Chapter 89

What the captain and the navigator needed most at this moment was sleep. Returning to the large bed in the captain’s cabin, Miguel immediately grabbed a pillow and stuffed it under his head, munching on a piece of rye bread that the sailors had “dedicated” to the “captain’s wife.” As he devoured the bread, he said, “Do you feel like we just got married under everyone’s blessings?”

Caesar changed his clothes and wiped himself down, walking back to the bed and peeking over. Without a word, he took the bread from Miguel’s mouth and tossed it aside, asking indifferently, “Married what? I’ve told you not to eat in my bed.”

“Just… became a couple,” Miguel rolled over on the bed, reluctantly taking the wet towel handed to him by the captain to wipe his face. Then he lifted his foot, naturally letting the captain help him, the cripple, take off his shoes. “Now everyone thinks I’m your man.”

The navigator’s last sentence made the captain laugh.

“My man?” He threw the stinky shoe aside, looking up at the navigator with a look of utter disdain. His thin lips curled slightly, brimming with confidence as he said, “Anyone with eyes and a brain would think I’ve fucked your ass raw.”

Miguel wasn’t angry at all. He loved Big Dog’s blind confidence (…).

After watching the live action all night, the two didn’t say much. They ate a bit, drank some juice, and collapsed into bed. They didn’t even get up for breakfast, let alone lunch—this day, the entire fleet knew that “the captain and Miguel were exhausted.” Everyone was careful not to breathe too loudly, the band took a day off, and the Wind Fury was unusually quiet all day. Even the neighboring ships were particularly silent—Leoza was wailing and demanding to break into the captain’s cabin to snatch Miguel, but he was violently suppressed by the loyal first mate, Rick.

Finally, when the sun set in the evening, Miguel opened his sleeping beauty eyes.

In his blurred vision, he could vaguely see a dim candlelit figure moving at the desk not far away—it seemed like he was focused on writing something. The navigator thought for a moment, then reached out to feel beside him. Sure enough, the bed was cold where Big Dog had slept. Only the wrinkled sheets showed that someone had been there.

The navigator sighed, deeply understanding the inexplicable loneliness of being left alone. He stretched lazily, slowly getting out of bed, yawning and wiping the tears from his eyes. Only then did he see the scene in the captain’s cabin at this moment… He had already guessed that the workaholic at the desk was undoubtedly Caesar, but he didn’t expect Rick to still be here instead of returning to his own ship.

“Redhead, have you fallen in love with the Wind Fury?” Miguel said slowly, a hint of teasing in his voice.

The navigator’s voice obviously interrupted the low conversation between the two men. Caesar glanced at him indifferently from behind the desk, while Rick was much more enthusiastic. Seeing Miguel awake, he immediately abandoned the captain, who clearly wanted to continue the conversation, and strode over in a few steps. He lifted the bed curtain, poked his head in, and scanned the navigator, who seemed rooted to the bed, with a look that was either concern or something else. He stroked his chin and asked, “Still can’t stand up?”

Miguel pursed his lips and slapped his legs twice in silent response.

“…Boss, you’re something else,” Rick’s face showed a flash of surprise, then he clicked his tongue twice, seizing the opportunity to mock Caesar. “You’re not even letting a cripple go.”

Caesar paused in his rapid writing with the quill. He looked up again and said expressionlessly, “Thanks to you, we didn’t do it.”

Miguel chuckled beside them.

Rick was even more shocked. He stared at the grinning navigator, “Didn’t do it? Didn’t do it and you slept until the afternoon?!”

“He’s always been able to sleep like this,” Caesar said dismissively, glaring at his first mate. “Get back here, trash, we’re not done talking—and you, either keep lying there quietly or pull that bell beside you to call someone to take care of your needs. I don’t have time to deal with you right now.”

How ruthless.

How unreasonable.

How heartless.

Miguel struggled to sit up, reaching out excitedly to pull the bell beside the captain’s bed—he had never known what it was for before, and Caesar had never pulled it. He had tried to pull it once, but every time he thought about doing it, the man would give him a sharp look followed by a “don’t touch it”… Miguel had once thought it was some kind of fire suppression system, where pulling it would make the whole room spray water. Today, he pulled it hard, only to find out it was just a bell to call a sailor to come and serve.

You can’t imagine how disappointed Miguel was when the door to the captain’s cabin opened and a plain-looking sailor poked his head in to ask, “What do you need?”

To this, Caesar only gave him one word, which translates to three characters in Chinese: “Psycho.”

After dinner, Miguel asked Rick to carry him over to the desk. He leaned over to look, and Caesar was drawing a new coordinate map—the islands and sea distributions around it were something Miguel had never seen before. The scattered small islands weren’t even labeled with names, only marked with various symbols in Caesar’s bold handwriting.

“What’s this?” Miguel pointed to the large island at the top of the map, deliberately circled in red ink.

“The Fountain of Youth,” Caesar didn’t even look up.

Miguel: “…”

“If you have questions, ask,” Caesar snorted, extremely impatient. “Making that face, how am I supposed to know what you want?”

“Too many questions, I’m just not sure which one to ask first,” the navigator pursed his lower lip. “The only mermaid that could lead us to the Fountain of Youth is dead, so how does this map exist? It shouldn’t.”

The navigator’s sentence structure sounded a bit odd. When Caesar paused and looked up at him, he only saw the black-haired young man frowning intently at the half-finished map on the desk under the candlelight. Caesar blinked, feeling that he was being overly suspicious. Why should he find it strange that this idiot in front of him was talking nonsense?

Speaking of which, he remembered that before this little slave, he had never encountered such a difficult student… Thinking of this, the captain’s lips curled in mockery, thinking that he had brought this upon himself. He pulled the map closer to himself and said disdainfully, “Move aside, your drool’s about to fall on my map—that mermaid spoke, so now we have another usable mermaid.”

Miguel looked up, his expression a bit dazed: “It told you?”

“It told me,” Rick scratched his nose, looking a bit embarrassed. “Who would’ve thought mermaids are such submissive creatures—well, it makes sense, no human has ever survived mating with a mermaid or lived after mating. I’ve made history!”

“That mermaid spoke? It told you how to find the Fountain of Youth—just like that?” Miguel asked in surprise.

“It said it could lead us to the Fountain of Youth, meaning it could navigate us there,” Caesar frowned. “Given the massacre at the Mermaid Harbor, I’m not ready to fully trust it yet.”

“…No, you can trust it,” Miguel stared blankly at the nautical chart in front of him, sounding somewhat wooden. “Mermaids don’t lie.”

The man raised an eyebrow.

Miguel looked up at him and smiled: “I read it in a book. You’re the one who said I should read more.”

Caesar didn’t respond. He stared at Miguel for a while, then expressionlessly looked away, carefully rolling up the nautical chart and placing it into a wooden cylinder for storage. As he turned to place the cylinder on the shelf behind him, Rick dragged a chair over and sat down by the captain’s desk. He propped his chin on one hand, looking at the navigator with interest across the desk: “That mermaid promised to lead us to the general location of the Fountain of Youth, but I’ve heard we need one more thing to find it—”

“What are you looking at me like that for?” Miguel said expressionlessly. “Is it my life?”

“Bullshit,” Caesar turned around, reaching out to hook Miguel’s chin, saying indifferently, “Your life isn’t worth that much.”

Rick laughed.

Miguel rolled his eyes.

At that moment, the window of the captain’s cabin moved—

“Who’s there?”

Caesar immediately opened a drawer, grabbed the pistol inside, loaded it, and aimed it, casually tossing a dagger to Rick. As for Miguel… Miguel was yanked off the chair by the overly protective Captain Caesar and thrown to the ground, landing flat on his back. As he rubbed his butt and got up, he looked up to see his girl squatting on the windowsill, looking apologetic at the tense atmosphere in the cabin.

“Sorry, sorry, I’m used to coming this way!” Zhizhi scratched her head and jumped down from the window, taking the time to lean over and ask Miguel, “Are you okay, little Miguel?”

…This silly girl.

Miguel helplessly sat back in his chair with Rick’s help, but before he could even settle in, Caesar deducted a third of his monthly salary. “Teach your pet to use the human entrance,” Caesar said with a dark expression, putting the pistol back in the drawer. “Neither of you gets food tomorrow. That’s the deal.”

“I came for serious business!” Zhizhi widened her beautiful eyes, full of grievance.

Caesar sneered: “No matter how serious, it doesn’t excuse you from using the front door.”

Don’t talk back. Afraid of having his salary deducted again, the navigator made a zipping motion at Zhizhi behind the captain’s back, even raising a hand in a chopping motion to emphasize the importance of this command.

So Zhizhi obediently lowered her head and sat down on the floor of the captain’s cabin in her dirty dress.

Because the captain with a cleanliness obsession was so cruel as to not let her sit on the sofa.

“The Fountain of Youth is in the ‘Land of Dusk,'” Zhizhi counted on her fingers, speaking very seriously. “The ‘Land of Dusk’ only appears once every four years during the full moon. On the first and fifteenth days of November in that year, at sunset, the Land of Dusk will rise from the sea, and its entity and reflection will form a gate. Only those who find that gate can enter the ‘Land of Dusk’—that mermaid can lead you to the entrance of the Land of Dusk, but to enter this place, you need to open the gate of the Land of Dusk.”

The full moon that occurs once every four years, the full moon in Zhizhi’s words refers to February with 29 days.

Which is a leap year. This year is 1488… and 1488 happens to be a leap year.

“I’ve heard this legend,” Caesar turned around, pondering for a moment before pulling out a dusty book from the corner of the shelf. When he threw the book on the desk, Miguel, who was leaning too close, sneezed several times. The man gave him a disdainful look before turning to Zhizhi, speaking without much emotion, “I didn’t expect you to know about it too.”

Zhizhi pointed at herself: “Prostitutes are very cultured.”

…Why are you so proud? Miguel felt a headache coming on, thinking this girl’s values were seriously skewed.

Caesar pressed the book under his hand, his lips curling slightly as he tilted his head to look at Zhizhi, asking with interest, “What else do you know?”

“The gate to the ‘Land of Dusk’ can only be opened by the blood of a ‘person who reverses day and night’—not much, just a little, but it must be fresh,” Zhizhi sat on the floor, her hands on her skirt, emphasizing again very seriously, “It must be alive, the ‘person who reverses day and night.'”

Rick instinctively turned to look at Miguel.

Zhizhi shook her head: “Not him.”

Miguel didn’t speak. He sat expressionlessly in the chair, staring unblinkingly at the girl on the floor with his dark eyes.

Surprisingly, Zhizhi smiled. She stood up, patted the already dusty skirt, and under Caesar’s disapproving gaze, walked over to Miguel. She patted the black-haired young man’s shoulder, “No need to worry too much,” she said softly, speaking words no one could understand. “What’s meant to happen will happen. Everything is fated.”

Yet Miguel still didn’t respond to her. He just lifted his eyelids, looking at Zhizhi with a somewhat cold gaze.

Zhizhi shrugged, her feet lightly turning. She once again smiled sweetly, meeting the amber eyes of the captain of the Wind Fury, she said with a smile, “That’s all. I really hope your sister is still healthy and alive, and that you can contact her as soon as possible. We don’t have much time, do we?”