Chapter 193

Chapter 193

The north wind, sweeping across the ice-dotted sea, carried a bone-chilling cold that made every student present shiver involuntarily.

Eve placed one foot on the windowsill and the other on the ground. After a moment's hesitation, she gripped the window frame, flipped over, and landed lightly. She carefully avoided the fish blood-splattered areas, then crunched across the ice, approaching with a deep frown. "Where did this strange fish come from?"

"It, it came from—"

"It jumped out of the ice hole," Lorca interjected before the pale, frightened students could stammer out a reply. He stepped aside, revealing a haphazard pile of ice blocks behind him. "They said they wanted to fish, so they drilled a hole in the ice near the shore. As soon as the drill moved, this fish suddenly leaped out, slid across the ice, and ended up here, where I killed it."

If it had just been a large fish, it wouldn't have been such a shock. But this fish had a face indistinguishable from a human's—no wonder it terrified so many students.

The most frightening things are often those that resemble us.

Jessica was among the terrified students. It wasn’t until Lorca finished his explanation that she took a few steps forward, her voice trembling. "S-sorry, Department Chief. We had no idea there were monsters like this in the sea... We were completely unprepared when we drilled the hole..."

Even now, the little princess’s voice still wavered, clearly shaken by the sudden appearance of the monstrous fish.

"It’s alright. None of us could have expected something like this to be in the sea," Eve said, shaking her head as she crouched down. "Besides, this might be a clue for the competition. We were bound to encounter it sooner or later."

She drew her dagger from its sheath, preparing to examine the dead fish, when a shadow fell over her. Lorca had crouched beside her and, without a word, pressed his own short knife into her hand.

"Use mine. It’s already touched the fish. If this thing carries any viruses, it’ll save your blade."

"...The glaciers and the ocean here are part of the same system. If this fish lives in the sea under the ice, it’s unlikely to be poisonous. Otherwise, the entire polar glacial system would be contaminated."

Eve glanced at him but eventually accepted the black-handled dagger. She then turned to Jessica. "Jessica, go call the other Department Chiefs over."

"Yes!"

As footsteps pattered away, Eve used the blade to prod the fish without looking up. The human-faced fish had been cleanly severed at the waist, the cut smooth. Thanks to the extreme cold of Iceland, though it hadn’t been dead long, the blood in its abdominal cavity had already congealed into bright, thin crystals. Its flesh was dense and firm, typical of saltwater fish.

"It looks edible."

Ignoring the head, the human-faced fish didn’t look much different from an ordinary fish. Staring at it for too long stirred Eve’s inner Chinese gourmand, and she couldn’t help but voice a judgment from the depths of her soul.

Lorca, beside her, replied seriously, "Even if it looks normal, we’d need a full toxicology analysis before anyone eats it."

Eve fully agreed with his caution. "You’re right."

"Edible? What’s edible?" Anthony arrived just then, following Jessica. He had rushed over as soon as he heard that the other students had pulled a human-faced monster fish from the sea, concerned for their safety. His first words upon arrival were those two.

Mu Huanzhu and Ludwig followed close behind; they had been discussing competition-related matters earlier.

"This."

Eve used the tip of the knife to flip the fish over, so its pale, wide-eyed human face stared directly at the newcomers.

Anthony: "......"

His eyelid twitched; he seemed to be trying hard to control his expression.

After startling them, Eve turned the fish back and continued her examination. Human heads and fish skulls were structured differently. To maintain facial depth, the human-faced fish’s head was somewhat blunt, with a shield-like skull stretched taut under a ghastly, lifelike human face the color of a corpse.

She removed her glove and, before Lorca could stop her, quickly ran a hand over the fish’s face. It was slippery and ice-cold, covered in a protective mucus like the rest of its body. Her nail scraped against the feeling of fine scales.

She inserted the blade shallowly into the fish’s mouth, twisted, and pried it open. The polished metal reflected three rows of sharp, tiny teeth. The students nearby gasped—it wasn’t hard to imagine that being bitten by this fish would be painful, virus or not. Just having a chunk of flesh torn off would be agony.

"Find anything?" Anthony asked, having recovered enough to lean in for a closer look. "Should we call Lu Qing over to take a look?"

Eve gave him a look. "She’s an alchemist, not a biologist."

Though she didn’t know much about marine biology, she could roughly deduce the fish’s habitat from its features. Its flesh remained firm after being out of water, suggesting it wasn’t a deep-sea species.

The polar region was extremely cold, and with scarce nutrients, aside from krill and other fish, there wasn’t much edible meat available. Eve was curious how the human-faced fish developed teeth clearly suited for a fierce carnivore.

Beneath its abdomen were four protruding fleshy pads, somewhat resembling a salamander’s. This was likely how it managed to crawl quickly across the ice to the base.

Eve pondered for a moment. "I still think—"

Anthony pressed, "Think what?"

"—that this fish should be edible."

"......"

"Alright, we have a lab in the base, right? Let’s get a medical student to examine it," Eve laughed, lifting the strange fish with one hand. "This fish probably has something to do with the ghost ship. For the sake of the competition, I’ll trouble you, Chairman, to catch a live one."

She shot Lorca a look before leaving, signaling him to follow.

-

The base’s laboratory was small but fully equipped, complete with a dissection table, various professional tools, potions, and even two cages housing lab mice.

Not all medical students were alchemists; some were purely technical experts. When initially drafting the team roster, the meticulous Luo Lin had specifically included two students skilled in medical technology. Thus, Eve quickly found the right person for the job. While they worked, she and Lorca waited by the lab’s back door.

"Since the competition includes survival, hunting and foraging are probably part of it. Although First Empire Academy has the best base, our food supplies are limited. Ludwig and I calculated that without additional foraging, our team of sixty can only last two days at most," Lorca said. "Other bases likely have even less."

Eve sighed. "In this frozen wasteland, aside from fish, there’s nothing else to eat. And we don’t even know if there are other types of fish here besides the human-faced ones."

If there were other options, would she really want to eat such a weird, ugly fish?

Unbeknownst to her, others had already begun to assume she had peculiar dietary preferences. Before she could say more, the medical student dissecting the human-faced fish came over to report.

"The fish is edible, but it’s best to remove the head," the student said hesitantly. "The skeleton is strange. The caudal fin has typical asymmetrical vertebrae, but the torso is symmetrical, connected by a spiral bone joint."

The structure was so odd he didn’t dare mention that the torso skeleton resembled that of an underdeveloped human more than an ordinary amphibian.

"Leave the strange parts alone for now," Eve glanced at the red and white mess on the dissection table. "We still don’t know what this creature is. Better to be cautious."

So now she was being cautious? Which meant her earlier comments were just to scare people?

The medical student, reluctantly dragged into this, had no energy to complain about the Department Chief’s inadvertently revealed mischievous side. He cleaned up the lab and excused himself.

The students of First Empire Academy were quite capable. Though initially startled by the strange fish, they ultimately exceeded Eve’s expectations, capturing six live human-faced fish.

They used the same ice-drilling method. At first, Ludwig suggested using a net over the hole, but the nylon mesh was no match for the fish’s sharp teeth. Moreover, the fish were surprisingly strong, breaking through the net and skittering away on their fleshy pads until Mu Huanzhu sliced one in half.

After killing three or four, they gained some experience: stunning the fish with a heavy object as soon as they emerged, then hooking them through the upper jaw with palm-sized iron hooks.

This was suggested by a student from a mid-level planet whose family had connections to fishing. She applied standard fishing techniques to the human-faced fish, and surprisingly, it worked.

Finally gaining control over the bizarre creatures, Anthony glanced at the chaotic footprints and dead fish littering the snow and suddenly wondered, "Do any of you get the feeling these fish really want to get to the base?"

Every human-faced fish that had been killed while fleeing had its head pointed toward the red house on shore.

He hadn’t thought much of it initially, but during the fishing, one student slipped and fell near a human-faced fish. The nearby students immediately drew their blades and killed the fish.

Amid the chaos, others might not have noticed, but Anthony’s observation skills were sharp. He saw that the fish showed no intention of attacking the fallen student. Instead, its distinctly human-like eyes were fixed intently on the base’s red walls, as if that were its only destination.

This was quite abnormal. Based on the earlier inference about the sharp teeth in the fish's mouth, Anthony had assumed this would be a highly aggressive monster.

His remark made the other students gradually realize something was off.

"It can't just be a particular sensitivity to the color red, can it?"

Ludwig frowned. The howling cold wind had tousled his golden curls into a messy bird's nest. As he smoothed his hair, he casually made up a theory: "Maybe these fish grew human faces from eating human flesh. They devoured the people who previously lived in this base. The people died, but their souls haven't dispersed, driving these fish to instinctively want to return to their 'home'—the base."

The students: "......"

Ludwig: "Uh, why did everyone suddenly go quiet?"

A chill swept through the air. In the silence of the wilderness, no one responded, only glaring at him with ashen faces—could he please not say such terrifying things in such a casual tone when everyone was already on edge?

-

Milky-white fish soup was served. Lorca wiped his hands with a slightly damp towel from the back of his chair before pulling out the seat to Eve's right and sitting down.

Upon learning that the food in the warehouse would last at most two days, Anthony tacitly approved the decision to incorporate the human-faced fish into their meals. Of the six live fish caught that afternoon and the four that were killed, one fish had been chopped too finely to be used as food, and another live fish was kept in a reinforced fish tank in the lab as a live specimen for observation. The remaining eight human-faced fish were all stewed into soup.

Besides the human-faced fish tail soup, there were also two grilled stingrays and a large bowl of krill paste. Lorca's cooking skills were surprisingly excellent. The stingrays were processed and cut into evenly sized pieces, seasoned, and grilled until golden brown—rich and fatty, with an enticing aroma. The krill was first fried and then stewed into a paste. Paired with the dry rations already in the warehouse, the students, initially wary of the food source, soon completely immersed themselves in the joy of eating after a few bites.

Eve only spoke after he sat down, clasping her hands together and smiling warmly as she said to him, "Thanks for all your work."

"You're welcome. I'm just doing what I can for everyone," Lorca took a sip of cool boiled water to moisten his throat, then added thoughtfully, "But I never expected we'd find stingrays in the nearby sea."

Not only were they surprised to find stingrays, but this icy, low-temperature sea also turned out to be unexpectedly rich in biological resources.

Suspicious about the origin of the human-faced fish and curious whether there were other creatures in the sea, the First Empire sent a few students that afternoon to put on diving suits and slowly descend into the depths.

They were tethered with steel-wire ropes and equipped with a concealment potion specially prepared by Luo Lin, making it difficult for ordinary marine life to detect their presence. It wasn't until they actually entered the water that the students realized the glacier they were on seemed to be a floating island. Clear, bubbling currents flowed out from the crevices in the island's base, mingling with translucent jellyfish and small fish. From beneath the ice to the seabed around the island chain, the water shifted from sparkling azure to dark and unfathomable.

The black depths of the ocean evoked an inescapable sense of dread. For safety, the students tasked with diving didn’t venture too far into the dark, unpredictable waters under the island but instead circled the shallower peripheral areas. Two human-faced fish swam past them, completely unaware. Deeper down, what sounded like whale songs seemed to echo faintly.

In the face of nature, humans easily feel their own insignificance. Surrounded by the endless icy sea, the students were momentarily dazed. If not for the ropes tightly fastened around their waists, they might have lost themselves in the mysterious light-blue waters until their oxygen ran out.

Even now, reminded by Lorca's words, those who had dived still felt a lingering fear.

"Although the seabed seemed peaceful, it’s definitely not without danger," said Dick, one of the divers. Perhaps because his Spiritual State was more compatible with aquatic environments, he had been one of the more clear-headed among the diving students.

"While underwater, I felt a supernatural influence constantly trying to tempt us to stay at the bottom. Luckily, I was exceptionally strong-willed. Not only did I resist the temptation, but I also helped bring the others back safely!"

Grace mercilessly punctured his boast: "Come on, it was Eve who kept track of the time upstairs. When you didn’t respond by shaking the ropes after half an hour, she pulled all of you back up."

Dick quickly glanced at Luo Lin, who was sitting to Eve’s left. Seeing her still expressionless, he awkwardly said, "Why say it like that... At least I can still recount what happened around us underwater. Even if I didn’t accomplish much, I still put in the effort."

"A place that produces something as bizarre as the human-faced fish can’t possibly be safe," Tachibana Maki said, picking out the soft bones from her fish without looking up. "Everyone should make sure to close the doors and windows tightly tonight. For some reason, I have a bad feeling."

"I’ve heard many fish are more active at night than during the day," he added with a faint, ambiguous smile.

Many people immediately stiffened.

Halfway through the meal, seeing the atmosphere was ripe, Eve brought up her speculation about the competition task: "The competition has been going on for more than half a day, and we still haven’t seen any sign of the task target. Could it be that the ghost ship only appears under certain conditions?"

"That’s possible," Anthony nodded. "Huanzhu, Lud, and I discussed it earlier. We think the ghost ship might only appear in specific locations or at specific times."

...So they had a meeting without inviting me?!

Eve raised an eyebrow. Though her expression didn’t change, her knee gently bumped against Lorca’s thigh under the table. Almost immediately, the arm next to hers stiffened unnaturally, only relaxing after a moment.

Lorca lowered his eyes, his lips trembling almost imperceptibly as he whispered, "They didn’t invite me either. I was helping them prepare for fishing at the time."

Almost forgetting that, Eve calmly found an excuse for herself: "Your brother went."

That kid actually dared not report back—seems he forgot which side he should be on.

If the brother isn’t taught properly, it’s the older brother’s fault.

Hearing this, Lorca seemed to sigh, though Eve wasn’t sure—it was too noisy, and she didn’t catch it clearly.

She casually changed the subject: "Maybe it’s not about time or location. Perhaps the ghost ship has certain activation conditions and won’t appear until we complete some prerequisite tasks?"

This thought had occurred to her while listening to Dick recount their underwater adventure.

Such speculation would fit the nature of the interlinked tasks. Anthony said, "That’s also very possible. If there are prerequisite tasks, there should also be scoring opportunities—what was that sound?!"

His words abruptly turned into a sharp query.

From outside the windows and doors, all around the house, came a series of pat-pat sounds, growing closer and closer. Dull and heavy, like a large club striking a water-filled vinyl bag or slapping lifeless flesh, it was indescribably eerie.

Pat-pat—the sound grew louder and closer.

Eve snapped her fingers. A small black snake shot out from Lorca like an arrow, darting toward the wall. Its slender tail swept past, and the lights in the room instantly went out. Only the translucent curtains now cast twisted, elongated shadows, like desiccated corpses from a horror movie, crawling past the walls with outstretched hands.

Without even needing to lift the curtains, everyone in the room could guess where the pat-pat sound was coming from.

In the darkness, a calm female voice asked, "Do you need to pull back the curtains and take a look first?"

"Uh, p-probably not..."

"Then why are you still sitting there?" Eve asked, puzzled. "Shouldn’t you go get your weapons?"

After a brief dead silence, chairs and tables were overturned. Someone, with grim determination, shouted, "Let’s fight!"—doors and windows were flung open from the inside. Under the bright moonlight, human-faced fish with slender limbs were clearly visible. The students visibly paled but steeled themselves, brandishing swords and daggers as they leaped out.

Perhaps because they’d eaten too well that night, they even forgot to put on their coats when rushing out. The outside air flowed in, surprisingly not as cold as expected.

Without further thought, they swung their weapons, roaring to boost each other’s morale:

"Fight these monsters!"

"Friends, charge!!!"

The monsters: "???"

Soon, the glint of blades and swords bloomed into grotesque blossoms of blood on the snow.

This scene played out simultaneously at the bases of the other schools across the competition grounds, with one exception.

Zhou Huixue, leading the students of Imperial Arts and Sciences, held a curved blade that seemed too large for her frame. Standing on a slightly elevated, sheltered ledge on the mountainside, she coldly watched as the small blue base was quickly overrun by the human-faced fish monsters, which broke through the locked doors and windows and flooded inside.

Once she estimated all the fish monsters had entered, she used her free right hand to crush a button the size of a button. Instantly, a thick purple gas filled the small base. The drifting smoke seeped outside, its color carrying an extremely ominous quality, but it was quickly dispersed by the night wind.

The once noisy base fell completely silent in an instant.

After waiting a bit longer, Zhou Huixue rapped on the ice wall behind her with the tip of her curved blade. The clanging sound rang out sharply in the quiet night.

"Get to work," she ordered lightly. "After skinning them, gather at the shoreline immediately."

Shadowy figures slid down the mountainside like meteors in the night, only the glint of their blades flashing coldly under the moonlight.