Chapter 69: Are All You Star Pirates So Unreasonable? Part 2

Xie Jianxun glanced at his bulging arm muscles. Oddly, there wasn’t a drop of sweat on Huo Jing. Aside from the muscles, he didn’t look like he’d just worked out.

Maybe he’d just showered, hair still wet, and come straight to find him.

Huo Jing dug into his chopsticks, devouring the table’s worth like a whirlwind without even a burp. He leaned back lazily, leg crossed.

Squinting, he made Xie Jianxun increasingly uneasy under his gaze, eating slower and slower.

Huo Jing: “What, choking?”

He got up and fetched Xie Jianxun a glass of tomato juice. Xie Jianxun awkwardly accepted and took a sip—the rich tomato flavor as always.

“Minai Hill specialty tomatoes, with a full tomato industry chain,” Huo Jing explained.

Xie Jianxun looked up: “Your affiliated city?”

In his mind, he pictured a massive city full of tomato orchards, complete with ketchup production bases.

Huo Jing: “Just a small city. The scenery is beautiful.”

He got more enthusiastic as he spoke.

“Why don’t you buy a city to play with?” Huo Jing tempted. “You’ve got so much pocket money—buying one won’t cost much.”

Casually said, buying a city was like buying a balloon—light as air.

Xie Jianxun thought for a moment: “A city would be boring. Might as well buy a planet.”

Huo Jing paused. This Great Star Pirate, who supported twenty thousand people—or even a whole city—sighed: “So rich, little young master. Share some with me, and I’ll be your ox or horse forever.”

Xie Jianxun choked on a laugh, hand shaking so much he nearly sputtered his drink.

“As if I could afford you, Leader. I’ll be bankrupt in days.”

The Siphon Whale’s leader turned his face aside and chuckled lowly.

Just as he planned to press his luck and scoot over for a sip of the young master’s tomato juice, a huge commotion erupted at the cafeteria doors.

Passing star pirates nimbly jumped back, steadying their trays while grumbling: “Always so jumpy—nearly spilled my coffee!”

The doors slammed open. A middle-aged man tumbled in, scrambling desperately.

Before he could duck under a table, a figure in a black suit appeared at the entrance, kicking him down and pressing a knee hard into his lower back.

The middle-aged man let out a pig-like squeal that echoed through the entire cafeteria.

Xie Jianxun whipped his head around in shock to look at the star pirate boss across from him.

But Huo Jing acted like it was nothing, calmly peeling his boiled egg shell unhurriedly.

Xie Jianxun: “Huo Jing! Did one of your men cause trouble…”

Halfway through, a boiled egg was stuffed into his mouth.

The man in the black suit was the First Mate. He twisted the middle-aged man’s arm, and the man started wailing like a wind-up toy.

He scanned the room with those aggressively gray eyes.

Every star pirate he looked at shivered and hastily averted their gaze.

The young First Mate tore open the middle-aged man’s clothes and swiftly bound him up, then stood with relaxed hands and feet.

Only when he calmed did the star pirates dare crowd around.

“First Mate, what’d this guy do?”

The young First Mate’s voice was flat: “Warehouse manager, hoarding Tungsten Gold Soil. He’s already embezzled and moved over a hundred grams.”

Whoa, over a hundred grams—a huge amount!

Just a fraction of a gram could restore a weapon to peak condition. This top-tier Mineral Paste was always under strict inventory watch.

After arriving at Lihou Port yesterday, no one knew how much Tungsten Gold Soil this man had managed to sell off from his stock.

The middle-aged man lay prostrate on the ground, weeping bitterly with a face ashen as death, begging incessantly for mercy.

“It wasn’t me, it really wasn’t… I don’t know why the Tungsten Gold Soil count is off. Someone, someone is framing me…”

The surrounding star pirates clicked their tongues. “Stealing supplies that belong to all the brothers—this guy is either in for a torturous death or a quick one.”

Someone from the crowd piped up, “Isn’t the boss here too?”

All eyes immediately shifted to Huo Jing in the back.

The leader of the Siphon Whale was attempting a grand feat: shoving a nutrition liquid straw into Xie Jianxun’s mouth while insisting that eating more would help him build muscle.

The poor little young master was truly on the verge of bursting. He couldn’t swallow another drop.

Seeing Huo Jing right there in the cafeteria, the warehouse manager—who had been accused of pilfering under the boss’s watch—brightened up.

Even with his hands and feet bound, he persisted relentlessly, inching toward Huo Jing.

His eyes were beaten shut, his cheeks bruised purple, and his speech slurred as he bellowed, “Boss, Boss, I didn’t do it! I’m innocent!”

Huo Jing gathered all the empty bowls, picked up his tray, and headed to the dish return under everyone’s watchful eyes.

When he returned, the leader had a clean pair of chopsticks in hand and flashed a cryptic smile.

“I suggest you tell the truth. That way, at least you’ll die painlessly.” Huo Jing crouched down and prodded the man’s eyeball with one end of the clean chopsticks.

The eye immediately darted around wildly as the man struggled violently.

The middle-aged warehouse manager wept rivers of tears, terrified into howling, “I… I did steal a little Tungsten Gold Soil, but it’s all still in my cabin, Boss. I didn’t sell the brothers’ stuff—”

Huo Jing tossed the clean chopsticks aside and, amid the crowd’s jeers, ordered, “Haul him up.”

One star pirate grumbled, “The boss isn’t showing off today?”

“Tsk tsk, didn’t expect you to be into that.”

Finally, the leader leaned in close to his ear and hissed like a devil whispering, “Why on earth did you think the buyer for the Tungsten Gold Soil wouldn’t recognize it as Siphon Whale goods?”

…The black market buyer was one of their own!

Lihou Port’s black market was riddled with the Siphon Whale leader’s informants!

The middle-aged man froze, a foul stench of urine wafting from his crotch as he promptly fainted.

The star pirates cheered, clamoring to be the one to finish him off for the boss. Just as Huo Jing was about to pick someone at random like before, something occurred to him.

The crowd parted, and he strode out from within.

Xie Jianxun was still quietly eating a boiled egg that had been three-quarters shelled when he saw Huo Jing suddenly heading his way.

Xie Jianxun: “…”

An ominous premonition.

“How’s the food?” The star pirate leader stopped in front of him, mimicking his politeness. “I’ve got something I’d like your help with.”

Xie Jianxun swallowed the last bite of egg white and eyed him warily. “What?”

Huo Jing shifted slightly to let him see the unconscious warehouse manager.

“This poor fellow broke the ship’s rules. By tradition, he should be sentenced to death. But somehow, I feel like he might have a better fate.”

Huo Jing smiled. “Young Master, why don’t you act as the judge? Tell me—what punishment should he receive, or should we let him off easy?”

Xie Jianxun blinked, glancing at the fainted man.

If he were awake, he would have begged this soft-hearted stranger for mercy with every ounce of his strength.

Under the gaze of all the star pirates, Xie Jianxun took a deep breath.

He managed to say, “You really want me to decide?”

Huo Jing shrugged indifferently. “Worst case, we let him go.”

The little young master fell silent for a moment before saying reluctantly, “Exile him. How about exile?”

“Stuff him into an Escape Pod and eject him into space. From then on, whether he lives or dies has nothing to do with us. He might get torn apart by a cosmic storm, or he might land on some planet and survive.”

Huo Jing narrowed his eyes and approved the suggestion.

The group marched en masse to the lower decks, to the Escape Pod launch bay.

Just before shoving the man in, the First Mate spoke up. “Why waste a functional one? Use a scrapped one.”

The star pirates immediately cheered for him. “Great idea!”

“Our First Mate really knows how to recycle trash!”

A functional Escape Pod could protect a person until the oxygen ran out, up to a maximum of seven days. But a scrapped one had glass that looked ready to shatter at any moment, with the oxygen already depleted.

Xie Jianxun stood far back at the stairwell entrance, feeling a pang of sadness.

He had used this man to memorize every route to the Escape Pods.

Tonight, when the Siphon Whale set sail, he would quietly eject an Escape Pod and slip away, then hide in Lihou Port until dawn and buy a ticket out.

Over there, the star pirates were cheering wildly, the atmosphere electric.

He didn’t catch what they said and turned to head back.

Without looking, he walked straight into Huo Jing’s chest. Huo Jing looked down and asked, “Feeling sad? You’ve already given him a chance to survive.”

Xie Jianxun murmured softly, “No, I was just thinking—if I stay here too long, will I turn into… a proper star pirate too?”

Huo Jing paused before replying, “Possibly. Given enough time, you’ll blend in. Take me—I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t living among star pirates. In that sense, I was born to be one.”