From the bridge to the cargo hold, there was at least a distance of forty meters and a height difference of about three meters. The number of pirates who boarded the ship exceeded thirty. The fact that someone could control thirty people to dream within such a large area was indeed beyond Petru's imagination.
Petru knew he was powerless to resist. His only chance was to jump overboard and escape before reaching the main deck.
After making this decision, he did not hesitate at all. He immediately changed his dream, retrieved the image of the ship from his memory, and perfectly combined it with his current dream. He found himself just coming down from the living deck to the ship's side next to the main deck, and walking forward would take him up to the main deck.
As he merged with the scene, he also changed his behavior in the dream. Instead of following Lawiye's call and stepping onto the lawn, he leaped to the side and rushed towards the white, unknown place that was originally in the dream, which was actually the vast sea outside the ship's side.
Almost simultaneously, he felt a surge of Mental Power, like a giant wave, sweep over him, seizing his consciousness like the giant hand of a god.
The intense mental pressure made him feel suffocated and about to die, and then he saw the man holding the coffee in his dream.
Then, the dream shifted, and he saw himself jumping off a sheer cliff. The man was staring at him from above, a hint of anger in his eyes, but a wicked smile on his lips.
Petru's body was falling, faster and faster.
Everyone has had this dream, and most people wake up before hitting the ground. If not, the brain assumes you've died from the fall, and consciousness simulates the sensations of freefall and impact, including the state of brain death. Then, you truly die. At dawn, your body will be found on your bed, and doctors will declare you brain dead.
Petru was well aware of the consequences of such a dream, and desperately wanted to collapse it immediately, but he couldn't. The guy was still staring at him from the cliff edge, and the powerful mental interference made it impossible for him to control himself and escape the dream.
Was I going to fall and die?
No! It's just a dream. I just jumped off a boat; there's sea below. I won't die, I won't die!
Despite his repeated attempts to reassure himself, the accelerating sense of falling and the fear of death continued to intensify. He could no longer see the person on the cliff edge; all he could see was the bottomless valley below and the rapidly receding wind around him.
At the very last moment, he bit his tongue hard. He didn't know if dreams and reality could be synchronized, but it was the only thing he could do under the strong interference of his consciousness.
Finally, with a loud bang, his body crashed into the water, while in his dream, he landed on the ground. He felt as if he had turned into a lump of clay.
After the loud bang, there was only deathly silence. Darkness enveloped him, and he lost all feeling in his body. His consciousness was slowly fading away, and only the slight pain on the tip of his tongue, like the safety rope around his waist during bungee jumping, held him tightly.
Lawiye!
He called out the name that haunted his dreams, then was choked awake by the seawater he inhaled. He opened his eyes to find himself surrounded by seawater, with some things that looked like seaweed or garbage floating in front of him. Above him was a huge black cloud, the shadow of a ship.
Petru knew he was finally out of the nightmare. Although he desperately needed some fresh air, he dared not surface. Using the excellent swimming skills he had honed over years of piracy, he swam a long distance in the opposite direction of the ship's direction until he was far away from it before surfacing.
Most of his belongings were still with him, including weapons and ammunition. Fortunately, he was now a leader and wasn't carrying much weight; if he had been carrying dozens of kilograms of equipment like he used to when he was a mercenary, he certainly wouldn't have been able to float. Besides, the maritime walkie-talkie was very waterproof, so he tried to contact his comrades dozens of miles away, ordering them to come by boat to pick him up, and instructed his men to bring a. comL115A3—a United Kingdom- made sniper rifle with a range of over a mile.
Petru still vividly remembers the moment the Pastor died, the bullet hitting his left eye and tearing off half his face. He believed that since the Pastor couldn't defend against a long-range sniper rifle, then at sea, no matter how strong that guy was, he couldn't possibly defend against a bullet fired from 1.5 miles away.
However, he still underestimated his opponent.
As Petru lay prone on the speedboat, locking his sights onto his target through the scope, the man was standing on the side of the living deck, admiring the scenery. But he seemed to sense something, glancing in Petru's direction with eyes as sharp as an eagle's. Petru sensed something was wrong and decisively fired.
The bullet traveled at 900 meters per second, taking about two and a half seconds to hit its target. Almost the instant Petru fired, the man dropped his coffee cup and leaped into the cabin. Petru fired two shots in quick succession, both missing, and in the blink of an eye, he disappeared into a blind spot inside the cabin.
Petru was not discouraged; he had prepared for the worst from the beginning. When even sniper rifles couldn't take down the enemy, he could no longer care about the lives of his hypnotized comrades on board. With the decisiveness of a true hero, he gave the order for the submarine, which was lying in ambush underwater, to open fire and destroy the entire cargo ship with torpedoes.
Just to be on the safe side, he also fired a rocket into the cargo ship's bridge.
The cargo ship turned into a fireball at sea and was quickly swallowed by the water. No one would believe that there was once a mental master on board who could control the dreams of dozens of people at the same time. Even Petru himself felt a sense of disbelief when he recalled it.
Only God knows what happened, but God doesn't care about any of it. No matter how powerful you are, those who are meant to go to heaven go to heaven, and those who are meant to go to hell go to hell.
Petru had lost interest in knowing what was on the ship that required such a skilled guard to escort it alone; clearly, there was some unspeakable secret at play.
But he had to search for his pirate brothers at sea, praying to the sea god that some of them might have survived, or at least that a few bodies might be recovered. Most of these women had families, in impoverished and chaotic Somalia coastal towns, where they had prepared meals, warmed their beds, and were waiting for their husbands, fathers, and sons to return. They were forced into piracy; if it weren't for the constant war and poverty, who wouldn't want to stay home with their wives and children, watching television together?
Unfortunately, the sea god did not bring back any of his brothers, nor could his bodies be found. However, the pirates salvaged something strange from the wreckage of the ships floating at sea.
It was a rectangular iron box, somewhat like a miniature shipping container, but the outer shell was of very good quality and remained undamaged in the cargo ship's explosion. Inside the iron box was a thick crystal coffin, and inside the coffin lay a the Mummy, with a small box placed on the Mummy's chest.
The pirates had no concept of cultural relic preservation. They only felt it was very unlucky to bring back a corpse that had been dead for hundreds or thousands of years, so they sank the Mummy to the bottom of the sea and kept only the wooden box, which they then gave to Petru.
Petru noticed a strange mark on the wooden box—a triangle with two vertices connected together and a short vertical line in the middle.
The box contained several old nautical charts, marking the locations of some islands.