Train Survival: You're really trying to survive!

After a satisfying meal, it's natural to want to gather some information.

Su Li gave Sun Lili a sharp look, and Sun Lili nodded, releasing some basic mind-based spells.

Jiao's expression immediately relaxed a lot.

“Reef, let me introduce ourselves. We come from another ocean.” Su Li told the lie she had made up. “We are explorers. We left our home to see if there are any other survivor camps.”

After listening to Su Li's words, Jiao showed a longing expression. "Then you must have experienced some very exciting adventures! Me too. I've wanted to see those strange things the priest talked about since I was a child, like the iron box called a chariot, and the flying machine that can carry people through the air. The old priest said that when he was a child, every household could eat meat, fruit and vegetables."

Su Li gleaned information from his words: it seems that this world was not originally a water world, but a change occurred later, causing the surface to be submerged.

[A post-apocalyptic world?]

It's a post-apocalyptic world, a world after a global catastrophe. It's quite popular in games.

Following up on what Jiao said, Su Li continued, "Yes, we also yearn for these stories, which is why we came out to explore and see if there are any scenes from these stories in other places."

"So we're not very familiar with the surrounding area. We don't have these floating islands where we're from."

Reef gaped, "No floating islands? How do you replenish your supplies?"

After saying that, he suddenly realized something and said, "I know, you must be from the first plateau, the Passofi Plateau, right!"

Reef looked extremely excited. "The old priest said that the sea has submerged all civilizations. If there are still civilizations in other places, they must be in the highest place in the world, the Passofi Plateau!"

"Can you tell me the story of that place?" Jiao asked expectantly.

“Sure, but you need to tell us about the situation here first. We’re worried about another large-scale sea monster attack,” Su Li said with a smile.

"Hmm." Reef nodded. "What do you want to know?"

“I’d like to know, how do you usually live? These are all floating islands, and they sink every now and then. It’s unlikely that you would build a fixed base,” Su Li said.

Reef shook his head. "No, we have the Holy City."

"Holy City?"

“Yes, it’s a very, very huge sacred statue.” Reef gestured with his hands in the air. “It’s much higher than sea level. City people and rich people all live there.”

Su Li squinted; he couldn't find this strange statue on the map. Could it be that the top-down view made the shape less obvious, causing him to miss it?

"What about the people outside of Holy City?" Su Li pressed.

“The others, just like us, live on ships and sail between various floating islands.” Jiao’s expression darkened as he said this, tears welling in his eyes. If Sun Lili hadn’t been comforting him, he probably would have already burst into tears. “Uncle, Aunt, they have all been killed by the Thousand-Legged Sea Monster.”

Sun Lili patted Jiao's head and sighed.

Once Jiao's emotions had calmed down, he continued, "Our ship has various planting boxes, and we can also fish from the sea. As long as we don't go to dangerous waters, we won't be attacked by sea monsters."

“Every now and then, we go to various islands to change the soil for planting and collect some food and materials. If we’re lucky, we can even catch some snakes and lizards.”

"At the same time, we will take some purification crystals from the purification sanctuary to alleviate our mental pollution."

“Mental pollution?” Su Li asked. “Where does this mental pollution come from?”

“It’s our eyes.” Jiao looked at Su Li with some confusion. Sun Lili behind him quickly increased her spell output, which made Jiao overlook the strangeness in Su Li’s words.

Jiao pointed to the eye that had been stitched up on his forehead. "The old priest said that our eyes are cursed. If we open them, they will be seen by evil gods and then constantly corrupted by them. So, when our newborns are born, we gouge out their third eye and then stitch it up."

"Only prepared priests can retain their eyes. Because the power of the eyes is needed to activate the stigmata and open the sanctuary."

[So the people of this world are all three-eyed. Their third eye possesses special power.] Su Li looked Reef up and down. This race was a naturally extraordinary race. In a world of energy level 1.2, they were quite rare. [Ming Yu examined the wound on Reef's forehead; it contained a complete eyeball. Was he the prospective priest? Then the blue glow he emitted earlier was their unique talent?]

"Could you elaborate on the evil god?" Su Li pressed on, "We don't know much about evil gods where we're from."

“It’s because you live on land and drink clean water,” Reef said with envy. “We can’t. Only the lords of Holy City can regularly drink the clean water that falls from the sky. The rest of us can only drink the filthy water from the sea. If we drink the filthy water, we will be corrupted by the evil god’s power in the water.”

"Only by purifying and crystallizing can we purify our spiritual pollution."

Ivan was a little puzzled. "Isn't it quite rainy at sea? Why don't you just stock up on more?"

Jiao was equally puzzled: "Drinking pure water all the time will make you weak and die; that's common sense. Gentlemen drink pure water with various kinds of extracted holy salts."

[Well, they're a saltwater race. They need to regularly consume salt from seawater.]

One question has been answered: "Let's continue with the purification crystal."

“Alright, each purification crystal can purify the mental pollution of 30 people. Purification crystals can only be found in sanctuaries. After a priest awakens his priestly power, he will have a vague feeling as to which sanctuary he can open. Once the purification crystals have condensed, the priests will go to the sanctuaries to retrieve them.”

Further questioning yielded only supplementary details.

Seeing that Reef looked tired, Zuli asked Ivan to take him to rest.

Su Li tapped her four fingers on the table in turn, her mind processing the information she had just received.

The way this world operates is bizarre. An unknown, psychic evil god twists and transforms marine life, and can also corrupt these three-eyed beings through his third eye. Simultaneously, there exists a force that helps the three-eyed beings fight against the evil god and purify the corruption. This force has also created a floating island system to help the three-eyed beings obtain resources for survival.

After summarizing the intelligence, Su Li's first reaction was that it was a classic storyline of a binary conflict between the local world will and an alien evil god, which later involved terms like "enemy and ally share the same origin" and "dark and cruel." He was very familiar with this kind of thing; it was a common trope in games.

"So, are we going to deal with an evil god this time?" Song Mingyu concluded.

“To correct you, this evil god is most likely just some kind of powerful mind-based monster,” Sophia added.

"It could also be information contamination caused by the body tissue of a demigod. Just like the mechanical demigod last time."