Chapter Summaries

Li Xian survived another hallucination in the cold storage room, then hid as the Captain brought unconscious crew members onto the deck. He realized the Captain was gathering twenty people in a fishing net, apparently to recreate the fate of the shadowy figures, and watched as the Captain lowered them over the sea.

• Li Xian broke the ribs stabbing through the planks until a hallucination made him collapse and see the corpse restored to its original state.
• After hearing a nearby door open, Li Xian kicked the corpse down the stairs, covered the entrance, and hid as the Captain approached.
• The Captain dragged three unconscious crew members from a net and left them on the deck; Li Xian checked that they were breathing but could not wake them.
• Li Xian watched the Captain make repeated trips until exactly twenty people lay on the deck, matching the number of shadowy figures.
• The Captain loaded the twenty people into the fishing net and lowered it over the sea while muttering that the blame belonged to whoever struck first.

Li Xian tried to rescue the twenty crew members the captain had drowned, but his rope could not hold their weight. When the captain returned, he seemed unable to see Li Xian until Li Xian moved, leaving him caught in the captain’s gaze.

• The captain lowered the net of crew members into the sea, where they struggled and began to drown.
• Li Xian tied a rope to the machine and tried to haul the crew members out, but the rope began to snap.
• Li Xian dropped a rib bone into the sea, and a crew member used it to tear a hole in the net before being dragged back by another drowning man.
• The captain returned and removed the rope from the machine, apparently unaware of Li Xian.
• Li Xian tried to slip away, but the captain turned and fixed his gaze on him.

Li Xian was mistaken for a fish by the Captain, who dragged him to a fish-processing room to kill him. After Li Xian escaped the worktable and wounded the Captain, an unseen disturbance knocked the man down and gave Li Xian enough control to crawl toward the door.

• The Captain asked where the fish had come from and reached for Li Xian, whose body had become difficult to control.
• The Captain dragged Li Xian into the fish-processing room and placed him on the worktable beside a knife.
• Li Xian grabbed the knife with his teeth and slipped off the worktable, knocking the blade into the Captain's calf.
• The Captain rinsed his wound, then fell and began struggling with something unseen.
• Li Xian regained some control of his hands and feet and crawled toward the door.

Li Xian escaped the Captain and found Hoodie Woman freezing and hallucinating, then realized the missing player had been mistaken for a fish. Connecting the distorted timelines to a torn fishing net, he rushed to check the five fish and discovered they were dead.

• Li Xian crawled away from the Captain, spotted a purple tentacle around his ankle, and escaped as the fog cleared beneath a full moon.
• Hoodie Woman emerged in a deteriorated state and tried to walk toward the sea, so Li Xian stopped her and asked about her missing teammate.
• Hoodie Woman confirmed that the missing teammate had two moles on his face before collapsing, and Li Xian concluded that the person gutted in cold storage had been the missing player.
• Li Xian recalled Ke Yi mentioning a torn fishing net and suspected the man-eating fish and its eggs were connected to the net across the timelines.
• Li Xian hurried to the room with Ke Yi and Zhang Yuyao, checked the five fish, and found that they were all dead.

Li Xian realized the five fish were the missing crew members and used one of their eyes to see their bodies as they really were. After finding the cargo-hold key, he hurried below deck with Zhang Yuyao and Ke Yi, where a familiar purple tentacle appeared.

• Li Xian concluded that the Captain had drugged the crew and thrown them overboard after fearing the crew’s growing suspicion and unrest.
• Li Xian used a fish’s eye to see the crew members’ corpses and searched them for the cargo-hold key.
• Li Xian found the key and told Zhang Yuyao and Ke Yi to go to the cargo hold.
• The three encountered a purple tentacle in the corridor, and Li Xian recognized it as resembling the one that had wrapped around the Captain and himself.
• Li Xian reached toward the tentacle despite knowing they should hurry on.

Li Xian opened the cargo hold with the fish eye and scale, revealing a coffin containing the Captain, the cargo the crew beneath the sea wanted. As the ship began rocking violently, the Captain’s corpse slid out of the hold, and the three survivors started dragging it toward the water.

• Li Xian opened the cargo hold after Ke Yi admitted he could not force the iron door open.
• Li Xian and Ke Yi lifted the coffin lid and found the Captain’s corpse, with a sheet of paper on his chest.
• The dark shapes rocked the ship violently, sending the corpse rolling across the cargo hold and out through the doorway.
• Ke Yi pinned down the corpse, and Li Xian confirmed they needed to throw it into the water.
• Li Xian, Ke Yi, and Zhang Yuyao began carrying the Captain’s corpse along the corridor.

Li Xian, Ji Xie, Ke Yi, and Zhang Yuyao carried the Captain’s corpse toward the sea’s dark shadow, where it reanimated and attacked them. After Ji Xie threw the corpse overboard, the ship steadied, but Li Xian noticed the corpse’s severed hand had been twisted off in a disturbing way.

• Ji Xie appeared and helped carry the Captain’s corpse toward the dark shadow while the ship rocked violently.
• The Captain’s corpse opened its eyes, broke free, and attacked Ji Xie and the others as they struggled to restrain it.
• Ji Xie hurled the corpse over the railing, but it grabbed Li Xian’s ankles and pulled him over the side.
• Ji Xie caught Li Xian and the corpse’s hand was severed before the body plunged into the sea.
• The sea erupted with screams and bubbles, the ship’s rocking subsided, and Li Xian found the severed arm had been twisted apart.

Li Xian read the Captain’s Will and realized that those who shed all their skin could become monsters. He found Hoodie Woman missing, with scales leading from her bed toward the Toilet.

• Li Xian noticed that the severed hand had been twisted off, but Ji Xie hurried him back to their room before he could question Ke Yi.
• Li Xian read the Captain’s Will, which described how a mysterious gentleman had treated the Captain’s skin loss with Incense Ash and warned that an evil would arise once all his skin was shed.
• Li Xian and Ji Xie concluded that the Captain’s funeral request had not been honored, and Li Xian suspected that mental value affected how quickly players lost their skin.
• Li Xian realized that Hoodie Woman and the dead Crew Members might turn into monsters after shedding all their skin, then rushed to check on Hoodie Woman.
• Li Xian found Hoodie Woman gone, with pieces of skin and scales scattered on her bed and a trail of fish scales leading toward the Toilet.

Li Xian discovered that Hoodie Woman had transformed into a fish-headed monster and became trapped outside a room where Ji Xie was fighting it. As the entire ship fell under a grotesque hallucination, Li Xian took a Fishbone Knife and headed back to help Ji Xie, but hid when he heard approaching footsteps.

• Li Xian watched Hoodie Woman's corpse transform into a fish-headed monster and realized other dead crew members might have changed as well.
• A door slammed shut and trapped Ji Xie inside with the monster, while Li Xian tried unsuccessfully to get back in.
• Li Xian's hallucination spread across the ship, turning its walls, windows, and floor into fishlike flesh and organs.
• Li Xian went to the kitchen, found that someone had taken a knife, and pulled a Fishbone Knife from a grotesque fish.
• Li Xian decided to find Ji Xie and break the hallucination, but hid in a room after hearing squelching footsteps nearby.

Li Xian fought Zhang Rui, the Fish-Head Monster, and realized the monster was tracking him because of his remaining eye. When Li Xian used the Spherical Object as bait, Zhang Rui abandoned the chase to follow it.

• Li Xian hid in a toilet as Zhang Rui entered the room and came straight toward him.
• Li Xian struck Zhang Rui's chest, but the monster's scales deflected the blow, so Li Xian exploited his unsteady movements to escape the toilet.
• Zhang Rui smashed through the door, and Li Xian recognized him as the man who had gone mad after seeing a crew member gut a player.
• Li Xian suspected Zhang Rui's remaining eye was his weakness, but the monster tracked him even with his empty eye socket facing him.
• Li Xian waved the Spherical Object at Zhang Rui and threw it, causing the monster to stop chasing him and follow the object.

Li Xian pulled out the monster’s second eye and tried to escape, but the monster kept tracking him despite its blindness. He realized the eyes on the ship’s doors were sharing their vision with it, leaving him trapped as it broke into the room.

• Li Xian hooked the monster’s remaining eye with his knife and pulled it out, but the monster stayed still with its sockets covered.
• Li Xian approached to retrieve the Fish Eye, and the monster feigned stillness before attacking; he dodged its palm, but the Fish Eye rolled away and was lost.
• Li Xian fled from the monster and tried to hide along the ship’s railing, but it changed direction and headed straight toward him.
• Li Xian barricaded himself inside a cabin as the monster battered the door, then noticed it was striking at the height of the door’s eye.
• Li Xian realized that the eyes on the doors shared their vision with the monster and had been tracking him.

Li Xian killed the fish monster by cutting through its neck from the inside, and the bathroom returned to normal. Before he could rest, an identical monster appeared in the doorway.

• Li Xian stabbed the eye in the door just before the monster broke through.
• The monster searched by swinging its own intestine, and Li Xian lured it into the bathroom with noise.
• Li Xian trapped the monster with the shower hose and stabbed into its throat, then cut its neck from the inside.
• The monster died and the bathroom returned to normal, but another identical monster appeared in the doorway.

Li Xian passed out after becoming too exhausted to defend himself, then woke to find the ship and his companions back to normal. As they neared shore, he learned Ji Xie and Ke Yi had killed the fishmen and that Zhang Yuyao had died from their wounds.

• Li Xian collapsed as Ke Yi approached with a bloodied Short Knife, and he glimpsed another figure rushing toward him before he lost consciousness.
• Li Xian woke beneath two quilts beside Ji Xie and Ke Yi, with his body still aching and much of the skin on his hand gone.
• Ji Xie told Li Xian that the hallucinations had faded as the fishmen were killed, and that Ji Xie and Ke Yi had cleared the remaining monsters.
• Ke Yi told Li Xian that Zhang Yuyao was dead and said her wounds had been inflicted by the fishmen.

Li Xian explained how the crew’s past tragedy became entangled with the players’ timeline, including why the Captain killed his crew and how the Captain’s Will fit the ghost ship’s history. After Ji Xie abruptly left the room, Ke Yi warned Li Xian that something was wrong with him.

• Li Xian told Ke Yi that a crew member had hauled up and gutted a player mistaken for a fish, and that Zhang Rui had witnessed it and gone mad.
• Li Xian explained that five crew members, including Zhang Rui, had crossed into the players’ side, where they appeared as fish, and that the terrified crew blamed one another for their disappearance.
• Li Xian said the Captain drugged a meal, sank the remaining twenty crew members, and fled abroad, then showed Ke Yi the Captain’s Will.
• Li Xian confirmed he had searched fish for a Key and lost Zhang Rui’s illusion-seeing eye during a fight.
• Ji Xie watched the doorway, then abruptly left the room, and Ke Yi privately told Li Xian that something was off about him.

Ke Yi revealed that Ji Xie had used tentacles to kill the fish-man monsters, but Li Xian refused to fear or condemn him. Li Xian found Ji Xie transformed beside the railing just as the dark shape caught up with the ship, and he insisted on staying to help.

• Ke Yi told Li Xian that Ji Xie had grown tentacles and torn off the Captain's wrist while fighting the fish-man monsters.
• Li Xian dismissed Ke Yi's warning and asked him to help him go outside to find Ji Xie.
• Li Xian spotted tentacles clinging to the railing and rushed to embrace them before they could dive into the sea.
• Ji Xie changed back into human form and supported Li Xian, who showed no fear and asked what he had been about to do.
• A dark shape struck the ship, and Ji Xie told Ke Yi to take Li Xian away.
• Li Xian clung to Ji Xie and said he would think of something.

Li Xian realized the Crew Members wanted to be rescued, but their pursuit resumed when they spotted the monster’s corpse. Ji Xie carried Li Xian into the cargo hold to escape them, while Ke Yi took another route.

• Li Xian asked Ji Xie whether the Captain or the Crew Members were chasing them and learned the Crew Members had already dealt with the Captain.
• Li Xian lowered a rope into the sea, and the Crew Members grabbed it and climbed onto the ship.
• The Crew Members turned hostile after seeing the monster’s corpse and rushed at Li Xian, Ji Xie, and Ke Yi.
• Ji Xie carried Li Xian toward the cargo hold, while Ke Yi split off and went around the other side of the ship.
• Ji Xie entered the cargo hold and used the tangled fishing net as a stepping stone to evade the Crew Members, then ran toward the door.

Li Xian and Ji Xie survived the final attack and reached shore, where Li Xian learned that all the strange tentacles he had encountered belonged to Ji Xie. After a worker arrived to collect Captain Zhu’s body, Li Xian led him to the cargo hold and opened its door.

• Ji Xie used a tentacle to fling the escaped Crew Member back inside before Li Xian shut the iron door, trapping the attackers.
• Ji Xie carried Li Xian to the deck, where Li Xian reassured him and asked whether the tentacles he had seen were all Ji Xie.
• Ji Xie confirmed they were, and he evaded Li Xian’s question about how they had first met, saying Li Xian would know when his memories returned.
• Ke Yi joined them as the ship neared shore, and the three prepared to disembark.
• A staff member asked to collect Mr. Zhu’s body, so Li Xian led him to the cargo hold and used the Key to open the door.

Li Xian and the others took the Captain’s remains to the crematorium, but the Instance did not end when the ship docked. After collecting the ashes, Li Xian emerged alone into an unfamiliar, crowded city and spotted someone he recognized.

• Ke Yi and Ji Xie escorted a frightened staff member to the cargo hold, where Li Xian showed him the Captain’s remains and asked him to verify the other bodies.
• The staff member carried the Captain’s corpse to the crematorium, and Li Xian, Ke Yi, and Ji Xie waited for it to be cremated.
• A crematorium worker gave Li Xian a box of ashes and told the group to leave.
• Li Xian stepped outside into bright sunlight and found himself alone in an unfamiliar city where people spoke languages he did not understand.
• Li Xian recalled that the Captain had once sailed to another country and began searching the streets, then spotted a familiar figure and hurried after him.

Li Xian realized he had to play the gentleman from the Captain’s Will and feed the Captain Incense Ash to complete the Ghostly Mystery Ship’s true ending. After the instance closed, Li Xian rejected Ke Yi’s invitation because he liked someone, and Ji Xie overheard him.

• Li Xian recognized that he was meant to be the gentleman who gave the Captain Incense Ash and followed the words from the Captain’s Will.
• Li Xian fed the Captain ashes from the Urn and told him he had a baleful aura, completing the final link in the chain and clearing the instance’s true ending.
• Ke Yi asked Li Xian to add him as a friend, but Li Xian declined and said there was someone he liked.
• Ji Xie appeared behind Li Xian and heard his confession.
• The system awarded the players their instance rewards, granted Li Xian a 30-fold points bonus and a Sea Fishing Rod, then permanently closed the instance.

After realizing he loved Ji Xie, Li Xian returned to the guild residence and accepted Ji Xie's promise to stay by his side. The two embraced, and Li Xie produced a new Marriage Certificate for Ji Xie as his reward.

• Li Xian reflected on his memories from the instance and realized that he liked Ji Xie.
• Li Xian reunited with Ji Xie in his room, and Ji Xie reassured him that everything was fine.
• Ji Xie reminded Li Xian of his promise to grant a reward, and Li Xian agreed to whatever he wanted.
• Ji Xie asked to stay by Li Xian's side, and Li Xian readily agreed.
• Ji Xie wrapped Li Xian in his tentacles, and they stayed close until their racing hearts calmed.
• Ji Xie asked to replace their Marriage Certificate, and Li Xian produced a new red booklet.