Chapter 771 The Island of the Dead <TOC> Chapter 773 Graveyard of Ships
Translator: SumTLMan
The water was stagnant, riddled with a repugnant odor. As the luminescent stone descended, it unveiled the floating black fuzz swarming in the water.
Shortly after, the stone reached the bottom.
The colossal shadow at the bottom of the lake revealed its true identity.
“Is this… a ship?” The tattered canvas clung to the wooden mast, sinking lifelessly in the water. The bare skeletal frame of the mast, decorated with a black sediment, and the faintly visible cabin all corroborated the fact that this was a sunken ship.
Sunken ships were not uncommon, but finding one at the bottom of this lake was indeed peculiar.
The lake was not small by any means, but Angel had already circled around it once, failing to locate any exit to the sea. Without any tributaries connecting to the open ocean, how did this ship sink here? Or more accurately, how did it reach this lake in the first place?
It was unlikely that a shipwright would build a ship near this lake, only to realize afterward that it couldn’t set sail, and finally decide to sink it.
Even the thought of this possibility made Angel feel foolish.
No shipwright would build a ship beside a stagnant lake. And from the brief glimpse just now, the ship appeared to be a cargo ship. The open ocean was the natural habitat of such vessels; they wouldn’t be confined to such a small lake.
So how did this ship end up here?
Angel decided to investigate further.
He activated his Purifying Field to shield against the surrounding filth. After taking a leisurely tour around the lake’s bottom and confirming that there were no hidden tunnels, he returned to the sunken ship.
The ship was located right in the middle of the lake. From the surface, it appeared massive. However, upon closer inspection at the lake’s bottom, it wasn’t as large as imagined, even smaller than the Cloud Conch, roughly the size of the Feather Fan.
Indeed, the ship’s design suggested it was a cargo ship, but Angel couldn’t determine its era. If Helen or Alvin were present, they might have been able to provide an answer.
Angel ventured into the cabin, where the stench from the darkness was overpowering. Within the illuminated range of the luminescent stone, he found nothing that could identify the ship.
When Angel reached the bilge, he noticed a fracture in the keel’s central longitudinal beam. Broken wood floated in the water.
The fracture seemed to have been caused by a powerful impact, strong enough to snap the beam. However, this damage was at the bottom of the ship. Apart from a colossal sea beast, hardly anything could inflict such damage. Yet, there were no sea beasts in this lake, not even any living organisms.
So, how did this rupture at the bottom of the ship occur?
Beyond mere skeletal remains, Angel found naught of worth aboard the ship. It was barren, devoid even of cargo, the captain’s quarters likewise empty of anything of value.
With a resigned sigh, Angel returned to the surface of the lake.
Setting aside the origins of this vessel, two mysteries remained: Why had it sunk to the depths of a dead-end lake, a place offering no escape? And who had caused the keel’s fracture?
There were no sea beasts in the lake, so from where did the upward force originate?
“It couldn’t have fallen from the sky, could it?” Angel muttered, freezing as a sudden insight flashed through his mind, a potential clue captured.
He hovered in silence, seemingly motionless, but within his mind, a vault of memories flicked through at a frenetic pace, intertwining with what he had observed since entering this area.
“Why couldn’t it have fallen from the sky? If the Feather Fan could traverse from here to the foggy zone and disappear back here, doesn’t that hint at something?” Angel entertained this speculative line of thought, theorizing about the potential reality.
Angel lifted his gaze to the pitch-black sky.
Perhaps this bizarre region’s space was extremely unstable, causing ships to tumble in sporadically. One day, a fissure in space appeared directly above the lake, and a ship plummeted from the high heavens.
The resultant violent impact fractured the ship’s keel, leading to its sinking.
“A fall from the sky would explain why a cargo ship appears in a lake with no tributaries. It would also explain the fracture on the ship’s bottom.”
Angel’s eyes drifted to the iron pot on the bank’s stand, conjuring an image in his mind. Perhaps when the ship fell, not everyone onboard perished. Some might have survived the fall, swum ashore, and built a stove.
“However, even if some survived, in this desolate place, there would be no food. In the end, death would be inevitable.” Angel speculated, suspecting that the bones of those survivors might be nearby.
With no light, no food, and even the water source contaminated, survival was bleak. Those who fell likely suffered injuries and couldn’t have gotten far.
Sure enough, before long, Toby returned from a few hundred meters away with two sets of skeletal remains.
Of note, Angel found a metal box necklace around the neck of one of the skeletons. He had seen a similar necklace on some of the sailors aboard the Cloud Conch.
The sailors knew all too well the perils of their trade, the ever-present specter of sudden death. Thus, leaving behind a final testament before setting sail was a customary practice.
He mulled over these thoughts, his mind reflecting and refining the narrative. The process repeated, strengthening his hypothesis with each iteration. After the third cycle, a more coherent and detailed story emerged from the fragments of his initial speculation.
This iron box necklace, in essence, served a purpose akin to a last will and testament. The iron box would typically hold a sailor’s personal information and precious belongings. Sailors clung to the hope that if their remains were fortunate enough to be discovered, the finder could determine their identity through the contents of the iron box, and return their remains to their homeland.
The cherished items within the iron box were intended as a barter for the finder. If the finder took the precious items, they implicitly accepted a commitment. However, if they chose to take the items without fulfilling the task, they were said to incur the wrathful curse of the deceased. Of course, this was only a legend, devoid of any substantiated evidence.
As for the ship at the bottom of the lake, Angel found no clues. Contemplating his next move, he thought perhaps the iron box necklace might yield some insight.
The iron box was compact, roughly a third of an adult’s palm in size. The outer iron layer showed signs of decay, displaying patches of rust.
Upon opening the box, a plume of dust was released. When the dust settled, the contents of the box revealed themselves to Angel.
A ruby ring with visible cracks, and a small, meticulously folded piece of parchment.
The ring was a mundane object, likely intended as payment for the transport of remains back home.
Angel unfolded the parchment, eager to determine the identity of the deceased and their potential connection to the shipwreck.
At the top of the parchment, the owner of the remains was identified as Goblin Frando, hailing from the Maple Country in the Magic Eaves Corridor…
The penmanship of the personal information was neat and orderly, likely written before setting sail. However, the words beneath were hastily scribbled, likely a desperate attempt to leave a message before impending death. The frenzied script suggested a state of extreme distress.
When Angel had finished reading the contents, a spark of realization flickered across his face.
His conjecture had been correct.
The ship, named the “Night Elf,” was originally a cargo ship voyaging from the Magic Eaves Corridor to the Feran Continent. As it traversed the Gear Abyss, it was suddenly engulfed in a fog. Before they could react, the ship was hurled from the sky into this Dead Lake. The ship sank, the crew perished. Goblin Frando was the sole survivor but without food and water, he managed to endure for a while, wrote this message, then also succumbed to the lake, forever resting with the Night Elf.
Beyond this information, Angel gleaned two additional pieces of information from the parchment.
First, the timeline. The Night Elf had plunged into this lake three hundred years ago—not an exceptionally long time in the grand scheme of things. Second, Goblin Frando, in the last line, penned a bewildering statement:
“Is it a trick of my eyes? Why do I see a shadow, dressed strikingly similar to the Tyrant King of Legends?”
The Tyrant King of Legend?
If this wasn’t the hallucination of a dying Goblin Frando, could it imply the existence of another person here?
A sudden recollection flashed across Angel’s mind of a fleeting shadow he had encountered not long ago. Could that shadow have been the notorious Tyrant King?
If so, that entity had managed to live for centuries.
Regardless of its identity, Angel fortified his resolve. In this eerie landscape, there was no room for laxity.
He tucked the parchment and ring back into the iron box, repositioning it around the skeleton’s neck. He had no intention of returning Goblin’s remains to its homeland. If the Magic Eaves Corridor was a place he could easily reach, he wouldn’t mind accomplishing some good deeds. Unfortunately, the Magic Eaves Corridor and his destination, the Revelation Continent, were polar opposites.
Angel was ready to leave this lake. The oppressive aura of the true knowledge wizard felt like a mountainous burden. He needed to locate Lucas’s treasure quickly and depart from here.
With Toby accompanying him, Angel continued his swift descent.
Before long, they had left the mountainous region, and Angel could vaguely perceive the other side of the island. The increasingly putrid scent in the wind indicated they were nearing the sea.
In this territory, Angel roamed about, but there were no signs of life, except for the dead trees.
However, when Angel emerged from a withered palm grove, his expression froze in surprise.
Before him lay the coast, but it was far livelier than the cliffside where the vessel, the Feather Fan, had run aground. For within Angel’s line of sight, he saw countless… ships!
All manner of vessels – expedition ships, icebreakers, freighters, cruise ships, sailboats, pirate ships… It was a veritable armada. Yet all these ships were imbued with a sense of antiquity, similar to the Feather Fan, they had all met their end here.
A subtle luminescence from the luminescent stone on some ships sprinkled a dim light across the coast, rescuing it from absolute obscurity.
Yet, this faint radiance, coupled with the lifeless husks of the vessels, stirred an eerie sensation. It was akin to standing in a haunted forest where the darkness alone might have been bearable, but the sudden emergence of ghostly luminous fires amplified the horror.
“This place is nothing less than a graveyard of ships,” Angel murmured under his breath.
If the Night Elf had fallen into this uncanny place due to spatial instability, could the same be true for these ships? Even if instability was the issue, like the Night Elf and the Feather Fan, they should have been scattered across different regions, not piled up on this coast.
Moreover, when Angel flew from one end of the island where the Feather Fan resided to this end, he followed a straight line. During this journey, he did not find any place that might hide treasures. Surely, it couldn’t be that this ship graveyard was Lucas’s treasure?
Angel was utterly at sea.
The mysteries surrounding this bizarre island were multiplying, wrapping themselves in an ever-thickening fog of uncertainty.
Chapter 771 The Island of the Dead <TOC> Chapter 773 Graveyard of Ships