There were so many pirates outside, and Mr. Ning was unarmed. No matter how capable he was, how many pirates could one person deal with? This was reckless.
Moreover, they were seasoned sailors and knew all too well how terrifying these pirates were.
These pirates wouldn't reason with anyone. They would plunder any ship and cargo they could get their hands on. And once they fell into the hands of pirates, they certainly wouldn't have a good end.
If they were lucky, they might wait for their families to pay a ransom and be redeemed.
If they were unlucky, these pirates would simply kill them.
"No, we can't entrust our safety to others. Brothers, take action."
The three guards decided not to wait any longer. They picked up their weapons and walked out of the cabin.
The captain and his wife couldn't stop them and had no choice but to let them go.
At this moment, the pirates had already climbed aboard the ship using grappling hooks. To their surprise, they found no guards ambushing them on deck, which emboldened them.
Ning Beichen didn't make a move, planning to wait for them all to come up before taking them down in one go.
But who could have predicted that those three guards would rush out and immediately engage in a fierce battle with the boarding pirates?
For a time, gunshots rang out from the ship.
Soon, pirates were killed by bullets, enraging the rest. The pirates immediately opened fire on the three guards, pinning them down in their hiding spots, unable to move.
Ning Beichen frowned. He had originally intended to take them down effortlessly, but these three fellows had disrupted his plan.
However, this was not the time to hesitate. If he didn't act soon, these three guards would truly lose their lives.
Ning Beichen loosened the bowstring in his hand.
With a series of whistling sounds, arrows flew through the air.
The pirates who were firing at the three guards were instantly pierced through the body by the incoming arrows.
Ning Beichen continued to draw and shoot his bow, and soon all the pirates who had boarded the ship were dead.
The three guards hiding in cover were utterly stunned.
"Get back. Who told you to come out?"
Ning Beichen leaped down from a high point, holding his compound bow, and spoke to them with displeasure.
"Thank you for saving our lives, Mr. Ning."
The three guards quickly regained their senses, not daring to say anything more. With expressions of shock, they retreated in a flustered manner back into the cabin.
"A Qi, did my eyes deceive me just now? Mr. Ning alone shot and killed those pirates with arrows."
*Thwack!*
A Qi slapped him on the head.
"Are your eyes deceiving you now?"
The guard who was hit shook his aching head and said with admiration.
"It wasn't my eyes deceiving me; it was real. That Mr. Ning is too powerful. Over a dozen pirates, and he killed them all with a bow and arrows."
"He's a true master. No wonder the captain didn't let us go out. Let's go back quickly and not embarrass ourselves here."
The three guards returned to the cabin and told the captain and his wife what they had witnessed.
To their surprise, the captain and his wife seemed unfazed by the news. It was likely they had already known that Mr. Ning outside was a formidable expert.
"This is nothing. Back when Mr. Ning saved us, he single-handedly wiped out an entire pirate stronghold. Three hundred pirates died. That was truly shocking!"
The captain said with his eyes gleaming.
"Captain, tell us quickly, did Mr. Ning really wipe out the pirate stronghold by himself?"
Hearing the captain's words, the three guards and the crew members were all filled with curiosity.
"That was three years ago, when my wife and I were sailing..."
The captain and his wife slowly recounted the story of how Ning Beichen had saved them years ago.
Meanwhile, Ning Beichen was outside dealing with the pirates. He had originally intended to wait for all the pirates to board before taking them down in one go.
However, there were intelligent individuals among the pirates. Seeing that their companions had been on the ship for so long without any news, they knew that something must have happened to them.
So they became clever, no longer boarding the ship but delaying tactics from below, waiting for more pirates to arrive as reinforcements.
Ning Beichen paid them no mind and instead retrieved the arrows he had shot.
Killing the pirates below would be easy, but once he killed them, the pirates who arrived later would likely not fall for the same trick.
More importantly, Ning Beichen feared that these scoundrels would damage the equipment. This equipment was something he had painstakingly obtained, even at the risk of offending the Habers family.
If it were damaged by these little scoundrels, even if he killed them all, it would be no compensation.
Rather than that, it was better to incapacitate them and, when a large number of them boarded, take them all down in one go.
Ning Beichen didn't wait long before he saw a large fleet of ships appearing. These ships, like ants, were approaching, with an estimated two to three hundred pirates.
Ning Beichen remained completely unfazed, while the crew and guards hiding in the cabin worried endlessly.
The captain and his wife, however, had complete faith in Ning Beichen and were not worried at all about such a large number of pirates.
Soon, these pirate ships drew closer.
The pirates conferred among themselves, and then they saw them firing several smoke bombs from below towards the ship. Using the smoke, the pirates began to climb onto the cargo ship.
However, they were unaware that their smoke bombs had provided Ning Beichen with an even better opportunity.
These pirates who climbed onto the cargo ship went in but never came out.
But because the ship was filled with smoke, they couldn't see clearly, and the pirates below didn't know that their companions were already dead, so they kept sending more men up.
Because, in their view, they heard no gunshots and no screams from their companions, their companions must be fine.
However, as time passed, more than a hundred pirates had boarded the cargo ship, but they still hadn't received any response from their companions. This made them vaguely sense that something was amiss.
The pirate leader, Karl, also frowned and ordered the pirates to temporarily stop boarding.
"Leader, there's been no response for so long. Could they have met with trouble on the ship?"
A pirate said worriedly beside the leader, as this had never happened before.
They would have preferred to hear a lot of gunshots from the ship, at least proving that there were guards on board. But now, with the silence, they were completely in the dark about the situation on the ship.
The pirate leader remained silent; he too couldn't figure out what was going on.
Logically speaking, over a hundred pirates had already boarded. Even if there were guards on the ship, there shouldn't be complete silence, right?
Were all the pirates he sent up mute?
Even the two pirates who had been by his side and whom he trusted implicitly were silent.
This...
It was too strange!
Too abnormal!