“Lord Li, you stay with Su Qin for a while. I’ll go find something to eat,” Yue Tianhong said.
“We should all go together,” Li Si was uneasy.
Su Qin’s body swayed a few times and she leaned softly into Li Si’s embrace again.
“Su Qin is too weak. I know every detail of this ship’s structure. Even if I encounter danger, I know how to escape.”
“That’s the only way then. Brother Yue, take this with you.” Li Si handed Yue Tianhong the burned-out torch. It could be used for self-defense in a dangerous moment.
The dining hall was behind the helm building. Yue Tianhong walked toward the helm building.
“I’m a bit tired. I want to sleep,” Su Qin closed her eyes. Li Si tested her forehead—it was burning hot. It seemed Su Qin had caught a cold.
He needed to find her some water to drink first, but leaving her alone was worrying. So Li Si carried Su Qin on his back while searching for water.
Every short distance in the ship’s cabin there was a wooden barrel for holding water, but on this ghostly ship from the netherworld all the water barrels were broken. Even the remaining barrels didn’t have half a drop of water. Where could he find water to drink?
Li Si recalled that there were several wooden barrels in the lower hold. He didn’t know if there was still water inside, but at this point he could only go take a look. Moreover, that human-faced monster fish also made Li Si very curious—what kind of fish was it that could look like a human face?
At the entrance to the lower hold was a conspicuous pool of blood, left not long ago.
There were also bloodstains on the wooden ladder behind the cabin door. Li Si had an ominous premonition. He took a breath and leaped down the wooden ladder with Su Qin on his back.
At the same time Li Si entered the lower hold, Yue Tianhong walked out of the dining hall in disappointment. Apart from cold pots and cold stoves, there wasn’t half a bit of edible food. Food was secondary—they could find a way to catch fish to fill their stomachs—but drinking fresh water was truly a problem.
They could only hope that after the storm there would be rain, and they could survive on rainwater. To be surrounded by endless seawater yet possibly die of thirst—wasn’t that heaven’s greatest mockery?
A hatch at the back of the deck had opened—it opened to a cargo hold. The so-called “six-nine cargo to one person” referred to the fact that sea vessels were generally configured with six cargo holds to one passenger cabin, or nine cargo holds to one passenger cabin. Most of the ship’s cabins were cargo holds.
“Tap tap… tap tap!” The sound of rapid running came from inside the pitch-black cargo hold. Yue Tianhong thought to himself, could it be that Ji Ming was frightened and had run into the cargo hold to hide?
Thinking of Shan Jie who died with eyes wide open, anger suppressed his terror of the ghostly ship from the netherworld. Yue Tianhong gripped the torch stick tightly and crawled into the cargo hold.
The cargo hold only had large compartments. The path between compartments was extremely winding and difficult to navigate. Unable to distinguish direction inside the hold, it was like walking through a maze, making one dizzy and disoriented.
Yue Tianhong searched two or three large compartments and was already somewhat confused. He couldn’t help but worry. Better to go back temporarily and return together with Li Si to catch Ji Ming. But just as he turned around, a ghostly white shadow suddenly flashed by and entered a large compartment next door.
Inside this compartment it was clean and empty. Apart from the suffocating emptiness and darkness, there was nothing else.
“Ji Ming, I saw you. Come out.”
The white shadow he had seen at the door earlier floated out like a specter, stopping in the empty space in the middle. A head of jet-black long hair floated lightly in the eerie wind, and white brocade clothing moved slightly.
“Stop playing ghost here. I’m not falling for your tricks.” Yue Tianhong looked at the brocade clothing. This brocade seemed familiar… It looked somewhat like, no, very much like the southern brocade woven by the embroiderer twenty years ago.
“How is this possible?” Yue Tianhong trembled involuntarily. That embroiderer who had known and stayed with him had long since turned to white bones. It was impossible for her to weave southern brocade again.
Yue Tianhong walked step by step behind the white shadow, breathing heavily: “Let me see your true face!”
He grabbed the white shadow. Inside the soft, smooth brocade clothing, beneath the flowing jet-black long hair, was actually a pale white skull.
The skull’s ice-cold eye sockets gazed at Yue Tianhong, just like that… it lowered its head slightly. A mournful, desolate sigh resonated from within the visible bone cavity.
Yue Tianhong only felt his scalp explode, staring with incomparably horrified eyes: “Ghost, an evil ghost!”
Yue Tianhong threw away the torch stick and fled in panic. Behind him, the white shadow merged back into the darkness.
The cargo hold was extraordinarily enormous. Yue Tianhong ran wildly for a long time but couldn’t find an exit. He was already exhausted, but he couldn’t stop, and didn’t dare stop. If he paused even slightly, that terrifyingly pale skull would fill his mind and devour him bit by bit.
“Help! Is anyone there?”
Yue Tianhong’s desperate cries echoed in the depths of the cargo hold…
In the lower hold, Li Si arrived carrying Su Qin on his back.
“Big Brother Li, it’s so cold,” Su Qin opened her eyes slightly and said in a confused voice, then quickly lost consciousness again.
Li Si draped his green robe over Su Qin. In the lower hold, a bloody smell gradually intensified from faint to strong. Against the wooden wall beside the deep green water pool was a person stuck to it.
Li Si recognized his long robe—Ji Ming!
Settling Su Qin in the corner, Li Si walked over and pulled Ji Ming from the wooden wall. Ji Ming had a deep blade wound from his right shoulder to his left abdomen, a gash that almost split him in two!
Ji Ming’s death state was exactly the same as Shan Jie’s—both died from body splitting and blood loss.
“Alas!” Li Si sighed softly, but immediately noticed that Ji Ming’s left hand was clutching a blue paper.
The content of the blue paper left Li Si baffled and confused. It was still two lines of text:
“Please find the repenter in the darkness, who will be exiled for life to the frozen hell. If not found within two days, you will die by body splitting!
You cannot reveal this to a second person, violators will die together.”
This time the target to find was even more complex. “The repenter in the darkness,” “exiled to the frozen hell”—did these refer to a person or a ghost?
Li Si laid the body flat on the ground. At the instant Ji Ming lay down, Li Si suddenly discovered—Ji Ming’s corpse actually had no shadow!
“The person whose shadow has been devoured”… could it be referring to Ji Ming?
Where was his shadow? Ghosts have no shadows, but Ji Ming had just died—how could he become a ghost?
“Splash!” The water pool bubbled up with splashes. That human-faced monster fish that seemed to come from another world emerged from the water.
The monster fish’s tentacles danced in the air. It was unclear from which part of the fish body the sound came—first like a young maiden’s sobbing, then changing to a baby’s loud crying, and after a while becoming a sick person’s long moans.
The human-faced monster fish swam a circle in the pool, its deep blue fish body radiating blue-gold colored light. It seemed somewhat excited, twisting its round, plump body as it dove into the pool and emerged again. The lower hold was like a sunless, moonless night sky, and the blue-gold fish light was like the slowly rising brilliance of the bright moon, eerily dazzling.
Even more astonishing was that the blue-gold light completely disappeared on Ji Ming’s body. At the same time, his light blue robe flickered with blue-gold dark light, as if the robe had devoured the radiance.
“Shadow devour, devouring shadows…” Li Si repeated the characters on Shan Jie’s blue paper.
“I understand!”
“Shadow devour refers to the Shadow-Obscuring Garment.”
Guiyun Province was rich in mineral resources, especially producing some special rare minerals. Some rare minerals could be refined into incomparably sharp sword weapons, some could be refined into elixirs with miraculous effects. Among them was a mineral called Shadow Stone that could absorb light and heat.
Skilled craftsmen dissolved the Shadow Stone into mineral juice, soaked brocade robes in the mineral juice for nine days and nine nights, and it became a Shadow-Obscuring Garment.
The Shadow-Obscuring Garment could absorb heat and sweat in summer. At night it could absorb moonlight to make the body faintly glow, dispelling darkness. Because of this divine effect, Shadow-Obscuring Garments became treasures that noble families competed to possess. Unfortunately, Shadow Stone production was extremely low. In just two years it was exhausted by mining. After that, no more Shadow Stone mines were discovered, and Shadow-Obscuring Garments became a legendary treasure.
Throughout the Great World realm they were commonly called Shadow-Obscuring Garments or Radiance Garments. In Guiyun Province, where the garments were made, workers habitually called them Shadow-Swallowing Garments or Shadow-Devouring Garments. Who would have thought that what Ji Ming wore was an extremely rare Shadow-Devouring Garment, which could absorb light and become shadowless?
The person whose shadow was devoured was Ji Ming. The person with three eyes was Shan Jie.
As for the remaining person with three moles on their left hand, and the repenter in the darkness—who did they refer to…
He couldn’t consider so much now. The human-faced monster fish still flickered with light. With the help of the blue-gold light, Li Si examined the wooden barrels in the lower hold. One of them had residual fresh water. Li Si cupped the fresh water in his hands and fed it to Su Qin.
After drinking the water, Su Qin’s breathing gradually grew louder and more vital.
Li Si set down the heavy stone in his heart but worried about Yue Tianhong again. Since Ji Ming was not the murderer who killed Shan and Xiao, then the murderer must still be at large. Yue Tianhong was in critical danger.
Suddenly a dark shadow came behind him. Li Si whirled around—it was actually Yue Tianhong with a face full of lingering fear.
Yue Tianhong had finally escaped from the cargo hold with great difficulty and rushed back to the ship’s cabin, but couldn’t find Li Si and Su Qin. He wandered in the vast ship’s cabin until he also discovered the bloodstains outside the lower hold door, and so entered the lower hold.
“Brother Yue, why do you look so terrible?” Li Si asked.
Yue Tianhong saw the tragically dead Ji Ming: “Ah, a ghost! Ji Ming was right—there really is an evil spirit on this ship!”