1888: Memoirs of an Unconfirmed Creature Hunter

Chapter 366: Parasitic Anchor Block

At that moment, the sailing ship suddenly shook. Lin Jie quickly moved to the railing at the stern.

He looked down at the seawater beneath his feet, his brow slightly furrowed.

"This isn't right. This situation has occurred several times already."

According to normal sailing logic, this 1,500-ton displacement steam freighter, at full speed ahead, should be dragging a long, churning trail of white foam behind the stern.

But right now, there were only a few faint ripples there.

As soon as those ripples formed, they were instantly smoothed over as if by some invisible gravity, quickly disappearing beneath the pitch-black water surface.

This defied fluid dynamics, and even more so, defied common physics.

The deck beneath his feet transmitted abnormal tremors.

The sound was like an ox, long exhausted, dragging a load far exceeding its capacity, struggling to trudge through a muddy bog.

"Speed is dropping."William walked over, holding his gun. His voice was very low, his eyes warily scanning the thick fog surrounding them.

"I just went to the engine room."

A trace of barely concealed worry showed on the veteran's face.

"The boiler pressure has hit the red warning line. The chief engineer is screaming wildly, ordering the stokers to shovel in all the high-quality coal."

"According to the gauge readings, the ship's current output power has reached one hundred and twenty percent of its designed peak."

"But at this power level, our speed..."

William paused, glancing at the vast, featureless sea.

"...our speed is barely five knots."

Five knots.

For a smuggling ship fleeing for its life, with pursuers possibly appearing at any moment behind them, this was almost equivalent to being stationary.

"It's not a current problem."

Lin Jie shook his head. His fingers lightly tapped the railing, feeling the heavy, sluggish feedback transmitted from deep within the ship's hull.

"If it were a counter-current, the resistance from the bow cutting through waves would be enormous, and the hull would pitch violently."

"But right now, the hull is extremely stable. Too stable."

"It's like..."

Lin Jie narrowed his eyes, searching for the right words.

"...like the ship's weight has multiplied several times over the past few hours."

A clamor of argument came from the direction of the bridge.

Immediately after, Captain Deken rushed out, furious and flustered.

He still clutched his pipe, but it wasn't filled with tobacco now; instead, it was clenched between his yellowed teeth, grinding audibly.

"Damn it! What the hell is going on!"

The captain roared at the sailors on the deck, but the anger in his single eye was mixed with something more—a deep-seated, bone-chilling fear.

"Check the waterline! Go check the waterline now!"

"Has the bilge sprung a leak? Or is that damn chief engineer slacking off?"

"Captain, the bilge isn't leaking!"

The first mate ran over, sweating profusely, his face as pale as paper.

"I checked two days ago. All watertight compartments are dry, not even a single rat."

"But... the waterline has indeed deepened."

The first mate's voice trembled.

"Two full meters deeper than when we departed! And it's still sinking further!"

Two meters.

This meant the ship had gained hundreds of tons of weight out of thin air.

But how was that possible?

They hadn't loaded any new cargo, and there was no water ingress. Where did this extra weight come from?

Unless something was clinging to the ship's bottom.

"Stop it."

Lin Jie's voice suddenly cut in, interrupting the captain and first mate's panic.

"What?"

The captain turned, looking at Lin Jie as if he were insane.

"Stop the ship?"

"There are mad dogs chasing us behind, and ahead is a godforsaken place not even marked on the charts. And you want me to stop now?"

"If we stop, we'll become sitting ducks!"

"If you don't stop, this ship will soon sink to the seabed."

Lin Jie's tone brooked no argument. His black eyes stared directly at the captain, radiating a calm that was impossible to refute.

"This ship is 'getting heavier.'"

"And this process of gaining weight seems to be directly proportional to the steam engine's output power."

"If you don't want to be crushed to death by your own power, order the chief engineer to shut down the engines immediately."

The captain froze.

Though he was a rough smuggler, having made his living on the sea for decades, he also possessed an instinctive intuition for danger.

Lin Jie was right.

The faster the steam engine turned, the slower the ship became, and the deeper it sank.

It was as if... the power itself had turned into weight.

"Stop!"

Gritting his teeth, the captain roared into the speaking tube.

"Tell the engine room to vent pressure immediately! Shut the main valves! Make this damned iron beast stop!"

As the order was given, the deep rumbling from within the ship gradually weakened.

The black smoke billowing from the chimney thinned, and the violent tremor running through the entire ship also subsided.

Propelled by inertia, the Black Seagull glided forward a distance before finally coming to a complete stop on this deathly still sea surface.

The surroundings were terrifyingly quiet.

Only the occasional sound of metal contracting from the cooling pipes broke the silence.

"Is the weight still increasing?" Lin Jie asked.

The first mate leaned over the railing, staring fixedly at the waterline markings on the ship's side.

After several minutes, he finally let out a long breath and shouted back:

"It's... it's stopped!"

"The waterline isn't dropping anymore!"

The captain wiped the cold sweat from his face. He slumped wearily against the helm, looking at this bizarre sea with superstitious eyes.

"This is a curse."

The captain muttered to himself, his voice hoarse and low.

"This is the 'Drowned One's Embrace.'"

"What?"

Julian walked over, holding several thick logbooks. He happened to hear the captain's words.

"It's a legend that's been circulating in these South Seas waters for a long time."

The captain refilled his pipe with tobacco. His hand trembled slightly; it took several attempts to strike a match.

The flame illuminated his weathered face, making it appear especially sinister.

"Old sailors say that in the deepest parts of this sea, lives a kind of invisible ghost."

"They are the greedy souls swallowed by the ocean."

"When a ship sails too fast, or carries too much ill-gotten wealth, these ghosts quietly climb onto the ship's bottom."

"They won't breach the hull, nor will they stir up storms."

"They just... hug the keel."

The captain took a deep drag of his pipe, the smoke he exhaled lingering in the stagnant air.

"The harder you row, the more desperately you burn coal, the tighter they cling."

"They'll suck away your strength, turning that strength into stone-like weight."

"Until they drag the ship alive into the abyss, making it their new grave."

"I always thought that was just a ghost story."

The captain's gaze fell upon the pitch-black sea, his eyes filled with terror.

"Until today."

"This isn't normal."

Julian adjusted his glasses. His scholarly instincts made him instinctively want to refute this baseless claim.

"Kinetic energy can't just vanish into thin air, let alone transform into mass out of nowhere."

"Unless..."

Julian suddenly stopped.

He remembered the anomaly of this sea area on the star chart.

This was a Spiritual Blind Zone.

Here, the laws of physics might not be absolute ironclad rules.

"Unless it's a creature with a special conversion mechanism."

Lin Jie picked up the thread.

He walked to the edge of the deck, took off his Black Mercury trench coat, and handed it to William beside him.

Then he began unbuttoning his shirt, revealing his upper body.

"What are you doing?"

Evelyn emerged from the cabin, holding the pair of glasses she had just half-repaired, which still looked quite crude.

"Going down to take a look."

Lin Jie said while stretching his joints, checking the belt and leg bindings around his waist.

"Legends are often distorted projections of reality."

"The ghosts the captain speaks of are most likely a type of UMA we've never recorded."

"Since it likes clinging to the ship's bottom, I'll go meet it."

"Too dangerous."

William frowned, instinctively wanting to stop him.

"We don't know how deep it is down there, and if there's something aggressive..."

"We're out of time."

Lin Jie cut William off.

"If we don't want to be trapped here to death, we must figure out what's dragging us down."

"And."

Lin Jie pointed at the water surface, unnervingly calm.

"Don't you think this water is too 'dead'?"

"This kind of environment suits me perfectly."

With that, Lin Jie took a sharp sailor's knife handed to him by William and clenched it between his teeth.

He took a deep breath, slowly adjusting his bodily functions to their optimal state.

Lin Jie climbed over the railing and, like a flying fish entering the water, slipped silently into the pitch-black seawater.

The moment he entered the water, a piercing cold enveloped his entire body.

The water temperature here was much lower than expected.

And the texture of the water was very strange.

It wasn't refreshing like ordinary seawater; instead, it had a nauseating viscosity, like swimming through a pool of diluted glue.

Light rapidly disappeared.

Lin Jie opened his eyes.

Though visibility was extremely poor in these turbid underwater conditions, he could still make out the outlines of his surroundings.

He slid down along the ship's hull, covered in barnacles and seaweed.

The further down he went, the stronger the oppressive, unsettling feeling grew.

When he reached near the keel, the sight before him made his pupils contract sharply.

The ship's bottom wasn't empty.

Countless grayish-white, translucent objects densely covered it.

They didn't look like any known marine creature.

Neither barnacles nor shellfish.

They more closely resembled irregularly shaped, massive crystals made of some kind of keratinous layer, or perhaps some kind of pathological hyperplastic tissue.

These things covered the entire ship's bottom like a thick layer of armor, especially around the propeller and the load-bearing parts of the keel.

This was the "ghost" the captain spoke of.

Lin Jie swam closer.

He reached out, tentatively touching one of the largest crystals.

The texture was hard, cold, yet with a subtle elasticity.

The moment his fingers touched the crystal's surface, he felt an extremely faint suction force.

Lin Jie tried tapping the crystal with the sailor's knife in his hand.

At that moment, something bizarre happened.

The crystal didn't shatter. On the contrary, as the force of Lin Jie's strike landed, that originally fist-sized crystal visibly expanded a full circle.

Its color also deepened from grayish-white, as if it had devoured the kinetic energy of Lin Jie's strike, converting it into its own solid matter.

Lin Jie's heart tightened.

He immediately stopped moving, suspended in the water, carefully observing these bizarre creatures.

They were alive.

Though they had no eyes, no tentacles, no obvious organs.

Lin Jie activated his Reverberation Touch.

Though the ability's effectiveness would be greatly diminished underwater, he still managed to capture a trace of primitive information emanating from these creatures.

Hunger.

An extreme hunger for "motion."

They attached themselves to moving objects, greedily absorbing all mechanical kinetic energy, vibrations, even impact forces generated by the host.

In this process, they would convert these intangible energies into high-density solid mass.

This explained why the faster the ship went, the deeper it sank.

The immense thrust generated by the steam engine wasn't used to propel the ship forward; instead, it was entirely "eaten" by these parasites, becoming dead weight that crushed the ship.

It was a perfect natural trap.

If you tried to shake it off forcefully, it would become heavier.

If you tried to blast it open with explosives, the shockwave would only cause it to instantly expand into a mountain, directly crushing through the ship's bottom.

This was a dead end.

Unless you could find a method, in this completely still world, to detach them without using "kinetic energy."

Lin Jie felt the oxygen in his lungs was about to run out.

He didn't linger any longer. With a kick of his legs, he swam toward the surface.

"Splash."

Lin Jie broke the surface. He grabbed the lowered rope ladder and quickly climbed onto the deck.

Everyone gathered around.

The captain stared at him nervously. William handed him a dry towel. Evelyn held her notebook, ready to record.

"How was it?"

Julian asked urgently.

"What's down there?"

Lin Jie wiped the seawater from his face. His complexion was somewhat pale, a result of losing body heat.

"The captain was right, and also wrong."

Lin Jie put on his trench coat, feeling the warmth the garment provided.

"There is indeed something down there, but not dead ghosts."

"It's a kind of living anchor. A parasitic anchor."

Lin Jie briefly described his underwater discovery and the creature's unique "kinetic energy absorption" characteristic.

After hearing Lin Jie's description, everyone fell silent. This news was worse than encountering a pack of man-eating sharks.

"So that means..."

The first mate swallowed hard, his voice trembling.

"We can't sail, and we can't smash them off?"

"As long as we move, they'll get heavier?"

"Then aren't we just waiting here to die?"

Captain Deken's face turned ashen. He plopped down on a bollard, his eyes vacant as he stared at the fog ahead.

"It's over."

"Not a single ship embraced by the Drowned One has ever escaped."

"We'll slowly exhaust our fresh water and food, finally becoming a ship full of dried corpses, sinking to the seabed along with the ship."

Despair spread across the deck like a plague.

The sailors began whispering among themselves; some even started praying.

"Not necessarily."

Julian suddenly spoke up.

He adjusted his glasses, excitement gleaming in his eyes.

He picked up the sea chart and drew a line within the ellipse representing the Spiritual Blind Zone.

"Though this creature's existence defies conventional physics, in the field of mysticism, any conversion has its price and conditions."

Julian looked at Lin Jie.

"You said just now, they are 'translucent, keratinous,' and have 'spiritual light points' pulsating inside?"

"Correct." Lin Jie nodded.

"That means their energy conversion isn't instantaneous, nor is it unlimited."

Julian paced on the deck, his speech speeding up.

"Converting kinetic energy into mass must involve a 'digestion' process in between."

"Just like humans eating."

"If we can find the weakness in their 'digestive system,' or cut off the medium through which they absorb energy, this conversion will stop."

"Medium?" William asked.

"Yes, medium."

Julian pointed at the deck beneath their feet.

"They must be in close contact with the ship's hull to absorb vibrations."

"What do they rely on? Suckers? Mucus? Or some kind of spiritual connection?"

"If it's a spiritual connection..."

Evelyn suddenly interjected. She raised her left hand wearing the Tesla Coil Glove, a faint blue electric arc dancing at her fingertips.

"...then I might have a way to interfere with them."

"Electromagnetic waves and high-frequency currents can disrupt biological nerve signals, so they might also sever this spiritual connection."

"But..."

Evelyn frowned.

"This requires extremely precise frequency control."

"And my glove's power isn't enough to cover the entire ship's bottom."

"We don't need to cover the entire ship's bottom."

Lin Jie's eyes lit up.

His mind rapidly constructed a bold tactical model.

"We only need to detach one piece."

"One core piece."

Lin Jie looked at the captain, the man who had just been utterly despairing now staring at them blankly.

"Captain, you must have something like this on your ship, right?"

Lin Jie gestured a shape.

"Those long-handled tools used to pry open heavy objects, or to cut ropes in emergencies."

"You mean... a crowbar?" The captain was taken aback.

"Not just a crowbar."

Lin Jie shook his head.

"I need a more precise tool."

"We're going to perform surgery on this ship."

Lin Jie walked to William's side and patted the box containing the hunting rifle.

"William, the gun is temporarily useless, but I need your hands."

William didn't hesitate at all. He nodded.

"At your command."

"Julian, you need to calculate the nodes of these creatures' arrangement."

"Evelyn, you need to adjust your glove's frequency, prepare for that moment of pulse interference."

Lin Jie turned to look at the vast sea.

The fog seemed to have thickened.