After his malicious taunts, Feng Bujue stopped talking and let Greybeard go ballistic.

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

"Is it really okay to provoke him like that?" Gui Wang asked, looking at Jue-ge.

"Heh... even if I didn't provoke him, he wouldn't let me go, would he?" Feng Bujue pointed to the two corpses on the ground. "These two just opened fire on me without a word, which means 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... you're right," Gui Wang replied, nodding. "But... even so, you could have just not talked to them. Why expose your identity in the public channel and deliberately provoke Greybeard?"

"Two purposes." Feng Bujue clipped the walkie-talkie to his waist, raised one hand, and held up a finger. "First, I wanted to probe Greybeard's personality..." He paused for a moment. "If he didn't respond after hearing my words, or scoffed at my mockery, then he would be a calm, calculating opponent." He smiled. "Heh... but, as it stands, he acts like a pure thug, impulsive, violent, and easily enraged when provoked."

"That should be a good thing," Gui Wang added.

"Not necessarily," Feng Bujue replied. "A ferocious person isn't necessarily brainless, and a calm person isn't necessarily intelligent." As he spoke, he held up his second finger. "So... I did a second test."

"Oh? What is it?" Gui Wang asked, looking puzzled.

...

At the same time, on the Dolphin cruise ship.

By this point, under Max's direction, the pirates had completed a full takeover of the cruise ship.

Except for Hai Mei Long, who was receiving "special attention," 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 cameramen, medical staff, logistics, etc.), were all locked in the monitoring cabin.

Ba Feite, Luo Han, Luosi Chai Erde, Ao Guanhai, and Gu Zhe, the five "important hostages," had been moved to the lounge next to the monitoring room. Although four of them had been injured in the knees, they had regained some mobility after a night of treatment and could hobble around.

After all, this world is set in the twenty-fifth century. Leaving aside cutting-edge technology like "Ant" (the 'Ant' technology in the Earth Wasteland chapters is usually only available to the military, research institutions, and some higher-level hospitals; naturally, this cruise ship doesn't have it. In addition, due to the high cost of this technology, ordinary people can't afford it either. Criminals like Greybeard have no right to use it, and even if he had money, he wouldn't be able to get treatment anywhere), human conventional medical methods are already quite advanced, at least in the field of surgery... as long as treatment is timely, recovery is very easy and quick.

"What the hell is going on? Who is that! That bastard actually dares to talk to me like that!" Greybeard was still shouting irascibly in the captain's cabin.

"Hehehe..." Hai Mei Long, tied to a chair in the corner of the captain's cabin, gloated. "He's the terror that flaps in the night~ He's the winged tapeworm that torments you in your nightmares..." This guy's ability to fan the flames wasn't weak either. "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!" Greybeard turned back and shouted.

"He's the chewing gum stuck to your shoe~ He's the wrong number that wakes you up at three in the morning~ He's the special breaking news that interrupts your favorite TV show~ He's the slug on your begonia~ He's the weirdo sitting next to you on the bus... He's..." Hai Mei Long demonstrated... that he wasn't done.

"Enough!" This time, it was Max who stopped the incessantly jabbering Hai Mei Long. "Stop quoting lines from *Darkwing Duck*. I recognized it the first time you said it."

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

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

"I have more free time than you think, Mr. Hai Mei Long," Max replied. "Living on a ship is like that... besides the daily routine and some action planning, I'm mostly free." He paused for a moment. "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 balancing work and rest... to relax my brain, I would play some entertaining videos while studying, so... I randomly watched a lot of cartoons and accidentally remembered all 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 age restrictions. 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 Mei Long was speechless and didn't know whether to laugh or cry after hearing this bunch of absurdities. He thought to himself, "You're hanging out with a bunch of pirates who kill without batting an eye every day. The things you've seen and heard are much bloodier and more real than in movies and TV shows, right? Besides, is your mental age really still that of a child? I'd believe you if you said you were a time traveler!"

"Alright... enough chitchat." Greybeard hobbled to Hai Mei Long with his wooden leg. "Quick, tell me... who exactly is this Stephen Carbon?"

"He's a writer," Hai Mei Long replied. "Hehe... if you were literate, you might have read his books too..." As a prisoner, he was still doing everything he could to mock the other party.

Thump!

"Ah—"

Hai Mei Long's words earned him another round of physical torment. His shattered foot had never been treated; whenever he pissed off Greybeard, the latter would use his wooden leg to "lightly" touch the injury as revenge.

"A writer..." Max mused. "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 cabin, stood on tiptoe, and quickly operated it.

Seconds later, the recording of Feng Bujue's earlier two sentences replayed, playing on the large screen in the captain's cabin.

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

"Son, what did you find?" Although Greybeard couldn't hear any clues from the recording, he knew that when his son showed this expression, he had found something.

"Regardless of what state of mind this 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, 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 in the background..."

On the other side, Feng Bujue and Gui Wang had already climbed to a nearby high ground and hidden themselves. And the place where they were hiding happened to allow them to observe the bodies of the two pirates.

"We'll wait here for an hour. If no one comes, or if it takes more than forty minutes for someone to find this place, it means... Greybeard and his gang are just a bunch of pure thugs; but... if pirates come over within half an hour, and they are clearly following the stream with a purpose, then we need to be more vigilant..." Feng Bujue said, explaining to Gui Wang 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."