Deep Sea Embers

A ship rose from the sea in a spectacular fashion, materializing before Vanna and Nina with its swaying body and otherworldly hue.

Nina was dumbfounded, taking several seconds to react before exclaiming, “Ah! A ship! A ship just emerged!”

She turned to Vanna and said quickly, “I must tell Uncle Duncan!”

Before she finished speaking, the girl had already spun around and dashed across the deck like the wind, heading towards the stern.

Vanna, however, continued to gaze intently at the eerie ship that had suddenly surfaced, observing the signs of decay and age, as well as every detail of the ship’s body.

She noticed a row of large letters on one side of the ship’s bow – the letters were severely corroded and covered with grime, making them difficult to discern, but she managed to read them: “Obsidian.”

The mysterious ship’s sudden appearance on the sea surface caused quite a stir, and Nina and Vanna weren’t the only ones who noticed. In no time, the others who had been resting in the cabin also gathered on the deck, including Morris, Shirley, Dog, and Alice. They approached the bow in amazement, gazing at the strange ship not far away, speculating about its origins, and soon, Duncan joined them on the bow’s deck with Nina.

“Mr. Duncan,” Vanna said as soon as she saw him, “there are no signs of life on that ship. It might be…a ghost ship.”

When she uttered the words “ghost ship,” the young inquisitor’s expression turned somewhat peculiar.

“Fellow travelers,” Duncan replied nonchalantly, then looked up at the ghost ship, which seemed to be only half the size of their own vessel. He first noticed the chimney structure on the ship’s upper part, “It looks like a steamship…can you estimate its age and origin?”

“No need to guess,” Morris’s voice suddenly interjected from the side. The old scholar’s gaze fixed on the distant sea, his eyes filled with complexity, “I saw its name – Obsidian, a steamboat that sank in the Cold Sea six years ago.”

“Ah?” Shirley, who was stretching her neck, looked at the old man in surprise, “Sir, you know that ship?”

“Scott Brown was on that ship when it had the accident,” Morris’s voice was slightly somber, “but how did it suddenly appear here? And in this manner…”

Alice, who had been listening to the others’ conversation, looked at the distant “Obsidian” and then back at Morris and Duncan. After contemplating for a long time, she finally asked, “Captain, is this normal? Do sunken ships float back up from the sea?”

“This is, of course, not normal,” Duncan glanced at her, “This is called a ghost ship… and I suspect it’s not just any ghost ship.”

He was speaking when suddenly Goathead’s voice echoed in his mind, “Captain, should we fire a couple of shots? The cannons are in an ideal position at this angle and distance, and they’re eager to fire a few rounds over there…”

“Hold them off!” Duncan cut off Goathead without hesitation. After pondering for a moment, he turned to those around him, “We need to go over there and investigate.”

“We’re going… to that ghost ship?” Shirley recoiled upon hearing this, “Isn’t that a bit reckless? I’m not afraid of anything else, but what if that ship suddenly sinks again? After all, it surfaced unexpectedly…”

“Ai will bring us back,” Duncan glanced at the girl indifferently, “Of course, if you don’t want to go, you can stay here. It’s not compulsory.”

Shirley opened her mouth, but before she could speak, Dog broke the silence first, “We’ll go! We’ll go! It’s our duty to serve the captain! We’re eager to!”

Taken aback, Shirley started grumbling to her partner telepathically, “Dog, can’t you have some principles…”

“What’s unprincipled about actively participating in group activities, understanding the situation, and showing initiative?” Dog argued in their mental connection, “With the boss leading, we don’t have to worry about safety, so we should show ourselves…”

“What I mean is, can you give me a chance to rely on someone next time? You always snatch it…”

Dog pondered for a moment, “Shirley, can’t you have some principles?”

Duncan didn’t notice that Shirley and Dog were daydreaming while communicating telepathically (he knew that when these two were silent, they must be muttering in their mental connection). Instead, he looked at the others and asked, “Do you want to join us?”

“I want to go!” Nina was the first to raise her hand, and she even seemed a bit excited, “A ghost ship, I’ve only heard of them in legends and stories, but I’ve never seen one in person.”

“The Vanished is also a ghost ship,” Duncan reminded the girl, then looked at the others, “What about you?”

“Perhaps we can find clues left by Brown before the accident on that ship,” Morris nodded, “I’ll go with you.”

“I’ll go too,” Vanna followed, “The ghost ship phenomenon may be related to heresy or evil corruption, and I have some experience in this area.”

“I don’t know,” Alice thought about it and looked at Duncan, “But I want to be with the captain.”

“Let’s all go then, consider it an eye-opener,” Duncan said casually, waving to the dove resting and basking in the sun on the mast nearby, “Ai, take us to that ghost ship.”

A ball of dark green flames suddenly appeared on the Vanished, and in an instant, the massive skeletal bird took flight, heading towards the “Obsidian,” which swayed gently with the waves.

All of a sudden, the deck of the Vanished had fallen silent.

This quietness was brief though, and a small boat hanging near the side of the Vanished suddenly creaked, swaying rather dejectedly.

It was a shuttle boat, typically used for quickly transferring personnel between two ships at close range on the water.

As they spoke, two ropes coiled at the edge of the deck produced a rustling friction sound, slithering like snakes toward the side of the shuttle boat and tapping the boat’s hull with their ends.

Of course, the goat head in the captain’s cabin sensed the situation on the deck and sighed slightly. It struck up a conversation with the old crewmates it had been with for a century, “Maybe… you guys should practice rowing in the sea a bit more…”

The creaking sound of the rocking boat grew louder…

On the other hand, Ai, who had flown to the airspace above the Obsidian, did not land immediately. Instead, under Duncan’s command, she circled above the ghost ship several times, ensuring there were no moving targets on the ship before landing on a relatively clean and stable part of the deck.

A green flame shot into the sky, and Duncan and his companions emerged from the fire.

An unmistakable musty smell immediately assailed everyone’s nostrils – the stench of seawater mingled with an indescribable rotten odor.

Nina was the first to frown upon arriving on the deck, “Ugh… the smell here is so unpleasant…”

“Not all ghost ships are as clean and tidy as the Vanished with unlimited fries,” Duncan said to Nina with a smile, “If this ship really is the Obsidian from back then, it’s been submerged in the deep sea for six years.”

As he spoke, he surveyed the eerie steamship.

Rusty, broken, and stained – it might have once been a beautiful and advanced mechanical speedboat, but now all that remained was a lifeless mass of steel and wood. Even more bizarrely, the seawater that should have been present on a ship that had just emerged from the sea was nowhere to be found.

The deck was dry.

Even in many of the dents on the deck, where water should have easily collected, everything was dry.

Vanna also noticed this and frowned slightly, squatting down to rub the ground with her finger.

She still remembered the scene when the ship emerged from the sea, with a torrent of seawater pouring down from the Obsidian, like an endless waterfall washing every corner of the ship. Logically, there shouldn’t be any dry spots on this ship.

“Vanna,” Morris turned his head after observing the situation, “Do you sense any heresy or evil corruption?”

“…No,” Vanna shook her head slowly and frowned. She had been paying attention to this issue since she first stepped on the deck, constantly detecting the presence of any supernatural fluctuations around her. “There’s no trace of any supernatural aura, but that’s even more unsettling. The deck is dry, which is obviously abnormal, and some supernatural force must be involved behind the abnormal phenomenon.”

“It could be a supernatural force beyond your perception,” Duncan said casually as he walked forward, “Anyway, if there’s something hidden on this ship, we just need to search more thoroughly, and it’s bound to reveal itself.”

Nina hurriedly took two steps to catch up with her Uncle Duncan, “What if something really jumps out?”

Duncan stopped and turned around with a smile, “In any case, let’s try reasoning first…”