When that piece—which could no longer be called wreckage of the tiger whale, but at most an object the size of a fingernail—arrived at the shore with its passenger, Vivian's brows knitted together.

Anxiety began to set in; she just wanted to open a can of the beer she had just acquired and drink it down to relieve the stress.

She had expected to face an enemy with a nasty attitude and brutal methods, but she never imagined that the person who arrived before her would be a guy with tattered clothes, covered in grime, and draped in seaweed. 𝙛𝒓𝓮𝒆𝔀𝒆𝙗𝓷𝒐𝙫𝒆𝙡.𝒄𝓸𝓶

He didn't look much better than the corpses she usually fished out of the sea.

That's right, Vivian often salvaged corpses from the sea; or rather, many unemployed people in the Free City did similar things.

As the Black Night Alliance completely abandoned its interference in the Free City, the Free City grew increasingly chaotic. Almost every day, a large number of corpses were dumped into the canals of the Free City, and the flowing water could quickly erase all traces related to the cause of their deaths.

And before these corpses drifted along the canals into the sea and were devoured by marine life, they would always undergo a "baptism" by the hands of strangers.

According to certain unwritten and not-so-legal rules, when corpses of those who died by murder or suicide fell into the sea, the person who discovered them first enjoyed the right to dispose of them...

Thus, those unemployed vagrants without a source of income would gather like a flock of seagulls smelling french fries, scrambling for the remaining benefits of the corpses.

A wallet, a watch, or perhaps a ring...

Those guys could always find something valuable. If they couldn't find anything, they could still take the corpses to some underground clinic on South Avenue before they were corroded by seawater; if they could find some usable "parts," they could also make a big profit.

And those vagrants never felt ashamed of their heinous acts; they even prettified it by calling it: recycling waste.

As one of those people, the only difference between Vivian and them was that if she discovered some unlucky guy wasn't completely dead, she would casually fish him ashore. As for whether that guy lived or died in the end, it was all up to luck...

Or, after taking their belongings, she would resolutely offer a requiem prayer. As for which sect's requiem prayer it was, that depended on her mood, not the deceased's faith while alive.

She often did things like using Sanskrit from Tianzhu to perform rites for the dead who were clearly believers of the Holy Light Sect.

Therefore, having seen countless corpses fished out of the water, when she saw this guy who seemed to be drowning in front of her, Vivian actually didn't care about his life or death. What she really cared about was the thing stored on the tiger whale that contained her authority.

And that thing didn't seem to be on this handsome young man...

With her arms crossed over her chest, watching the strange cat that accompanied her flip the handsome young man's body over a few times, Vivian frowned and urged impatiently, "Horace, how is it? Did you find it?"

"No!" The strange cat looked at Vivian, "He has nothing on him except a stack of cash, but I did find something interesting."

"What is it?" Vivian frowned.

The strange cat glanced at Vivian, lifted its furry front paw, and slapped the handsome young man's body hard. He flew into the air, flipped over, and slammed face-down heavily onto the beach.

"black sun totem?" Through the tattered clothes, she faintly saw the tattoo on the handsome young man's spine. Vivian's pupils trembled slightly, "Is he a member of the Eclipse Society?"

As she spoke, the expression on her face became complicated.

"Yes, exactly one of those guys' underlings!" The strange cat made a cat-like look of disgust, "After knowing his identity, how do you intend to dispose of him? My dear Ms. Vivian?"

As it spoke, the strange cat jumped onto Vivian's shoulder, leaned close to her ear, and continued, "I don't see anything valuable on him anyway. Why not... send him to that underground clinic on South Avenue? While he's still alive, we should be able to dismantle quite a few parts and sell them for a good price."

"Stop trying to use your devilish whispers on me!" Vivian glared at the strange cat angrily, then sized up the handsome young man's back, her gaze landing on a red dot next to the black sun totem, a spot positioned in an unusually subtle location.

Why would there be a red dot there?

Although it looked like a rather large red mole, it just happened to grow in that exact location.

That was the position belonging to Mars, or Yinghuo...

Could it just be a coincidence?

After pondering for a moment, Vivian turned to look at the strange cat on her shoulder and said, "Horace, I think I should take him back."

"What? Are you planning to save him? Are you crazy?" The strange cat exclaimed, "Do you know how much a guy like him, with no obvious external injuries and not yet completely dead, could sell for if dragged to the underground clinic on South Avenue?"

"Wait! You haven't taken a fancy to him, have you? That shouldn't be right; although his appearance and physique are pretty good, they aren't exactly stunning, are they?"

As if she hadn't heard the strange cat's nagging, Vivian walked forward on her own and helped the handsome young man lying on the ground up, "Shut up, Horace. I'm taking him back because there are some things on him that interest me. Once the doubts are cleared, I'll throw him out the first chance I get."

"Is that so?" The strange cat tilted its head and said, "However, I still think throwing him away is too wasteful. Why not sell him to South Avenue..."

"Enough nonsense, come over and give me a hand!"

After the person and the cat deliberated for a long while and reached a conclusion, deciding to move Lu Yibei away, Nanling Yaohua, who was on the side, witnessed some of it with a face full of worry and secretly noted down their actions.

Before experiencing a real shipwreck, Lu Yibei, who had just acquired Calamity-level power, began to hide here and there under the special attention of various Psychic organizations. He hadn't even had time to properly familiarize himself with his power, and some of his knowledge even came from the materials in the Nameless Book.

And when he rode the constantly collapsing tiger whale, cutting through the waves all the way to escape, and finally lost consciousness, he realized one thing—Disaster is easily dissolved in seawater.

When excessive seawater entered his body through his mouth, nose, and pores, the series of reactions it triggered was truly uncomfortable!

It was just like a Devil Fruit user falling into the sea; his whole body was weak, and his spiritual power was sluggish.

Of course, these uncomfortable symptoms in his body might not be related to the seawater, but rather influenced by that ghost of a thing hidden in the tiger whale's engine room.

When the tiger whale was destroyed by the giant waves stirred up by Calypso and almost completely disintegrated, that thing fell out of the tiger whale's engine room.

That thing was about the size of an adult's fist, cast entirely from some strange rose-colored metal, surrounded by some deep red substance resembling flesh, forming a regular and complex polyhedron. On those hundreds or thousands of tiny facets, strange-looking characters were engraved.

Those strange characters flickered on and off, diffusing weak spiritual power fluctuations, regularly rippling out in the seawater, making people feel like it was the heart of some creature.

That level of refinement made one feel like it was an Alchemy power furnace that only appeared in some soft science fiction novels, or some kind of specially made mechanical core. In any case, one look and you knew it was definitely a good thing!

When he discovered that thing, Lu Yibei subconsciously thought it was the urban legend body core of the tiger whale...

This could also explain well why he hadn't been able to successfully summon an Alchemy ship with the tiger whale as a template.

The special ability of 【Heroic Spirit Type Spirit Mark · Roland's Horn】 is to summon used vehicles, and things with their own life cannot be considered vehicles.

If the tiger whale was a urban legend possessing a urban legend body core, then his failure to summon it was reasonable, just like how he couldn't summon Elder Sister and Jiang Li whom he had ridden before...

However, when Lu Yibei used the grappling hook function of his mechanical prosthetic limb to pull the gradually drifting polyhedron in front of him, he discovered that it didn't seem to be a urban legend body core.

No vitality, no life aura, the spiritual power fluctuation was also very weak, not even as good as a no-level urban legend.

But.

No-level urban legends do not have urban legend body cores.

The first step they have to take if they want to advance to become a D-level urban legend and avoid the fate of gradually dissipating is often to condense their own urban legend body core. And even if they succeed, the condensed urban legend body core is likely just a mass of objects resembling rotten internal organs.

If it wasn't a urban legend body core, what else could it be? Lu Yibei thought suspiciously.

However, before he could reach a new conclusion, his consciousness became blurred under the constant washing of the surging seawater.

The moment before losing consciousness, he manipulated his Alchemy prosthetic limb to lock onto that piece of polyhedral metal from inside the tiger whale.

Then.

He saw some inexplicable images.

Endless seawater wrapped around his body, constantly sinking.

It was like returning to a mother's body, like an infant "breathing" in amniotic fluid, or like turning into an aquatic animal, placed in the deep sea, yet he didn't feel suffocated at all.

An ominous ❀ Nоvеlігht ❀ (Don’t copy, read here) blood-red light shone from somewhere unknown above his head, separated by the surging deep currents, a hazy patch, getting further and further away, finally swallowed up by the darkness, and then his consciousness also fell into silence...

He didn't know how long it had been, but Lu Yibei finally regained some consciousness.

In a trance, he felt like he was lying on the beach, the faint salty smell of seawater echoing in his nasal cavity.

Where is this? Some unknown deserted island?

Before he even opened his eyes, Lu Yibei's brain started turning first.

Following that, he noticed a hint of abnormality.

He felt warmth; although the tactile sensation wasn't great, it really felt like he was lying on a bed.

What the heck?

It couldn't be such a coincidence that he just drifted to the Free City and was picked up by someone and taken home, could it?

Lu Yibei was very self-aware when it came to good luck; most of the power related to "miracle" remained on the vast Gobi Desert along with the Divine Kingdom Jade Gate. It was almost impossible for him to arrive at the Free City after experiencing an unexpected attack.

Being able to save his life without any danger and wash up on some isolated island relatively close to the Free City could already be considered an easy-difficulty start.

If he had really arrived at the Free City by a "miracle," it might be some hidden hell-difficulty start, with even bigger trouble than "deserted island survival" waiting for him later.

Just thinking about it made his brain ache.

"Wake up! Are you still alive?"

A strange voice sounded in his ear, it sounded like it came from a woman, with a raspy feeling similar to a smoker's voice, and her specific age could not be distinguished.

Opening his eyes, after his eyes adapted to the warm light projected from somewhere unknown, Lu Yibei discovered that he was in a dilapidated room.

This seemed to be an old one-bedroom apartment, the space was not large, the wallpaper on the four walls was dirty, seemingly showing signs of peeling off. He was lying on a single bed far from the window, and an old TV and two single sofas were placed near the window.

On the wall behind the single sofa, an electronic clock was hanging, displaying the time.

The time was 11:27.

Nearly six hours had passed since he fell into the sea, and weak, gray sunlight spilled through the gaps in the blinds onto the grayish carpet.

After secretly sizing up the situation in the room, Lu Yibei noticed the red-haired girl in a dark green jacket beside him.

"It's good that you're awake. You should have just come down from the tiger whale, right? I want to ask you something."

The girl seemed to notice that Lu Yibei had woken up, leaned over to look at him, her dark green eyes as deep as a lake hidden in the mountains and forests.

She leaned lower and lower, finally just squatting by the bed, and a strong smell of alcohol hit his face.

Good-looking, great figure, magnificent and quite generous bosom, full of alcohol smell, just like she had just crawled out of a wine vat...

These were the pieces of information Lu Yibei obtained from the girl's appearance after briefly opening his eyes; she felt like the legendary drunken vagrants often seen in the US, only it was a beautiful girl version.

In addition, through his spiritual sense, he detected spiritual power fluctuations on the girl and the strange cat on her shoulder; the former was at most D+, the latter barely reached C-level, and neither seemed to be a formidable character.

After making such a judgment, Lu Yibei closed his eyes again.

He still felt very weak and needed to rest a little more.

Since the girl posed no threat to him, it meant that even if he played dumb, the girl wouldn't be able to do anything about him, and he could even use the girl...

He felt that the girl had no malice towards him for the time being.

Otherwise, the girl wouldn't have brought him home and let him sleep quietly for several hours.

In addition, if a D-level Psychic wanted to know what happened on the tiger whale from him, the only way was probably to wait for him to wake up. As for means like torture, luring with profit, or reading memories, they wouldn't work at all in the face of absolute spiritual power level suppression.

As for what the girl did while he was unconscious...

After she leaves, wouldn't he know by asking Xiaohua? Lu Yibei thought, his peripheral vision drifting towards Nanling Yaohua, who was behind the girl with a gloomy gaze.