The Abyss Gazes Back

1888, Indian Ocean.

The metal skeleton of the steam freighter Sea Witch groaned rhythmically amidst the relentless monsoon winds.

The air in the hold was as thick as semi-solid grease, churning together the charred stench of coal ash, the rancid odor of machine oil, the sour rot of sweat, and the putrid reek of vomit into a corrosive poison capable of dissolving a person's will.

In this floating hell, Lin Jie curled up in a corner too cramped to stretch his legs, doing his best to keep his breathing steady and long.

A shrill, miserable scream tore through the gloom of the hold without warning, followed immediately by the dull, crisp snap of leather whipping against flesh.

A gaunt, sallow-faced laborer collapsed from exhaustion due to dysentery and was instantly dragged out by a tall Indian overseer, the rough wooden planks carving bloody welts into his back.

Lin Jie's eyelids merely twitched; he did not look up.

He had long since grown accustomed to it; ever since he was tricked onto this ship as a "piglet" at the port of Guangzhou two months ago, scenes like this had become a daily norm.

The result of resistance was being sunk to the bottom of the sea; numbness was the only way to survive.

Yet, unlike his fellow captives who resigned themselves to their fate with hollow eyes, the gaze hidden beneath Lin Jie's messy hair always held a clarity and scrutiny that did not belong to this era.

"Trash! If you can't crawl up, go feed the sharks!" the overseer cursed in heavily accented English, kicking the man hard in the ribs with his leather boot.

No one pleaded for mercy.

Everyone watched the scene in silence, like a herd of livestock waiting to be slaughtered. In the shadows where no one could see, Lin Jie's fingernails dug deeply into his palms.

He was not truly numb. As a history student from the 21st century who had accidentally fallen into this barbaric era, he understood his situation better than anyone else.

There was no law, no human rights, only the most naked law of the jungle.

His knowledge was worthless in the face of absolute violence; the only thing he could do was disguise himself as a harmless sheep, absorbing all the information around him while waiting for the one-in-ten-thousand chance of survival that might never come.

It was time for food distribution. A spoonful of viscous paste that could barely be identified as oatmeal was roughly dumped into everyone's wooden bowl, emitting a sour stench.

Scrambling and shoving erupted, but Lin Jie used his small frame to slip through the gaps in the crowd before the chaos began, claiming his portion before retreating to his corner to swallow it quickly in small bites, giving no one a chance to snatch it away.

This was a pattern he had deduced, a survival advantage he had gained in this miniature social experiment using his modern analytical skills.

However, in the last few days, an indescribable anomaly had broken this "pattern."

He was the first to notice that something was wrong.

Based on the vague world nautical charts in his memory and his estimation of the sun's angle, the Sea Witch had long since deviated from the normal trade route to the Suez Canal.

They were sailing toward an unknown stretch of sea that appeared blank on any chart and was rarely visited by ships.

This discovery made Lin Jie shudder.

What kind of reason could compel a profit-driven freighter to waste extra fuel and time to bypass the busy main shipping lanes?

Following that, the atmosphere on the ship began to turn eerie.

The sailors, who usually only sang lewd sea shanties, had recently been humming a gloomy folk song on the deck in a tone like sleepwalking.

Lin Jie had heard fragments of it; the lyrics were ancient and obscure, telling of the resentment of a woman cast into the sea, and how she used her long hair to entangle the anchor and drag the sailors down to the cold seabed.

Panic spread like a plague, starting first among the laborers in the hold.

Three days ago, a young fellow villager from Chaoshan suddenly went mad in the middle of the night. He clawed at his own throat, leaving bloody gouges on his neck with his fingernails, roaring, "Water... there's hair in the water! It's hanging all over the hull!"

The next day, people discovered he had vanished.

The overseer's explanation was dismissive: "Slipped and fell overboard, just another fool like every year."

But Lin Jie remembered clearly that the night had been calm, and all the laborers had been locked in the hold with no chance to approach the ship's rail.

From that day on, an invisible pressure shrouded the entire ship. Even the thick air seemed to be soaked in a malice originating from the deep sea.

Tonight, that malice reached its peak.

The night was deep, and the sea was as calm as a solid sheet of black glass. Most of the people in the hold had fallen into a deep sleep from exhaustion, occasionally punctuated by suppressed sobs and weak groans.

Lin Jie leaned against the cold hull, forcing himself to maintain a light sleep. He was suddenly jolted awake by a noise that was extremely faint, yet incredibly clear.

It was not the creaking of the ship's timbers, nor the dull thud of waves against the hull.

The sound was like someone with extremely long fingernails slowly and deliberately scratching against the thick, moss- and barnacle-covered iron plating on the outside of the hull.

Screech... scrape...

The sound was steady and persistent.

Every hair on Lin Jie's body stood on end.

He held his breath and moved silently to the nearest circular porthole.

The window was covered in grime and salt stains, allowing only a sliver of the sea's faint phosphorescence to filter through. He squinted, straining his eyes to cast his gaze into the blurry darkness outside.

He saw it.

Just a few meters from the hull, amidst the sea mist, a blurry, unnaturally pale humanoid silhouette flashed by.

The thing appeared to have no legs; its long, slender body twisted in the water in an unnatural way. He could vaguely see that its lower half consisted of countless black, long hairs and slippery gray tentacles tangled together like seaweed.

Just as Lin Jie tried to see more clearly, the silhouette noticed his prying gaze.

It stopped, slowly "turning" in the mist to face the porthole.

Lin Jie could not make out its features, only two points emitting a faint red light on a pale, flat surface.

That was not a reflection, but some kind of bioluminescent tissue. Those two red dots were just quietly "gazing" at this tiny window.

There was no killing intent, no anger.

The very instant he was "gazed" upon, a chill originating from the deepest depths of his soul swept over Lin Jie's entire body like a tsunami.

It was an emotion that transcended fear; it was the nausea and trembling of his reason being torn apart and his very level of existence being utterly negated.

His mind went blank, his stomach churned violently, and he was on the verge of vomiting right there on the spot.

He abruptly tore his gaze away, clamping his hands tightly over his mouth as his body slammed against the ship's bulkhead from the intensity of his tremors.

At that same moment, the noise of scratching against the hull vanished.

But something even more terrifying occurred.

The steam engine, which had always served as the "heart" of this ship, providing everyone with motive power and psychological comfort, let out a metallic shriek of unbearable strain before its heavy, rhythmic "thump... thump..." came to an abrupt halt.

The heart of the steel beast had stopped beating.

The entire hull of the Sea Witch shuddered violently, and the vibration that had maintained the rhythm of life vanished along with it.

After a brief silence, a panicked commotion erupted in the hold.

Upon this dead, silent sea shimmering with pale phosphorescence, the entire ship came to a complete standstill.

At the same time, an eerie humming grew from distant and blurred to crystal clear.

It no longer had just a single source; it rang out from all sides, from every direction of the ship simultaneously, layering and weaving together into a grand requiem.

A requiem prepared for them, the entire ship full of sacrifices.