realized nothing had actually happened to him—he hadn't even felt any change on his face. It had all been completed in complete silence.

This left Fang Yue a bit baffled. When the others arrived, he found that everyone else was fine—only Jing Yan had been hit.

"Looks like it's a follow-up to what happened during the day."

Qing Chen pretended to push up a pair of glasses that didn't exist.

"What's that for?" Fang Yue asked, puzzled.

"It makes me look knowledgeable."

"…"

Since it was a follow-up to the daytime incident, it was the follow-up to Jing Yan being swallowed by the Red-Eyed Monster Fish and having his heart copied.

"What's his situation?"

"The daytime incident? You mean the Red-Eyed Monster Fish?"

"Lord Ye, could something happen to us too? We fought the Red-Eyed Monster Fish as well…"

The crowd grew uneasy, whispering and debating among themselves, until Tian Ruichi silenced them all with a single look.

Fang Yue quickly explained the situation, and the crowd calmed down a little.

Since there was no physician on board, solving Jing Yan's curse naturally fell to Qing Chen.

Fang Yue dismissed the others and asked Tian Ruichi to stay.

"Does Brother Ye have any instructions?"

Tian Ruichi asked, and Lin Ling also looked at him in confusion.

Those who remained on the scene were their core five-person team; something important was clearly about to be discussed.

Fang Yue glanced at Qing Chen, who was still examining Jing Yan's body, and said slowly, "There's a problem with Old Helmsman."

A problem with Old Helmsman?

The moment those words fell, the expressions of everyone present changed.

If there's a problem with Old Helmsman, then there's a problem with the ship—and they were all aboard this great ship of Han Jiang, meaning their lives were in Old Helmsman's hands.

"What do you mean?" Tian Ruichi asked in a low voice.

Taking the water route had been his master's suggestion, but the actual operation had been handled entirely by him.

If there's a problem with Old Helmsman now, then he's the one with the problem.

"Don't be nervous. I trust you—that's exactly why I'm being open and honest, keeping you here to discuss this."

As he said this, Fang Yue carefully observed Tian Ruichi's reaction. From the surface, at least, Tian Ruichi's every response was perfectly logical—no abnormality, no tension.

Based on his understanding of Tian Ruichi over these past days, Tian Ruichi probably wasn't lying.

Fang Yue glanced at Qing Chen again, and just then Qing Chen happened to look back at him and gave a slight nod.

Lin Ling couldn't hold back any longer. "Xiao Ye, what's actually going on? What's the problem with Old Helmsman? Does it have anything to do with the Red-Eyed Monster Fish this morning? What's really happening?"

"Don't rush, I'll explain it to you slowly. During the day, based on the existing information, Qing Chen drew a rough nautical chart, and then he discovered… we've drifted off course."

"Drifted off course?"

The group exchanged uncertain glances.

"Then where will we end up?" Tian Ruichi asked.

"The mountain gate of Blazing Flame Sect. Ask Qing Chen for the specifics later—I couldn't make heads or tails of that nautical chart either."

"…Could it be that you two got it wrong? Master wouldn't harm me. He told me to take the water route, and Old Helmsman was his arrangement…" Tian Ruichi was visibly unsettled, pacing back and forth.

But in Fang Yue's view, a master who had even refined his own disciple into a Sword Spirit wasn't exactly credible.

"The problem now is, with the course shifted, even if we reach Blazing Flame Sect without incident, taking the land route to Jingcheng will waste many days. Not to mention god knows what's waiting for us at Blazing Flame Sect."

"Then what do you want to do?" Lin Ling didn't care much about those things and went straight for the core issue.

"Find a way to make Old Helmsman one of ours, or… put Old Helmsman to sleep and take control of the great ship of Han Jiang ourselves!"

Old Helmsman's consciousness was attached to the helm, but that didn't mean Old Helmsman was the great ship of Han Jiang—those were two different concepts.

In theory, as long as they put Old Helmsman to sleep, they could control the direction. Conversely… it would also require manpower to work the oars and propel the ship.

"…I'll go talk to Old Helmsman." Tian Ruichi still didn't quite believe the course deviation, and left with an expression that shifted between dark and light.

Fang Yue called out to his retreating back, "Remember, don't tip him off. If you can't work things out, come back, and we'll figure out how to deal with Old Helmsman."

"Understood."

Tian Ruichi had already walked far away, and the voice came back from the deck.

"Why did Xiao Ye's backup measure only put Steward Old asleep? With your power, you should have been enough to kill Steward Old!" After experiencing so many things, Lin Ling had gained a measure of ruthlessness.

However... Fang Yue looked at Lin Ling with a strange expression.

Just how strong does he think I am, anyway!

That was Steward Old, controlling an entire ship. If the ship was destroyed and everyone perished, what would be the point of me defeating him even if I won? Wait to sink into the bottom of the Han River together as corpses?

"Ye Ge, there's a situation! Come over here!"

Just then, Qingchen suddenly said from behind.

Fang Yue and Lin Ling hurried over, and upon looking carefully, their expressions changed at once.

They saw that at the position of Jing Yan's forehead, a crack slowly split open, and the kind of red eye from the red-eyed monster fish before was hidden within the crack!

"Ye, Ye Ge save me! Qingchen save me!!"

Jing Yan panicked, and under Qingchen's direction, Fang Yue and Lin Ling held his body down, not letting him thrash about.

"Qingchen, can he be saved? What's his situation right now?"

"Eyes." Qingchen said with a complicated expression: "Under his skin's surface, within the gaps of flesh and blood, densely packed are all this kind of blood-colored eyes, and they're still rapidly splitting and multiplying like cancer cells. Before long, his body will be burst open by these eyes, becoming a corpse. The specific manifestation is probably about the same as that crack on his forehead.

Cracks will split open all over his body, and more eyes will pour out.

All of this also matches my previous research... that kind of blood-colored monster fish was actually just a common fish from the game, infected and parasitized into that state by the acquired environment."

"Parasitic infection? By what?" Fang Yue was stunned and blurted out without thinking.

Qingchen coldly spat out two words.

"Han Jiang!"

(End of this chapter)