ATFBETIBM 183.1

The silver-haired wizard chased after the youth and the vines for a while. He opened his mouth, and the cold breath he exhaled instantly condensed the water vapor around him into frost.

Everywhere he passed, there was a belt of frost and ice beneath his feet.

Seeing that the vines were getting faster, the silver-haired wizard with a gloomy expression subconsciously began to run wildly.

The vines soon reached the sea, and the youth’s hands were embedded in the green vines. Thick green sap soiled his hands and slowly dripped onto his waist, slipping down the curved, smooth waistline, and disappearing.

The silver-haired wizard gasped for air. He stood on the beach, and because of his anger, the sea turned into a sheet of ice.

His master had been defiled by such a foul thing.

Damn it.

When his master’s curse is lifted, he will kill that damned sea monster that dared to defile Bai Lixin!

It was the height of summer, and people in this mysterious and spooky seaside city went to bed early at night.

The fog was thick, the night was covered in white mist, and everything was unreal.

Suddenly, a cold wind swept through the windows of the tavern.

The bald man was still sitting at the counter playing with his abacus when there was a loud “bang” and the wind chimes around the room were shaken.

His dark eyes glanced towards the wind-blown door. “It’s windy.”

He put down his abacus and went to the door. He was about to close it when a cold frost covered his hand.

The bald man was slightly stunned, and he looked up at the sky, where countless snowflakes had begun to fall.

He stared blankly at the sky for a while and then slowly closed the door. He was about to lock it when a hand suddenly stopped him.

Then, a shivering figure with a dark cloak came in.

As soon as the person entered, he sat down at the table, and the bald man’s expression grew duller, blinking blankly as he re-closed the door to the tavern.

As he put the lock on, he muttered to himself as if no one was watching, “Tsk, tsk, tsk, snow in summer, which angel in heaven is crying again?”

After making sure the door would not get blown in by the wind, the bald man moved his stiff body back to the counter, ignoring the dark figure that had just walked in as if it hadn’t appeared.

Two frozen little hands protruded from under the cloak. They were thin and small, like the hands of a seven- or eight-year-old child.

After rubbing the two hands together and waiting for the chill to dissipate, the figure under the cloak jumped out of the chair and walked up to the tavern boss.

The cloak was small, only about a meter tall. Two pale hands held the edge of the counter, and the figure leaned over, aiming the pitch-black hood at the bald man, “Boss, have you seen my mother?”

The tone of voice was milky with a little bit of grievance.

The bald man’s numb eyes rolled twice as he stood up and looked over at the voice, seemingly just noticing the appearance of a person in front of him.

He blinked his dark eyes and rubbed his ears with his big, fat hands, “You, what did you say?”

The figure under the cloak cleared its throat and asked again, “Have you seen my mother?!”

The bald man still looked numb: “Your mother? What does she look like?”

The black cloak: “Father said that mother was a beautiful mermaid, and all she yearned for was to return to the sea.”

“I want to find my mother; she was a beautiful mermaid.”

Pale hands searched through the cloak and pulled out a folded and crumpled piece of paper.

The hand lifted the picture, which depicted a pretty mermaid sitting on a reef by the sea.

The drawing was made with a crayon, and the coloring and brush strokes were so jerky that they could have been done by a child.

The golden tail of the mermaid, the black waves, and the body and the features were a little distorted, but the owner of the drawing had put a lot of thought into it.

A little finger pointed to the picture: “I drew this from a picture of my mother, she must have looked like this; have you seen her?”

“I’ve heard there are mermaids here, but why haven’t I found one after searching this city?”

“She’s the most beautiful mermaid in the world,” the milky voice had urgency in it, “and by the way, she can turn into a human being too.”

The bald man stiffened as if he were a wooden man, and the spider above his head, which had just been crawling, also stopped moving. The sea breeze picked up once again and rapped hard on the wooden door outside.

“Clang, clang, clang,” one after another, as if something was waiting outside and trying to break in.

The bald man stared at the picture for several seconds, then stiffly raised his hand and pointed out into the fog, his mouth moving mechanically, “The most beautiful person I have seen so far went to the beach.”

The hood turned and looked in the direction he was pointing, as if determining the coordinates.

Then the black cloak folded up the picture carefully and stowed it in the cloak.

The figure in the black cloak carefully straightened the cloak, pulled two silver coins out of the pocket, and placed them on the table.

The figure in the black cloak took two steps back, bowed politely, and continued in a non-threatening milky voice, “Thank you, this is your payment, goodbye.”

With that, the black cloak went to the front door, struggled to tiptoe up to pull the latch, and walked out.

It was foggy outside, and the figure in the black cloak soon blended into the wind and snow.

A few minutes later, the bald man blinked, his dull eyes gradually coalescing as the spider above his head rewove its web.

The sea breeze wrapped in frost blew in, and the bald man got up to close the door.

The icy snow fell on the back of his hand. He suddenly looked up at the flying snow in the sky, his pupils shrinking slightly, and he said to himself, “Snow in the summer? Which angel in heaven is crying again?”

After saying this, the bald man froze slightly and said, “Strange, why do I feel like I’ve already said this?”

He closed the door with some doubt, and when he went back, he saw two brand-new silver coins on the counter.

Frowning, he held the silver coins in his hands, and wondered even more, “Huh, did I leave money here? Why is my memory getting worse each day?”

————–

The silver-haired wizard stepped on the sea that had turned to ice.

Snowflakes continued falling from overhead. He had chased the vines for a long time until that damned sea monster laughed and dragged the youth, who was on the verge of tears, into the sea.

—“If you want him to be saved, don’t follow.”

As he pursed his lips and looked down at the endless sea in front of him, tens of thousands of curses that would kill people without a trace swept through his mind.

It wasn’t until the youth had completely disappeared from his vision that the silver-haired wizard looked up hesitantly.

A layer of frost had formed on his long silver eyelashes, and beneath it was a pair of deep, bone-chilling eyes.

The silver-haired wizard stayed on the ice for a long time, long enough for the fog to lift, and then turned towards the shore.

By the time he made his way from the middle of the sea to the shore, it was already approaching dawn.

The fog had lifted, but the frozen sea showed no sign of melting.

It had snowed overnight and the snow showed no sign of stopping, and by the time people opened their doors during the day, the rooftops and roads were already covered in white.

Someone went down to the shore and noticed a strange man standing there.

The man wore a cloak that covered his face and stood quietly in the cold and frost, his back straight, as if he were waiting for something.

He stood there for three days.

It had also snowed for three days in the seaside city, and thick snow piled up underfoot to a depth of more than half a meter.

The deadline for the curse had already passed, but the silver-haired wizard didn’t feel its trigger, which meant that the sea monster had lifted the curse from Bai Lixin.

But Bai Lixin did not return.

The pair of cold silver pupils hidden beneath the cloak slowly closed, and the scene of the youth being taken away came to mind.

Those ugly and filthy vines forcefully possessed his master and the sea monster took away him, wanting to take possession of him.

“Boss, what’s going on these days? We had already found the sea monster’s lair, but now we can’t get there because of the ice. Fuck, won’t the treasure get taken by someone else?”

“Damn it, you’re panicking, but I’m more panicked than you.”

“Hey, don’t be angry, boss. We can’t control God’s anger. We can’t go out to sea, but neither can other people. Besides, it’s hard to find the sea monster’s lair. Why don’t we wait until the sky clears and then go?”

“Fuck, what else can we do except wait? You don’t need to tell me that. But I’m getting more convinced that this place has even greater treasures. The weirder the place, the more treasure it has.”

“Bring over the charts and call over the navigator.”

The sea breeze rolled a conversation into the ears of the silver-haired wizard, who abruptly opened his eyes and stared at the pirate ship trapped on the ice.

The pirate ship was painted a somber black, and the canvas had been stowed. From the silver-haired wizard’s side, a flag with a horrible skull painted on it could still be seen.

The silver-haired wizard, who looked like an ice sculpture and had not moved for three days, slowly swept the snow off his body and calmly moved in the direction of the pirate ship.

The pirate ship was hundreds of meters away from the silver-haired wizard, but the wizard took less than a minute to reach the deck.

By now, the bearded captain had a spherical compass in his hand and was making marks on the nautical chart he was looking at.

The ship had over 20 crew members, and no one noticed that there was an extra person on board.

The bearded man planted one flag after another on the map: “Here, here, and here were searched, but still no skeletons were found.”

“The skeleton mentioned should refer to the reef areas, where the reefs are formed in the shape of a skeleton. But we’ve searched the whole sea and haven’t found any reef areas shaped like a skeleton, much less a skull.”

One of the more flamboyantly dressed men said, “Is it possible that we have misinterpreted the prophecy? What if the skeleton in this prophecy means a real skeleton? If it says the nose, is it possible that the treasure map is hidden in the skeleton’s nose?”

A sharp-tongued man immediately disagreed: “It’s even harder to find a skeleton, there are so many skeletons in the world, where are we going to find this one? And how can you be sure it is the one being mentioned?”

The flamboyantly dressed blonde man stared at the map. “There’s a clue, didn’t the prophecy say it’s in the center of the sea?”

The man pointed towards the sea and said, “To find the skeleton, we need to find the center of the sea first.”

The sharp-tongued man: “That’s easy to say, but what is the center of the sea? The sea is inherently irregular.”

Blonde Man: “Even if we don’t know the exact location, we can look on a wide scale.”

“Shut the fuck up!” A sharp hook suddenly dug into the wooden table, embedding itself deep in it.

With the angry shout, everyone stood silent in their place.

“All that noise and bickering. Bunch of useless trash! If you are so capable, why don’t you do something to make this damn sea melt and make the ship move?”

“You’re all just talk.”

“I’ll throw you all overboard and feed you to the sharks if I hear one more word of nonsense!”

“I can make the sea melt.” A calm, unfamiliar voice rang out in the angry and cramped room.

Several people froze, and multiple pairs of eyes looked at the place where the voice had come from.

In a corner that had been deserted, a man in a cloak had appeared at some point.

A sailor looked the cloaked man up and down and surreptitiously came up to the bearded man’s ear to mutter, “Boss, that seems to be the cloaked man that has been standing on the shore for the past three days.”

The bearded man eyed the man warily and asked, “Who are you? How did you get here?”

He was sure that there was no such person in the room before

The silver-haired wizard wore a hood the whole time, only revealing a well-defined jaw.

His voice was pleasant, with a clear, cold tone that sounded like snow on the top of a snowy mountain and an ethereal sense of silence.

“I am a wizard; I can drive the frost away and set you sailing. But I have one condition, I need you to take me to the sea monster’s lair.”

The bearded man’s gaze suddenly sharpened, and he silently signaled towards the people around him, who immediately drew the longswords from their belts.

The scene was tense, as there were many men against one.

The bearded man: “No one but us knows about the sea monster’s lair, how do you know about it?”

The silver-haired wizard, however, spoke indifferently, “When I entered here silently, you should have realized the disparity in power between us. You should be thankful that I am still communicating with you in a conversational manner, rather than directly controlling your movements.”

“There is no conflict of interest between us, I am looking for the sea monster, you are looking for the treasure.”

“I can tell you in clear terms that the only reason you are still standing here talking to me is because I dislike violence.”

“Think about it carefully, there is nothing for you to lose.”

The bearded man and the advisor at his side looked at each other, and the bearded man asked the silver-haired wizard, “Why do you want to find the sea monster?”

Silver-haired wizard: “A personal vendetta.”

Bearded Captain: “The sea monster is your enemy.”

Silver-haired Wizard: “You could say that, I’d just kill it if I could.”

“Heh,” the bearded captain let out a laugh, “if I lead you to the sea monster’s lair, how can you guarantee that you won’t grab some treasure?”

The silver-haired wizard’s chin lifted. “How do you want me to promise?”

The advisor leaned over to the bearded captain and whispered in his ear, “The sea monster is the overlord of the sea after all, we didn’t get their treasures last time because of its power.”

“This man’s strength is extraordinary, let him and the sea monster fight each other to death, we can take advantage of the situation. It’s best if the two of them fight each other to death, and even if one of them is lucky enough to live afterward, they’ll be weak, and we can take them down.”

The eyes hidden under the hood swept a cold glance at the advisor.

The bearded captain nodded and then looked at the silver-haired wizard with a calculated glance, saying, “Fine, I promise you, but for my safety and the safety of my crew, I need to sign a contract with you.”

Silver-haired wizard: “What will the contract say?”

The bearded captain: “We will lead you to the sea monster’s lair in exchange for melting the ice and snow. When you find the sea monster’s lair, you must not kill anyone from our ship, and you must not take any of its treasure.”

Silver-haired wizard: “Okay, I promise you.”