novelraw Chapter 209: Clothing, a Whale, and Falling Overboard
Chapter 209: Clothing, a Whale, and Falling Overboard
The boat's wake vanished into the gray fog.
Unmanned, the small wooden boat glided silently forward. Lu Li rotated his wrist, letting the Contamination Detector tick softly.
As the fog rolled in, the boat felt completely cut off from the world.
The Contamination Detector emitted a faint, slow, steady clicking that neither quickened nor faded. It seemed the source of the mental degradation wasn't a specific entity, but the fog itself.
There was no wind, no sound of lapping waves. The sea was as still as a windless lake.
Lu Li started to draw the Spirit Gun from its holster, but as his senses reached out into the surrounding space, he slid it back. For a fleeting moment, he had felt a faint, sinister presence, but he detected no anomalies.
For Lu Li, adrift on a vast, empty ocean, this was good news.
Still, he couldn't figure out where the strange fog had come from—whether it had risen from the depths of the sea or emanated from the hurricane's eye.
Clenching the flashlight between his teeth, Lu Li took up the oars. He began to row smoothly, careful not to make a sound, guiding the boat toward the spot where he remembered the sailing ship being.
The oars broke the water's stillness, sending ripples spreading across the surface until they vanished into the darkness beyond the reach of his oil lamp.Time slipped by. After a few minutes, Lu Li stopped rowing. He had returned to the spot where he'd first lowered the boat into the water. He stood and raised the lamp.
The dim light illuminated only a small patch of sea around him. There was no sign of the ship, no shouts from the crew, no strange waves.
The three-masted ship had vanished.
Not a sound broke the dead silence of the sea.
The ship couldn't have sailed away that quickly. Something must have happened, or perhaps he was the one who was off course...
Click... Click-click...
Suddenly, the clicking of the detector on his wrist grew faster.
His dark eyes narrowed. Lu Li’s hand went to his belt as he scanned the surroundings.
Click-click-click...
The interval between the clicks was definitely shortening. Something was approaching the boat.
Anything could emerge from the sea fog. Without hesitation, Lu Li drew the Spirit Gun.
His senses picked up a dark presence—not around him, but beneath the waves. It was rising quickly toward the surface.
He immediately aimed the flashlight's beam at the water. A shadow was circling in the dark depths around his boat.
It was a set of pale gray, tattered clothes. The garments swirled in the water, taking on the vague shape of a human figure, as if worn by an invisible body.
The moment the flashlight beam touched the strange clothing, it shot toward the surface as if startled, its sleeves wrapping around an oar resting against the boat's side.
Lu Li quickly grabbed the oar while his other hand tightened its grip on the Spirit Gun, aiming it at the clothing in the water.
He didn't fire.
His senses detected more dark entities rising from the depths, all closing in on the boat.
Click... Click-click...
The detector's clicking grew more frequent.
The force pulling on the oar wasn't overwhelming. Lu Li calmly watched the clothes tug at the wood, and then he let go.
The freed oar was instantly dragged beneath the surface. The second oar vanished right after it.
The dark shapes swirled in the water, then plunged with the oars into the bottomless depths, fading from Lu Li's perception.
Click... Click... Click...
The detector's rhythm returned to normal. Lu Li lowered the Spirit Gun and tucked it back into his belt.
In the end, he had decided not to fire.
Losing the oars a hundred and fifty kilometers from shore was the lesser evil compared to attracting some other anomaly with a gunshot.
In the dead silence of the open sea, the sound of a gunshot could carry for a kilometer, perhaps even further.
Lu Li sat back down in the boat. Ripples disturbed the water for a moment, then vanished.
Not the slightest breeze stirred the air. Without oars, the boat was dead in the water. All he could do was wait for the fog to lift and hope the ship would reappear.
Assuming, of course, that nothing had happened to it, and that it hadn't simply sailed on without him.
The water around the boat reflected the lamplight, fracturing it into distorted, shimmering patches.
The brief respite soon came to an end. Lu Li noticed the fog around him was beginning to thin.
He raised the lamp and realized it wasn't a trick of the light—the fog was genuinely receding.
The detector's clicks slowed. Visibility improved, a breeze picked up, and the gray shroud around him began to dissipate.
Lu Li held the lamp high. Beyond its small circle of light, an impenetrable darkness still reigned.
And on the vast ocean, there was still only his small boat.
Then, a long, mournful, low-pitched sound carried across the sea.
Lu Li turned toward the source of the sound. It was distant, as if slowed to a crawl—the mournful call of a whale.
The whale song echoed across the open water, a sound that filled the soul with an involuntary sense of sorrow and weight.
Lu Li lowered the lamp toward the water. An immense shadow passed through the dark depths below.
Suddenly, a geyser of spray erupted nearby. Lu Li pulled up the hood of his slicker just as a torrent of water crashed down on the boat.
Mixed in with the water were black, viscous flakes of some unknown substance. They carried an unbearable stench.
Lu Li recalled a news story he'd read a few days ago about a dead whale that had washed ashore, and he understood why this whale's call was so full of pain.
The black substance splattered his slicker, but none touched his skin.
Another geyser of spray erupted, and the whale's dying cry became even more drawn-out and agonizing.
A silhouette broke the surface, parting the waves. The whale had emerged.
It had long pectoral fins. In the lamp's dim glow, Lu Li recognized it as a humpback whale.
Its body was covered in barnacles. But now, both the whale and the crustaceans clinging to it were coated in the black, oil-like substance.
The whale appeared to be on the verge of death. It drifted helplessly on the surface, surrounded by the black sludge.
Lu Li suddenly realized what was happening and glanced down. The bottom of his boat was also stained with the substance.
The whale's life was fading. It began to roll uncontrollably, its white belly turning toward the sky.
Just as Lu Li was trying to figure out how to get away from the dying leviathan, the unexpected happened!
The dying whale, its life nearly spent, suddenly began to thrash about. The death throes of the fifteen-meter giant churned the sea into a frenzy!
Caught too close, the small boat took an accidental blow. The whale's fluke slammed into the water beside it, raising a massive wave. The boat capsized, plunging Lu Li, his backpack, and the lamp into the icy sea!
The lamp's light flickered a few times, then died.
Only the sound of churning water remained.