Chapter 273: No Holding Back
Looking at his own house frozen solid, Ethan Yardley was filled with emotion.
’So it was really true.’
The best at manipulating water and ice was, of course, Tiberius, which was why Ethan Yardley had brought him over.
Tiberius didn’t make a fuss. He placed his hand directly on the outer layer of ice, and soon enough, the ice vanished without leaving so much as a drop of water.
Faye Yardley first thanked Tiberius for his help, then turned to her brother. "The weather’s bad today. When it clears up, we should take everything out of the house for a good cleaning and reorganizing."
Willow Yardley, at her side, nodded eagerly.
Tiberius spotted Eamon standing in the distance and said suddenly, "You wouldn’t mind if I go have a chat with your little sidekick, would you?"
"Just don’t mess him up too badly."
"Don’t worry. I’m not into guys."
With that, he sped off toward Eamon.
Faye Yardley turned to look at her brother. "Bro, is Tiberius actually straight? He’s not just putting on a front, is he?"
As she spoke, she shot her brother several suspicious glances.
Her gaze made Ethan Yardley’s skin crawl. "What in the world goes on in that little head of yours all day? I don’t know if he’s straight or not, but I know for a fact that I am. And he always acted perfectly normal with us. Don’t tell me he has a thing for Little Green Men?"
By the end of his own sentence, even Ethan Yardley started to suspect that his friend’s tastes might be a little peculiar.
Willow Yardley pursed her lips into a smile. "Don’t worry, you two. He doesn’t have that kind of preference."
"How do you know?" The siblings turned to look at her in unison.
"He’s chasing after Rainie."
"Ah!" Faye Yardley exclaimed. "He’s trying to poach someone right from under my brother’s nose!"
"What do you mean, ’poach’? Rainie is my sister too." With that, Ethan Yardley pushed open the door and went inside. "Nothing has changed in here at all. Look, your hair clip is still sitting right here by the door."
Faye Yardley paid no mind to her brother’s reminiscing. She pulled Willow Yardley aside to gossip in a low voice and finally got the full story. It turned out the root of it all was the meat with Divinity she had given them.
Once Ethan Yardley received it and learned there were no side effects, he gave it all to Rainie in one go. After Rainie woke up, Tiberius started clinging to her.
"Willow, after you ate the meat, your body changed, but your Spirit didn’t, right? I mean your soul, what we’d call it in our world. For you guys, would that be... your source code? Of course, that’s not a perfect analogy, but you get what I mean, right?"
Willow Yardley nodded, following her into the house, and answered seriously, "No, I was just enhanced. But Rainie seems a bit different. For her, a quantitative change led to a qualitative one. Of course, she’s still the same person she was before. And she’s still bound by her contract."
"Okay, I get it. Come on, let me show you the house we used to live in. Once the weather clears up, we’ll need your help tidying up."
"You two can leave it to me. Housekeeping is my specialty."
The family photo was still on the cabinet. Faye Yardley stared at it for a long while, an indescribable feeling welling up inside her.
’Next time I get the chance to go to the cemetery,’ she thought, ’I should dig up Mom and Dad’s urns.’
’Speaking of which, the event should still be going on, right? After all, the system hasn’t announced its end.’
’I still have a train ticket. Does that mean I can leave again?’
Just as she was about to try, a system announcement rang out.
[Congratulations to all players who have returned to The Oceanic Station and their rafts. The Nightfall Citadel recreational event is now over.]
Huh?
’Does that mean the people who didn’t make it back are stuck there forever?’
’And previous events never said they were only one day long.’
’Did the system make that announcement because I took out my train ticket, preparing to use it again?’
Faye Yardley wasn’t sure if there was a connection, but she knew she could forget about making another trip now.
After a tour of the house, Ethan Yardley’s expression was subdued. He patted his sister’s shoulder. "This must have been hard on you. I have to go back. There’s a pile of things waiting for me to deal with."
"Okay."
As they stepped out of the house, they heard terrified screams coming from the sea.
Tiberius had taken Eamon to the area with the black seawater, where Eamon was now bobbing up and down in the water.
"Tiberius, we should be heading back."
The wind carried Tiberius’s reply from across the water: "Ethan, you head back first. I’ll come back when it’s time. This patch of sea is a great place for me to temper my body."
As he spoke, he tossed Eamon back. Just as Eamon was about to hit the water, screaming in terror, a branch from Bramble shot out, coiled around him, and delivered him smoothly onto the raft.
Eamon’s legs gave out, and he sat on the deck, bawling his eyes out.
Faye Yardley glanced at him. "Eamon, it looks like your skin has lightened again! Quick, stand up and let me see. Have you gotten a little taller, too?"
Eamon’s crying stopped mid-sob. "Really?"
Ethan Yardley, on the other hand, said bluntly, "Faye, with all these flowers, hurry up and pick some for me. I’ll give one to each of those little brats back at base."
"Bramble, give my brother twenty regular flowers."
Bramble swayed, and twenty flowers detached themselves, falling right in front of Ethan Yardley.
"Thanks. That seawater can temper your body? In that case, I’ll take some back with me."
"It won’t work for ordinary people. In fact, soaking in it will likely make them go berserk and become extremely irritable. Mr. Pierce’s people have already experimented with it."
"In that case, I’m off. I have a feeling that patch of black water of yours is shrinking. If it’s really that useful, you should stock up on it first."
With that, Ethan Yardley left.
Faye Yardley stared at the patch of black seawater and realized that guy Tiberius was basically competing with her Bramble for food.
If her Bramble was drawing it in like a gentle trickle, then Tiberius was inhaling it like a hurricane.
"Willow, hurry to the workbench and make some more large wooden barrels. I need to stock up." As Faye Yardley spoke, she also sent messages to Master Veridian and Zachary Pierce, asking if they still needed any more. For all she knew, the patch of black seawater might be about to disappear.
Who knew how long it would be before they encountered something like this again.
Of the billion players across the country, Faye Yardley was the only one known to have encountered this region of black seawater, so naturally, Zachary Pierce didn’t want to miss out. After all, his team had developed a Body Explosion Pill that could temporarily unleash a person’s potential and increase their combat power.
He had originally assumed the black water was an inexhaustible resource, but he never thought it would be on the verge of disappearing so soon.
He immediately sent Faye Yardley two four-hour Invitation Cards and told her to invite Finn Ford and Caleb Colby over.
Those two were both familiar with Faye Yardley, which would make communication easier, and they wouldn’t leak any information about her situation.
Master Veridian was even more direct. He insisted that she prepare a large amount for him, though he couldn’t get away at the moment.
He told Faye Yardley to order his senior and junior disciples around as needed.
Faye Yardley stood on Goliath’s head and yelled, "Tiberius, you better take it easy! If you use it all up, I swear I’ll make your life a living hell every single day!"