novelraw Chapter 364: The Oppression of the Red List
Chapter 364: The Oppression of the Red List
The South China Sea in December 1889 was anything but calm.
The steam freighter "Black Seagull," struck from official maritime records, rose and fell with the waves.
Lin Jie sat in the crew's quarters, a parchment sea chart devoid of any official shipping routes spread open on the table before him.
Several conspicuous red X marks, drawn with red ink, dotted the edges of the chart. This was already the fourth day they had been aboard this smuggling vessel.
Lin Jie's fingers tapped lightly on the tabletop, his gaze fixed on the red X marks.
Those were the secret supply points I.A.R.C. had established along the route.
In the ninety-six hours since departing Singapore, Lin Jie had attempted to contact three of them using the Hermes Array's backup frequency bands.
The result was a despairing, dead silence.
The "Lighthouse" liaison station at the entrance to the Strait of Malacca had ceased signal transmission.
A containment faction-affiliated underground safe house on Batam Island had sent back a string of meaningless Morse code twelve hours prior.The legendary "Purger," Henry Ackerman, had, through his will transmitted along the Association's global nerve network, swiftly paralyzed all nodes that might offer aid to the traitors.
This was the true weight of a warrant.
Lin Jie withdrew his fingers, fishing the Round Table badge from his coat. He had to adapt to this state of isolation and helplessness.
In previous operations, whether relying on the Redgrave family's money or utilizing the information networks of Association branches, they had always been able to act under the shelter of some kind of rules.
But now, those rules were shattered. They had become true lone wolves in this dark forest.
A sound of metal scraping came from the corner of the cabin.
Evelyn was sitting on a low stool, a piece of felt cloth spread across her knees.
The [Echo Goggles] were currently disassembled into dozens of precise components, neatly arranged on the felt cloth.
The core of this Grotesque Armament—a translucent crystal derived from the auditory organ of a deep-sea sonar-type UMA—now exhibited a worrying cloudiness.
The crystal's surface was crisscrossed with several cracks, scars left by overloaded operation.
Evelyn wore a single-lens magnifier.
With extreme care, she used forceps to pick up a copper wire thinner than a strand of hair, attempting to re-solder it to the crystal's energy-conducting contact point.
Her movements were agonizingly slow.
Every sway of the ship's hull forced her to pause, readjusting her breathing and the steadiness of her wrist.
It was pure torture.
But in this desperate situation, repairing this equipment was the only thing she could currently control.
"The spiritual energy circuits in the core crystal are thirty percent severed."
"Right now, it's like a patient with cataracts, only able to vaguely sense extremely high-decibel sound wave vibrations."
"Can you fix it?" Lin Jie asked.
"I'm trying to build a bypass circuit."
Evelyn put down the forceps, wiping the sweat from her forehead with the back of her hand.
"Since the internal spiritual energy pathways in the crystal are broken, I'll use copper wire to reconstruct an external circuit."
"But this requires extremely precise technique, and..."
She paused, picking up the cloudy crystal and holding it up to the kerosene lamp's light.
"...it will reduce its sensitivity, and it could shatter at any moment due to a secondary overload."
"I need new materials."
"Or a craftsman with better skill than me."
Lin Jie nodded silently.
On this vast, empty sea, both materials and a skilled craftsman were a luxury.
But he didn't voice this thought.
William was leaning against the opposite side of the cabin, resting with his eyes closed.
This old soldier who had brushed past death's door, after undergoing the reshaping by the [Ghost Mother Flower Nectar], had restored his physical condition to its peak, perhaps even surpassed it.
But he had grown even more silent.
Even in sleep, his right hand remained tightly clenched around his gun case.
It was a warrior's instinct.
Julian sat beside William. The elegant scholar now looked somewhat disheveled.
His shirt collar was open, stubble shaded his chin, and he held a notebook recovered from a Black Lotus Sect Death Soldier.
He was attempting, from an astrological perspective, to reverse-engineer the model concerning the "Projection World."
Just then, hurried footsteps sounded outside the cabin door.
Followed by a rough knock.
"Mr. Lin."
The distinctive voice of the first mate, a muddled mix of Dutch accent and betel nut-stained English, came from outside.
"The Captain asks you to come to the bridge."
"He says the waters ahead are... not right."
Lin Jie stood up, glancing at Evelyn who was still buried in her work and William whose eyes snapped open instantly.
"Stay here."
Lin Jie said in a low voice.
"Keep your weapons within reach, but do not leave this room until I give the signal."
William nodded, his fingers silently flicking open the latch of his gun case.
Lin Jie pulled open the cabin door and followed the first mate through the corridor, climbing the iron ladder leading to the bridge.
The bridge of the Black Seagull was located high up at the ship's stern.
It offered the best view on the entire vessel and served as the brain of this ghost ship.
The light inside the bridge was dim.
Only a massive brass compass and a few pressure gauges emitted a faint, phosphorescent glow.
Captain Van der Decken stood before the helm wheel, a classic seafaring desperado.
He had a face as rough as dried grapefruit peel, his messy gray beard woven with several small, unidentifiable bones.
A black eye patch covered his left eye, while his right eye gleamed with a cunning, greedy light.
Seeing Lin Jie enter, the Captain pointed his pipe toward the sea ahead.
"Look at this, my friend."
"Tell me, what do you see?"
Lin Jie walked to the observation window. The rain outside had stopped, and a thin layer of mist shrouded the sea surface.
But that wasn't the strangest part. The strangest part was the state of the water.
This was the narrow channel between Sumatra and the Malay Peninsula. In theory, it should be turbulent with rough waves and swift currents.
Yet now, the sea before Lin Jie's eyes was as calm as a vast, black mirror.
No waves.
No foam.
Even the wake that should have been produced as the ship cut through the water appeared abnormally faint, as if the viscosity of the seawater itself had increased several times over.
"Too quiet."
Lin Jie narrowed his eyes. Although his [Spiritual Sonar] could only rely on the Cursebreaker Vambrace for vague sensing, he still detected that solidified, dead silence in the air.
"Not even any seabirds."
"Keen observation."
Captain Decken turned around, exhaling a thick plume of smoke.
"Those who make a living on these seas know that when the ocean becomes sticky like glue, when seabirds dare not alight, it means something has arrived."
"Something not belonging to nature."
The Captain walked to the chart table, using a thick finger to tap heavily on a location at the northeastern corner of Sumatra.
"Our current heading is west-northwest. The original plan was to pass through this channel into the Andaman Sea."
"But ten minutes ago, my lookout spotted the wreckage of several ships floating about five nautical miles ahead."
"What kind of ships?" Lin Jie asked.
"Don't know."
The Captain shrugged.
"Because you can't tell what they originally were. Those ships... how to put it... it's as if they were frozen by some immense force, then 'carved' by some invisible engraving tool."
"Carved?"
Lin Jie keenly latched onto that word.
"Yes, carved."
The Captain's expression grew serious, the greedy glint replaced by deep apprehension.
"They take on extremely bizarre shapes. Broken masts hang suspended in mid-air, shattered hull planks maintain the posture of the explosion's instant, like a three-dimensional still-life painting."
A chill ran through Lin Jie's heart.
This description didn't match any natural phenomenon he knew of, nor did it fit the attack patterns of most legendary sea monsters.
"This doesn't seem like the work of those... animals."
Lin Jie looked at the Captain.
"You know who did it, don't you?"
Captain Decken was silent for a moment.
He tapped his pipe, knocking the ashes into a brass ashtray.
"On this route, information is more valuable than gold."
The Captain looked up.
"Before you came aboard, I heard a rumor."
"A madman named Henry Ackerman issued a private bounty."
"Anyone who can bring him your heads, or your corpses, will receive an immunity waiver from your I.A.R.C., plus ten thousand pounds in cash."
Ten thousand pounds—enough to turn any hunter with a shred of reason into the most rabid beast.
"I thought you'd be tempted."
Lin Jie's hands were in his trench coat pockets, but his finger was already on the trigger of [Serene Heart].
"I was tempted."
The Captain grinned, revealing a mouthful of broken, yellowed teeth.
"But I value my life more. I have money, but I need to be alive to spend it. I know what you people are made of. Not something a captain like me, who just hauls contraband, can swallow."
"And besides, the sharks that bounty has attracted are bigger than I imagined."
The Captain refilled his pipe with tobacco, struck a match. The flame illuminated his face.
"Just yesterday, someone spotted a fast ship with black sails in the port of Banda Aceh, northern Sumatra."
"That ship carried only one person."
"A man who likes to wear a white suit and always carries an old-fashioned camera."
Lin Jie's pupils contracted slightly.
White suit.
Old-fashioned camera.
This image rapidly overlapped with a certain entry in the [Record of Elite Investigators] in his mind.
Ranked sixty-second in the Record, a high-ranking freelance hunter notorious for his bizarre methods and neurotic personality.
"You mean..." Lin Jie's voice grew low.
"That's right."
The Captain took a deep drag from his pipe, the exhaled smoke coiling in the bridge's dim space.
"That's 'The Sculptor,' Galliard."
"That madman treats killing as art, the battlefield as his studio."
"His favorite thing is to freeze his prey at the instant between life and death, then slowly savor their collapse."
"Those wrecks floating ahead are probably his masterpieces, and his markers."
The Captain turned, fixing his stare on Lin Jie.
"You are my employer, and also the bloody bait that drew this shark here."
"Tell me, do you want us to turn back?"
"Or do you have a way to deal with that madman blocking our path?"
The sea outside the window remained calm, but beneath that calm, undercurrents were stirring.
Lin Jie walked to the chart. He looked at the spot marked by the Captain's finger, less than five nautical miles away.
For a steam ship at full speed, it was just half an hour's sailing.
But at the end of that half hour, what awaited them was a monster ranked within the top hundred of the Hunter Ranking.
Not a perverted killer like The Smiling Clown, reliant on a single tool.
Nor a beast like the Tongue-Ripper, driven by instinct.
This was a true professional hunter who had mastered a certain rule and honed it to its extreme.
Lin Jie slowly exhaled.
Ackerman's purge wasn't merely about cutting off supplies.
He was using these high-ranking hunters as hounds, step by step compressing the living space of Lin Jie's team, forcing them to reveal a flaw, to be torn apart in despair.
If they didn't clear this route, they would be trapped and die in these stagnant South Seas waters.
"Continue forward."
Lin Jie raised his head. His eyes held no fear, only ice.
"Maintain speed. Do not attempt evasion."
"Since he wants a masterpiece, we'll give him one."
Lin Jie turned and walked toward the cabin door.
"Except, the ones finally frozen on the negative might not be us."
Just as Lin Jie's hand grasped the door handle, the ship's hull suddenly experienced an extremely subtle tremor.
Lin Jie stopped. His intuition told him something was happening, something wrong.
The Captain hadn't noticed the tremor, assuming it was just a change in the current.
But Lin Jie knew it wasn't.
"Captain."
"If you don't want your ship to sink here, you'd best have your men check the bilge."
"And also..."
"Tell the chief engineer to prepare for overloading the steam engine."
"Our troubles might not be limited to just that 'Sculptor.'"
Before the Captain could fully process the meaning of Lin Jie's words, Lin Jie had already pushed open the cabin door and vanished into the sound of wind and waves outside.