Chapter 43: Forty-third Day of Being a Salted Fish

Ying Xun¹ turned forty this year.

In the interstellar era, human lifespans have generally extended. Except in places like Desolate Planets, the average human life expectancy is around one hundred and fifty years.

At forty, one is still considered a young man. Twelve years ago, when Lu Yuan attacked, Ying Xun had been even younger. He had just become the leader of the Sea Eagle Pirates, a classic case of being young and successful.

However, back then, there wasn’t much of a difference between the captain and an ordinary pirate. At least, that was true most of the time.

Pirates were a bunch of bastards.

This pack of bastards had no sense of organizational discipline, let alone a strict hierarchy of superiors and subordinates. As the pirate leader, his primary function was to decide when and where to go for a raid. But back at the base…

Hey, everyone drank their own booze, chased their own girls, and fought their own brawls. Who cared if you were the leader or not!

At that time, the newly promoted Ying Xun didn’t think there was anything wrong with that.

Aside from being the most handsome, the strongest, the best at picking up women, and the biggest bastard of them all, he didn’t feel he was any more noble than the other bastards. Nor did he feel the need to arrange a bunch of bastards to serve as his bodyguards – he was the strongest, after all! He wouldn’t back down from anyone who came looking for a fight.

Back then, Ying Xun never imagined that outsiders would come to provoke them.

The authorities were overwhelmed by the Zerg; anyone capable of fighting had long since been sent to the front lines, leaving them no time to worry about pirates. As for other pirates… it was true they would prey on their own kind, but no one had ever heard of someone raiding another’s home base. Especially in these unregulated golden years, the galaxy was full of fat sheep waiting to be slaughtered. Robbing your own people? Was someone crazy?

Furthermore, although everyone seemed very disorganized, Ying Xun knew his crew. They were chaotic bastards, perpetually drunk, prone to infighting over nothing, and even at the base, they were often missing limbs… true, but they were also extremely xenophobic.

Pirates had noses like dogs; they could smell an outsider from a mile away. Pirates also had fangs and the temperament of wolves; if an outsider showed up, they had to swarm him and blow him to bits before they’d call it a day.

As for whether they actually could blow someone to bits…

Before Lu Yuan appeared, Ying Xun had never doubted the capabilities of his Star Pirate Syndicate.

They were the Sea Eagle! The most badass pirate crew in the universe!

• Though, admittedly, that last part was self-proclaimed.

So, when Lu Yuan arrived…

He faced almost no resistance.

Lu Yuan even doubted for a second whether this was actually a pirate base or if he had come to the wrong place.

Lu Yuan had been very young back then, too.

Even younger than Ying Xun. One could even call him a child. He was only fifteen and a half at the time.

Although he had a very ambitious goal of taking down the Zerg and had formulated a general plan – such as joining a pirate crew, then ruling that crew, then ruling several crews, and then returning to the military – the young and ignorant Lu Yuan truly didn’t know what kind of characters pirates were.

Lu Yuan felt that, as the official base of a serious organization, it should at least have a few checkpoints, right? Upon arriving in the vicinity, he should at least be able to find a target for negotiation, right?

So, he had naively planned to arrive nearby, tell the peripheral members he wanted to join, and then be brought before their boss…

Reality, however, went against his wishes.

As soon as his mecha reached the area, a swarm of uncommunicative, hostile NPCs rushed him – each one more drunk than the last. Whether they were in starships or piloting mecha, none of them acted like human beings.

Lu Yuan: Forced to fight, questioning his life choices.

But seeing the quite luxurious starship in the center, emblazoned with a skull, Lu Yuan decided to go take a look anyway.

It wasn’t difficult, regardless. 🙂

And so, the fifteen-and-a-half-year-old Lu Yuan effortlessly cut through the interceptions of all the drunks, his mecha heading straight for the Sea Eagle, the flagship of the Sea Eagle Pirates.

The pirate leader, who had barely realized what was happening, had just scrambled into his mecha and lunged out when a plasma cannon was pressed against his skull.

Lu Yuan: “Is your captain inside?”

Ying Xun: “Huh?”

• Until that moment, Lu Yuan hadn’t even realized that this drunk he had so easily captured was the pirate captain he was looking for.

However, finding out was easy enough.

The other drunks outside were shouting with great enthusiasm –

“He’s captured our captain!!!”

“Whoa-hooo!”

“Kill him! Kill him!”

“Blow up his mecha! Smash his face! Throw him onto the battlefield to feed the Zerg!!!”

Lu Yuan looked at the drunk in his grip: “…”

The drunk grinned: “What do you want with me?”

“…Your popularity is terrible.” Lu Yuan hauled him up, dodging the overwhelming but disorganized stray fire, finding time to complain as he moved.

With such a high-ranking captain in his hands, those pirates didn’t care at all; they kept firing just as they had before, seemingly unafraid of killing their own leader.

…It was hard to tell if they had too much faith in him or if they cared too little about their captain.

Ying Xun laughed when he heard this: “Heh, you’re just a kid.”

A kid who had recklessly barged in without understanding the pirate world at all.

But…

Cough. Since the kid was this strong, it seemed he didn’t really need to understand.

Seeing how incredible the kid’s evasion was – even with a heavy burden like himself, not a single attack landed, while he himself was being shaken so much he nearly vomited – Ying Xun had already judged the opponent’s level…

Yeah, even if his whole pirate crew stacked up, they wouldn’t be enough for this one person to fight.

But this kid seemed to have another purpose…

Meanwhile, Lu Yuan seemed to have convinced himself to skip the “kid” remark and brought the topic back on track.

“Actually-“

The memory was suddenly interrupted as a voice inexplicably overlapped with the Lu Yuan in his mind.

Ying Xun heard a tender girl’s voice from outside, sounding even younger than Lu Yuan had been back then, saying the exact same thing as Lu Yuan –

“Actually,” they said, “I’m here to join you.”

Ying Xun: …Fuck.

–

Compared to the Lu Yuan of back then, Zhu Rong was a bit easier to deal with.

Back then, when Lu Yuan spoke with Ying Xun, he was flying wildly through space while holding Ying Xun’s mecha, dodging a hail of bullets, and even finding a free hand to hack into the pirates’ communication channel to force his voice into Ying Xun’s mecha.

Zhu Rong, however, was being “escorted” by a group of pirates, standing inside the flagship Sea Eagle, right in front of Ying Xun.

• As a side note, this Sea Eagle was no longer the Sea Eagle of back then. But the pirates felt that the flagship of the Sea Eagle Pirates had to be called the Sea Eagle, so the name had been passed down.

In fact, the Sea Eagle that Lu Yuan had encountered wasn’t the first Sea Eagle either… God knows if it was the twentieth or the hundredth.

However, although Zhu Rong was escorted here, she wasn’t a prisoner.

If she were that easy to capture…

Ying Xun wouldn’t have thought of Lu Yuan when she attacked.

The main reason she was standing here was that she truly had come to join them.

She had no grudge against this pirate crew and no reason to kill them. Moreover, doing so would likely come at a price; after all, she only had a battered mecha with almost no weapons on it. While she had a talent for combat… and had played games with Lu Yuan for a long time, her skills weren’t yet fully refined.

In fact, even now, many of her issues – like the perspective problem she had discussed with Lu Yuan before – hadn’t been completely resolved. She had fought this battle almost with her eyes closed.

One could only say that, fortunately, most pirates were quite unskilled.

It was also fortunate that ever since the Lu Yuan incident, the major pirate crews that had been rebuilt had gradually set up checkpoints and arranged for pirates to stand guard.

…Which is to say, the pirates one encountered outside were no longer entirely uncommunicative NPCs.

After Zhu Rong fought for a while, she ran into a few guys who were forced to stay sober and were slightly more reasonable. Having found someone she could communicate with, Zhu Rong naturally ceased fire for the moment and followed them inside.

But a fight had still been inevitable.

Siming had asked Lu Yuan how he became a pirate boss and about related matters, so he knew a bit about the pirate situation.

Lu Yuan told him that his primary method for becoming a pirate boss was…

To fight his way through them all.

If you want to hang out with pirates, don’t worry about anything else; just fight.

Pirates were a bunch who responded to force, not kindness; you couldn’t talk sense into them. If you tried to negotiate nicely, they might think there was a conspiracy. But if you started firing at the slightest disagreement, they’d think, “Hey! One of our own!”

Later, after warping to this vicinity, Siming had even gone to several lawless chaotic zones to investigate the situation. He found that, yes, Lu Yuan was right.

The saying goes that no friendship is made without a fight… well, among star pirates, that was practically an ironclad law.

There were cases of joining a pirate crew peacefully, of course. But that rarely happened at the syndicate’s main stronghold.

It made sense, really. Normally, if someone wanted to apply for a job, they would submit a resume, go through written tests and interviews, and then finally start work. You didn’t hear about people charging straight into the CEO’s office and saying, “I’m here to work for you.”

But Siming and the others had no channel to “submit a resume,” nor did they have the patience to wait through several rounds of evaluation to be hired.

Thus, Siming had intentionally chosen the Sea Eagle Pirates. This had been the first stop when Lu Yuan conquered the Star Pirate Syndicate years ago, and the only crew Lu Yuan had dismantled entirely on his own…

Siming also intended for Zhu Rong to recreate Lu Yuan’s performance from back then.

Even if she couldn’t quite match it, he wanted to remind these pirates of the terror they felt when they were ruled by that Great Demon King.

Doing so…

Would be more conducive to the negotiations that followed.

It would also help him learn more about Lu Yuan’s past without having to mention his own connection to the man.

At that moment, Zhu Rong sat before Ying Xun. Siming and Geshu Qing were on a nearby planet, watching the situation unfold through a monitor mounted on Zhu Rong’s chest.

Ying Xun sucked air through his teeth. How should he put it? He strongly suspected this girl had some connection to Lu Yuan; after all, her entrance was far too similar. But he had followed Lu Yuan for ten years and watched with his own eyes as Lu Yuan died without even a corpse left behind… He truly couldn’t imagine how this girl could have ever crossed paths with him.

Still…

“Just in case,” Ying Xun said, taking a swig from a liquor bottle. “I say, little sister, do you know a guy named Lu Yuan?

“White hair, looks… well, a bit more handsome than me. Fine, a lot more. He was pretty thin, not very muscular. But when he fought…”

He gave a thumbs-up. “He was the best!”

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Translator’s Notes

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1. Ying Xun: The character’s surname, Ying (鹰), means “eagle,” which directly connects his name to the Sea Eagle Pirates (海鹰星盗团) he leads. This type of naming is common in Chinese web novels to establish thematic links between characters and their organizations. ↩