After a brief dream, a gust of moisture inexplicably sprayed onto his face, and a woman’s shout came to his ears.

“Lord Li, be careful!”

Li Si woke up. In the ship’s cabin, a thin, tall figure raised a dagger high and stabbed toward him.

“Bang!” Li Si kicked the black shadow away. Su Qin said, “Ji Ming has gone mad.”

The one attempting to assassinate Li Si was Ji Ming. Yue Tianhong and Shan Jie also woke up. The entire ship was shaking violently. Ji Ming let out a ferocious cry and lunged forward again.

“Kill! Kill you evil spirits!” Ji Ming’s eyes stared straight ahead, filled with gray deathly energy.

Li Si shouted, “Get back.”

The ghostly ship from the netherworld suddenly soared upward, as if a giant sea monster wanted to lift the entire ship. Then the ship crashed down heavily, shaking everyone’s ears with buzzing sounds.

Yue Tianhong shouted loudly, “This is bad—the storm has arrived!”

The sea surface turned dark and gloomy, as if the terrifying rainstorm would tear the sea apart. The ghostly ship from the netherworld trembled endlessly. Su Qin let out a heart-stopping scream, and her entire body was thrown into the darkness.

“Su Qin!” Li Si went to rescue Su Qin, but suddenly a stone table slid down and struck Li Si right on the head. Li Si’s vision went black and he fainted.

He didn’t know how much time had passed when a pair of ice-cold hands pressed against his cheeks. Li Si grabbed these hands and at the same time opened his eyes.

The person before him revealed a trace of a smile: “You’ve finally awakened.”

Li Si also smiled bitterly. The person before him was Yue Tianhong.

Yue Tianhong looked completely disheveled. With Yue Tianhong’s support, Li Si climbed to his feet. The small hall was unrecognizable, a complete mess.

“Where are Shan Jie, Ji Ming, and Su Qin?”

Yue Tianhong shook his head and said, “I was knocked unconscious earlier. When I woke up, only you were left in the small hall.”

“This ship hides deadly dangers everywhere. We must hurry and find them,” Li Si said worriedly.

At the end of the corridor was a hall room. On an overturned stone table lay a person sprawled across it. Blood obscured his face, but Yue Tianhong still recognized him at a glance: “Shan Jie!”

Shan Jie was dead!

From his right shoulder to his left abdomen was a penetrating blade wound, deep enough to see bone, almost cleaving him in two.

“Death from excessive blood loss after severe injury,” Li Si said after examining the body.

“Who killed Shan Jie?” Shan Jie had followed Yue Tianhong since childhood. Yue Tianhong had long regarded Shan Jie as half a son.

Li Si said nothing.

“When the storm came, Ji Ming kept saying he would kill the evil spirits! It was him—it must be him who killed Shan Jie!” Yue Tianhong could barely suppress his emotions.

“Ji Ming, where are you?” Yue Tianhong roared angrily as he walked back. From the corner of his eye, Li Si noticed that Shan Jie’s left hand was pressing down on something.

Lifting Shan Jie’s left hand, Li Si saw yet another blue paper.

On the blue paper were two blood-red fingerprints, shockingly vivid.

The blue paper was the same as Xiao Lu’s blue paper, also with only two lines of text:

“Please find the person whose shadow has been devoured. If not found within two days, you will die by body splitting!

You also cannot reveal this to a second person, violators will die together.”

Another death-demanding blue paper. “Find the person whose shadow has been devoured” truly left one utterly confused. Xiao Lu’s blue paper was to find the person with three eyes—how could humans possibly have three eyes?

Li Si’s blue paper was to find the person with three moles on their left hand, which in comparison was still fairly normal.

Regarding the time limits specified on the blue papers, both Xiao Lu and Shan Jie had two days, while Li Si had three days.

One night at sea was equivalent to one day. If Li Si couldn’t find the person with three moles on their left hand by the third night, would he also mysteriously die like Xiao and Shan?

“Crack, crack!” There was movement again in the small hall. Li Si discovered a black shadow in the corner. The shadow’s face was hidden in darkness, with only two hands exposed in the weak dim light.

On the palm of the shadow’s left hand were three black moles.

“Is he the person with three moles on the left hand that I need to find?”

“Who are you?” Li Si asked in a calm tone.

The black shadow said nothing.

“Help! Someone!” A woman’s cry for help came from the corridor. The only woman on the ship was Su Qin. Li Si was startled, and when he raised his head again, the black shadow had disappeared.

A circular black hole had appeared in the thick partition board, leading to the cargo hold on the other side.

Li Si couldn’t abandon Su Qin. He could only give up the idea of chasing the black shadow and go find Su Qin.

Outside the lower hold, Su Qin was fending off two sea monkeys before her.

The sea monkeys’ sharp claws constantly scratched at Su Qin’s arms. Soon her arms had several more wounds. “Get lost!” Li Si grabbed one sea monkey, twisted its neck, and threw it aside.

The second sea monkey shrieked for a while, picked up its companion’s corpse, and fled.

“Su Qin.”

“Don’t come near!” Su Qin waved her hands wildly.

“Don’t be afraid, it’s me.” Li Si shouted loudly. Su Qin slowly opened her eyes. Her fearful, tense emotions finally relaxed. She threw herself into Li Si’s embrace. Li Si gently patted Su Qin and said, “It’s alright now.”

Yue Tianhong rushed over. He had heard Su Qin’s cry and thought Ji Ming was committing murder again.

“Ji Ming doesn’t know where he’s hiding,” Yue Tianhong said somewhat dejectedly.

Li Si informed Su Qin about Shan Jie. Su Qin tightly gripped Li Si’s sleeve and said, “Shan Jie is dead… Could it really be as Ji Ming said—that there are evil spirits on this ship? Will they kill us all one by one?”

“Don’t let your imagination run wild,” Li Si comforted her.

“There may be no evil spirits, but there must certainly be an evil murderer.” Li Si took out the blue papers belonging to Xiao, Shan, and himself and said, “The content of the blue papers is the motive for murder, but these contents are too bizarre. You should also share your thoughts.”

Su Qin had no thoughts.

Yue Tianhong was stunned for a moment, his gaze stopping on Xiao Lu’s blue paper.

On Xiao Lu’s blue paper, the rouge marks covered two characters—specifically the characters for “three” and “eye.” Yue Tianhong showed a surprised and doubtful expression and said, “Could it be referring to Three-Eye Village?”

“Three-Eye Village?” Li Si said.

“My hometown is in Weicheng, Guiyun Province. Three-Eye Village is thirty li west of Weicheng… I once lived in Three-Eye Village,” Yue Tianhong recalled.

“Weicheng, I’ve heard of it. The southern brocade of Weicheng is one of the best in the entire Great World Dynasty. It’s said that because the materials are so demanding, the production is low, so many noble sons from the Holy City deliberately travel far to Weicheng to purchase it at great expense.” When it came to brocade, Su Qin, being a woman, became eloquent.

“It’s that Weicheng that produces southern brocade.”

Li Si saw that Yue Tianhong seemed to have more to say, so he continued to ask, “Brother Yue, do you still have relatives or friends in Three-Eye Village?”

“Alas, I once did.”

“What do you mean?” Su Qin asked.

Yue Tianhong closed his eyes slightly, his thoughts drifting back to the past: “That was about twenty years ago. In my hometown of Weicheng, I had a lady love—a famous embroiderer known far and wide. Her skillful hands could weave brocade as beautiful as the robes of the Moon Palace. We knew each other and stayed together in Three-Eye Village.”

“Later I went to the Holy City to take the imperial examination. There I met the daughter of the prominent Pei family. Miss Pei took a liking to me, but my heart already belonged to another, so I left without saying goodbye and returned to Weicheng. But when I returned to Three-Eye Village, I learned that the embroiderer had died. Somehow she had heard that I had already married Miss Pei in the Holy City. Her heart turned to ash, and in despair she took her own life.” Yue Tianhong sighed regretfully. “After the embroiderer died, Miss Pei and I got married.”

“So Brother Yue has such a heartbreaking past of bitter love,” Li Si said.

“How pitiful,” Su Qin said with reddened eyes.

“The two characters ‘three-eye’ have rouge marks. Could it be ‘Three-Eye Village’? If so, what connection does the evil murderer have with Brother Yue? There are more and more unknown mysteries. Did Brother Yue discover anything else in the remaining two blue papers?” Li Si looked toward Yue Tianhong.

Yue Tianhong shook his head.

“Wait a moment,” Su Qin said.

“Xiao Lu’s blue paper has rouge marks, and Shan Jie’s blue paper also has blood fingerprints.” Su Qin enlightened Li Si. Li Si had been entangled in the mysterious information provided by the blue papers but had overlooked the most superficial things.

The blood fingerprints likewise covered two characters: “shadow devoured.”

A flash of doubt flickered in Yue Tianhong’s eyes. For a moment he couldn’t think of where he had seen or heard this.

Li Si had the same feeling: “What does ‘shadow devoured’ refer to?”

Yue Tianhong could barely conceal his excited expression and said, “I’ve thought of who the person with three eyes is.”

“Who?” Su Qin stared intently at Yue Tianhong and asked.

“Shan Jie.”

Li Si, Yue Tianhong, and Su Qin returned to the hall room where Shan Jie’s corpse lay. On the back of Shan Jie’s head was a scar about two inches long, shaped like a date pit, resembling a human eye.

“The scar was left when Shan Jie fell down a mountain as a child. For a long time, his companions mocked him as ‘the child with a third eye on the back of his head.’ Later, when his hair grew out, no one called him that anymore.” Yue Tianhong gazed at Shan Jie’s death-gray face and said, “I watched Shan Jie grow up. I never imagined that today I would witness this child’s tragic death.”

The scar on the back of Shan Jie’s head was indeed left many years ago.

“The person with three eyes that Xiao Lu’s blue paper sought was Shan Jie,” Li Si said after pondering. “Could it be that all the people we need to find are around us?”

“Who could be the person whose shadow has been devoured, the person with three moles on their left hand?” Su Qin couldn’t come up with an answer.

Outside, the most violent phase of the storm had passed. The three went up to the deck to check. Dark clouds still covered the sky and sun. Heaven and earth were gray and dark. Even face to face, it was difficult to see each other’s expressions clearly.

Yue Tianhong rushed to the cloud carriage. The opposite sea vessel was still pitch black.

Because of the storm, circulating seawater had formed between the two ships, creating whirlpools half a person wide. In such circumstances, it was even more impossible to swim to the opposite side.

The three could only think of another way.