Chapter 4: Racing Boats in the Spirit Realm

Ethereal green flames burned fiercely over his body, turning flesh and bones into a translucent spiritual body. Duncan, amidst these flowing fires, grasped the helm of the Homeloss, and his perception seemed to extend along with the flames, eventually reaching the entire ship.

It turned out that it didn't need a crew at all.

The Homeloss could set sail on its own, requiring only the captain to steer; it could depart at any time.

The moment the ethereal green flames soared into the air, Duncan fell into brief panic, but the supernatural phenomena he had witnessed more than once on this ship over the past few days forced him to regain his calmness, and in those critical few seconds, he did not let go of the steering wheel.

Now, he was finally certain that the flames were some kind of "force" harmless to him—regardless of whether his body could recover afterward, at the very least, the power of the flames now seemed to be helping him control the Ghost Ship beneath his feet.

The noise in his mind gradually subsided, and Duncan felt his head clearer than ever. The Homeloss, like an extension of his limbs, conveyed indescribable "sensations" to him. Although he still lacked the knowledge and experience of a qualified captain, at least now he had the power to control the ship alone.

Specter-like sails filled out on the masts like gauze, and many auxiliary sails and staysails began to adjust their angles on their own. Right now, the air currents above the sea were chaotic, yet those spectral sails seemed to draw a unified power from the invisible, turbulent winds. The massive Homeloss ended its aimless drifting and began to steady its course under the push of its sails.

Duncan tried to turn the steering wheel, and a tangible force feedback entered his mind. He could feel the huge hull beneath his feet at last beginning to turn, attempting to stray away from the boundless fog ahead.

But the turning speed still seemed not fast enough; the limitless thick fog was still closing in bit by bit. From the brass pipe beside the steering wheel came the shrill call of the goat's head: "Attention, we are approaching the limits of reality... We are about to fall into the Spirit Realm! Captain, we need..."

"I'm doing it!" Duncan shouted, cutting off the goat's head, "Instead of jabbering down there, think of something useful to help!"

The goat head fell silent, but just as Duncan thought it had finally calmed down, that raspy, piercing, and somewhat eerie wail suddenly burst forth from the brass pipe again: "Push on! Push on! Push on!"

Duncan: "...?"

At this moment, he suddenly felt that everything around him had lost its sense of reality; he had come to terms with the strange occurrences he'd encountered, the supernatural powers aboard the ship, and even with the fact that he was being stewed by a green fire, but he couldn't imagine that the goat's head, which had given him such a strong sense of danger from the start, would make such an astonishing move at this moment... That weird thing had always been bizarre, but now it was excessively so!

However, the approaching thick fog did not give Duncan more time to think or to complain. Although the Homeloss was already turning sharply—with its massive hull, the speed of the turn almost resembled a drift—the distant fog seemed to be consciously chasing the prey before it. It diffused large swathes of thin haze from its edges, and the haze spread so fast that it almost instantly enveloped the space around the Homeloss.

As the mist rose from the sea, Duncan distinctly felt a weird change in the environment; the sky light dimmed abruptly, and the originally blue seawater had inexplicably surfaced with countless, threadlike black lines. These black lines surfaced from beneath the sea like entangled fine hair and rapidly darkened the entire ocean.

In the mist, innumerable vague figures seemed to be emerging.

"We have fallen into the Spirit Realm!" The goat head's noisy and cryptic "push on" finally ceased. Its call sounded as if it came from a very distant place, interwoven with numerous low murmurs, as if a multitude of malicious voices surrounded Duncan, "But the Homeloss hasn't completely dropped—Captain, hold the helm, as long as we haven't sunk into the Mysterious Deep Sea, the Homeloss still has power to maintain its course; we can still get out!"

"The problem is I need to know where to go!" Duncan roared in a low voice, his own mixed with the crackling of the green flames as if from hell, "I've lost my sense of direction!"

"Intuition, Captain, intuition!" the goat's head shouted through the pipe, "Your intuition is more accurate than any line on a sea chart!"

Duncan: "..."

A sense of helplessness washed over him, but Duncan no longer had the energy to argue with a bizarre goat's head. Since it said to rely on intuition, he decided to just be bold—

Following the lingering feeling that remained before the haze rose, he tightly grasped the steering wheel and mustered all his strength to turn in the direction he believed in.

From top to bottom, the Homeloss emitted a succession of spine-chilling howls. The massive hull drew a shocking arc across the sea, now turned pitch black, with the wind howling and the mist swirling. And in the dim sky light and fog, Duncan's peripheral vision suddenly caught something gradually emerging within the mist.

The next second, he saw it was a ship—a white ship, smaller than the Homeloss, with a pitch-black smokestack standing in the middle of the hull.

At the end of the beautiful arc traced by the Homeloss, that ship suddenly appearing from the mist was heading straight toward—it could be said that the Homeloss was now heading straight for it.

Only one scream was left in Duncan's heart: "Motherclucker, Spirit Realm ship chase has gone wrong!"

He had been exploring this eerie world for so long without seeing any other living people; why did a ship suddenly appear now? What kind of probability was this for a mutual collision?

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The howling winds roared, and towering waves surged; the Endless Sea was unleashing its terrifying might, and in the face of this natural force that could shred even Transcendent beings, the "Homeloss" strained the last bit of power from its steam turbines to resist the fate of death.

The ship's captain, Lawrence Creed, his hair turned gray, stood in the pilot house. The solid walls and glass windows of the pilot house offered no sense of security as he clenched the ship's wheel, the death throes and convulsions of Homeloss as if pouring directly into his mind through the gears and connecting rods behind the wheel.

Through the broad windows, he clearly saw the astonishing waves rising outside the ship's side, but even more terrifying than those waves was the eerie fog spreading across the distant sea and the sporadic black lightning within.

Homeloss was the most advanced steamship in the world, but even the most sophisticated machinery could only ensure powerful propulsion within "normal" seas. What it and its captain now faced was a collapsing reality, the chilling cold spreading from the vile palaces of evil gods beneath the world's surface.

"Captain! The priest is losing his grip!"

The first mate's shrill cry came from the side. Lawrence heard a tinge of hoarseness in the other's voice and then looked forward to the prayer altar, seeing the ominous purple-black flames rising from the incense burner, while the respectable and loyal clergyman in a deep blue robe trembled in front of it, his mouth and nose full of blood, his eyes alternating madly between lucidity and frenzy.

Lawrence felt a sinking in his heart.

He knew that the respectable priest was still standing by humanity, using his last devout beliefs and a soul pure and sacred to resist the call from "the depths of the world." But this persistence was already faltering, with the emergence of purple-black smoke from the incense burner being clear evidence that contamination had breached the prayers.

Once the priest fell, the consciousness of everyone on board could potentially turn into a portal to the Mysterious Deep Sea, or even to Subspace.

"Captain!"

The first mate's voice came again nearby, but Lawrence cut him off, the middle-aged Captain's face resolute: "Temporarily shut down the Sacred Relic beacon—we're sinking into the Spirit Realm!"

The first mate was dumbfounded, the sea-hardened man seemingly unable to believe his ears: "Captain?!"

"Sinking into the Spirit Realm—this way, at least for ten minutes, we can avoid the most ferocious impact of the border collapse. The priest might also get a chance to recover," Lawrence ordered decisively, but this time with a bit of explanation, "Execute my order."

The first mate opened his mouth as if to say something more, but then he clenched his teeth: "You're the captain!"

The crew began to quickly carry out the captain's orders. Lawrence, steering personally, took a deep breath as the Sacred Relic beacon deep in the ship gradually died out. He could feel that the invisible protective force field enveloping the Homeloss was swiftly weakening, and without the relic's protection, the ship was slowly sinking into the "Spirit Realm," a layer between reality and the Mysterious Deep Sea.

A mist appeared over the surrounding sea, and the waters began to darken.

It was dangerous, but historically, not all ships that sank into the Spirit Realm failed to return to the human world—as a member of the Explorers' Association, he had perused the related tomes countless times, as well as various "Survival Guides" written by survivors.

How much worse could it get? He just needed to let Homeloss skirt a storm at the edge of the Spirit Realm, and then, using the powerful propulsion of the advanced steam turbine, perform a breathtaking "Spirit Realm Drift." If fortune still favored him, he could lead his crew back to the human realm.

Then he'd hurry to hand over the damned "Anomaly 099" in the cargo hold to the Governor of the Plunder City-State, and after that, never wade through the murky affairs of the authorities in this lifetime again.

It couldn't get worse.

Lawrence comforted himself with these thoughts.

Then he saw a three-masted sailing ship emerge abruptly from the now pitch-black sea in the distance, one much larger than the Homeloss, bearing down with an unstoppable momentum and making a heart-stopping arc as it came crashing toward them...

Captain Lawrence watched woodenly ahead.

"Shit."

(Mommy! What a surprise!

Thank you for your enthusiasm and support, thanks to the Silver Alliance from "Integrity Eaten"… Big Cutie, there will be another update today =.=

But this updating pace is just for today… after all, my body isn't what it once was 233)