Chapter 1 Anomaly

Faced with the strange phenomena, Fang Senyan calmed down. Following Kree's previous instructions, he tossed a pre-prepared apple, a serving of fried bacon, and two dozen rye breads into the water before him. At that moment, a very peculiar sound rang out in the air, like the gentle strumming of a Greek harp, mixed with the dark shadows that began to shuttle through the water. These shadows were extremely fast, like wide black ribbons moving at high speed through the water. Fang Senyan looked at the shadows, but a feeling of extreme danger welled up in his heart, as if even being touched by them would have severe consequences. He knew this was a warning from his high perception, and he couldn't help but take a step backward, so he could pounce behind the nearby rocks to hide at any time.

Fortunately, these shadows never had any intention of coming ashore. After eating the food Fang Senyan had thrown down, they disappeared one after another. The silver light on the sea surface also began to fade slowly. At this time, it could be seen that a drifting bottle covered with moss and algae was floating from the distant sea surface at a very fast speed. Fang Senyan picked up the bottle, and the silver light immediately dissipated, returning to the previous state of wind and rain.

Fang Senyan was unwilling to stay on the coast any longer, because walking alone in such a deep night was too conspicuous. He went to a bar, threw two pounds over, and asked the bartender for a room. At this time, the bar served as a city hall, hotel, and even a brothel, so the bartender was not surprised at all and led Fang Senyan around the back corner into a room.

Probably because the customers were mostly pirates and sailors, the room was built in a style quite similar to a cabin. A decoration that looked like a steering wheel hung on the wall, and the window was a typical oval porthole. Beside it were some currently popular hand-thrown darts. There were very clear scorch marks on the wooden stool next to it, which seemed to be caused by the pipe of a careless previous tenant. What was commendable was that the gray striped sheets made of linen looked old, but they were quite clean, and they exuded a fresh scent of sunshine after washing.

Fang Senyan sat down on the bed and began to carefully examine the bottle he had picked up. It was a dark brown, narrow-necked, round-bellied bottle. The mouth of the bottle was sealed with a thick layer of wax, which kept the cork dry. The surface of the bottle was no longer smooth, and it was covered with things like barnacles and seaweed. Touching it with his palm gave a kind of deliberate primitive roughness. What surprised Fang Senyan even more was that the bottle felt extremely cold, as if it had just been taken out of a cold storage. Holding it in his hand even gave the illusion that the heat in his bone marrow would be absorbed.

According to Kree, if he opened the bottle, the mission would be interrupted, and an evil spirit would appear from it. This evil spirit was in a virtual state, and no attack could harm it at all. This thing would curse people, causing the opener's life value to drop a total of 100 points within five minutes, and then it would disappear. Back then, a unlucky guy in their team hurriedly opened the bottle, and as a result, he was entangled by the evil spirit and cursed.

As a result, this unlucky guy was a pickpocket before entering the Nightmare Space. He claimed to be an expert who could continuously scoop up ten one-yuan coins unscathed in a pot of fried dough sticks. His agility, under deliberate stacking, had exceeded 20 points, but because of this, his physical strength was only on par with that of a normal person. As a result, after this guy was cursed, his eyes were tearing apart. He tried everything he could, but he could only watch himself slowly die within five minutes... His almost collapsed mood before his death can be imagined.

After encountering this kind of thing, of course no one dared to open the bottle rashly again. After a series of explorations, Kree's team finally realized that an old man named Russell in the Tortuga castle was very interested in this thing. This old man had a high status in the castle, similar to that of a butler who was trusted by the owner. He would come out every morning at nine o'clock to buy vegetables and other things. As long as he handed over this bottle to him, he could get a reward of up to twenty pounds (currency of this world, cannot be taken out), and he could also gain his friendship. From then on, he could freely enter and exit the periphery of the Tortuga castle under the pretext of visiting Mr. Russell. This permission was not without its benefits. According to Kree, using a whetstone in Tortuga Port could permanently increase your weapon's attack power by 1-1, and there was also a chance to receive other in-depth missions.

But Fang Senyan didn't intend to follow the process given by Kree anymore.

First of all, Kree was not a good person. He had previously cleverly exploited the loopholes in the contract and deliberately skipped the element of getting on good terms with the stingy Mughal, thus causing Fang Senyan a big or small trouble. According to psychology, people's defenses are the lowest when they are closest to success, so if he continued to follow this process, he might run into a trap that Kree had set up again.

More importantly, the reward for doing it again was not attractive to Fang Senyan at all. Under Armand's generous sharing of spoils, the total number of pounds on Fang Senyan's body at this time exceeded three digits, and a mere twenty pounds seemed unimportant. As for entering the periphery of the Tortuga castle, it seemed that there were many opportunities—but for the Boatswain of the Bell and Mug/the direct murderer who killed the castle owner's wife, frequently entering and leaving that place was definitely not a good idea. Perhaps the benefits he got would not be worth the trouble he brought.

So Fang Senyan planned to try another branch route—the route that Kree and his team had run into a wall—open the bottle!

The resentment spirit's curse seemed very vicious, but unfortunately, this degree of blood deduction was not a threat to Fang Senyan at all. If he wore the title of Pirate Chief and was on a ship, his maximum life value could even reach a full 190 points, even now

Now it has a life value as high as 170 points. Losing one hundred points of life value within five minutes is almost no pressure for him... This does not even include the resistance and damage reduction ability brought by high life value.

After carefully weighing the pros and cons, Fang Senyan steadily picked up the drifting bottle, allowing the bursts of coldness from it to wantonly absorb his body temperature. Then he took the candlestick next to him, first touched the flame of the candle with his finger, as if to verify the temperature of the flame, and then put the mouth of the drifting bottle on the candle flame to evenly bake it, so that the thick and strong wax seal melted away.

As the flame heated up, the wax seal on the mouth of the drifting bottle began to melt, dripping onto the table. At some point, a faint fragrance appeared in the air. Fang Senyan looked at this scene and suddenly thought of the "haunted house" story that his fourth uncle told him when he was a child: It probably said that his fourth uncle's father had traveled with friends when he was doing business in his early years. In a mountainous area where it was already dark, they encountered a small house. There was no one in the house, and an evil statue without a head was placed in the main room. However, the rice, firewood, and bedding were quite complete. Although everything seemed very gloomy, they had been walking in the mountains all day and were hungry, and it was pouring rain, so they decided to rest here for one night.

Naturally, these merchants planned to make a fire and cook, and go to bed early after eating. As a result, there was no chimney in the house, and the smoke from cooking spread everywhere. Before they had even cooked the food, they realized that many terrifying evil spirits were frantically rushing towards them. In horror, they fled for their lives, and two companions fell off the cliff on the slippery road. Later, they heard a colleague with high martial world experience say that this small house should be a trap set by bandits, and the problem was with the firewood they used to light the fire for cooking.

The firewood should have been added with "ingredients" extracted from poisonous mushrooms in the Ailao Mountains—translated into "trendy" language, it is a hallucinogen. Of course, inhaling the smoke from burning would cause hallucinations. Coupled with the gloomy environment around, the psychological suggestion of the evil headless statue, naturally, terrifying illusions would arise before their eyes.

And Fang Senyan at this time saw the melted candle oil, and the faint smell that suddenly appeared in the air, and couldn't help but have a faint ominous premonition in his heart. Because in the current era, the most common way to open this drifting bottle is undoubtedly to use fire to bake open the wax seal—then it is difficult to say whether there will be any traps set up in it. So he immediately moved the bottle away from the flame of the candle, and then opened the window and took a few deep breaths of fresh air. Whether it was a psychological effect or something else, Fang Senyan immediately felt a lot clearer.

Although he did not receive a prompt from the Nightmare Imprint about being attacked, he still quickly checked his personal attributes out of the ominous premonition in his heart, and immediately found the source of the unease! Because there was a line of prompts under the personal attributes:

"You have a 14% chance of invalidating your attacks when they hit enemies." But obviously this hateful effect is rapidly fading away, because when Fang Senyan finished reading this line and carefully observed his situation again, he found that after removing this damn dBuff (harmful continuous effect), there was nothing unusual. The probability of attack invalidation had dropped to 13%, and it seemed that in less than a minute, this dBuff would disappear quietly as it appeared, without alarming anyone.

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