A brave man may not live, but he cannot die

Chapter 237 CST Wednesday UTC+8: 4:40

"These days, my life feels like an act—saying things I don't mean and wearing a mask of hypocrisy."

The salty sea breeze, the waves crashing against the rocks, and the spray of sea foam—my body and the world were swaying with the waves.

The policeman opened his eyes.

He felt pain in his left and right hands; not only were they tied up, but the pain was so intense that he couldn't lift them.

A tall, thin figure sat in front of him, with a sleeping bird perched on the figure's shoulder.
The radio was playing the song "Sailor." He must be inside a fishing boat. It was the early morning, just before dawn, and he could see the lights of the cross-sea bridge outside the boat window.

The ship was floating on the sea, and the shore was far out of sight. The sea was pitch black, and the ship had no lights on. The police immediately realized that they had been kidnapped.

"woke up?"

Quinn changed his makeup again, and now he looked completely different; in the dark, the police could hardly see him.

At the same time, he tapped the parrot's little head on his shoulder, and Amamiya Nene also woke up.

Three days have passed since the transformation potion was given, and the little parrot is more sleepy than on Monday and Tuesday, but apart from sleeping more, there are no obvious side effects.

A flicker of shock, confusion, fear, and doubt flashed in the police officer's eyes.

"What do you want?" he asked in the Guangxi dialect. "Who are you?"

Quinn was amused.

"Pretending to be stupid?"

Upon hearing Quinn speak Mandarin, the police officer hurriedly and sternly said, "Do you know what you're doing?! Can't you talk things out? Why did you tie me up?"

"I'm a level 13 member of the NoFap forum, and I can't stand you lustful people with extraordinary destinies."

As Quinn spoke, he stomped on the officer's already shattered hand, causing the officer to nearly choke on his breath in pain.

"Where is that manager you mentioned, Ms. B?" Quinn's voice was indifferent as he pressed the gun barrel against the policeman's forehead: "I'm not here to cause trouble for you Abyss Transcendents."

“Answer my question, and I swear to the sun I won’t kill you. You can stay on this ship and wait for this bullshit ceremony to end.”

"If you keep talking nonsense, I'll go find it myself."

Quinn crouched down, and the police finally saw his face clearly—

It looks exactly like me!
"Y-you-you-you..." The policeman stammered, startled. "I don't know what you're talking about."

Quinn sighed.

He lowered the gun, aimed it at the policeman's knee, and prepared to let the bullet speak for him.

Just then, the radio, which was playing songs, suddenly started emitting static.

The song abruptly ended, replaced by a distorted, hoarse sound, purely electronically synthesized—

"Stop torturing him. The soul you're trying to interrogate is no longer in the abyss."

The parrot cautiously ducked back into his hood. He glanced around the waters surrounding the ship before calmly saying, "Impressive. I've brought the ship all the way here, and you still managed to find him. Are you Ms. B?"

The voice on the radio mocked, "Lustful believers can't understand the technology of this abyss. The walkie-talkies they use to communicate are even provided by me."

“You may call me ‘Q.’ Mr. Quinn and Ms. Cavendish of Grindelwald, this is the second time you’ve messed things up for me, including three months ago.”

When her name was called out in Taymuri, Amamiya Nene stopped hiding and poked her head out to ask, "Was it you who caused us to fall into the abyss twice?"

"I'm sorry, I can't answer that. But it's none of my business." Mr. Q spoke in an extremely pretentious tone, almost like Batman with a voice changer.

Quinn was still keeping an eye on his surroundings.

But his intuition and senses told him that the waters around the ship were quiet, and there were only three people on board within a radius of several hundred meters.

Quinn did not release the trigger of the pistol pointed at the policeman. He asked with interest, "When did you discover that we were in Beibu Gulf City?"

The voice on the radio didn't answer, but instead asked:
"Heh. Do you know how Abyss Transcendents enter the Abyss?"

[Trading Merchant] After being beaten, Jack told Quinn that the way Abyss Transcendents enter the Abyss is by sleeping, which he called "logging into the Abyss Network".

Abyssal Transcendent beings can enter the Abyss directly—in the form of their souls—without needing to go through the five Abyssal entrances hidden around the world.

"Dream?"

“Your understanding is somewhat flawed.” The man who called himself ‘Mr. Q’ explained to Quinn in a scientific manner: “Abyssal transcendents do not dream. Because they have no time when they are not lucid. They are either in reality or in the abyss. As soon as they close their eyes, the world changes.”

“You shouldn’t have knocked him out. His soul will leave the abyss and return to Temuran the moment he faints. All he needs to do now is stay awake and get through the ritual, and you may never see him again in this lifetime.”

Quinn glanced at the policeman who was tied up in the cabin, with a gun to his head, and who was looking around trying to find a chance to escape.

The darkness did not affect Quinn's vision at all; he could see the policeman's expression—very different from that in the hotel earlier.

Although both were filled with fear, after seeing Quinn crush the walkie-talkie in the hotel, he immediately gave up resisting, without even attempting to struggle with his supernatural abilities. He could sense the huge difference in strength between the two and chose to obediently wait for his companions to rescue him.

Now, he's mostly confused—Who am I? Where am I? What does he want to do? Why can the parrot talk? And what kind of bird language is it spouting at the radio station?
His bewildered and fearful expression was very real, and he finally showed some policeman skills—instead of immediately begging for mercy, he tried to communicate with a serious but not intimidating attitude.

This is hard to fake.

Quinn raised his pistol slightly, but still kept some of his attention on him. Who knew if Mr. Q was telling the truth?

"You can think of the Abyss as a network—do you understand that terminology?" Mr. Q said calmly, "Each Abyss transcendent has a relatively fixed login and logout time; this is their daily routine, from sleeping to waking up."

"The one you knocked unconscious suddenly logged out—and he was still in the ritual, which was very strange, so I searched around and found you."

Quinn's eyes narrowed slightly.

He deliberately avoided all possible surveillance locations, and no passersby saw him. He stole a boat and sailed out to sea just to evade the search.
Could it be that Mr. Q, or the Abyss Transcendent, has the ability to monitor the Abyss?
"This isn't the first time you've set your sights on me," Quinn's voice gradually turned cold. "By framing me for the jewelry store incident and getting Reeve, the head of the Branson family, to take Starlight, what are you planning to do in Ashwell?"

"Ha, Jack has fallen into your hands, and you even found out his email account password. I misjudged him and recruited a good-for-nothing." Mr. Q was not angry: "I originally wanted to use the jewelry store incident to get the academy to investigate your background. But unfortunately, it failed. You can get much more help than I thought."

“You are a very unstable factor, Mr. Quinn. But I still want to express my goodwill towards you. The reason I am telling you this is to apologize for what happened at the jewelry store.”

Amamiya Nene asked, "So? What do you want by suddenly appearing and communicating with us?"

"How about we make a deal?"

The radio paused for a moment, seemingly due to a signal interruption, before the synthesized audio resumed playing after a while.

“I will not report your presence to the lustful believers who are performing the ritual. I can help you leave the Abyss. You can leave this hellish place immediately if you wish.”

"All you need to do is not interfere with the ongoing ceremony."

Quinn smiled.

"You mean you let the anti-drug operation fail and allowed Qin Weizheng to escape?" "That's right."

"What is the purpose of doing this?"

Mr. Q succinctly stated:
"Abyssal transcendents play a role in the abyss, using their abilities to influence and change everything around them. This is how abyssal transcendents absorb abyssal transcendent characteristics."

"The so-called ritual is the most cost-effective event that the priests determine through divination—the power gained from completing the ritual is far greater than that from doing other things. They each perform their duties, play their roles, and reap rewards and promotions."

Quinn asked expressionlessly, "You mean, these Temuran cultists are systematically and deliberately committing evil deeds in the fictional city of the Abyss, all in order to absorb supernatural characteristics and gain advancement?"

“Smart, your understanding is correct. But I want to correct one point—it’s not about doing bad things, it’s just that this time it’s bad, but maybe next time it will be good. What rituals they continue at different levels depends on the priest’s divination and the ‘role’ they play.”

Quinn and Amamiya Nene, who had climbed back onto his shoulder, exchanged a glance.

"It sounds like I don't have to do anything."

"That's right, all you need to do is take your little parrot with you when you leave."

Quinn's lips curled up.

"In other words, all I need to do is block Qin Weizheng and make sure he gets arrested by the police—then I can catch whoever is trying to let him escape, and that guy is definitely an Abyss Transcendent?"

"Even if the ritual fails, we can still leave, right?"

There was a moment of silence on the other end of the speaker.

"This world is an illusion of the abyss; doing this will not do you any good."

“But it feels like it can help you get back at me, just like you did to me before,” Quinn said with a chuckle.

"How about this?" For some reason, Mr. Q was unusually submissive: "I can add one condition."

“Ms. Cavendish, you’re looking for your father, aren’t you?”

Amamiya Nene suddenly looked up: "You know where he is?!"

"Of course I don't know. But I can tell you which depth you can find clues about him, and how to get there."

"On the condition that you are willing not to disturb us Abyss Transcendents."

Amamiya Nene almost wanted to agree immediately.

But when she saw Quinn's unusually deep eyes, she inexplicably fell silent.

“I don’t know if he’s lying or not, but I’ll listen to you,” she said to Quinn.

"Where did you learn about these things?" Quinn asked first.

"There are very few things in this world that I don't know." The electronic voice was as calm as AI.

“I can agree to that, but you need to show me the sincerity that will convince me,” Quinn said.

The sea surface suddenly trembled.

Accompanied by a strange dripping sound, a bright light suddenly appeared on the sea in front of the fishing boat, and the water churned, as if something moving at extremely high speed underwater—

With a deafening roar, a blue phone booth burst out of the water and landed absurdly on the deck of the fishing boat, much to the astonishment of Quinn, Amamiya Nene, and the police.

Mr. Q's voice rang out: "The depth of the abyss is the time of the abyss world."

"If you want to leave your current depth, besides waiting for the city's time to 'rise,' you can also change your own time."

"The depth of Beibu Gulf City is '1999 AD'. There are countless subsurface layers of cities with different depths like this. To return to the abyss layer, you need to reach the time of Temuran, which is 1454 AD in the Divine Calendar."

"This phone booth can help you travel through time. Just walk in. If you don't trust me, you can wait until the ceremony is over—tomorrow. After the ceremony is successful, the city will rise to the surface."

Amamiya Nene immediately asked, "What about my dad's clues?"

"Ah."

Mr. Q on the radio laughed and said, "You should show me your sincerity. Please swear an oath to your god. Remember to infuse it with spiritual power and use the proper incantation format."

Quinn nodded slightly to Amamiya Nene, who immediately raised her small wings and swore an oath to the Goddess of Order and Holy Spirit.

Unexpectedly, Amamiya Nene discovered that a wisp of spiritual energy had dissipated into the air along with the oath. Could the true god of Temuran really accept the prayers from the abyss?
Quinn, however, stood upright with his arms outstretched, and reverently addressed the faintly visible sunrise at the edge of the sea:
"I beg your majesty, O Sun God—bathe in the light, and receive your grace."

"I, in my own name, swear—"

“The deal I promised Mr. Q was all true, without a single lie.”

"I'm deeply terrified. I'm deeply terrified."

"Please bear witness to my piety—"

It seemed like a coincidence.

The moment Quinn finished reciting his oath, the first rays of morning sunlight fell on the sea, revealing a magnificent corner of the enormous sun in the abyss.

But unlike Amamiya Nene, he felt nothing at all.

"very good."

Mr. Q seemed to smile with satisfaction.

"You know my dad?" Amamiya Nene asked impatiently.

"I don't know him. I don't know his name."

Mr. Q said calmly, "But what if your father is the husband of that Lord Cavendish, the fortune teller from Axwell, someone who entered the [Layer of No Return] and came back?"

"Then I roughly know where you can find clues related to him."

“Deep abyssal layer, 2016 AD, Jianghai City”

Upon hearing the year, Quinn's eyes narrowed, and he asked calmly, "How should we get there?"

"Isn't there an elevator in the Forbidden Forest that connects to Jianghai City? It can be activated with 2016 soul fragments."

Quinn nodded and smiled, "Thank you."

Immediately, he raised his pistol and smashed the radio to pieces.

"Let's go, top-secret anti-drug operation, block the bridge, here we come!"

(End of this chapter)