"Thud."
When the third echo fell, no one on the deck moved.
The wind blew, the ship swayed, and everything looked the same as before. Yet those three muffled knocks seemed to have struck straight into their chests. No one dared say a word.
Bai Zhu had only just recovered a little from being hollowed out. When he heard the sound, he froze for a moment, then his back suddenly tensed and every hair on his body stood on end.
"What? What?"
He raised his head and looked at Milluki.
"What the hell was that sound just now?"
Milluki stood beside the terminal, repeatedly zooming in and out on the screen as though confirming whether the sonar had malfunctioned. His expression was terrible.
"Don't ask me."
"Weren't you always pretending to know everything?"
"I don't know shit."
Milluki's Adam's apple bobbed as he lowered his voice.
"If the sonar isn't broken, then that thing on the seabed... is huge."
Bai Zhu stared at him.
"How huge?"
Milluki never took his eyes off the screen. He simply spat out two words.
"An island!"
He paused, as if he did not even want to say the rest.
"At the very least, it doesn't look like a living creature that should exist in this world."
Bai Zhu took two breaths and braced himself against the deck to stand. His legs gave out, and he sat back down.
"That answer told me nothing."
"What do you want me to say?" Milluki suddenly looked up. "The thing in my hands is hanging on by a thread, the screen is full of shadows, and the sonar is glitching out. You want me to make up a ghost story for you on the spot?"
Before Bai Zhu could answer, Morel had already risen to his feet.
He