"Brothers, here comes our Pure Dome Crystal!"

"Get ’em! For the Son of the Sun!"

"Tear their ship apart!"

The land and the oasis, like reflections on the water’s surface, suddenly rippled and then shattered. The camels, cows, and mules within the oasis vanished along with it, as if they were nothing but a mirage.

A menacing drifting ship, adorned with a wicked dragon, emerged from the shimmering light.

A Gold-rank drifting ship, the Son of the Sun!

Hehe.

Shi Ming could barely suppress the smirk on his face.

’Tear a ship apart?’

’Let’s see who’s better at it.’ 𝒇𝓻𝓮𝓮𝙬𝙚𝒃𝒏𝓸𝙫𝒆𝙡.𝓬𝓸𝒎

’And honestly, you guys have no patience. Aren’t we still half a nautical mile apart? Why the rush?’

’You have to understand, fishing requires patience. A true seasoned angler can sit by the river and fish all day, even at ten years old!’

When the situation suddenly changed, the expressions of the crew on the *Dayun* changed, but they didn’t panic.

Instead, they went full throttle and charged forward to meet them.

Their captain was the source of their confidence.

At nine in the morning on the Sea of Yellow Sand, it should have been absurdly hot. Many of the crew had changed into short-sleeved summer shirts, and some of the non-Awakened were even shirtless and drenched in sweat. But suddenly, they noticed a trace of a chill in the air, one that didn’t belong in these waters.

Yellow Cannon, standing next to Shi Ming completely unprepared, shivered from the cold.

He knew his captain was about to unleash a powerful move.

The chill spread in an instant. With a great CRACKLE, the water around the *Dayun* condensed into layers of broken ice. Accompanied by the Golden Ship’s speeding turbines and hull, the ice shattered with a loud CRUNCHING, instantly ground into powder and flung far behind the *Dayun*.

The two ships were less than two hundred meters apart.

The crew of the Son of the Sun were howling like pirates.

They couldn’t fathom it. How could this Silver ship, which they had lured over, be so audacious?

’Don’t they recognize our glorious reputation?’

’And they still dare to charge at us?’

"Tear their ship apart!"

"Loot ’em clean and kick ’em to the curb!"

’So noisy. It’s getting on my nerves.’

Shi Ming suddenly leaped, soaring more than thirty meters into the air in a parabolic arc. He materialized an enormous, eight-meter-long Frost Hammer in his hand. Carrying the giant hammer, he descended from the sky, swinging it in a vicious arc to smash down directly in front of the Son of the Sun.

The Son of the Sun barely avoided the hammer strike.

But that didn’t mean it had dodged the attack.

The giant hammer hit the water, raising a colossal wave. The moment the hot wave crested, it was instantly frozen solid, trapping the Son of the Sun with it and encasing everything in a massive block of ice.

A palpable white mist of cold energy emanated from Shi Ming.

He was becoming more and more proficient with his A-rank skill, Ice Obliteration.

The entire crew of the Son of the Sun felt as if they’d been transported to the Endless Ice Sea, a place they had never seen. Some were embedded in the ice, others were frozen from the waist down. Those who had narrowly avoided the icy water were now shirtless, their teeth chattering as they shivered uncontrollably.

"Impressive!"

The sound of clapping came from below deck.

A man of average appearance with dark, tanned skin and messy hair walked out unhurriedly from the ship’s cabin. He wore a jewel-encrusted crown, a thick gold chain across his chest, and had a cigarette dangling from his lips. In his hand, he held an inconspicuous, old, lamp-shaped ashtray.

He looked at the ice formed from the monstrous wave and chuckled in surprise.

"An A-rank Awakened? No wonder you dared to approach my Son of the Sun alone."

"A pity. In the past five years, I’ve killed three A-rank Awakened. Their heads are all hung in my cabin, where I occasionally admire and play with them..."

"And you will be the fourth."

’Three?’

BANG!

The Prince’s voice hadn’t even faded when an ice flower bloomed at his feet and burst apart. Tiny ice shards shot out like hidden projectiles. Unable to dodge in time, the Prince’s body was laced with bloody cuts from the fragments.

The gold chain across his chest snapped and fell away.

The sudden loss of its several-hundred-gram weight made him flinch, the corner of his mouth twitching.

Then, with a low roar from Shi Ming, the massive block of ice shattered. The fragments hung in the air, forming a reddish array of myriad swords. Like a phalanx of soldiers or a swarm of drones, they shot towards the smoking Prince like a dense barrage of bullets.

"Lowly commoner, don’t you have any manners?"

"Don’t you know this is a time for negotiation?"

The Prince ripped away the broken ends of his chain as a faint curtain of water materialized before him, blocking the barrage of ice shards.

An Ice Blade had already re-formed in Shi Ming’s hand and was jammed into a seam between the drifting ship’s steel plates. He gave a sharp tug, and the Ice Breath of Obliteration erupted beneath the deck. Thick steel plates were ripped loose and sent flying like planks in a hurricane, hurtling straight for the Prince.

’Villains always die because they talk too much. You really don’t get it, do you!’

’Besides, didn’t your men just say they were going to tear a ship apart?’

A portion of the water curtain before the Prince split off, sweeping toward Shi Ming as a mirage-like mist. A layer of ice scales instantly grew over Shi Ming’s entire body, shielding him from the unknown attack.

The hazy water vapor spread through the air,

slowly forming an Illusion Realm that was both lifelike and illusory.

A-rank skill, Mirage Illusion Realm!

’What’s all this flashy nonsense?’

’I only know one way: break magic with brute force!’

Shi Ming leaped high into the air once more. As he plummeted, his body carried unstoppable momentum. A thick, pointed layer of ice encased him, sharpened to a razor’s edge by the rushing air!

Like the guillotine that beheaded Louis XVI!

SWOOSH!

The razor-sharp greatsword ignored the shifting Illusion Realm and plunged directly into the Son of the Sun’s core control room. Then it exploded. Tiny ice shards burst outward from within, riddling the ship until it was full of holes like a sieve!

Although it still looked intact on the surface, it was already taking on water.

The Prince was overcome with rage and cursed the most vicious obscenities in Arabic.

Shi Ming turned a deaf ear.

When facing an enemy, he never spoke a single useless word.

The dense mirage mist enveloped the Prince entirely, temporarily shielding him from the exploding ice crystals. The Prince, meanwhile, raised the ashtray in his hand and began to chant. A hazy light began to glow from the mouth of the ashtray.

"Oh?"

"A treasure?"

"My bad, I thought it was an ashtray!"

Shi Ming’s eyes swept over the old object.

The Brain of Creation had already activated.

New information appeared before his eyes.

[Contaminated Lamp of Wishes.]

[Level 9]

[A Wishing Star that fell from the sky transformed into a wondrous power and merged with an oil lamp, forming this Lamp of Wishes, ranked 41st on the List of Marvels. It can grant its holder three wishes.]

[Unfortunately, the mundane thoughts of mortals have contaminated the pure Wish Power. It now fulfills wishes in a very twisted manner and demands compensation on the grounds of equivalent exchange.]

[Upgrade Requirement: Purifying Marrow x300 grams.]

41!

Shi Ming’s eyes lit up!

’This thing is destined to be mine!’

The Prince’s muttering didn’t stop. The mirage mist temporarily formed a cocoon, wrapping him tightly.

Shi Ming’s right arm emitted a crimson glow.

His Ice-Forged Long Saber was dyed with dazzling blood-red patterns, as brilliant as a rainbow piercing the sun!

Tenfold Power!

The surging power tore through the cocoon. The Prince’s eyes snapped open, and the lamp’s wick glowed, forming an incredible magnetic field.

In an instant, the Prince had already completed a great deal of communication with the oil lamp—

[My wish is: ..., ...]

[...Cannot be fulfilled!!!]

[Difficult to find a loophole to twist. Please change your wish immediately, or it will be assumed the Divine Lamp has fulfilled its duty.]

[My wish is to take my ship and return to the former site of my kingdom.]

[Your wish can be granted! The price is, you will randomly lose one of your non-essential organs!]

WHOOSH!

——

Like a magic trick, the Son of the Sun vanished. Shi Ming, having sliced through empty air, fell into the water. Under the strain of tenfold power, he couldn’t retract his Red Ice Sword in time. It struck the seawater and, with a great FWOOSH, threw up a wave dozens of meters high, which then flash-froze into a glittering ice sculpture.

He was stunned for a moment.

’Wait, you made that wish way too fast!’

’And that ashtray in his hand... was that Aladdin’s Divine Lamp?’

’The other day, the theme was all Twelve Titans and Ragnarok. Are we just switching from Northern European mythology to Arabian mythology now?’