West City Phantom, Midnight Ghost Ship!

A playful curve touched Lin Xuan's lips.

He had thought that wiping out one base would make these guys settle down for a while.

He hadn't expected them to be like scallions pumped full of hormones—cut down one batch, and another sprang right back up.

They had even brought their business right under West City's nose.

Were they delivering achievements straight to his door?

That faint trace of aura had already been locked onto by his divine soul.

The next second, Lin Xuan raised a brow.

He discovered that the aura was moving at high speed.

And it was rapidly heading toward the coastline.

"Being so sneaky—this can't be anything good."

Muttering to himself, Lin Xuan's figure flickered in place, blurred, and then vanished completely into the night.

He suppressed his aura to the utmost limit and, with his perfect control over his body, turned into an afterimage too fast for the naked eye to catch, following that aura at an unhurried pace.

The coastline of West City was silent in the dead of night.

There was none of the downtown bustle or neon here, only sea wind and waves.

Lin Xuan appeared soundlessly atop a jagged reef. Through his spiritual senses, he had learned that this was the meeting point.

His divine soul power spread out, sweeping back and forth across the sea.

Just then, a sudden change occurred.

Without warning, a strange, impenetrably dense fog surged up from the surface of the sea.

The fog was cold and viscous, carrying an unnatural dampness. Within a few breaths, it swallowed the entire coast, dropping visibility to less than three meters in an instant.

Normal fog came from evaporated moisture.

But this fog seemed as though it had been forcibly squeezed out of some rift in the underworld, exuding a sinister chill that unsettled the living.

Lin Xuan's gaze remained utterly calm.

He knew the main act was about to arrive.

Sure enough.

Deep within the thick fog, a massive, silent silhouette broke through the mist and slowly approached.

It was a ship.

A gigantic vessel with an extremely futuristic design.

Its hull had sleek lines and was pitch-black from end to end, as if it absorbed all light and blended perfectly into the nighttime sea.

What was strange was that such a massive technological creation made not the slightest sound as it sailed.

There was no roar of engines, no crash of waves, not even a single light.

Like a ghost from the deep sea, a silent steel behemoth, it appeared without a sound in these waters sealed off by dense fog.

That increasingly distinct aura of sin was coming from this "Ghost Ship."

Lin Xuan's divine soul power, like the most precise probe, instantly enveloped the entire vessel.

The first thing he sensed was that familiar cold evil belonging to the Red Ribbon Army.

Compared to Light Base, this aura was purer and more sinister, like ice tempered with deadly poison, devoid of the slightest human emotion.

But when Lin Xuan's divine soul power penetrated the steel hull and entered the ship's interior, what he sensed made his gaze turn cold.

There were no soldiers in the cabins as he had expected, no armory, and no laboratories.

There was only boundless fear and despair.

They were not the emotions of adults.

They belonged to children.

Hundreds upon thousands of young souls were packed into the dark, cramped depths of the ship like sardines in a can.

Most of them were unconscious, but their dreams were filled with the terror of being forcibly torn from their parents' arms, confusion over the unknown road ahead, and bone-deep cold when icy machinery touched them.

Countless desperate thoughts converged into a swamp on the spiritual plane.

"So that's how it is."

Not a trace of amusement remained on Lin Xuan's face.

He understood completely.

This ship was neither a transport vessel nor a warship.

It was a mobile den, a floating hell dedicated to transporting and stockpiling children.

Whether the Red Ribbon Army had adopted a new method, or this was some other evil organization, he did not know.

But without question, this was another enormous "merit event."

Moreover, in terms of the depth of its sins and the harm it would cause in the future, it surpassed Light's slave base by far.

Lin Xuan drew a breath, and the icy coldness in his eyes settled into calm.

He hesitated no longer.

Since they had delivered themselves to his doorstep, there was no reason for him not to accept.

On the reef, Lin Xuan's figure swayed lightly in the air, then shattered and vanished like a reflection in water.

The sea breeze swept past, carrying a few mournful wails.

On the Ghost Ship's broad deck, a figure silently materialized.

Lin Xuan landed without making a sound, not even disturbing a speck of dust, as though he had been standing there from the very beginning.

The deck was completely empty.

All around him was nothing but dense fog, utterly isolating the ship from the rest of the world.

Lin Xuan's ears twitched slightly.

Within his senses, an exceedingly faint hum of machinery came from inside the hull, as though countless precision instruments were operating at once.

Beyond that, he could also catch the sounds of children murmuring and sobbing in their nightmares, suppressed to the utmost extreme.

The power of his divine soul seeped beneath layer after layer of decks, and a horrifying scene slowly unfolded in his mind.

Deep within the cabins, where the aura of sin was strongest, lay a cruel secret about life and souls—one far beyond the imagination of the world.