Chapter 2: Cold Iron and White Lanterns

After a brief moment of deathly silence in the lower deck, the suppressed panic finally found its outlet and exploded instantaneously.People scrambled frantically from their filthy bunks, their cries, curses, and desperate prayers blending together to assault Lin Jie's eardrums.

The hatch had been bolted shut from the outside with a heavy latch, and the laborers trapped in this metal can were pounding madly against the thick iron door, creating loud but futile bangs.

Lin Jie did not join this pointless commotion.

Pounding on the door was utterly meaningless.

The people outside—those sailors and overseers—were probably struggling to save themselves right now.

He forced his chaotic thoughts back to rationality, his mind racing. The thing he had just seen was clearly no ordinary creature.

It could affect his mind, generate fear;its singing could stop the ship—this went completely beyond the realm of science.

"Ahhh—!!"

A piercing scream came from the deck above, followed by the blast of a musket.

The gunfire was scattered and hasty, more like a cornered animal lashing out blindly. Lin Jie's heart sank further—this proved the fight had already begun.

He turned his gaze to the lower deck's only exit—a cargo lift shaft leading to the upper deck, currently also barred by an iron grate.

The lock on the grate was an old-fashioned brass one, impossible for him to open in his current situation.

However, Lin Jie's eyes moved past the lock and settled on one of the grate's connection points. The rivet there was heavily rusted from years of seawater erosion.

There was no time to hesitate.

Lin Jie moved through the chaotic crowd to an middle-aged laborer who was already barely breathing. The man was burning with fever, muttering deliriously.

Lin Jie crouched down and carefully pulled a thin iron rod, worn down until its original color was unrecognizable, from the man's waist.

This was one of the laborers' few "personal possessions."

"Sorry, uncle," Lin Jie whispered, then immediately turned, tore a piece of oilcloth, and wrapped it around one end of the iron rod to prevent slipping.

He aimed the other end at the most vulnerable rivet, then picked up a small piece of pig iron used as ballast from the floor to use as a makeshift hammer.

"Clang! Clang! Clang!"

After what felt like an eternity, with a dull cracking sound, the rivet finally gave way under the strain and broke. The iron grate loosened, creating a small gap.

Lin Jie quickly inserted the iron rod into the gap and pried with all his strength!

"Screech—" Accompanied by the sound of twisting metal, an opening just large enough for one person to crawl through appeared.

Just as he prepared to climb out, the sounds of battle on the deck grew more intense.

Amid the gunfire were sounds resembling bones being forcibly snapped and the final gurgling sounds from sailors' throats as they were dragged away.

Then, a bright light illuminated the deck.

Lin Jie saw a gentleman in a proper travel coat rush out from the upper cabins.

The man had a resolute face, his eyes showing tension but not a trace of panic, forming a stark contrast with the chaotic sailors around him.

In one hand, he carried a lantern emitting a steady white light;in the other, he held a heavy-looking Webley revolver.

"Everyone to the deck! Form a circle, aim the lights at the water! Aim at those 'Deep Sea Sirens'!"

The gentleman shouted loudly in German, but unfortunately, no one could understand him in the chaos.

However, his subsequent actions shocked everyone who saw him.

A slick, wet creature crawled out from the shadows along the ship's rail and lunged at him.

The German gentleman didn't turn around, simply pointed his revolver backward and fired decisively.

"Bang!"

In the deafening gunshot, a burst of scorching flame erupted from the muzzle.

The moment the bullet struck the "Deep Sea Siren," a silver glow exploded on its pale body.

The hit monster let out a sharp, strange shriek, its body stiffening, its movements faltering for one second.

In that instant, the German gentleman had already turned around and calmly fired a second shot into its head.

The Siren's head exploded, turning into a cloud of black mist mixed with foul seawater that dissipated into the air.

"It works!" Lin Jie's heart pounded wildly as he watched this scene.

That gun, those bullets—they were clearly specially designed to deal with these monsters!

But the situation on the battlefield didn't improve because of this.

There were too many of those monsters.

They kept climbing onto the deck from the pitch-black seawater. Their most terrifying weapon wasn't their claws, but an intangible fear that could shatter human will.

Most sailors went limp from extreme fear before they could even fire their guns, their minds freezing as they watched themselves being dragged into the abyss.

The German gentleman stood firm in the center of the deck.

His marksmanship was terrifyingly accurate, every shot hitting its mark. The strange lantern in his hand also seemed to have a certain dispelling effect on the Sirens.

But under the siege of several monsters, he gradually appeared overwhelmed, soon sustaining injuries.

Lin Jie seized the opportunity, climbing out through the broken opening hand and foot, rolling into a pile of debris on the deck.

He didn't dare make a sound, holding his breath as he observed.

Suddenly, a Siren larger than its counterparts charged out from behind the shadow of the main mast. Its speed was unimaginably fast.

The German gentleman had just repelled a monster from the flank and had no time to turn around.

And that monster positioned itself right in his blind spot, avoiding most of the light.

The tremendous impact sent him flying backward. The Webley revolver in his hand traced a parabola through the air, sliding across the wet, slanted deck toward Lin Jie's location!

Acting on instinct, Lin Jie lunged out and grabbed the still-warm revolver.

A piercing cold sensation spread from his palm, making him feel like he was holding not a gun, but a block of ice.

This chill surged into his fear-blank mind, miraculously dispelling the suffocating mental pressure that had been making his limbs go weak.

"Huff... huff..." Lin Jie gasped for breath, finally understanding how this German man had managed to stay calm amid such fear.

A Siren spotted him and shrieked as it lunged toward him.

The mental pressure attacked again, but with the "barrier" provided by the gun in his hand, although Lin Jie's legs felt weak, he didn't completely collapse.

Survival instinct overwhelmed everything. He mimicked memories from movies, raising the heavy piece of iron with trembling hands, aiming at that featureless white face, and pulled the trigger!

"BANG!!!"

The powerful recoil slammed his slender body backward. The gunshot deafened him temporarily, and his vision went white from the dazzling muzzle flash.

He couldn't see anything, couldn't hear anything, only felt himself falling backward uncontrollably.

Survival instinct made him reach out randomly, trying to grab something on the slippery deck to steady himself.

His right palm pressed heavily against a slimy surface.

A burning, stinging pain came from the wound on his palm where the iron had cut him. Warm blood immediately merged with the slimy, slippery sensation.

Without warning.

The world disappeared.

Lin Jie's consciousness felt like it was being violently torn from his body by an invisible hand, then smashed into an abyss made of pure malice.

He was no longer Lin Jie, no longer a young man struggling to survive on a deck.

He had become something else.

He "felt" that he had no lungs, yet could breathe freely under the terrifying pressure of ten-thousand-meter depths.

He "felt" that he had no eyes, yet could "see" everything around him—a perception of space and existence that transcended vision.

He "felt" an eternal, bone-gnawing hunger, an extreme hatred for all things warm and living.

Soon, a human emotion forced its way into this vast consciousness belonging to an "unknown other."

It was an extreme focus and unwillingness, carrying a resolute will that pierced into this icy darkness.

"Licht……Licht!"

The German gentleman's final obsession before death, and the ancient, vast malice of the "Deep Sea Sirens"—these two completely different yet equally powerful mental fragments used Lin Jie's consciousness as a battlefield, unfolding a silent but brutal collision.

His brain was the anvil for this impact.

"Boom——!!!"

Pain, indescribable pain.

Countless memory fragments and sensory information that didn't belong to him violently washed over his fragile mental defenses.

He saw.

Saw densely packed pale nests in the deep ocean trenches...

Heard countless Sirens wailing in an inhuman tone, merging into a grand, blasphemous hymn...

And saw, from the German man's perspective, a rapidly approaching pale hand...

Lin Jie couldn't make a sound. He couldn't even feel the existence of his own body.

He was like a leaf in a storm, likely to be torn to shreds at any moment in the gap between these two immense wills.

Just as his consciousness was about to be overwhelmed at the critical point, survival instinct made him frantically grab onto that fragment of human obsession carrying the resolute will.

"Licht……mehr Licht!"

(Light... more light!)

Lin Jie suddenly struggled awake from the lethal sensory erosion. He glanced at the revolver in his hand that allowed him to maintain basic reason, then at the Siren that had retreated hesitantly, fearing the gun's muzzle flash.

Finally, his gaze pierced through the numerous ghostly figures on the deck, locking firmly on something not far away—the lantern that the investigator had dropped but was still stubbornly emitting a steady white light in the wind.

A bold plan formed in his mind.