Chapter 4427 — Nearly Wiped Out
The Blossom Guardian · Page 2 of 2
Picturing Wei Zhao's miserable end—ship wrecked, man dead—and humming a tune in high spirits, Wang Baitiao's mood recovered fully. But before long, when the outline of a small boat off to the diagonal ahead slowly sharpened through the sea fog, his good cheer vanished in an instant, and his face turned unspeakably grim.
That boat's tonnage was tiny, scarcely a tenth of Wang Baitiao's sailboat, with room for barely five men. In a head-on clash, Wang Baitiao could simply have crushed it flat—but lend Wang Baitiao a hundred guts and he would never dare.
For the black skull flag flying from that little boat was one he knew all too well. These were pirates, damn it!
By the rules of the race, at random points along the sea route, fixed-position pirates were inserted by airdrop from flying spirit beasts. Since the coordinates were provided by the five judges individually and then randomly shuffled, even the Four Seas Escort Agency had no way to predict them in advance—and for Wang Baitiao, this was the sole unknown factor.
He had never dreamed that after such meticulous preparation, he would in the end run straight into the fixed pirates. Man proposes, heaven disposes—was this damn well fate?
Before Wang Baitiao could react further, the fixed pirates over there were already charging ferociously toward him.
Wang Baitiao's vision went black, and he spat out a great mouthful of blood in fury—for he suddenly recalled that Sailboat No. 5's turn to the right had been very abrupt. On so perilous a sea route, even in flight one could not turn so rashly. Looking at it now, it seemed it had been no mere desperate gamble, but something deeply calculated indeed...
Though a Golden Core expert, Wang Baitiao had never believed that anyone in this world truly possessed the power to foresee the future; he had always thought such tales were inflated. But today, he finally believed it—only he had believed too late...
At the Mo Leng docks, the whole crowd was craning their necks in anticipation. Though the heads of the various escort agencies held out little hope, each still nursed a sliver of wishful thinking—even if those sent out were all the old, the weak, the sick, and the crippled, what if they happened to stumble into heaven-defying luck?
The others were one thing—a bit of wishful thinking would not make them too nervous—but Qi Wenmo here was truly frantic. He had to keep his eyes fixed on the distance for any returning ships, and every so often glance at how much of the long incense had burned, while also watching the mother-and-child jade tablet array to see whether the No. 5 jade tablet was still intact. A single pair of eyes was simply not enough.
Not long after the competitors set out, the sliver of hope in the hearts of the escort agency heads was utterly shattered. At the mother-and-child jade tablet array, trouble came in an unbroken stream: of the thirty-two jade tablets in all, they cracked one after another with resounding bangs—in less than the time it took half a stick of incense to burn, a full thirty of the thirty-two had shattered!
In the span of half a stick of incense, they had been nearly wiped out. Such a staggering casualty rate was enough to make one's hair stand on end. The escorts of the various agencies keeping watch at the docks could not help but secretly congratulate themselves—thank goodness they had held firm and not gone up! (A heaven-sent giveaway event—cool phones waiting for you! Follow the Qi~Dian/official account (add a friend on WeChat, add the official account and enter it) and join right away! Everyone wins—follow the WeChat official account now!)