Martial Arts: Starting with Upgrading the Dilapidated Temple

With its illusionary fog properties fully activated, the massive ship was completely hidden in the thick gray-white fog, and even the sound of the waves breaking was deliberately suppressed, making it look like a huge ghost drifting on the sea.

Luo Meng stood shirtless in front of the helm, his eyes fixed on a black line heavily circled in cinnabar on the nautical chart, his Adam's apple bobbing up and down.

"Boss, are we really going this way?" Luo Meng pointed at the nautical chart, his voice a little weak. "This is the edge of the Burial Ground Trench. The name itself sounds ominous. Normally, the ships of the Three Alliances and Twelve Pirates would rather take a longer route than venture into this area. I've heard that the waters here are full of unclean things, and even seabirds don't fly here."

Xu Hao leaned against the ship's side, tossing a newly formed bead of essence blood in his hand, without even lifting his eyelids.

"Take a detour? How many days will that take?" Xu Hao popped the essence blood bead into his mouth and crunched it. "The people from the Three Alliances are all rushing towards the Sea King's Tomb with bloodshot eyes. The main channel is full of mad dogs. Although our ship is thick-skinned, if we run into them, it will be a waste of time to fight. Let's go this way, it's quiet."

Luo Meng gripped the helm with a worried expression: "It's quiet, but what if something really pops up down there..."

"It's good that they've shown themselves." Xu Hao patted the deck with its eerie blue frost patterns and sneered. "Do you think we're standing on some kind of benevolent people? This ancestor has a huge appetite now. If any blind evil spirit dares to show its face, who knows who will eat whom?"

Chen Yuanzhi carried the Thousand Poisons and Ten Thousand Gu Scripture up from the lower deck, his body still carrying a pungent smell of medicinal residue.

He heard the two talking, casually turned a page of his book, and replied without looking up.

"Old Luo, you're still too timid. The boss dared to rip the lifeblood out of the Salt and Iron Society, what are you afraid of, a few pieces of bone from the trench?" Chen Yuanzhi walked to the side of the ship, looked down at the gray-black seawater, and his eyes lit up. "This place is perpetually dark, filled with yin energy, and there must be plenty of poisonous insects and strange beasts. I was just worried that the ordinary ingredients Luo Ying found weren't potent enough. If we could catch a few poisonous bone fish, my pot of bone-rotting powder would be done."

Looking at the two of them, one treating the demon ship like a garbage can and the other reading the Poison Scripture as if it were a sacred text, Luo Meng felt a chill run down his spine.

So, I'm the only normal person on this ship.

"Alright, I'll do as the boss says." Luo Meng gritted his teeth, jerked the helm sharply, and yelled, "Everyone, keep your eyes peeled! Full sails, stay close to the edge of the trench!"

The current hold of the Zhenyuan is no longer what it was during the time of the "ghost woman".

The originally chaotic bottom passage has now been divided into three parts according to Xu Hao's requirements.

The outermost part is Chen Yuanzhi's interrogation hall, the middle part is the extreme cold forging pool, and the deepest part is the forbidden zone. Without Xu Hao's order, anyone who dares to approach it will be chopped up and thrown into the sea. After all, it is full of good stuff that has been looted recently.

A small private room was set up in the interrogation hall, where Chen Yuanzhi locked himself all day.

With a muffled thud, a plume of pungent yellow smoke billowed out through the crack in the door.

Luo Meng, who was passing by, sneezed three times from the stench, tears streaming down his face. He covered his nose and pounded on the door.

"Second-in-command, what the hell are you stewing in that pot? The guys on deck are rolling their eyes at the smell, and even the seagulls passing by are tumbling head over heels into the sea!"

The door creaked open, and Chen Yuanzhi, without looking up, turned back to the stove, stirring a sea monster bone in the black pottery jar.

The jar was bubbling with a ghastly green color, and the pungent, sour smell assaulted my senses.

This is bone-rotting powder with a little sea snake venom gland added.

Chen Yuanzhi used a rag to cushion his hands as he took the pottery jar off the stove. "Old Luo, why don't you put some on the knife first to test the medicine's effects? If it gets on the skin and flesh, even the bones will turn into yellow liquid."

Luo Meng looked at the green liquid in the pot, shrank his neck, chuckled awkwardly, and took three steps back. "If I run into someone who doesn't know what's good for them, I'll definitely come to you for my medicine." With that, he turned and ran away.

As Chen Yuanzhi watched Luo Meng flee in disarray, a genuine smile bloomed on his lips.

So what if his meridians were destroyed in the death row? With this poisonous skill, he can still make those high and mighty martial artists suffer a lot on this man-eating sea.

On the deck, Luo Ying had fully recovered. Her already handsome face now exuded the heroic spirit of a seafarer.

She was leading several skillful sailors, working to make protective gear from sea animal hides and bones.

"Tighten the line." Luo Ying tapped a sailor's hand with an awl. "This is your life-saving leather armor. If it's sewn crooked, the enemy's knife will rip your guts out along this seam during the next boarding action."

The sailor wore a pained expression as he gripped a bone needle that was thinner than an embroidery needle.

"Miss Luo, we're good at chopping people with knives, but this needle-pinching work is really deadly."

"Doing it well can save your life!" Luo Ying casually picked up a piece of cut, hard sharkskin, and with a few swift movements of his bone needles, he sewed out a neat arm guard. "If you mess up one, you'll lose half a bead of essence blood."

Upon hearing the word "deduct blood beads," the sailors immediately fell silent, lowering their heads and gritting their teeth as they struggled with the leather armor in their hands.

Xu Hao is the most relaxed.

He spent his days and nights immersed in the extremely cold martial arts forging pool.

The icy spring water churned, and he leaned against the pool wall, shirtless. The qi and blood of the peak of the Yi Jin realm in his body were repeatedly tempered by the extreme cold, like a furnace that never ceased to burn. The ice that had just formed on the surface of the water was evaporated into white mist by the heat he emitted.

Luo Meng, his eyes red from the smoke, approached the edge of the pool and peered inside.

"Boss, you've been soaking in the water for three days now, and your skin hasn't even wrinkled?"

Xu Hao opened his eyes, and the white mist on the water's surface was instantly dispersed by an invisible force.

He scooped a piece of frozen black ice from the water and crushed it into powder with his hand.

"Are you tired from driving? Why don't you come down and soak for a while?"

Luo Meng waved his hands repeatedly, and the memory of his nose freezing solid instantly flooded his mind.

"No, no... If the second-in-command really succeeds in concocting his poison, next time we encounter a tough opponent, can we just pour the poison on them?"

"Poisoned water?" Xu Hao scoffed, standing up from the pool with a splash. He casually grabbed a towel to wipe the water droplets off his body. "Poison is for scheming. If you really want to fight to the death, you have to see how tough your knife is. Go tell the higher-ups to cast a wider net and catch as many good things as possible for your second-in-command to make soup."

Luo Meng grinned and agreed, then turned and ran towards the deck.

Although life on the ship was filled with anxiety, there was hope for the future every day.

"Get up! Get up for me!" A low-level crew member nicknamed "Sea Crab" was shirtless, gripping the edge of the fishing net tightly with both hands, veins bulging on his neck.

A venomous moray eel, as thick as a thigh and covered in bony spines, was caught in the net, writhing wildly and slapping its tail against the deck with a loud cracking sound.

"Old Crab, this thing is mine! The Second Boss is in dire need of poison glands for medicine making, this is a great achievement!" A bald sailor's eyes were gleaming with greed as he reached out to grab it.

"Bullshit! This Spiky Girl said it can be used to make arm guards, worth at least half a bead of essence blood. Don't even try to get involved!" The crab kicked the man away, then drew the back of its knife and swiftly knocked the eel unconscious.

The black pottery jar that Chen Yuanzhi used to brew poison was a bottomless pit; he would accept any poison glands, sacs, or thorns as long as they were tainted with evil.

Luo Ying was even more unceremonious, accepting anything that could be used to sew leather armor or make protective gear, from the tough outer skin of sea monsters to the sharp bone spurs.

These two had an enormous need for sea monster materials, which directly led the Zhenyuan ship to deviate from its established rules.

In the past, when these pirates encountered poisonous insects or ferocious beasts at sea, they would run faster than anyone else.

Now? He's forced himself to become a workaholic fisherman, spending every day by the side of the boat casting his net, trying to catch anything he can to earn a reward.

"Second-in-command! Second-in-command Zhenhai! Come out and take a look!" At the other end of the deck, a sailor carrying a tattered wooden bucket shouted excitedly, "We just hauled up a nest of black-skinned sea frogs, their backs covered in poisonous sap! How many merit points can we get for that?"

The bottom hatch was pushed open, and Chen Yuanzhi walked out with dark circles under his eyes.

He peeked into the wooden bucket and waved his hand dismissively: "The toxins are too mixed; it'll easily explode if you boil it."

However, the skin was usable for Miss Luo, so that counts as two merits for you.

"Only two o'clock?" The sailor grimaced, then turned and, as if injected with adrenaline, rushed to the ship's side, yelling at the top of his lungs, "Brothers, keep casting the net! We're going to catch a three-tailed poison ray today!"

To gain merit by enduring the freezing cold of the Extreme Cold Forging Pool, and even more so for the essence blood bead that could transform a person, these pirates, who usually killed without blinking an eye, were completely blinded by rage.