Captain – Chapter 682 – Ship Within a Ship

The tide scattered upon touching the anchor, transforming into countless fireflies spreading in all directions.

This wasn’t because the young man lacked the strength to maintain it and could only let that giant anchor smash into his body, ending up crushed to pieces, but because he felt it unnecessary.

If he pressed all his remaining chips at the very beginning of entering this sea, it would be hard to go far, let alone reach the depths of the abyss.

Under these circumstances, trading injury for time and remaining strength was the most profitable exchange.

So facing the approaching black shadow and the violent gale that cut painfully, the young man raised both arms to block in front of him, as if wanting to meet that terrifying offensive with just this.

It looked like a mantis trying to stop a chariot, somewhat pitiful.

Perhaps in the instant of contact with the iron anchor, all the bones in his body would shatter completely.

After all, the giant statue seated at the ship’s bow, now twisting its body at a strange angle to watch him, possessed monstrous strength that even dragons couldn’t withstand.

The broken scales and folded wings on the giant dragon embedded in the ship’s hull were clear proof of this.

And this skeletal giant ship’s fearsome might was, at least on the surface, all due to this giant statue—it was precisely the source of the ship of the dead’s name as known in the present world.

How could the young man’s body alone block a full strike from such a terrifying creature?

But the truth often contradicted expectations.

“Clang!”

A sound of collision clearer and louder than the death bell rang out where the giant anchor met the young man’s arms, even causing all the piercing shrieks to pause momentarily.

The next moment, the iron anchor fell powerlessly like a collapsing mountain, smashing countless reaching hands and claws below until bones cracked and broke, directly creating a hollow.

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But the Crown Prince who bore the giant statue’s terrifying monstrous strength didn’t break completely as logic would dictate, falling into the bone sea like a broken kite. Instead, he flew back swiftly.

In just the blink of an eye, he vanished into the depths of the abyss, into that pale mist.

Seeing this scene, the giant statue at the bow briefly froze, then let out a deafening roar. Enraged by such failure, or perhaps to ensure that “delicious meal” absolutely couldn’t escape the bone sea, it didn’t pull back the giant anchor as in the past.

Instead, it used the chain’s force to violently pull its own form toward that place.

“Crack, crackle…”

After a series of tooth-aching sounds of bone joints splitting and flesh tearing, the skeletal giant statue’s already irregularly twisted body actually separated from the ship’s bow entirely!

Using the counter-force transmitted back through the chain, it plunged diagonally down from the bow’s deck platform, landing on countless bone claws that came to meet and support it.

Then retrieving the giant anchor, pushed by the “sea tide,” it headed toward that ghostly mist.

In the pale mist, the distant solitary island appeared and disappeared.

The young man, seemingly struck and sent flying but actually borrowing the force to travel, still relied on the pale golden tide that swiftly gathered and swirled around him again to maneuver through the bone sea.

His arms hung slightly at his sides, trembling constantly, seeming somewhat drained of strength.

The pair of dark protective guards on his arms and hands, originally quite inconspicuous, were now wreathed in silk-like silver radiance, like countless miniaturized lightning serpents.

This protective item that also served as a weapon was the reason he could directly resist the giant statue’s great force, and was likewise one of the divine artifacts brought out along with that compass before fleeing the capital.

But even with this device protecting his body, taking a direct hit from the giant anchor still left him in poor condition.

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The fine cracks on the arm guards, the chaotic radiance, and his paper-pale complexion and blood at the corner of his lips all illustrated this point. More troubling was…

The “generous gift” his father emperor had left in his body after the “divine battle” in the capital twelve years ago, which he had spent years suppressing, now showed signs of losing control again.

Not to mention being caught by the giant creature behind him—once this “old wound” erupted, he would inevitably fall into the bone sea like a bird with broken wings, becoming a stepping stone for this chaotic ascension.

Such an outcome might be more terrifying than death.

But despite facing such desperate straits, knowing the possibility of successfully penetrating the island’s center and attacking the ghostly ship’s vital core was already very small, the young man remained calm.

He even cast aside the miserable shrieks and bell sounds in his ears, and the torch’s ghostly light flickering in the mist behind him, his eyes containing only the black shadow of the nearby island.

At this point, all distracting thoughts and hopes for reinforcements’ arrival were meaningless.

Only one path forward remained.

But for some reason, when he fell from the sky and surveyed this abyss, though he had clearly measured by sight that his landing point wouldn’t exceed a hundred meters from that island.

Even after entering the mist, the visual information supported this point.

Yet no matter how he “rode the waves” forward, the island’s outline remained as initially—no, though it was getting closer, the speed was truly too slow, as if separated by dozens of li.

Under ordinary circumstances, this distance would be nothing to him, but the current situation was different. The precious distance and time he had gained by suffering injury…

Were gradually being worn away by this despairingly long stretch.

The sounds of bone sea waves and the giant anchor’s whistling approached simultaneously. The young man could no longer conserve strength. The tide around him suddenly surged, temporarily blocking the iron anchor while barely helping him dodge, but that giant shadow in the mist behind was drawing ever closer.

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The situation became endlessly perilous.

This hunt, or rather this cruel game like a cat toying with a mouse, lasted a long time.

Perhaps due to the violence born from its earlier miss, though the giant statue clearly had several opportunities to strike him down and end this tedious chase, it deliberately didn’t do so.

It seemed to insist on letting him see the true terror at the abyss’s end before his death, completely severing his will to make things easier when devouring him.

So despite the space being stretched dozens of times longer, the Crown Prince finally reached the island.

But when he landed on it, even though the skeletal remains behind stopped at the nearby “shore” without continuing their offensive, the young man could barely stand steady.

The tide around him had dimmed several times over, its might no longer present, not to mention his injuries.

And in the moment of landing, many questions that he and his subordinates had puzzled over without solution found answers, just like the ghostly ship’s transformation years ago…

So it was because of you.

The ghostly mist ahead gradually thinned, but there was no human figure. The Crown Prince hadn’t seen that person, but sensed it through feeling, through that rare bond between kindred spirits in this world.

In the center of this island, perhaps deeper than the ocean floor, there was an aura.

Aloof, cold, deathly silent, and…

Unreasonably powerful.

Were there such monsters everywhere in the west? They all seemed related to Prince Deming too. If this was truly so, even obtaining the jade seal would make it difficult for him to resist.

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The pursuit ended, and the island was surprisingly quiet. The young man finally had time to rest briefly and gather his thoughts. Only then did he discover that this island’s ground was actually wooden—looking around, it was more like a warship.

This scene of a sea within a ship and a sunken ship within the sea was indeed quite eerie and peculiar.

Thinking that according to direction, the path leading to that great existence should be within the ship’s interior, and the faint summons spread by the jade seal was also there, the Crown Prince steadied his breathing, endured the irrepressible pain, and took a step forward.

“Tap.”

But just this one step seemed to take him away from the present world and into another realm.

The clear death bell faded away, the massive pressure from the giant shadow behind also disappeared, and even the ever-changing ghostly mist inexplicably froze for an instant.

The next moment, the mist flowed again, and some sounds reached his ears.

There was cheerful laughter and teasing, bottles clinking, mixed with somewhat stern rebukes—like stumbling into old times. But no matter how the young man looked around, he couldn’t find even a single human figure, so he took another step forward.

Those unseen existences seemed only now to finally discover the uninvited guest.

So all sounds suddenly ceased.

The ghostly mist ahead of the Crown Prince swirled rapidly like a whirlpool, more like opening a door.

A figure walked out from within, accompanied by an indifferent statement:

“You shouldn’t have come here, because you…”

“Are not the captain’s guest.”