“Is there something wrong with you? Why do you enjoy hanging people up like this? They look like rows of chickens being air-dried.” The kind-hearted Li Tai wasn’t accustomed to living surrounded by terrified screams and wails.
“Qingque, in this world there are people like you who were born with a golden spoon in their mouths, and there are plain and unremarkable good people like me, so naturally there will also be thoroughly evil villains. There’s nothing to be done about it. For naturally fortunate people like you, brother here can only feel envy. Although there’s quite a bit of jealousy too, I can still restrain myself from punching your face until it swells up.”
“But as for those villains I can catch, I won’t be so friendly in dealing with them. You only see them miserably shedding tears, wailing, and begging for mercy, but you haven’t seen their faces when confronting people weaker than themselves. That kind of cruelty, I guarantee, would give you nightmares. Life isn’t easy for anyone, and we could just make do and let things go, but they insist on doing things absolutely ruthlessly.”
“I don’t discriminate against bandits, because I’m one too. I generally only rob money, and if there happens to be a particularly beautiful woman, I might rob her too. You robbing someone’s money, you robbing someone’s pretty girl—I can understand all that. But if you rob someone’s money and girl, then burn down their home, and finally slash their throat for good measure, that’s going too far.”
“This cuts off bandits’ retreat. I absolutely will not allow such stupid things to happen on the sea. If everyone stops going to sea, pirates will only starve to death. Since I’m now a pirate, I must protect pirates’ interests.”
“Having pirates on the sea isn’t a bad thing. They’re the ones who urge those profit-seeking merchants to continuously improve their merchant ships, so they can run faster and farther when pirates appear. Pirates are the ones who urge those merchants to search for new maritime routes. The role of pirates is the same as the role of wolves on the grasslands—eating the sick, the wounded prey, leaving the strong and healthy, allowing a species to reproduce healthily. Their contribution cannot be overlooked.”
Yun Ye eloquently immersed himself in pirate thinking and gave Li Tai a new lesson.
Li Tai said impatiently, “You’re just planning to establish rules for the sea, so go establish them. Don’t always put yourself in the position of a teacher. You enjoy torturing and killing pirates—I’ll pretend not to see it, but can’t you gag their mouths?”
He most detested receiving lectures, no matter from whom, and no matter whether the other party was right or wrong. The proud Li Tai didn’t need others’ guidance and always knew what he should do and how to do it.
Yun Ye beckoned Liu Renyuan over and said, “You heard that. These damned pirates are interfering with Prince Wei’s sleep. Go gag all their mouths. I can’t stand it either.”
After giving his instructions, Yun Ye also went below deck. War looked simple, but before engaging in battle, Yun Ye himself hadn’t been certain. Like Li Tai, he too had stayed awake all night, and now that the war had finally ended, he needed to go back and catch up on sleep.
When passing by Wushe’s room, he saw old Wushe looking at the porthole, seeming to mutter to himself. As soon as he approached, Wushe turned around and said, “If things continue this way, weapons will become more and more powerful, and individual martial prowess will no longer have any place of use. Could it be that the power of wisdom will indeed surpass the power of the body? If this continues, what’s the point of practicing martial arts?”
Yun Ye immediately laughed and said to Wushe, “Old master, we don’t necessarily practice martial arts to kill people. If we wanted to kill people, crossbow bolts and poison are faster. Since humanity’s emergence, we’ve been continuously challenging ourselves.”
“My master said that the earliest humans crawled on all fours, no different from monkeys. Later, in order to spot enemies more easily, they learned to stand upright. Later still, discovering that wooden clubs inflicted greater damage on prey than fists, they began universally using wooden clubs for hunting.”
“Later on, we discovered that attaching a sharp stone to a wooden club made it even more formidable, so stone knives and stone axes appeared. Right up until the appearance of bows and arrows, we have never abandoned the innovation of tools, and this is how things have evolved to their present state.”
“Martial arts are a more effective and swift method of protecting ourselves and hunting that we’ve summarized in the process of fighting with wild beasts. More than that, it’s a way of displaying humanity’s own potential to heaven—continuously excavating our own potential, continuously advancing toward higher and faster goals. To simply regard martial arts as a means of killing people is inferior thinking.”
“Your goal now isn’t whether you can kill someone or not, but to see if you can make further breakthroughs to your own limits, to let us know how long humans can actually live if we follow the correct patterns of life, and just how great our potential really is. As far as I know, you’re the only person I’ve seen who can still have your abilities at eighty years old.”
Wushe chuckled, waved his hand, and continued turning back to face the porthole to appreciate the scenery outside. As for whether the old man could understand or accept this theory from later generations, that depended on what he himself thought.
After returning to the cabin, he couldn’t fall asleep right away. Looking out through the thick porthole glass, he discovered the Qingque was still patrolling on the sea surface. Many sailors holding powerful crossbows stood on the ship’s railings. Whenever they spotted pirates who had fallen into the water, they would shoot them with crossbow bolts. Nearly forty ships, not counting those slaves who sank to the ocean floor with the ships—the number of pirates alone exceeded two thousand. Such a force was sufficient to overthrow a small country. No wonder that fellow called Zamuli would call himself the King of the Seven Seas.
Although at this moment he very much wanted to eat something, his body’s exhaustion told him that sleep was more important than food. He kicked off his shoes, lay down on the narrow wooden plank bed, and rapidly entered dreamland.
When he woke up again, the sky had already darkened. The oil lamp hanging in the cabin emitted an orange-yellow glow. A food box had been placed in the slot on the desk—Liu Jinbao had apparently already come by more than once.
He rubbed his face, dampened a towel, and vigorously wiped it twice before sitting down to see what the cook had prepared for him to eat. No matter where he was, Yun Ye’s requirements for food were never low. He considered this his greatest enjoyment in coming to this world.
Not bad at all. The millet porridge was still warm, a dish of cold mixed bean sprouts, two preserved eggs, and a scallion pancake—this was Yun Ye’s dinner. The heat of the equatorial region made it so that even when extremely hungry, one couldn’t eat much. Such a meal perfectly suited Yun Ye’s taste. The cook at home knew exactly what their marquis liked to eat.
Han Zhe walked in while Yun Ye was eating, sat down on the floor opposite him, and suddenly said, “Having such powerful military force, haven’t you thought about doing something else?”
“Are you very surprised?” Yun Ye finished the last mouthful of porridge, put down his bowl, and asked a question in return.
“Naturally. If I had known you possessed such maritime capabilities, I absolutely would not have engaged you in battle at Dongting Lake. I must admit that the water is your domain. These three massive ships could traverse the great seas without any problem whatsoever.”
“Frog in a well. Let me tell you, the best warship is always the next one. These three warships look good now, but they’re far from what you call traversing the great seas. You haven’t yet seen massive ships made of steel, equipped with weapons you couldn’t imagine even in your dreams. So we must know humility. After playing with this ship for three years, I’ll have no more interest in it. At that time, handing it over to the Lingnan naval forces as a flagship wouldn’t be bad.”
For the first time, Han Zhe, having received this rebuke, didn’t express dissatisfaction. Instead, he moved his body closer and said, “You have power, you have ability—why don’t you consider yourself? Why must you endure the frustration from those fools, repeatedly demeaning yourself?”
Yun Ye pressed his hands on the table and said very seriously, “Actually, I really don’t understand your thinking. Just because someone has power, must they necessarily rebel? It’s precisely because the Great Tang has too many people with this kind of thinking that things have ended up this way. Every single one has ridiculous ideas. I now have elders, a wife, and children. In my free time, being together with them is better than constantly dealing with those trivial annoying matters.”
“Han Zhe, stop wasting your effort. We have different views on power, so we reach different conclusions. I don’t care who becomes emperor, as long as I myself am happy. Being able to do what I like is enough for me, because this way time passes more quickly. Just hurry up and finish this lifetime and be done with it. Who has the leisure to spend a lifetime on rebellion?”
Hiding in the darkness, Han Zhe’s two eyes glowed as he said eerily, “I don’t believe there’s someone as selfless as you in this world. You must have a greater purpose, only I haven’t guessed it yet, can’t figure it out. After spending a year with you, I understand you even less. The jade plaque that others regard as more important than life itself, you don’t care about in the slightest, letting me, a former enemy, play with it for over half a month. A war fortress like the Princess, you treat merely as a toy, and when you’re tired of playing with it, you want to give it away. Yun Ye, I really can’t understand you anymore.”
From Han Zhe’s words, Yun Ye discovered for the first time that he was apparently such a selfless person. The jade plaque was just a puzzle—whoever solved it would be beneficial and harmless to him. Of course, he should vigorously promote such a thing that didn’t require him to rack his own brains yet allowed him to enjoy the results. The Princess was indeed good, but Yun Ye always dreamed of one day sitting aboard a steel battleship, so this wooden raft called the Princess really couldn’t arouse the slightest interest in him. It was merely a research product, and still the most elementary kind. Playing with it for three years was enough return on investment. How did it become selfless dedication in these people’s mouths?
People who don’t know Lei Feng are pitiable people.
“Who is Lei Feng?” Han Zhe, as if having discovered something, urgently pressed for an answer. His question left Yun Ye stunned. How did Han Zhe know about Lei Feng? Could it be I accidentally said it aloud just now? Yun Ye looked at Han Zhe with an even more peculiar gaze.
“No use denying it. I just read your lip movements and learned the name Lei Feng. Tell me, who is Lei Feng? A name that comes out of your mouth—this person must certainly be very extraordinary.”
This made him furious. The bastard actually knew how to read lips! This way, how could someone like him who likes to mutter to himself have any secrets? Want to know who Lei Feng is? Live another fourteen hundred years first.