Chapter 233 — A Piece of Theater

The whole way there, Goro was impossibly well-behaved. With people he couldn't afford to provoke, he would never go out of his way to provoke them again. Still, Goro couldn't quite work out what these people actually did for a living—they were nothing like ordinary stowaways. If anything, they seemed like people of standing.

That night, Yang Ce and Wang Yanqiu shared a room, and Victoria had one to herself.

Victoria, being an assassin, had keenly picked up a trace of killing intent from Wang Yanqiu. Yang Juehuan, however, gave off nothing of the sort. Yang Ce's air was calm and mild, nothing particularly remarkable—yet there was a distinct quality about him that made people look up to him.

It was different from the impression Bobbi gave. Bobbi was the brutal, high-pressure sort, while Yang Jiyan made one feel as though bathed in a spring breeze, and yet filled with reverence all the same. Perhaps that was what they called personal charisma.

As for Wang Yanqiu being Yang Juehuan's woman, that struck Victoria as a little odd. In Wang Yanqiu she sensed the aura of her own kind—this woman was absolutely a dangerous character too!

But Yang Jiyan had brought her here to protect his woman, Wang Yanqiu—did Wang Yanqiu really need protecting? Victoria was baffled. Wang Yanqiu had to be highly skilled; she had no need of Victoria's protection at all.

Deep into the night, Victoria still had not slept. Alone, she sat quietly on the deck, hugging her knees, turning over the events of the past two days in her mind—to her it all felt like a dream.

Like a dream.

From a slave to a bodyguard with her own freedom—the difference was like heaven and earth, and Victoria found herself unable to accept the reality of it for a time, always half-convinced that she would fall asleep, and that when she woke, all of this would have vanished like a bubble.

Goro and Jim sat at the other end of the deck. Though a beautiful young woman like Victoria was not far off, Goro had not the slightest improper thought. He could tell that this Victoria was even more frightening than Wang Yanqiu—Wang Yanqiu had only been trying to scare him, but this Victoria could genuinely kill him!

The killing intent that had flickered in her eyes during the daytime boarding had made Goro, who lived every day on the edge of a blade, break out in a cold sweat.

Suddenly, from somewhere not far off across the sea, a light appeared, flickering in and out. Goro's expression sharpened at once, and Jim beside him let out a shout and reached for a crate nearby, pulling a hunting rifle from it—but no sooner had the rifle been taken in hand than a blade appeared at Jim's throat.

"What are you doing with that gun?" It was Victoria's voice. At some point, Victoria—who had just been standing off to the side—had materialized behind Jim like a ghost.

Jim and Goro were both badly startled. Goro hurriedly waved his hands and explained, "Miss, that's a pirate ship out there! A pirate ship! They're signaling us to stop, or they'll open fire!"

"A pirate ship?" Victoria frowned and repeated what Goro had said, gazing off toward the distant signal light. She didn't know the rules of sailing at sea, so she hadn't understood the signals at all; when she had just seen Jim pick up the gun, she'd had no idea what he meant to do, and that was why she'd become wary and put the blade to his throat.

"Yes, a pirate ship!" Goro nodded. "Anyone who runs the sea for long—who hasn't run into pirates? Most of them are just after money. Give them the valuables and it's over! But you have to put up a show of resistance too, or they'll walk all over you!"

"Give me the gun, and go tell Mr. Yang." Victoria was not afraid of any pirate. She had already automatically discounted every opponent; in her eyes, pirates or bandits, they were all just people. If she wanted to kill them, she would kill them all the same.

Jim glanced at Goro. Seeing Goro nod, he obediently handed the hunting rifle over to Victoria. In truth, Goro wasn't counting on the gun to drive off the pirates—it was just that having a gun in hand would make the pirates somewhat more restrained, so they wouldn't be quite so reckless.

For someone like him, who made his living on the sea, this was the standard tactic when pirates appeared: with a gun in hand, when the pirates came to plunder, they would generally leave a certain margin—say, not taking all the money, and not touching the ship's fresh water and provisions.

Because even a cornered dog would jump the wall. If those boat people were pushed too far, they would do something that took everyone down with them. So a shipowner holding a gun had become an unwritten rule.

When the pirates saw it, they would naturally leave a little room.

"Mr. Yang, we've run into pirates!" Jim knocked on Yang Juehuan's cabin door and called out loudly.

Yang Ce and Wang Yanqiu had already lain down, but both were the sort with abnormally sharp senses—when Jim walked over, the faint creaking of the deck planks had already woken them. So when Jim called out, Yang Ce immediately rolled off the bed and opened the door: "What is it, Jim?"

"We've run into pirates," Jim said, pointing at the same moment.

"Pirates?" Yang Ce was taken aback. He turned to look out the cabin window, and sure enough, he saw a signal light flickering faintly in the distance. It was the signal telling them to stop! Yang Ce had studied similar ship signals in the set of discs Fang Tian had given him.

Though the pirate ship was still some distance away, and it was night besides, Yang Jiyan could see the situation on the vessel as clear as day.

It was not a very large ship. From its mast hung a skull flag, and around its hull were four gun emplacements. From what Yang Juehuan could observe, the guns were real—not the sort meant to frighten people.

On the pirate ship's deck stood four burly men, all covered in tattoos. One of them was even one-eyed. Looking further back, however, Yang Ce saw something he absolutely had not expected!

Yang Juehuan's brow twitched slightly, knitting into a deep frown before quickly smoothing out again. Things were getting more and more interesting, weren't they? Since when had this person gotten involved?

Yang Ce had no time for further detailed observation and hastily withdrew his gaze, because Jim was still standing to one side, and Yang Yongjin might have been staring out the window the whole time.

"Yes. At sea, running into pirates is the most normal thing in the world," Jim said with a nod.

"Oh? Then in general, when you run into pirates, how do you handle it?" Yang Yanchen asked.

"Generally, when we meet pirates, we hand over the valuables. Actually, there's nothing very valuable on board. The pirates all know we're in the smuggling business, and that we've only got a few tens of thousands of dollars in US currency on hand. Give it to them and they won't make things hard for us—this sort of thing is common as can be," Jim said. "We all have guns, so they won't touch the fresh water or the provisions either. If they really push us to the brink and we do something that takes us all down together, that does them no good either! Everyone knows that at sea, without fresh water and provisions, you're as good as dead."

Yang Xu nodded, then said, "Let's go. Up to the deck—let's see what tricks this bunch of pirates is really playing."

"All right, Mr. Yang. I'll head up first—get ready and come up after me." With that, Jim left the cabin and ran quickly toward the deck.

"Yang Ce, they couldn't be in league with the pirates, could they—coming to rob us? You know we're carrying hundreds of thousands in US cash, plus some diamonds," Wang Yanqiu said in a low voice, frowning at Yang Yanzhou.