Chapter 2: The Ghost Ship

After asking the questions, Zuo Qingcang slightly loosened his right hand and heard the man say stubbornly, “The whole ship is filled with our people. You can’t escape.”

Zuo Qingcang gave him a cold look, then tightly covered his mouth again with his right hand. With the two fingers of his left hand, he fiercely twisted the man’s wound.

The man’s whole body curled up, veins bulging on his forehead, but Zuo Qingcang held his mouth shut with his right hand, pressing him to the ground. The man let out low growls one after another.

“I’ll ask one last time. Where is the antidote?”

The man reached into his belt with his right hand, pulled out a small bottle, and placed it in front of Zuo Qingcang. Zuo Qingcang said calmly, “Take it yourself. I’ll take it after I see that you’re fine.”

Seeing the man take the antidote without hesitation, Zuo Qingcang nodded and slowly released his right and left hands. But just as the man breathed a sigh of relief, Zuo Qingcang suddenly slammed both fists hard against his temples. The man couldn’t even struggle; after three seconds, he stopped breathing completely.

Zuo Qingcang picked up the small bottle that had held the antidote and swallowed all of it at once.

From the sudden attack to taking the antidote, there were many points where errors or mistakes could have occurred. But Zuo Qingcang couldn’t think about that anymore, as his situation was too dangerous. With his lower body numb, if the other party had been more cautious, he would surely have died.

After taking the antidote, Zuo Qingcang felt a cool sensation below his waist, as if the antidote was taking effect. However, he didn’t just wait quietly for the antidote to work; instead, he began moving the body.

While moving the body, he searched the man again and found a dagger hidden near his ankle. Then, his eyes suddenly showed confusion. He felt the leather armor on the man’s body, the axe at his waist, the necklace around his neck, and the strange hair accessory.

‘Wait… this person doesn’t seem to be a soldier from the ship.’

A sudden realization hit Zuo Qingcang: ‘Could it be that the ones attacking me aren’t Prince Yu’s men?’ He had originally thought that Cao Sheng had sent people to kill Liu Zhicheng on the ship, where in the vast ocean, someone dying from illness or something would be too normal.

But now, feeling the equipment on the man’s body, he felt things might not be so simple.

He recalled the words the man had just said: ‘The whole ship is filled with our people. You can’t escape.’

Zuo Qingcang frowned. In the darkness, he moved the body to the bed where he had originally been lying and covered it with a blanket, making it look as if someone was still sleeping. As for himself, he slowly crawled behind the door, holding the axe and dagger, waiting quietly there.

A few minutes later, two noisy voices were heard approaching.

“What’s taking Old Song so long? He’s been gone for ages.”

“Damn, did he find some treasure or something? This deck is all officers’ quarters.”

Two sets of footsteps came from outside. When they checked the third room, they entered Zuo Qingcang’s room. There were no candles, only dim light from outside. The two were immediately drawn to the body on the bed.

One man waved his hand, slowly drew the axe from his belt behind his back, and tiptoed toward the body on the bed. The other also quickly drew his axe and followed closely behind.

The first man reached the bed and suddenly pulled the blanket aside. When he saw the body on the bed, his face showed surprise, but before he could carefully identify the body, he felt a sharp pain in his neck. He froze, then fell onto the bed.

A dagger was stuck in his neck, and blood spurted rapidly from the artery.

The other man immediately turned around but saw Zuo Qingcang, who had thrown the dagger, now hurling the axe in his hand. The flying axe struck the second man directly in the face. He screamed and fell to the ground.

The entire series of actions was clean and efficient. The two attackers died in an instant. Zuo Qingcang immediately stood up; his legs were still sore, but he could move with effort. Clearly, the antidote was starting to work.

He quickly dragged the bodies to the doorway and identified them by the corridor’s torchlight. When he saw the bald heads, tattoos, and brown eyes of the dead men, his expression turned grave.

‘Pirates?’

‘But how dare pirates attack the Great Qi fleet?’

It was important to know that this time, the Great Qi fleet sent to the New Continent consisted of over twenty ships, with crews and soldiers totaling more than ten thousand people. He couldn’t imagine what kind of pirates would dare take on such a fleet. Moreover, the drug they used, Haohan Down, was an official Great Qi medication, which made Zuo Qingcang sense a conspiracy.

But clearly, that was also why they carried the antidote with them—they were afraid they might accidentally get poisoned themselves.

But then he suddenly remembered that when the first pirate attacked him, he had started to say the word ‘Liu.’ That was strange. If they were just pirates, how could they know Liu Zhicheng? Or maybe he wasn’t saying ‘Liu’ but another word that sounded similar?

But the pirates had obviously drugged all the soldiers on the ship. They had sneaked in for a surprise attack, so why would they speak to Liu Zhicheng?

There were too few clues. Zuo Qingcang couldn’t figure it out and didn’t dwell on it further. Instead, he took the dagger and axe from the bodies, wiped off the blood with their clothes, tucked the dagger into his pants pocket, and walked out of the room holding the axe.

Zuo Qingcang walked in a peculiar way, his whole body half-crouched like a cat, his back arched as if ready to spring into action at any moment. His heels didn’t touch the ground, staying an inch above it, and he walked only on the balls of his feet. This allowed him to dodge forward, backward, left, or right immediately in response to any sudden situation.

Outside the door, the corridor was dimly lit by candlelight. Zuo Qingcang quietly entered the two adjacent rooms and found that the officers inside had already been killed, their bodies stripped and thrown on the floor. It seemed the pirates had taken their belongings.

He then continued downward, deck by deck, room by room. The scene before him grew even more bizarre.

There were no shouts of battle, no pirates. The empty corridor held nothing but the creaking of turning doors. The entire ship seemed to have turned into a ghost ship.

Zuo Qingcang slowly headed toward the deck. In all the cabins he passed along the way, everyone had disappeared. He could even see half-eaten meals, dropped clothes, and weapons, as if they had left in a great hurry, as though some sudden disaster had struck.

Suddenly, a wet drop of liquid fell on Zuo Qingcang’s neck. He swiftly turned around, holding the axe in front of him, but there was nothing there—nothing at all.

A dripping sound echoed in his ears.

Zuo Qingcang reached behind his neck with his left hand and saw a bright red liquid on his fingers.

‘Blood?’ Zuo Qingcang looked up and saw several holes in the ceiling. Bright red blood was continuously dripping from these holes, falling onto the floor with a dripping sound.

Zuo Qingcang narrowed his eyes and quickly hurried toward the stairs with the axe. For some reason, he felt an increasingly bad premonition.

Reaching the top of the stairs, Zuo Qingcang carefully pushed open the deck hatch with his left hand, peering through the crack. But as soon as he pushed it open a little, he saw an eye staring back at him through the gap, filled with malice.

Zuo Qingcang frowned but didn’t even flinch. He continued pushing the hatch open and saw the body of a Great Qi soldier lying on the deck, his head facing the hatch, his face full of venomous hatred.

Zuo Qingcang carefully examined the body and saw that the man’s neck had been completely twisted. Other than that, there were no other injuries on his body.

Then he looked up and saw that the deck was entirely covered with the bodies of Great Qi soldiers. The corpses were piled together, and blood covered the entire deck, filling the air with a pungent, bloody smell that assaulted Zuo Qingcang’s nostrils.

Walking across the deck, Zuo Qingcang looked around the bodies but found no pirate weapons or pirate corpses. He turned over several bodies and saw a horrifying wound on each soldier’s neck, with flesh torn open.

‘Was everyone on the ship drugged, and then the pirates came up and slit their throats?’

‘This situation clearly suggests there’s a traitor on board.’

But aside from the bodies of the Great Qi soldiers, he couldn’t see a single pirate. It was as if the pirates had never been there at all. Around his ship, the entire fleet floated silently on the sea. Aside from scattered points of light, there was no other sound.

‘Did the pirates leave?’

‘But these many ships themselves represent a huge fortune. Why didn’t they take a few? And the supplies on board—they left all of them behind.’

‘Did they just come to kill people, and after killing, they left?’

‘But how could they retreat so quickly?’

Zuo Qingcang stood at the ship’s railing. The dark sea all around was like a giant mouth that had swallowed everything. Aside from the Great Qi fleet, he couldn’t see any other ships. It was as if the pirates who attacked the fleet had vanished into thin air.

‘It doesn’t make sense. The whole thing is too irrational.’

The strange situation before him left Zuo Qingcang baffled, as if the three pirates he had just encountered were illusions. He could only continue inspecting the bodies on the deck. There were 232 in total. Aside from him, no one on the ship had survived.

Now, in the vast ocean, Zuo Qingcang alone couldn’t possibly operate the ship. He was trapped in a floating prison, surrounded by these corpses.

‘First, I need to collect dry rations and fresh water, find the sea chart, and see if there’s a logbook.’

‘With such a large ancient ship, I can’t sail it alone. If I want to leave, I’ll have to take a small boat.’

The more he thought about it, the less optimistic Zuo Qingcang’s expression became. Sailing alone on the vast sea truly meant leaving his fate to heaven. And he had no other choice.

Just as he began checking the ship’s dry rations and fresh water, a loud beastly roar suddenly came from the sea.