He maliciously mocked and then stopped speaking, letting Gray Beard go crazy.

For the next minute, Gray Beard's broken gong voice echoed through the public channel... until someone (Max) forcibly turned off his walkie-talkie, and the sound stopped.

"Is it really okay to anger him like that?" asked **, looking at Brother Jue.

"Heh... even if I didn't anger him, he wouldn't let me go, right?" Feng Bujue pointed to the two corpses on the ground. "Just now, these two opened fire on me without saying a word, which shows that the order they received before coming to the island was 'leave no one alive'. In this case, why should I be polite to them?"

"Well... that's true," ** nodded in agreement. "But... even so, you could have just not talked to them. Why expose your identity in the public channel and deliberately provoke Gray Beard?"

"There are two purposes." Feng Bujue clipped the walkie-talkie to his waist, raised one hand, and held up a finger, "First, I wanted to probe Gray Beard's personality..." He paused. "If he didn't respond after hearing my words, or if he sneered at my mockery, then he would be a calm, scheming opponent." He smiled. "Heh... but, as it stands, he acts like a pure bandit, impulsive, violent, and easily enraged by provocation."

"That should be a good thing," ** added.

"Not necessarily," Feng Bujue replied. "A brutal person isn't necessarily brainless, and a calm person isn't necessarily intelligent." As he spoke, he raised his second finger. "Therefore... I also did a second test."

"Oh? What is it?" ** asked, looking doubtful.

...

At the same moment, on the Dolphin cruise ship.

Under Max's command, the pirates had completed their comprehensive control of the cruise ship.

Except for Hai Meilong, who received "special care," everyone else had been imprisoned by the pirates.

Captain Joseph and his crew, as well as all the staff of the *Wilderness Poisoning* program (including camera crew, medical staff, logistics, etc.), were all locked in the monitoring cabin.

Ba Feite, Luo Han, Luosi Chaierde, Ao Guanhai, and Gu Zhe, the five "important hostages," were transferred to the lounge next to the monitoring room. Although four of them had bruised knees, after a night of treatment, they had regained some mobility and could walk with a limp.

After all, the setting of this world is in the twenty-fifth century. Leaving aside the cutting-edge technology like "Ant" (the 'Ant' technology in the Earth Wasteland arc is usually only available to the military, research institutions, and some higher-level hospitals, and this cruise ship naturally doesn't have it. In addition, due to the high cost of this technology, ordinary people can't afford it either. Criminals like Gray Beard are not qualified to use it at all, even if he has the money, there's nowhere that would treat him), human conventional medical methods are already quite advanced, at least in the field of surgery... as long as the treatment is timely, healing is very easy and fast.

"What the hell is going on? Who is that! How dare that bastard talk to me like that!" In the captain's room, Gray Beard was still shouting violently.

"Hehehe..." In a corner of the captain's room, Hai Meilong, tied to a chair, gloated and laughed, "He is the terror that flies in the night~ he is the winged tapeworm that torments you in your nightmares..." This guy's ability to fan the flames was also not weak, "He's the athlete's foot on your index finger~ he's the operator who cuts off your phone line..."

"Are you done yet? Bastard!" Gray Beard turned back and yelled.

"He's the gum stuck to the bottom of your shoe~ he's the wrong number that wakes you up at three in the morning~ he's the special news bulletin that interrupts your favorite TV show~ he's the slug crawling on your begonias~ he's the weirdo standing next to you on the bus... he is..." Hai Meilong expressed with his actions... not done.

"Enough!" This time, it was Max who stopped the incessantly chattering Hai Meilong. "Stop reciting lines from *Darkwing Duck*. I recognized it when you said the first line."

As a highly intelligent person with a rich imagination and a certain degree of cleanliness, Max felt uncomfortable all over when he heard these lines.

"Oh? So you pirates watch cartoons too?" Hai Meilong laughed.

"My free time is more than you imagine, Mr. Hai Meilong," Max replied. "Living on a ship is like that... apart from daily affairs and some action planning work, I'm idle most of the time." He paused. "I finished all the courses from first to twelfth grade online at the age of nine and started studying university majors. Due to the limited resources on the ship, I gave up some experiment-related subjects and chose economics, law, and management. Considering the principle of combining work and rest... to relax my brain, I would play some entertainment-oriented video products while studying, so... I randomly watched a lot of cartoons and accidentally memorized the content." After saying this, he paused for two seconds and added, "Oh, by the way, the only reason I watch cartoons is because of the age restriction. There are too many violent and sexual elements in current movies and TV series, which are not suitable for children like me to watch."

Hai Meilong didn't know whether to laugh or cry after hearing this barrage of nonsense. He thought to himself, "You hang out with a bunch of cold-blooded pirates every day. What you've seen and heard is far more bloody and real than in film and television works, right? Besides, is your mental age really still that of a child? I'd believe you if you said you were a time traveler!"

"Okay... enough with the small talk." Gray Beard hobbled to Hai Meilong on his wooden leg. "Quickly... who exactly is this Stephen Carbon?"

"He's a writer," Hai Meilong replied. "Hehe... if you were literate, you might have read his books..." As a prisoner, he still spared no effort to mock his captor.

*Thump!*

"Ah—"

Hai Meilong's words were exchanged for another round of physical torment. His shattered foot had not been treated; whenever he angered Gray Beard, the latter would use his wooden leg to "gently" touch his injury as revenge.

"A writer..." Max said thoughtfully, "That's a bit unexpected... his behavior doesn't seem like something a cultured person would do..." As he spoke, he walked to the control panel in the captain's room, stood on tiptoe, and quickly manipulated it.

Seconds later, the recording of Feng Bujue's previous two sentences replayed and was broadcast on the large screen in the captain's room.

Max turned up the volume of the recording and listened to it repeatedly five times, then revealed a smile: "Heh... I see."

"Son, did you find something?" Although Gray Beard couldn't hear anything unusual from the recording, he knew that his son's expression meant that he had discovered something.

"Regardless of the state of mind Mr. Carbon was in when he spoke in the public channel, he has inadvertently revealed two pieces of information." Max continued, "First, there is at least one other person with him..." He paused for a second, then turned to look at his father. "Second, his location is near a flowing water source..."

...

"The second test I did was to deliberately let the other party hear the sound of the stream water in the background..."

On the other side, Feng Bujue and ** had already climbed onto a nearby high ground and hidden themselves. The place where they were hiding happened to overlook the bodies of the two pirates.

"We'll wait here for an hour. If no one comes looking for us, or if someone finds this place after forty minutes, it means that Gray Beard's group is just a bunch of pure thugs; but... if pirates come looking for us within half an hour, and they are obviously following the stream with a purpose, then we need to be more vigilant..." Feng Bujue explained to ** while staring at the corpses in the distance, "... because there is a smart person among those pirates... and the game with this person will be the key to our survival."