novelraw Chapter 327: The Anomaly of the World
Chapter 327: The Anomaly of the World
The Messenger's pitch-black and massive hull quietly hovered over international waters about twenty nautical miles from Singapore's coastline.
This ocean-going freighter, heavily modified at great expense by the Redgrave family, was anchored in that unmanned deep-water area, waiting for the wooden longboat emerging from the mist.
As Lin Jie climbed the rope ladder onto the deck, a wave of heat mixed with coal smoke and engine oil instantly dispelled the chill he had picked up in the mangrove forest.
The sailors in uniform uniforms busied themselves methodically under the boatswain's whistle commands, showing no excessive curiosity about these uninvited guests reeking of jungle decay. Before boarding, they had already signed confidentiality agreements substantial enough to ensure their comfort for a lifetime.
"Set sail."
Lin Jie stood before the bridge's porthole window, issuing a brief command to the bearded British captain.
As the engine telegraph was pushed to the "Full Ahead" mark, a low, rhythmic vibration began to transmit through the deck beneath his feet.
The massive propeller at the stern churned the calm sea surface, churning up a white wake that left Chinatown's funeral parlor far behind.
The subsequent voyage became tedious and lengthy.
In this region where the South China Sea meets the Java Sea, called the "Land Below the Wind," the ocean revealed its most capricious nature.Sometimes it was calm and mirror-like azure, other times it was pitch-black with torrential rain and towering waves.
But for Lin Jie, this isolated maritime life provided rare time to organize his thoughts.
Late night.
The captain's cabin, converted into a temporary operations room, was brightly lit.
Heavy velvet curtains blocked the pitch-black sea beyond the porthole windows, with only the brass lamp emitting a steady, warm glow illuminating the wide oak chart table.
Lin Jie sat alone at the table, holding a fountain pen, his brow furrowed as he stared at the pile of scattered documents spread before him.
These were a notebook he had retrieved from the leader's body after counter-killing the Black Lotus Sect's death soldier squad at Gu Ji Zhai in Chinatown.
This notebook was carefully wrapped in a layer of oilpaper, clearly treasured by its owner.
The notebook's content was written in an encrypted cipher combining Manchu script, Chinese characters, and certain Daoist talisman symbols, but this posed no difficulty for Julian with the auxiliary translation function of [The Scribe's Papyrus].
As early as the first day aboard, the linguist had already deciphered all the notebook's content and transcribed it into English.
The first half of the notebook mostly contained routine records about personnel transfers within the Black Lotus Sect, material transportation, and some experimental data about the Living Holy Embryos. While confirming that Yan Xilou's plan in Borneo had entered the dangerous Fusion Stage, it contained little unexpected information.
What truly concerned Lin Jie were the several hand-drawn diagrams tucked into the notebook's final pages.
They were strange survey drawings that looked like star charts and sea charts.
Lin Jie picked up one sea chart depicting the topography of the South Seas archipelago, spread it flat on the table, then pulled from the nearby bookshelf a standard nautical chart newly revised and issued by the British Admiralty in 1888, representing this era's highest surveying standards.
He placed the two maps side by side, conducting extremely meticulous comparisons under the bright light of the desk lamp.
For the first few minutes, everything appeared normal.
The continental outlines, positions of major islands, and course directions on both maps were remarkably consistent.
That death soldier's hand-drawing skills were quite solid, appearing professionally trained in surveying, with even certain reef and depth markings differing little from official charts.
But Lin Jie didn't stop.
As a history student specializing in modern history before his transmigration, he possessed an almost instinctive familiarity with late-19th-century world maps.
That familiarity came not merely from textbook illustrations, but from geographical coordinates imprinted in his mind during countless research sessions.
His finger slowly moved along the map's equator line, crossing the Malay Peninsula, passing through Sumatra, finally resting at a seemingly insignificant archipelago location.
That was the Natuna Islands northwest of Borneo, precisely along their required route.
Lin Jie's pupils contracted slightly.
He picked up compasses and a ruler, beginning precise measurements on the two maps.
Something was off.
An extremely subtle sense of incongruity—impossible to detect unless deliberately sought—began spreading through his mind.
On the British Admiralty's standard sea chart, the Natuna Islands' main island, Great Natuna, presented an irregular elliptical shape, its northern coastline featuring several bays extending inland like saw teeth.
This almost completely matched the shape Lin Jie remembered from modern satellite maps, indicating this era's surveying technology was already quite accurate.
But on that Black Lotus Sect death soldier's hand-drawn chart, Great Natuna's shape displayed some subtle deviations.
That largest bay located on the island's north—labeled "Sedanau Bay" on the official chart—appeared broader on the death soldier's chart, even featuring two small islets at the bay entrance not recorded on official maps.
Lin Jie initially thought this was merely the death soldier's surveying error, or intentional camouflage added to mark secret strongholds.
But he quickly dismissed this assumption.
Because at the edge of that hand-drawn chart was a line of commentary written in extremely small characters: "Star positions calibrated correctly, mineral vein flow matches ancient text records, yet differs from Westerners' sea charts. Fear Westerners' surveying contains errors, or... the mineral veins have changed."
The mineral veins have changed.
These four words deeply pierced Lin Jie's nerves.
A Black Lotus Sect death soldier would never commit such basic errors while executing this top-secret mission, nor write such baseless speculation in such a serious notebook.
If he dared say "star positions calibrated correctly," it meant he had repeatedly verified this.
Lin Jie set down the sea chart, picking up another hand-drawn star chart.
It was a celestial chart depicting the Northern Hemisphere's winter night sky with Polaris as the reference point.
Lin Jie walked to the instrument rack by the window, picking up a precise sextant.
He pushed open the heavy wooden door connecting the captain's cabin to the outer balcony, stepping into the dark sea breeze.
The sea surface was currently calm and windless, without a trace of clouds, the brilliant Milky Way spanning the sky.
This was a magnificent sight absolutely impossible to see in modern society with severe industrial light pollution.
Lin Jie raised the sextant, skillfully adjusting the mirror's angle, aligning his sight with that northern star guiding countless navigators.
He began measuring the angle between Polaris and the horizon to calibrate his latitude.
This was the most basic navigation operation.
But when Lin Jie read the scale's data and compared it with the hand-drawn star chart's data, he felt a chill rushing straight up his spine.
Deviation.
Though extremely minute, perhaps only fractions of a degree, on astronomical observation scales this meant errors of thousands of miles.
More terrifying was that this deviation wasn't due to his operational errors or instrument precision issues.
He discovered that positions of certain stars in the sky exhibited a... structural misalignment with the star charts from the world he remembered.
Like that bright Vega currently positioned directly overhead.
In Lin Jie's memory, it should be located at a specific coordinate point within the Lyra constellation.
Though current observation results still fell within this range, he keenly perceived that its relative distance to several surrounding companion stars seemed "wider" by a tiny bit compared to his cognition.
As if the entire universe's backdrop had been gently pulled by an invisible hand, causing all stellar positions to shift in ways barely detectable to the naked eye.
This displacement wouldn't affect ordinary navigation, because human maps were drawn based on stars.
If stars changed, maps would follow, both still matching.
But for Lin Jie—an observer from "another spacetime"—this difference was like discovering a misshapen piece in a perfect jigsaw puzzle.
This wasn't merely "historical change."
If it were purely historical change—like Napoleon winning Waterloo, or Lincoln not being assassinated—that would only affect human society's boundaries and political structures, never affecting the stars overhead, much less changing an island's geological shape.
This was a micro-adjustment at the physical law level.
It was... a completely different cosmological constant.
Lin Jie felt dizzy.
He had to grip the cold railing to steady himself.
All along, he had believed he had merely transmigrated to the past.
Transmigrated to Earth in 1889.
He thought that as long as he worked hard to survive, even changing some historical processes, he could find belonging in this familiar yet strange era.
But now, this truth was making him doubt somewhat.
Whether this was his Earth.
Whether this was the past of the universe he knew.
Why did this world contain UMAs—monsters violating biological common sense.
Why was there spiritual nature.
Why was there alchemy.
Why were there those unbelievable Grotesque Armaments.
Lin Jie felt like someone trapped in a hall of mirrors.
Everything around appeared so real, so familiar.
But when he reached out to touch, he could only feel cold glass.
That loneliness originating from the soul's depths reached its peak at this moment.
"Not sleeping yet?"
A gentle voice interrupted Lin Jie's thoughts.
Julian had emerged unnoticed.
He held two steaming cups of coffee, wrapped in a thick wool blanket, also somewhat chilled by the sea breeze.
Lin Jie took a deep breath, deeply concealing the fear in his eyes.
He accepted the coffee, its scalding temperature restoring some sensation to his fingers.
"Looking at the stars."
Lin Jie pointed at the night sky overhead.
"Tonight's celestial phenomena are quite good."
Julian glanced upward, "Suitable for divination. Unfortunately I only know superficial aspects. If the High Priest were here, perhaps he could discern our fortune's auspiciousness or inauspiciousness."
"Julian."
Lin Jie suddenly spoke, his voice somewhat low, "Do you believe... there exists another completely different Earth in this world?"
Julian paused, seeming unprepared for Lin Jie suddenly asking such a profoundly philosophical question.
He adjusted his glasses, thinking seriously for a moment.
"As a scientist, I should say this lacks basis. But as a scholar researching mysticism, I must maintain reverence."
Julian walked to the railing, looking at the pitch-black sea surface.
"In ancient Gnostic texts, there exists a theory. They believed this material world we inhabit isn't actually the only reality, but an inferior replica created by a so-called Demiurge—a False God."
"Beyond this replica exist countless other worlds. Some worlds are filled with light, some with darkness. They're like bubbles floating in the ether sea, occasionally colliding or overlapping."
As he spoke, he pulled from his pocket that notebook retrieved from the death soldier's body.
"That Black Lotus Sect fellow also mentioned similar viewpoints in the notebook, look at this passage."
Julian pointed at that commentary about map differences in the notebook under light filtering from the cabin.
"He suspects the mineral veins have changed. This is a serious concept in Eastern feng shui, meaning fundamental shifts in mountains, rivers, and watercourses."
"But I'm more inclined to think..."
Julian looked into Lin Jie's eyes, "This might be a deviation of the 'observer effect.'"
"Observer effect?"
Lin Jie slightly startled.
"Yes."
Julian explained, "That death soldier used ancient celestial positioning methods, techniques passed down for thousands of years. The British Admiralty uses the newest scientific surveying methods. These two methods are based on different reference systems."
"Perhaps it's not that the maps are wrong. Nor that the stars have changed."
"But that our way of viewing the world has changed."
Julian smiled, taking a sip of coffee.
"Lin Jie, regardless of whether the stars in your eyes match what we see."
"At least here, on this ship, you are one of us."
"That is sufficient."
Lin Jie remained silent for a long time.
Looking at this wise and perceptive companion before him, that icy loneliness in his heart miraculously dissipated considerably.
Yes.
He stood here now.
He held hot coffee in his hands.
Comrades worth trusting with his back stood beside him.
Ahead were friends he must save and enemies he must defeat.
All this was real.
More real than any coordinates in memory.
"Thank you."
Lin Jie said softly, draining his coffee cup in one gulp.
The bitter taste invigorated his spirit.
"You're right."
"Regardless of how this world changes, we have paths we must complete."
He put away the sextant, turning to walk toward the cabin.
"Rest early, Julian. When the sun rises tomorrow, we'll enter that green hell."
"Before that we need to conserve our energy."
Julian nodded, following Lin Jie back into the operations room.
The wooden door closed, temporarily shutting out that vast and unfamiliar starry sky.