Killing and Fog (I)

Time flew by, and amid the tense, oppressive atmosphere, two days passed before anyone realized it.

After two days of sailing, the whaling ship was only one day away from Perilous Earth Island. On a clear day, one could even make out the flickering amber glow of the great lighthouse on Perilous Earth Island from the top of the mast.

No matter what, this long and bloody journey was about to reach its final destination.

"Scratch, scratch..."

A hand covered in boils and festering sores gripped a charcoal pencil, rapidly writing across one side of a sheet of white paper.

"1. We will arrive at Twin Bays today. Our position and heading have been adjusted. We only need to seize the helm. Should we act today?

2. The traitor Xia Lun is on helm duty today. He truly has completely lost his memory and does not even suspect me—the mad doctor has drawn most of his suspicion. Should we find an opportunity to assassinate Xia Lun first?

..."

A moment later, the writing was finished. Two thick fingers, nearly necrotic, gently pinched the paper and rubbed it lightly before tossing it into the cargo hatch.

Watching the paper vanish into the hatch, Daolunte, the sailor with the ruined face, finally let out a breath. He scratched at a burst boil beside his ear with his thumb, then warily looked behind him.

Since last night, the once-ceaseless sea wind had fallen silent, and a layer of mist had risen over the boundless ocean.

The fog was thick, reducing visibility to less than ten meters. The ruined remains of the forecastle and the broken mast loomed in and out of the mist, swaying with the waves like ghosts that had lost their way.

No one had seen what he did.

Daolunte, the sailor with the ruined face, took a deep breath and turned back around.

By then, the paper had been sent back up by a black tendril. Daolunte eagerly snatched it from the tendril and found two large checkmarks drawn on the reverse side.

Today was the day of the final showdown.

"Heh." Daolunte could not help laughing, then licked the salty, sticky chancre beneath the corner of his mouth.

Now, he was the only remaining member of the occult group still loyal to Monster. The rest had either died like the Bearded Pirate or betrayed them like Xia Lun.

He would soon receive the secret teachings that led to immortality! The cure for the horrifying venereal disease that had left him with little time to live was finally within reach.

And now, only one final obstacle stood between him and restored health: kill Xia Lun and free his ascended mentor.

At that thought, Daolunte glanced at the note bearing two checkmarks in his hand.

To be fair, after his mentor transformed into the Abyssal Hand, he had once suspected that his mentor had lost his sanity and become a monster lost in endless hunger and bloodlust.

Yet Xia Lun's amnesia had accidentally solved that problem. It proved that his mentor still possessed ample reason.

However, after learning that his mentor still had his wits, Daolunte had no idea how to contact him again. After all, he could not understand the shrieks his mentor made after ascending.

But Xia Lun's act of seizing power by putting the gunner to a vote and executing him gave the helpless Daolunte an idea.

—He could use writing to convey information to his mentor; although his mentor had lost the ability to write, he could express his opinion by drawing checkmarks and crosses.

"I really am a genius, hehehe." Daolunte could not help grinning foolishly.

Yet at that moment, a terribly discordant sound suddenly came from behind him.

"Hehehe..."

Daolunte's smile froze. In an instant, cold terror swept across his scalp like claws and clutched his heart.

He whirled around and found the doctor staring at him with a foolish grin.

—The fog was too thick. He had not seen the doctor behind him!

How much had the man heard? Had he seen the connection between him and Monster?

As his thoughts raced, Daolunte abruptly turned and grabbed a thick hemp rope.

—The pirates did not trust sailors like them, so they never issued them weapons. The most lethal weapon Daolunte had on hand was the rope used to haul the sails.

Dim sunlight filtered through the fog and fell across the deck. Daolunte's shadow spread over the ship's doctor's face like a tide.

"Hehehe... genius... genius." The doctor pushed up his glasses and muttered endlessly. "We are all geniuses."

Daolunte immediately relaxed. It seemed the doctor had seen nothing, and he unconsciously loosened his grip on the hemp rope.

To be fair, he did not want to kill the mad doctor—the doctor was not a member of the occult group, but they had spent nearly ten years together aboard the ship.

Before the doctor went mad, he had helped Daolunte countless times.

Yet at that very moment, a dull metallic thud suddenly sounded behind Daolunte.

"Thud."

Daolunte's heart trembled. He slowly turned around and saw a black tentacle coiling around a matchlock pistol and a pile of lead bullets, placing them on the deck behind him.

"..." He fell silent for a moment, then suddenly lunged at the doctor!

A huge hand covered in diseased boils slammed onto the doctor's shoulder. With one yank, the frail doctor was thrown to the ground.

Daolunte's face twisted savagely. He planted one foot on the doctor's tailbone, bent down sharply, and looped the coarse hemp rope around the man's neck.

The fibers were rough and thorny. Thick blood seeped from the strangulation mark, flung drop by drop onto the deck as the rope scraped back and forth.

The doctor struggled desperately. He clawed at the noose around his neck and pulled downward with all his strength, while his body writhed and thrashed like a fish out of water.

Without a word, Daolunte gripped both ends of the hemp rope in crossed reverse holds, stomped down hard, and cleanly crushed the doctor's last resistance.

Crack.

His tailbone snapped. The doctor's body arched backward uncontrollably, while the hemp rope, like a wooden saw, hooked against his cervical vertebrae and wrenched them sharply to the left. His entire head twisted a full 120 degrees left, like a puppet whose strings had snapped.

Accompanied by a series of raspy gasps born of suffocation, the doctor limply released the fingers clutching the noose.

Clatter.

The shattered glasses spun through the air and landed on the deck, only to be crushed beneath a boot.

The doctor was dead.

Daolunte released the rope and looked down at the doctor's mangled corpse. Instinctively, he wanted to look away, but driven by some morbid curiosity, his gaze lingered for a long, long time on the doctor's bulging, fishlike eyes.

As he watched, his breathing gradually grew heavy, and the hand holding the rope began trembling uncontrollably. A moment later, he suddenly realized that the smell of blood had spread through the air, and he spun around in panic.

In the damp, cold fog, Xia Lun still stood before the helm like a scarecrow. He did not move at all, seeming not to have noticed the murder that had taken place right before his eyes.

"Heh... hehehe." Daolunte licked the burst boil at the corner of his mouth and muttered as if reassuring himself. "So arrogant. You really thought everyone would follow your script, thought my mentor would obediently wait to die. Ridiculous, pathetic. You are not so omniscient after all..."

After saying that, he seemed to regain his senses. The murderer took several deep breaths, then grabbed the doctor's body and tossed it down through the cargo hatch into the hold like a broken doll.

"In for a penny, in for a pound. We act now!" Daolunte gritted his teeth and picked up the matchlock pistol from the ground.

Yet a moment later, his pupils suddenly contracted.

At some point, a pair of broad, dark hands with pronounced knuckles had gripped the edge of the cargo hatch. Their sharp, slender nails scraped against the wood with a creak.

The next instant, the face of a Black man missing most of its skull suddenly rose from the hatch!

The first mate?!

Daolunte opened his mouth in terror.