Chapter 12: Ghost Ship (V)
Luo Jian stumbled around the hold of the ship, and he eventually went to one of the crew cabins with Feng Yu Lan to find some clothes. There was only one bed, but that was more than enough to let a poor, shivering Feng Yu Lan rest comfortably. Along the way, Luo Jian didn’t dare take unnecessary steps for he feared that something strange hidden in the dark would suddenly pop out and attack them.
When he got to the place, Luo Jian surveyed the area once more. The crew cabin was tiny and quaint; there was a bed, a wardrobe, a small desk, and a chair. After double checking and finding nothing amiss, Luo Jian carried Ah Lan to the bed and gently laid him down, then he walked back to the door and locked it from inside. The oil lamp he held cast a dim light, faintly illuminating the small space. Luo Jian then placed a couple of items on the desk: a logbook, a cross pendant, a note with a purple design, and a silver pocket watch.
After that, he carefully patted Feng Yu Lan down, meticulously searching every part of his body. The other barely carried items on his body; there seemed to be nothing in his thin, hospital gown. After searching for a long time, Luo Jian finally found a familiar printed slip of paper on him, and he picked it up, looking it over. Both he and Luo Jian entered the chamber at the same time, except this was Feng Yu Lan’s first chamber experience, and he had to escape from the box within an hour. But Feng Yu Lan clearly wasn’t able to succeed. In the end, Luo Jian was the one who found him and opened the box for him, allowing him to escape.
After reading the message on the card, Luo Jian puzzled over the few hints. Determining that the hints were of little value, he flipped the paper over to see what was written on the back. Surprisingly, the passage written on the back of Feng Yu Lan’s note was completely different to that written on Luo Jian’s note.
【The sailing vessel entered the thick, illusory fog; the sailors could no longer find their way out. They endlessly panicked, they futilely struggled, the overwhelming anguish penetrated their minds. They were forever doomed for despair, to suffer day after day. The captain was the first one to break down under the agonizing pressure. The dark, coercing fog and the despondent blackness of the sea gave rise to the wicked devils in his heart. He instigated a few loyal, deranged crewmates to attack a passenger on the ship. The unfortunate victim had every limb of his broken, and the poor fellow was shoved into a narrow box. A whole month passed, different people disappeared one after another; many passengers on the ship died by the day. The boxes in the storeroom increased; the stacks became taller, higher. It was as if the souls could reach the skies; they could fly to the heavens one by one. But, alas, no one ever escaped from this boundless fog.】
Luo Jian finished reading the passage, and he noted a few things.
First, he and Feng Yu Lan both had different messages written on their respective slips of paper. The messages changed according to the condition of the environment, that was to say, their situation.
Second, several clues were written on the back of their notes, and there was also a direct connection between both passages. The two passages were parts of a whole, and they had to be pieced together in order to obtain the true, full passage.
Third, if Luo Jian gave up on searching for his partner, and if he failed to rescue Feng Yu Lan in time, he would’ve been left with only one incomplete passage. And he most likely would have lost an opportunity to find a faster way to escape from this place!
In conclusion, the chambers wouldn’t set up a scenario that was one hundred percent hopeless. Everyone had an opportunity to escape. The chance of two people escaping was infinitely greater than that of a single person. Therefore, having a companion wasn’t merely better, it was vital for survival. In this regard, the chamber seemed to promote teamwork.
Luo Jian frowned as he contemplated. He sat right beside Feng Yu Lan and then, without a second thought, he reached out to feel Feng Yu Lan’s forehead. A slight fever. That wasn’t a good sign. That only meant that their next actions would greatly fall short of what he had planned. If there were any accidents, and Luo Jian and Feng Yu Lan happened to separate from each other, Feng Yu Lan definitely wouldn’t be able to defend himself against a monster.
“Don’t think about the monsters, concentrate on the riddles,” Luo Jian willed himself, and he began to parse the contents on the two sheets of paper.
Originally, this ghost ship was a pirate vessel. They looted treasures and confiscated anything of value, but no later, they accidentally sailed through the Bermuda Triangle—also known as the Devil’s Triangle. Numerous ships and even planes went missing after venturing into this sea, never to be found again. The most perilous sea, a sea filled with mysteries, filled with the unknown, that was, precisely, the Devil’s Triangle.
Which meant, according to the clues on Feng Yu Lan’s note, the ship sailed into a dark, vast fog. Then it completely lost its way. The heavy mist shrouded the sun, devouring its rays and obscuring everything in sight. As time went on, the crewmates grew restless with panic, plagued with desolation. Chaos soon erupted. The first to cause a disturbance on board was the captain of the ship. The first victim—Luo Jian suddenly thought of the body crammed in the wooden box on the deck.
There were still a couple of details Luo Jian couldn’t comprehend. For instance, that box on the deck and the dead body inside. Why wasn’t it stacked in the storage room like the other boxes and bodies? It was just sitting alone on the deck, fully exposed to the changing weather.
Furthermore, that eerie photo on the corpse.
As well as the inexplicable disappearance of that feline creature’s remains.
Yet, as a matter of fact, these details could be ignored by Luo Jian, as they were irrelevant, completely unrelated to the main clues. For the sake of simplicity, the props may have been deliberately arranged like that to let Luo Jian find the exit with ease. After all, the chamber itself was illogical; therefore, the many irrational circumstances and unreasonable plots no longer appeared to be startling or bizarre.
Luo Jian sighed. He was feeling drained, both physically and mentally. However, mental tasks obviously consumed more energy than physical activities, he wasn’t even feeling this exhausted when he went up against that creature. And so, he decided to lay down next to Feng Yu Lan and silently pulled the thick covers over their bodies.
Luo Jian was so tired. He just wanted to fall asleep, but he couldn’t. They only had six hours to stay on this ship, and time often flew by fast when people slept. Luo Jian would probably die while dreaming.
But drowsiness gradually descended upon him. Luo Jian yawned and eventually succumbed to the sleep. Under the flickering light, the hand of the silver pocket watch on the table ticked by. About half an hour later, Luo Jian woke up with a start, dazedly looking around. As he slowly gained awareness, he noticed Feng Yu Lan tossing and turning, groaning while clutching his head.
“Head is dizzy! Mouth is thirsty!” Feng Yu Lan woke up muttering these words. He came to realize that his surroundings seemed to be different. He swiveled around to see Luo Jian beside him, and he was stunned for a moment, but in the very next second, he suddenly flung himself into Luo Jian’s arms, sobbing pathetically, tears streaming down his cheeks, “Ah Jian! I just had a nightmare!”
Luo Jian was rather perplexed, but he still followed up with a question, “What kind of nightmare?”
“I dreamt that you trapped me in a child’s coffin for very long time. I was struggling so much inside but you were just standing outside, laughing like crazy!” Feng Yu Lan sniffed and hiccupped, pitifully sprawling himself on top of Luo Jian’s body, glaring at him accusingly, “Ah Jian! How could you do this to me! You don’t love me anymore!”
“Look at what this boy is saying! Still dreaming, huh?” Luo Jian was beyond gobsmacked when he heard this. He roughly whacked the top of Feng Yu Lan’s head. Feng Yu Lan pawed at his hands, then covered his head and continued to whine miserably, “Don’t hit! Don’t hit! Will become stupid!”
When Feng Yu Lan finally recovered, he noticed that the situation seemed to have changed. He glanced around the small locked room then tugged on Luo Jian’s sleeve, trembling and asking, “Ah Jian, where are we?”
“A ghost ship.” Luo Jian didn’t know how to explain the situation, so he could only give a brief statement.
“Ghost ship… …?” His voice faltered. The two people suddenly felt the hull beneath them rock violently, as if a massive tidal wave struck. At the same time, Luo Jian vaguely heard the sound of the heavy rain pouring down on the surface of the water. The seas were raging outside, signaling the comings of a storm.
“Are we really on a ship?!” Feng Yu Lan incredulously demanded, “What are we even doing on a ship?! It’s so dark!”
There was only an oil lamp, which was nearly burnt out, in this room. The depressing glow of the light only added to small room’s dismal mood. Feng Yu Lan looked back at Luo Jian, fear evident in his eyes. Luo Jian got up from the bed. His leather sheath was fastened at his waist, conveniently allowing him to draw his knife and examine it.
Feng Yu Lan trembled even more witnessing this scene.
He swallowed his thick saliva, cautiously probing, “Jian, what are you going to do with that knife?”
Luo Jian subconsciously licked his lips and uttered two words, “To kill1!”
Immediately after, Luo Jian explained a bit to Feng Yu Lan about their current predicament, about the circumstances regarding the chamber, and later, he left the crew cabin; a dazed Feng Yu Lan with a bewildered expression on his face followed him from behind. They still needed to find the exit, and not one place here was entirely safe.
In order to save time, Luo Jian showed the logbook written in English to Feng Yu Lan as they walked; he remembered that Feng Yu Lan’s English was exceptional. In fact, he majored in English in university, then entered a foreign company to work, connecting and meeting with a whole bunch of foreigners. Later on, he had no intentions of continuing, so he resigned, and afterwards, he decided to give a try at translating.
Putting all his faith on Feng Yu Lan, Luo Jian pushed the logbook to his hands. Ah Lan was feeling rather distraught, but he had no choice. He scrunched his brows and pursed his lips trying to read the illegible and distorted cursive writings in the dim lighting. In the end, he helplessly complained, “It’s too dark…and…this person’s writing just looks like a whole bunch of scribbles…and…the log is too old, a lot of the words are blurred!”
“That’s not important! You can just read out whatever you do understand! There will always be some clues!” Luo Jian presence was domineering at this moment. He stood directly in front, leading Feng Yu Lan with one hand and gripping his knife in the other. Since one of his hands was being held by Luo Jian’s, Feng Yu Lan carried the logbook in his other hand and silently bowed his head. He began to read slowly and carefully.
“The time is…um…it began on August 6, 1655, the mid-seventeenth century… The captain was the one to write in this logbook, but I can’t see the name because it’s too sloppy to read. Let’s see…the first day of fog…the wind direction, distance, time, course of action and all the like are all recorded down, and the captain sums everything up in a sentence: Even the fog cannot stop our ambitions.”
“The direction of the wind isn’t important to us. Just say the time and everything else that the captain mentioned at the end, whatever he concluded with.” Luo Jian continued holding onto Feng Yu Lan’s hand and advanced cautiously, constantly remaining in vigilance and warily glancing in all directions while carefully paying attention to Feng Yu Lan’s words at the same time. Although it was slightly difficult, it was still manageable.
“Okay.” Feng Yu Lan understood what Luo Jian was trying to get at, and he continued on with reading aloud:
“On August 7th, the navigator stated that the weather would soon clear up. Incidentally, the weather has been nothing but gloomy fog and blasted rain all day.”
“On August 8th, a minor skirmish broke out between Jerry and Luke. The rain still hasn’t stopped.”
“On August 10th…”
“Wait.” Luo Jian interrupted, a frown marked his face. “August 9th?”
“I don’t know. The page was ripped off.”
“Well, let’s speculate then. Maybe that small conflict turned into a huge mess, and then something terrible happened that made the captain feel like he shouldn’t mention it, so the captain decided it had to be erased from the logbook?”
“What could it be? Could someone have died?”
“No no no, even if someone died, the captain wouldn’t intentionally tear the page off. You have to know that this ship was originally a pirate ship. The men on board were all convicts. Perhaps even the deadliest of killers. Not to mention, it was also between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, which was the era of chaos. So, it wouldn’t be surprising if one or two people died.”
“Since it’s not related to someone’s death, then what could it be?”
Luo Jian thought about it for a moment, then chuckled, “Well, this ship’s known as the Ghost Ship now. Perhaps it truly has something to do with ghosts.”