The blue sea stretched to the horizon, with two white sails billowing in the wind like the wings of a giant bird flying low over the sea. A flock of seagulls followed behind the mast, propelling the ship forward with the help of the air currents.
A small black figure perched on the towering mast. Suddenly, it let out a cry, soared into the sky, circled for a while, and then plummeted down, skimming across the water, causing quite a stir among the gulls behind the boat.
Qingmu stood at the bow of the ship, his eyes closed, feeling the strong sea breeze rushing towards him.
The salty sea breeze carried a hint of the fragrance of leaves and flowers, but all that could be seen was the vast expanse of blue waves, with not a single island or reef in sight.
When Petru turned the sails and sailed against the wind, the ethereal scent that had drifted with the wind vanished.
"What the hell is this?" Petru cursed.
They had been searching at sea for five whole days, the smell in the wind leading them to the same spot, but they hadn't even seen a single reef.
Qingmu smelled more than just the fragrance; he also sensed a faint spiritual fluctuation. Whenever he stood at the bow of the ship and closed his eyes, Crow perched on the high mast would take flight and survey the surrounding sky.
Its view is the same as Qingmu's, but all it sees is the sea, even though it has brushed against the thinnest clouds at the lowest level.
Su Huilan and Petru stood not far from Qingmu, their eyes also slightly closed, taking long, deep breaths, as if they were doing an ancient yoga exercise.
An orange cat lay on the deck next to it, clutching a half-eaten fish in its arms, its eyes fixed on the sea ahead, its gaze wary as if it had spotted prey.
Petru opened his eyes first and saw that the people next to him were still in a dream, and even the cat hadn't moved. He could only shake his head with a self-deprecating smile.
This was the method Qingmu taught him: when spiritual fluctuations appear at sea, carefully sense them and try to capture them. Although the energy is so weak that it is almost impossible to capture and it will not replenish one's Mental Power, when you follow its rhythm and project your Mental Power to the farthest and widest range, your Mental Power will be trained invisibly.
Petru couldn't sense the mental fluctuations at first. He realized he was the only one on the entire ship who couldn't sense them; even the bird and the cat could. He felt incredibly lonely, like a salted fish in a warehouse.
Later, he found the trick: whenever Qingmu said he had detected a mental fluctuation, his sensitive nose, which had been exposed to the wind at sea for many years, could smell a fresh scent of grass and trees, which drifted faintly with the salty sea breeze.
He didn't know if Mental Power had a scent, or if the Ghost Island had passed through somewhere in the void when Mental Power fluctuated. He wondered if two unrelated spaces had influenced each other when their orbits drew infinitely close. He could smell the fragrance of flowers from the island, but could the people on the island smell the salty sea breeze from here?
Oh, of course! Since it's an island, it naturally has the smell of the sea.
Following Qingmu and Su Huilan's example, Petru closed his eyes and searched for the faint fragrance in the sea breeze. The next day, he actually felt a fluctuation in his spirit. The fluctuation was like the breath of the sea. He saw the tide under the moon and the small lives on the beach that were brought in by the tide.
This feeling was like a dream, captivating him completely, until the tide receded, the moon disappeared, and the light in his dream, like the light of a departing comet, gradually vanished into the boundless silence of his mind.
These past few days, Petru felt his Mental Power had greatly improved. Each time, he would immerse himself in this dreamlike state, then joyfully open his eyes, only to be disappointed to find that he was always the first to wake up.
He lit a cigarette and watched them quietly. When the cigarette was half-burned, Su Huilan opened her eyes, and the cat started gnawing on the fish under its paws again.
When the cigarette burned out, he flicked the butt into the sea with his finger. The butt traced an arc, becoming a small black dot against the blue sky, before falling onto the sea surface. At that moment, a black dot also appeared at the horizon, slowly growing larger.
The Crow spread its wings, like a hawk returning from a long hunt, cawed, and landed on Qingmu's head.
Qingmu then slowly opened his eyes and stretched.
"Still no find?" Petru asked. "At this rate, when will we ever find it?"
Qingmu placed his hand on the railing at the bow of the boat and said lazily, "Oh, we'll find it eventually."
"But it's been five days!" Petru seemed a little anxious. "The food on my ship is only enough for half a month, at most five more days. If we can't find it in five days, we'll have to turn back."
Qingmu said, "We'll find it eventually."
Su Huilan smiled and said, "It seems you're already confident?"
Qingmu said, "I'm not entirely confident, but I'm still somewhat certain. Have you noticed that these mental fluctuations follow a certain pattern?"
Su Huilan noticed it too, but she didn't know what this pattern meant.
"You mean its appearance follows a periodic pattern?"
"I'm not entirely sure; it might be periodic, but it's more like a kind of interconnectedness."
"A collaboration? How does it work? Are the Tapu and Tapu exchanging information?"
"That's possible. Perhaps these Tapu are some kind of mechanism that triggers the underwater ruins."
Su Huilan said, "That mechanism is too big! I don't think humans have the capability to set up a mechanism on a sea of millions of square kilometers. Moreover, some of the Tapu are clearly no longer working, such as the one on Rapa Island. If it's a linked mechanism, if any one of them malfunctions, the whole system will fail. So how do you explain these Ghost Island appearing and disappearing, and that underwater ruins also appearing and disappearing?"
Qingmu shook his head and said, "The disappearance of Mental Power from the stone doesn't necessarily mean that the Tapu has stopped working! Perhaps the intensity of spiritual fluctuations varies depending on the location of the Tapu!"
Su Huilan fell into deep thought, and only after a long while did she come back to her senses. "What you said makes sense. I overlooked this point. Mental strength might be a setting of the mechanism, using different wave strengths to control the function of the entire mechanism."
"So, how exactly do we open this mechanism?" Petru asked impatiently.
Qingmu said, "I don't know. We need to see what the mechanism looks like first. This Ghost Island where we played hide-and-seek is probably the core of the whole mechanism, or at least the most important component. Let's just wait patiently. Since you've seen it before, it will eventually appear."
"Oh, my God!" Petru exclaimed, "What's the point of all that talk! It's all just bullshit!"
The Crow angrily said, "Hey, hey, hey, what use are you saying? What nonsense are you talking about? In the future, you'd better not use the word 'bird' when you're cursing someone. Don't you know that birds have dignity too?"
Petru rolled his eyes. "Oh, sorry, I forgot you're a bird! By the way, what exactly are you?"
"Me?" I, the Crow, said proudly, "Of course I'm the most human-like bird, and the most bird-like human. Sometimes, I don't even know if I'm a human or a bird, but biologically speaking, I do seem to be a bird."
"Okay, birdman!" Petru gave him a thumbs up.
"Um..." The Crow sensed something was off. "Humans and birds are better. In linguistics, the position of the subject and modifier is very important. Sometimes, changing their positions completely changes the meaning. For example, braised pork knuckle and pork knuckle sauce... well, they are two different flavors..."
"Okay, okay, I got it." Petru raised his hands in surrender, he really didn't know why he had bothered with this bird that was even more talkative than his great-grandmother.
The Crow finally shut its beak.
Petru was a little surprised. In the past, this bird would chatter on and on, regardless of whether you were threatening or begging, and it wouldn't stop until it finished speaking. But this time, it immediately stopped talking, as if someone had suddenly grabbed its beak.
The deck was unusually quiet, with only the sea breeze whistling through it.
He smelled a faint floral fragrance in the wind.
However, he noticed that neither Qingmu, Su Huilan, nor the Crow or the cats closed their eyes as usual; instead, their eyes were wide open, staring straight ahead.
Petru followed their gaze. In the distance, on the blue sea, an island suddenly appeared, its trees lush and green, and patches of silver ferns seemed to reflect an eerie light.