"You're sure you don't want to come aboard my ship for a bit?" Zhou Dai asks, her mood significantly improved now that her foot is healed."No, I have too much to do," Yang Yi replies flatly."Such a shame. How about I help you back to your ship? It must be difficult to walk when you can't see.""No need to trouble you. My crewmate is already on her way," Yang Yi says. He had sent Suna the coordinates a half hour ago; she should be on her way now."A ship-merging card, huh? No wonder your ship's name changed," Zhou Dai says with a touch of envy. "That must be a pretty rare item. I wish I could get my hands on one!" She taps away at her log, initiating a trade: the Brain-Eater's corpse for the [Twilight Veil] and 20,000 Conch Coins. Even though he didn't ask for payment, she insists on giving it, so there's no point in refusing.They lock in the eight-hour binding contract. As Zhou Dai stands to leave, Yang Yi, sitting very close, grabs her arm."Just sit a little longer," he says. "It's… probably not safe for me to be out here alone."Zhou Dai hesitates. By all accounts, the island's anomalous creatures should all be dead; there shouldn't be any danger. But she doesn't dwell on it, nor does she refuse. It's just a few more minutes, after all. Besides, in her eyes, Yang Yi has a strange charm. It's a hard feeling to describe; he's just… very pleasing to look at. Especially his head.Over an hour later, Suna arrives. She is armed to the teeth, wearing a cotton hat, fleece-lined boots, a new survival knife at her waist, the pirate longbow in hand, and dozens of armor-piercing arrows on her back. Aside from a down jacket, she seems to be wearing everything she owns. She's always been afraid of the cold."Where is it weird?" Suna had thought when she received his message two hours prior, saying he was blind and with a 'strange woman'.Now, she sees Yang Yi sitting with a graceful, white-robed woman. They are talking and laughing like long-lost friends. His left hand is still clamped firmly around the woman's wrist."You don't seem to need my help," Suna says dryly, emerging from the trees.Hearing her voice, Yang Yi lets out a sigh of relief and finally lets go. "My teammate is here.""Very well," Zhou Dai says, bowing with her arms crossed over her chest—a gesture that, in shadow, makes her look as if she has no arms at all. "May the Light bless you." She turns and walks away, heading toward her own ship, the Radiant Goddess.Once her footsteps fade, Yang Yi scrambles toward where he heard Suna's voice, only to run face-first into the tip of her bow. He recognizes her familiar aura and relaxes."Took you long enough," he whispers, grabbing the bow to orient himself. "Is she looking back?""No," Suna says, glancing over her shoulder."Good. Let's get out of here. Something's wrong with her. We'll talk on the way."Suna’s lips thin into a smile that doesn't reach her eyes. "Really? You two looked like you were having a great time.""That was to lower her guard!" he insists, his expression turning serious. "Do you think a normal person can control their pulse to drop below 10 beats per minute, or even stop it for a short time? Especially right after cutting off their own foot?"Suna's brow furrows. "We'll talk on the way," she repeats.As they hurry back, he explains how he'd felt for Zhou Dai's pulse and found it dangerously slow. No normal human could do that to reduce blood loss."And her entire demeanor changed so drastically," he adds. "I honestly think if I hadn't gone to help her, she would have just chewed off her own foot and crawled out!"Suna listens quietly as he explains ★ 𝐍𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐥𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 ★ that he only held her hand to have an anchor in case she attacked. As they walk, she suddenly stops."I can't help but feel like you're indirectly insulting me.""How?""Are you not afraid I'll shoot an arrow through your head?""Nope," he says nonchalantly. "Wouldn't be the first time I've been blind."Suna huffs but drops it. They reach the coast an hour later as dusk settles. Suna gets back to the Nyxstar first, then uses a grappling hook to haul Yang Yi aboard. The moment he's on deck, he tells her to watch the Radiant Goddess on the sea chart. Zhou Dai has dropped her [Twilight Veil], but her ship hasn't moved.Ten minutes earlier, back on the Radiant Goddess, Zhou Dai enters the ship's chapel. In front of a statue of an armless goddess, there are now five glass jars, each containing the severed head of a former crewmate."May you all return to the embrace of the Luminous Goddess," she murmurs, kneeling in prayer with her arms crossed, mimicking the statue before her. After about a half-hour, she stands, feeling purified… except for a slight itch on her neck.She scratches it and finds a thin slit, oozing a faint purple slime."What is this…"Completely unconcerned, she doesn't even think to check her status panel. She simply wipes it clean with a silk cloth to avoid staining her holy white robes. She turns back to the statue, crosses her arms again, and offers a final blessing to the five jars."May the Light bless you."But if one were to look closely, they would see that one of the heads in the jars has changed. It seems a bit more wrinkled, partially dehydrated.Zhou Dai takes no notice. The only sign that something is amiss is the occasional, agitated twitch of a thin tentacle peeking from the new slit in her neck. Her prayers complete, she leaves to finalize her trade with Yang Yi.If she'd only bothered to check her status panel, she would have seen a new line of text had appeared.[Transcendence Path… Brain-Eater Demon]

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