Chapter 176

Chapter 176

After bidding farewell to Detective Gray at the restaurant entrance, Evan didn’t rush back to his room. Instead, he first circled around to the end of the deck to soak in the evening breeze—the salty, damp wind, carrying the chill of the distant sea fog, just enough to take the edge off the creepy feeling from the ghost ship earlier. Only when his fingertips grew stiff from the cold did he turn and head toward his cabin.

Pushing open the door, the room was lit only by a small bedside wall lamp, casting a warm yellow glow on the floor covered in dark brown carpet, creating a soft, warm pool of light. Evan didn’t head straight to wash up as usual; instead, he walked directly to the desk and pulled out a beat-up black leather folder from his briefcase.

The clasp on the folder was worn smooth from years of use. He flicked it open with his thumb. Inside, there were no business documents or passenger lists—only a thick stack of slightly curled white paper and a fountain pen filled with dark blue ink.

Evan sat down at the desk and spread the top sheet flat—it already bore a few crooked lines of handwriting and some rough sketches of sail outlines, stuff he'd scribbled down a few days back about ghost ship rumors. He unscrewed the pen cap, and as the nib touched the paper, he paused, staring at the blank space for a few seconds.

After a moment, he moved his wrist, and the nib began to glide across the paper. But instead of writing “Ghost Ship The Death Ship,” the nib seemed pulled by some invisible force, tracing a twisted arc—the arc deepened, gradually forming the outline of a human face: two hollow pits for eye sockets, a mouth split to the ears revealing a row of sharp teeth, yet the lines were soft like melted wax, giving off a weird, hard-to-place creepiness.

Evan frowned, trying to steer the nib away, but the pen seemed glued to the paper, continuing to sketch the shape of a ship: a battered hull, sails like tattered black rags, and several chains of indistinct shape hanging from the gunwales—exactly the “Death Ship” he had encountered hours earlier. Strangely, around the ship, patches of deep blue ink slowly spread, like surging waves or drifting sea fog, enveloping the vessel at the center.

He let go, letting the pen do its own thing across the paper. The nib first drew a swirling mass of ink, its edges sharp and angular—a storm that could rip sails to shreds. Then, in the lower right corner of the paper, a line of text gradually emerged, the handwriting crooked but clearly legible: “Victoria, Death Route.”

The creepiest part was when the last word hit the page: where the ink had spread, several smaller, semi-transparent outlines appeared—some were skulls missing half their craniums, others were bony fingers reaching out, and even a streak of dark red ink flowed along the ship’s outline, like dried bloodstains.

Evan stared at the paper, pressing his fingertip on the words “Death Route”—the ink wasn’t dry yet, leaving a blue smudge on his finger. He had only meant to record his recent encounter, yet these drawings and words seemed to have “grown” out of the paper themselves. He had no idea why he'd drawn a face like that or written such a sentence.

He pulled this sheet out, tucked it into the innermost layer of the folder, and picked up a second blank sheet. This time, he deliberately gripped the pen tightly, and the nib finally behaved a little better, though it still couldn’t resist sketching a small, ghostly green flame outline at the edge of the paper.

Evan tossed the pen back into its holder, pressing his fingertips to his brow and letting out a deep breath—when he had been holding the pen, his fingertips still carried a cold, slimy feel, like grabbing rotten seaweed in the sea fog, which now slowly dissipated.

He turned his head to look at the drawings spread on the desk—the paper with the eerie face and the Death Ship still lay there, the ghostly green flame outline blurred by a small ring of ink, as if it were actually flickering on the page. The sight hit him, and he immediately recalled the moment hours earlier when the ghost ship had slid past the Victoria’s hull:

The skeleton captain at the helm had just turned his bony head, his hollow eye sockets fixed on the porthole where Evan stood. Two clusters of ghostly green flames “flared” half an inch higher, locking onto his gaze like living things. That gaze carried the chill of the seabed’s depths, like countless fine ice needles piercing the skin. Though it lasted only a moment, it made the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end.

“It's some kind of spiritual contamination,” Evan murmured to the empty room, his fingertips unconsciously rubbing a small silver badge hidden in his sleeve—a talisman forged from supernatural materials, now faintly warm against his wrist.

Fortunately, the Death Ship had only grazed the hull, lingering not at all, and Captain Bird had merely glanced at him briefly. This level of contamination wasn’t severe—unlike those crewmen entangled by ghost ships, who would be dragged into the sea and become part of the undead.

He retrieved a small crystal bottle from a hidden compartment in his suitcase, filled with flowing silver-white liquid—purified supernatural factor. Evan unscrewed the stopper, dabbed a bit of the liquid on his fingertip, and gently applied it to the fingers that had held the pen, then touched his brow.

The silver-white liquid turned into a cool current upon contact with his skin, coursing through his blood vessels and limbs. The lingering chill from before dissipated like mist under a blazing sun.

He leaned back in his chair, looking at the remaining liquid in the crystal bottle, and knew: with this level of contamination, using the supernatural factor to flush it out once a day, within three days at most, the cold, creepy feelings hiding in his nerves and the uncontrollable urge to draw eerie patterns would vanish completely.

Outside the window, the sea breeze continued to tap against the porthole. Evan folded the drawings, locked them back in the folder, and hid the crystal bottle in the secret compartment—this voyage had already brought enough trouble, and he didn’t want to be held back by this minor spiritual contamination. There were more pressing matters waiting for him in the colonies.