Lóng Hǎifēng couldn't sleep.
This wasn't unusual—eleven weeks of constant motion, chronic hunger, and mounting psychological stress had destroyed any semblance of normal sleep patterns. But tonight felt different. Day eighty-seven, fourteen days of provisions remaining, and something in the air had changed.
The storms had continued diminishing. Wave heights now averaged twenty meters, almost gentle compared to the sixty-meter monsters he'd survived weeks ago. Wind speeds had dropped to levels that would have seemed catastrophic when he first departed but now felt almost manageable. Even the luminous Qi in the water had faded to occasional flickers rather than constant glow.
He stood on deck at what his chronometer indicated was midnight—though "midnight" was meaningless concept under perpetual storm clouds that made every hour equally dark. His Rank 3 cultivation cycled automatically, maintaining the thin Qi barrier that kept rain off his increasingly skeletal frame.
