Captain – Chapter 523 – Ghost Bridge

“Captain, I will try my best not to hinder your progress.”

The young man’s gentle voice reached her ears, and Roy knew this was his response to her words about “caring for too many people.” She shook her head lightly in his embrace: “What are you saying? I know how hard you and the crew have been working.”

“Without everyone, I couldn’t possibly have come this far. What right do I have to consider you a burden? On the contrary, having you all by my side is my greatest fortune.”

“Looking through history, which great pirate captain has ever been alone?”

Because the girl’s cheek was pressed tightly against his chest, when she shook her head, Caine felt a tickling sensation. Combined with her gentle and sincere words, the slight depression that had arisen in his heart from her earlier confession gradually dissipated.

“So rest assured, I was just reminded of it earlier and mentioned it casually.”

“This captain isn’t that fragile.”

As she spoke, Roy rose from his embrace, smiling, her tone much lighter.

This wasn’t a lie.

Although, as the young man had thought, that journey through the icy seas, the sudden plunge into illusion, and the confrontation with Captain Enzo on Burial Island all indicated that her current power was difficult to control, and she would inevitably feel powerless.

Moreover, her inability to awaken, or rather, after that great dream, the complete lack of response from the great power within her had unknowingly become a heavy pressure surrounding her, like an undispersed specter constantly lingering in her heart.

This situation, combined with the worry and displeasure brought by her first mate’s determination to accompany her, had made her speak those words—those heartfelt confessions about weakness.

But just as she said, she wasn’t that fragile. Even if she was, it only lasted a moment, like a flash in the pan. After that, she would still be the cold Golden-Eyed Devil.

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If she were afraid, she wouldn’t have come this far.

Knowing that the captain might have doubted herself for a moment earlier but had quickly adjusted and was fine, Caine secretly breathed a sigh of relief.

He nodded slightly to show his understanding, but just as he was about to say something else, the corner of his eye suddenly caught some flowing light—a familiar… starlight.

So he didn’t speak, but frowned and shifted his gaze.

Then he saw that dark gray low reef—no, countless of them.

They jutted out from the unfathomably deep, lightless sea, some straight, some tilted, creating a chaotic sight. Under the gradually thickening water mist, they looked exactly like a mass grave. Oh, the shape of these low reefs…

Was identical to the stone tablets scattered and inserted into the ground on Burial Island.

The starlight the first mate saw was naturally the Mourning Tongue.

However, unlike those on Burial Island, the starlight on the reefs was unstable, flickering bright and dim with the passing sea breeze, making one wonder whether they truly existed or were just illusions brought by the mist.

Additionally, there was another difference in the writing.

Caine could clearly distinguish that those who had carved the glowing characters were not the same person, and the script was extremely sloppy and twisted, as if dying people had raised their blood-stained fingers and desperately, randomly scrawled them on.

Most chilling of all was that the same sentence was carved on all the reefs.

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“Welcome to Hell.”

As if that “hospitable” host had long known which path the visitors would choose, and thus had those dying souls leave behind these words of welcome.

“What’s wrong?”

The young man hadn’t read out that sentence, but the gravity and slight bewilderment he unconsciously revealed was immediately caught by the girl who was observing him.

“Captain, can’t you see it?”

Hearing this, Caine forced himself to calm down and pointed at those reefs that rose and fell with the wooden boat’s movement, appearing and disappearing, asking the girl with some confusion.

Following the direction he pointed, Roy raised her eyebrows slightly and answered truthfully: “Of course I can see them, if you’re referring to those oddly shaped reefs.”

“What else besides that?”

Faced with the young man’s further questioning, the captain’s eyes showed deeper confusion. She shook her head gently, said “Nothing else,” then turned to look at him, asking with some concern: “I say, Caine, you’re not having hallucinations, are you? Or tell me…”

“What exactly did you discover?”

She can only see the reefs but not the characters…

Hearing this, Caine’s frown deepened. He made a basic judgment, then thoughtfully wondered whether those Mourning Tongue characters were specifically shown to him by that mastermind behind the scenes, in order to shake his resolve.

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But that didn’t make sense either—that devil logically shouldn’t know of his arrival at all.

Unable to figure out the reason, the young man could at least determine one thing: this sentence must be something that person threw out as a spark to disrupt morale or cause discord between the two. So, facing the captain’s urging voice, he explained:

“No, I’m not sure either.”

Withdrawing his gaze, Caine said with feigned naturalness: “I seemed to see a specter earlier, but it disappeared in the blink of an eye. It was probably just my hallucination.”

A specter?

Hearing this, the girl unconsciously grasped the pendant she wore—the medium entrusted to her by the Lady, carrying the obsession of that ghost girl.

Could what Caine saw be her?

But the pendant had shown no reaction earlier, and it only recognized her—he had no reason to be able to see her. Or was this another manifestation of the curse branded on him?

The first mate didn’t know that his casually made-up sentence could actually connect with some of the captain’s experiences, causing her to fall into quite a bit of wild speculation.

“Don’t think about it anymore. Just consider it my eyes playing tricks on me.”

He only calmly comforted her, wanting to drop this topic.

Unable to find an answer after much thought, the girl could only attribute this strange occurrence to his hallucination. With a bitter expression, she sighed and was about to scold him for making her so nervous when she suddenly heard the young dragon’s low roar from the bow.

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Exchanging glances with her first mate and seeing that he was equally surprised, Roy immediately leaned out slightly to look in the direction the young dragon—who had awakened at some unknown time—was gazing.

After that, she saw an extremely rare spectacle.

A pale light descended from the horizon like dancing gauze or slender, gentle hands, caressing the dark and abyssal sea surface not far from the wooden boat.

The next moment, as if by divine miracle, the phantom of an ancient bridge, semi-transparent, appeared where the radiance fell, its entire form reflecting a ghostly blue fluorescence.

Like the legendary ghost bridge that only appears when illuminated by the full moon.

In the brief moment when the two were attracted and stunned by this scene, the pale light descending from the sky began to flow silently, spilling toward the wooden boat.

The broken bridge extended accordingly, gradually becoming complete.

And as it was about to carry the two into that otherworldly place, it also brought sounds and spectacular scenery from beyond the present world. The sound of rushing water grew louder, and within the area covered by pale light, the thick, vision-obscuring water mist also rapidly thinned.

So Roy and Caine, who had involuntarily stood up, saw the true appearance behind the great fog, while simultaneously feeling an indescribable sense of shock and bewilderment in their hearts.

At the beginning of the light, where the broken bridge started, connecting heaven and sea with no visible end, was…

A great waterfall.