Her forehead pressed against his shoulder, she mumbled a vague addition: "I'm so sleepy now, I want to sleep, don't bother me anymore."
After that rambling confession, Shen Yi's lashes finally drooped closed.
In her last line of sight, she saw Shen Wenta's face, pale and drained of all color.
Before plunging into the long darkness, a thought flashed through Shen Yi's mind.
It felt like this time, she might wake up from this nap and directly transmigrate.
Damn it.
She hadn't gotten her fill of savoring his expression yet.
Her full weight tipped forward, collapsing into Shen Wenta's arms.
The damp, bloody smell from Shen Yi's body slammed into his nostrils, so intense it made his temple twitch.
The rusty scent of blood mixed with some sugary, cloying odor that hovered near the edge of death.
Shen Wenta's palm touched the fabric of her back, soaked through with blood.
He called out in panic, "Shen Yi..."
The sea wind swept across the deck, and the sound of distant waves surged up, quietly observing the chaos unfolding on the deck.
She had fallen into a deep sleep, her entire weight leaning against him, her breaths so shallow they were almost imperceptible.
"Xiao Yi, Shen Yi, Yiyi." Shen Wenta cycled through several nicknames, a fear he had never known before overwhelming him.
Shen Wenta held her close, tightening his arms but afraid to squeeze too hard, worried he might aggravate her wounds.
He reached out to check her breathing, his fingers pausing at her nose as he silently held his own breath.
Afraid she might stop breathing altogether.
After what felt like an endless two seconds, he felt a faint wisp of air brush against his fingertips.
The suspended stone in his heart dropped an inch, only to be hoisted back up again immediately.
Too shallow—so shallow it seemed like it could stop at any moment.
"Shen Yi," he called out again, his voice trembling, his mind a complete blank.
Shen Wenta had never encountered this situation before.
He had seen people die, had even handled many such matters.
But right now, holding Shen Yi, drenched in blood, all his experience became useless. There was only one thought cycling through his mind.
Don't die.
Around them, the deck buzzed with the clamorous discussions of the crowd.
"The ship must dock."
"The nearest port is in a foreign country."
"Anchor at the shore—I've already contacted the embassy and police of the nearest country."
Someone was debating and planning, their tones urgent, mixed with various languages.
Those people had shaken off their initial terror and started chattering about solutions, discussing how to bring the ship in, how to contact the outside world after disembarking, and how to handle the aftermath.
Shen Wenta didn't even try to parse what they were saying.
His mind was a blank slate. He helplessly hugged the person in his arms tighter, trembling as he touched her face.
So cold.
Her skin pressed against his fingertips, icy as if it had been soaked in seawater.
He fumbled desperately with one hand, trying to take off his own jacket to wrap around her.
But undoing the buttons with one hand was too difficult, and his fingers shook so badly. After struggling, he only managed two before the fabric got stuck at his elbow, refusing to come off.
Finally, he gave up, wrapping his arms around her more tightly, trying to warm her with his own body heat.
For the first time, he felt utterly lost and terrified.
Shen Wenta was never one to panic—at least, when it came to matters unrelated to him, he could always stay calm.
But once it involved someone familiar, someone he cared about, Shen Wenta had no idea what to do.
His older brother had pointed out this emotional flaw long ago, but he had never taken it seriously.
Until now, sitting on the deck holding her, his back against the cold railing, all his thoughts had completely scattered, leaving only the fear of not knowing what to do.
In that moment, Shen Wenta hated everyone there.
Hated that they stood there unharmed, chattering away—why did they get to live?
The group around him kept on yapping noisily.
They had lowered their voices, discussing the most pressing issue at hand.
"Are we safe now?"
"Yes."
Many had cautiously rushed out to the deck to check the situation outside.
Over the past few hours since the incident began, the armed members who had carried guns lay strewn across every direction, having met various gruesome ends.
On the deck, in the corridors, at the stairwells, corpses and shell casings littered everywhere.
The scene was enough to make anyone's heart race.
After confirming that they were safe, most people finally breathed a sigh of relief.
A few people's legs gave way, and they collapsed onto the ground, backs against the railings, panting heavily.
Then, one by one, everyone started rummaging for the contracts they had been forced to sign.
Papers were scattered everywhere in the wind after the earlier chaos.
They crouched on the ground, flipping through the flying sheets one by one, finding their own and tearing them up to throw into the sea.
With their lives and property temporarily secured, they finally had some breathing room, but the weight in their hearts hadn't fully lifted.
The group began to worry about what would happen next.
How much longer would the ship take to dock?
How much longer would they have to stay with that murderous girl?
When would she wake up?
And what would she do when she did?
"That girl seems to have passed out. We should be careful around her."
"Yes, that person is very dangerous."
"Do we still have to stay with her? The shortest time for the ship to dock is a day."
They were assessing, calculating.
This was what they were best at.
Fear prompted thought; thought prompted action.
They began to consider how to protect themselves.
"Let's tie her up first," a voice came from the crowd. "Or better yet, kill her to be safer. Do we want to share a space with such a dangerous element?"
Never mind how Shen Yi had done it—
Killing over a hundred armed men single-handedly was already beyond reason, beyond their understanding of the world.
Her existence was scarier than a Saiyan.
After all, Saiyans didn't exist, but she was right there in front of them, real and tangible.
This dangerous figure could wake up at any moment, could turn her gun on them at any time.
The gathered crowd, their faces still pale from earlier, wore expressions of the same cold calculation.
Those on this ship were the world's best at knowing how to protect their own interests.
They understood how to save themselves in the face of danger, knew who could be sacrificed.
This girl had saved them, yes, but the superhuman combat ability she had displayed also terrified them.
How could anyone guarantee that this girl wouldn't lose her mind in the next second?
In their eyes, she wasn't a wounded child but an uncontrollable danger.
To eliminate this variable, they naturally had to consider the person beside her.
Like the young man holding her.
He looked a few years older than her, his face pale, eyes rimmed with red, trembling all over, with a dazed look—his spirit seemed completely shattered.
Easy to handle.
That's what they thought.
Shen Wenta's bodyguards, whom he had brought in earlier, were also exchanging uneasy glances.
Throughout the earlier showdown, those bodyguards had been completely useless.
They had been held at gunpoint, squatting on the other side of the deck, unable even to lift their heads.
Now, those bodyguards finally straightened up and, without nodding in agreement, moved to stand beside their employer, trying to salvage the situation.
But Shen Wenta didn’t spare them even a single glance.
Their employer sat there, holding a girl whose body was covered in blood. His gaze was vacant, as though his soul had slipped away.
“Sir, why don’t you hand her over to us?”
A man stepped forward voluntarily, bending slightly with a gentle, polite smile on his face.
To him, Shen Wenta looked frail—perhaps even more fragile than the unconscious girl in his arms.
A broken man, a girl lost to the world.
This negotiation felt almost too easy.
In Shen Wenta’s mind, only one thought kept circling:
He had to stop the bleeding first. Stop her bleeding.
But how? He had no experience at all.
As for what these people were discussing, he couldn’t even process it.
Soon, Shen Wenta saw a man step forward and suggest that he hand Shen Yi over to them.
Hand her over… to them?
