Chapter Eighty-Six: Odin Dragon Boat

Carefully yet with practiced speed, the sailors on deck began to butcher the king narwhal. When faced with a treasure worth a mountain of gold, wasting even a single drop of blood was shameful. Every part of its body had to be preserved in specially prepared arcane ice vaults, lest any of the materials be lost.

Especially its blood and fluids, which had to be stored in containers forged by dedicated arcane smiths. If ordinary vessels were used, then in less than three days the blood would lose all its vitality.

Even some of the filth within the whale king’s intestines was laboriously dug out by sailors and stored in a separate hold set aside for that purpose. The stuff was dirty, foul, and utterly nauseating, but what could one do when the alchemists valued it like a treasure? No matter how ugly it looked, a single pound of the king narwhal’s dung, if one was lucky, could fetch an auction price of several hundred gold coins.

Lin Qi and Long Cheng stood at the bow, watching as hundreds of sailors swiftly broke the whale king down piece by piece.

Leaning against the mermaid statue, Long Cheng suddenly grinned and said, “Do you know why I agreed to take only thirty percent of the share?”

Lin Qi shot him a sidelong glance, still somewhat resentful of this man who had taken thirty percent of the profits from his own hands. He shook his head. “It can hardly be because I saved your life, can it? That iceberg wouldn’t have been able to trap you to death; I know that much. At most, I merely made you suffer a little less!”

Long Cheng patted Lin Qi on the shoulder and laughed. “Interesting. You really are a clever little bastard. That iceberg couldn’t trap me to death, but it would certainly have left me badly weakened; that much is beyond doubt. The wager I made with those rivals only counts if I can return to the Imperial Capital within a year. If I wasted too much time in the iceberg, I very likely would have lost.”

With a long sigh, Long Cheng shook his head. “I have no time to waste. I need to make a sum of money as quickly as possible and then continue on my way. I don’t have the leisure to personally auction off this great beast, so I can only accept your terms! I must get back to the Imperial Capital as soon as possible and win this round in style!”

Lin Qi looked at Long Cheng in curiosity. What kind of wager could possibly make him take such enormous risks, to attempt something so nearly impossible?

Leaving from the eastern harbor, they had sailed north into the Northern Sea, then crossed the Odin Icefield, a place of countless perils. One had to remember that it was the lair of Frost Titans and other utterly terrifying foreign races. It was even said that at the heart of the Odin Icefield there were secret passages leading to the underground world, where certain ancient and evil beings lay hidden—the evils of legend that had destroyed the world before the age of ruin.

To cross the Odin Icefield and survive was already an inconceivable feat for an ordinary human. Yet he still had to cross the Northern Sea amid winter’s fiercest blizzards and plunge into the western continent. This wager was practically a dance with death. No matter how great Long Cheng’s strength might be, it was still a dance with death. What could possibly be worth such a risk?

“I don’t understand. Why?” Lin Qi asked, looking at Long Cheng with curiosity. “For gold? Or for beauty?”

Long Cheng laughed mockingly and turned his nose toward the sea in disdain. “Gold? I, Long Cheng, was born into great nobility. I dare not claim to be richer than a kingdom, but if you add together several dozen so-called noble houses from your barbarian backwater, they would probably amount to little more than the wealth of my household steward. As for women—heh. Among the one hundred and eight incomparable beauties on the Eastern Capital’s Red-Dusted List, thirty-eight of those maidens were won by me.”

With his hands behind his back, Long Cheng declared with boundless arrogance, “I have wealth beyond measure, peerless appearance, unmatched brilliance, divine martial might, and mastery of both letters and war. In literature and strategy alike, there are few under heaven who can compare to me. I am a man of the very first rank, a truly peerless figure. Money? Women? Are such vulgar things worth my taking this kind of risk?”

“Then, honorable Sir Long Cheng, whose appearance is peerless and whose brilliance is divine, whose martial and scholarly talents are both supreme—what, exactly, did you wager with them?” Lin Qi’s curiosity was thoroughly aroused.

Long Cheng chuckled with great satisfaction, then touched his nose and said calmly, “Nothing much. Merely the authority of a provincial governor in one of our empire’s provinces, the office of prefect in four commanderies, and the post of castle warden in thirty-nine fortresses. Those are the major stakes. As for the other little additions—like the freedom deeds of the beauties listed in the Red-Dusted Register and its supplements—they hardly amount to anything.”

Suddenly, Long Cheng burst into wild laughter, bending over until tears of mirth nearly sprang from his eyes. In an unusually wicked tone, he laughed to Lin Qi, “The most amusing part is that there’s a clause in it. Heh heh, if the man betting against me loses, he must send eight of his most favored concubines to my residence, where they will recite poetry and admire the moon with me for seven days!”

His eyes flashed with gleaming light as Long Cheng ground his teeth and said, “I’m going to plant that green cap on him so tightly that he’ll wear it through endless generations and remain a cuckold forever! To think he dared oppose me, Long Cheng the Blood Spirit and City-Slaughtering Dragon. Heh heh, giving him a few green caps is only the appetizer!”

Lin Qi felt his mind once again go blank. Just what kind of background did this Long Cheng have?

To be able to use the provincial governorship of an entire kingdom, the prefectures of several commanderies, and the wardenship of castle towns as wagering stakes—he must surely have come from some top-tier noble house, mustn’t he?

What made Lin Qi want to vomit blood even more was this: since Long Cheng had the authority to use such important offices for a gambling match, he had actually gone and wagered concubines with the other side as well! It was absurd, utterly despicable. Did that mean those governors and prefects were regarded as equal in status to their concubines?

Through Long Cheng’s description of this wager, Lin Qi suddenly realized that Long Cheng was nothing but a thoroughly rotten profligate bastard. Compared with him, the pampered young nobles and ladies of Dunker were merely a bunch of bumpkins, not worth mentioning as wastrels at all. Lin Qi and the sons and daughters of Dunker’s great houses only ever gambled a few gold coins for fun, but look at Long Cheng—what exactly was he wagering on with people like that?

Just as Lin Qi was privately guessing at Long Cheng’s identity, a dull drumbeat suddenly sounded from behind a nearby iceberg.

Lin Qi’s scalp prickled. He hurriedly turned to look in that direction.

The lookout in the mast had already screamed hoarsely, “Odin dragon boats! It’s those foreign tribes’ fleet! Fire up the arcane furnace, retreat, get out of here now!”

Hee—hee—ya—ho—

Accompanied by low, booming calls and forceful chanting, a wooden dragon head several meters high slowly emerged from behind the iceberg, and a bizarre warship gradually revealed itself.

No more than about five meters wide, yet half again longer than the great sea windmill, shaped like a dragon and painted entirely blood-red, the dragon boat rounded the iceberg, turned its course, and sped straight toward the sea windmill.

Behind that dragon boat followed three smaller dragon boats, each only half as long as the one in front and somewhat narrower as well.

At the center of each dragon boat lay a war drum covered in beast hide. A giant over three meters tall, with skin of a strange bluish-gray hue, wielded a massive bone mallet and slowly beat the war drum, sending out thunderous sounds that shook the mind and heart.