Chapter 222: 222

Chapter 222: Fury

“Are we safe now?”

By some miracle, the Jackdaw didn’t sink even after two rounds of intense shelling . Instead, she limped clumsily out of the harbor .

Anne dislodged a large splinter stuck in her shoulder and asked, “Are we safe?”

When the armored ship opened fire, Zhang Heng had to stay by his post, so Anne shielded him . Although fortunate enough to steer clear of the explosion, the shrapnel from the blasts was an even more significant threat . Thus, the red-haired girl bore the brunt of all the flying debris .

It wasn’t just her busted shoulder . Her arm, calves, and cheeks also had varying degrees of chaffs and lesions . Yet, despite the pain, she didn’t whine or complain .

Zhang Heng did thank her – with the relationship they shared; there was no need for verbal expression . Instead, without saying a word, he took off his shirt and bandaged her wound with it .

“I don’t think so . If they didn’t have the upper hand, they wouldn’t have just let us off like that . However, they won’t need so many ships to fight the people on the beach, so I believe they will split up and send some after us . ”

As if a demented prophecy, the silhouette of two armored ships emerged amid the thick fog of war!

They must have just turned around since they were pretty far away from the Jackdaw . Nevertheless, they caught up to ailing ship pretty quickly .

Zhang Heng wouldn’t typically worry about having a tail . With the Jackdaw’s imposing firepower and a crew to match, he could easily win a fight against two pursuing enemies . Even if the situation did go south, they could just turn away and escape .

Right now, the Jackdaw was in terrible condition . They were understaffed, having practically no gunners on board . At least three masts were damaged, and the leak in the hull was getting worse . The flood had quickly risen by three feet and was already at the danger line .

Under such circumstances, it would take a miracle for them to make it back to Nassau . They couldn’t fire, and they couldn’t flee . How were they supposed to fight? This was the same situation that hit Dufresne . Even if the Jackdaw could break through the naval blockade, she wouldn’t go any further in such a hamstrung state .

Zhang Heng couldn’t see the light at the end of the tunnel, but since he had put everything he had on this mission, he wouldn’t have come unprepared . He put Anne in charge of the rudder after borrowing her dagger . Then, he went up to the mainmast . Back when he was on the Sea Lion, he was Roscoe’s apprentice for some time and was no stranger to climbing high structures .

Even though he hadn’t done anything of that sort since he became captain, he wasn’t wholly rusty yet . Clamping his dagger between his teeth, he scaled the rickety rope ladder as quickly as he could . Once he was on the top at the crow’s nest, he saw the scratched surface where an ancient Celtic name was once engraved .

Zhang Heng took the dagger out of his mouth . Ironically, being the one who crossed out the name, he was the one to carve it back on again .

Initially, the plan was to communicate with the so-called ‘ancient Celtic god’ only after he got the Tulewood box, the safest method he could think of . Now he had no other choice .

Zhang Heng had quite a few game props in his possession, but the only thing that could be of assistance in this situation was the yet to be identified seashell .

However, nothing out of the ordinary happened after he finished engraving the name, and the two armored ships drew even closer to the Jackdaw, their gunners ready to light the fuses .

Time was running out fo Zhang Heng . That said, he wasn’t inclined to think that Betty, the ancient Celtic god, must have abandoned him . In fact, he had always suspected that the god’s objective back on the ghost ship wasn’t Seth, but him, the captain himself .

Anne’s sudden presence interrupted the god’s appearance . As a result, it had to give up on Zhang Heng and targeted Seth instead since he was all alone . From the beginning, her goal had never changed . There was a reason why she instructed Seth to steal the three notebooks . She intended to use him as bait for Zhang Heng, knowing it would draw his attention .

But if that was the case, then why didn’t she look for him again the moment he got the shell?

Zhang Heng quickly reevaluated his earlier conversation with Seth . He recalled the abrupt storm they encountered on their way back to Nassau, and he remembered Seth saying that anger was needed to control it .

Zhang Heng’s brows furrowed . Perhaps it was because his parents were never around, and he was part of the grow-up-real-fast group, that he ended up more emotionally stable .

There were times when he got mad, of course, but ever since he realized that anger only solved nothing, he rarely flamed up at every other matter that annoyed him .

When Wei Jiangyang got cheated on his first job, his friends brought him for a night out . After having a little too much to drink, he told Zhang Heng, “Zhang Heng, I think that the most incredible thing about you is that: you see this cruel world for what it is, yet you’re not disappointed by it . How do you do it? You’re just like a bystander… you are good at everything . It’s just that sometimes, you’re just too calm that it gets boring .

Zhang Heng also knew that his SAN value fell slower sometimes, but he never thought that it would be a problem for him someday .

He looked back at his life, finding that no particular baggage weighed him down, nor was there the taste of bitterness in his heart . He harbored no hate towards anybody, hence the cavalier disposition .

This was going to be tricky .

Based on his deductions, not only did he need anger to summon the storms, but it would require continual waves of rage to keep the storm going . Seth’s anger came and went quickly, which was why the storm only lasted for a short while .

So, if Zhang Heng wanted to break away from the two ships, he would need a storm that could last at least thirty minutes .

Zhang Heng had to find another way . He took in a deep breath and squeezed his eyes shut .

Half a minute later, the bows of the armored ships had almost come up to the stern of the Jackdaw . Suddenly, a flash of lightning as bright as the sun flashed across the night sky, striking a mast of one of the armored ships! Although no one was standing near it, the crew was shaken, terrified by the incident .

However, that was only just the beginning . Thunder rumbled along the horizon, and the wind started billowing from all directions . At the same time, the purple bolts of lightning grew more frequent akin to a discharging power grid . The calm seas became blustery, battering the wooden hulls with fury . Seeing that their target was mere feet away, the armored ship’s captain gave the order to open fire .

However, a massive wave suddenly came crashing onto the side of their ship, knocking the cannoneers off their posts with a mighty force!