Apocalypse Forecast

By the time Huai Shi and the others rushed onto the deck, not a single person could be seen.

All the sailors had vanished. Or rather, they had all died.

All that remained in their place was a handful of pale ashes and sets of uniforms that were about eighty percent new... Wait, eighty percent new?

It seemed the Investigation skills had yielded good results; Huai Shi had actually found additional information, such as the condition of the uniforms, and even... the composition of that handful of ashes.

Huai Shi put on gloves, carefully pinched a bit of ash, and sniffed it.

Thanks to Van Essen's excellent Alchemy, he almost immediately identified its components—calcium, carbon, phosphorus, sodium, and so on—almost all elements found in the human body.

Did this mean these were the cremains of the crew members?

Huai Shi found it hard to believe that any force could incinerate all the crew members from the inside out in an instant, yet not leave a single scorch mark on their uniforms.

It was evident that these individuals had no chance to react or struggle; they were consumed by fire in a moment.

And all of them at once, otherwise the anomaly would have been detected.

Such a large number and such terrifying precision... could humans truly be capable of this?

But as he sifted through the ashes, he found a singed piece of paper... When he carefully searched through other piles of ashes, he found similar pieces of paper in them as well.

Despite being incinerated in an instant, those fragile pieces of paper still retained their curled shapes, though they crumbled at a touch. Utilizing his Vampire's astonishing vision, he discerned that characters, looking like names, had been written on those charred, carbonized pieces of paper.

Every single piece of paper had one.

"Artificial Humans," Ai Qing concluded decisively. "These people are all Artificial Humans, tiny miracles created through Alchemy in imitation of humankind."

Huai Shi couldn't help but click his tongue.

He certainly knew about Artificial Humans; in fact, they were common tools in Alchemy, with a history that could be said to be quite ancient.

Those dolls were made directly from various metals, elements, and large amounts of water. They had no will of their own and could almost be described as Puppets, as lifeless as walking corpses.

Before creating them, the maker would place a paper bearing a name inside a container and use that name to command them to work.

But their greatest limitation was that these Artificial Humans could only last for a day and a night at most.

Regardless of when they were created, they would disintegrate upon exposure to the next day's sunlight.

This was a flaw that no Alchemist, no matter how outstanding, had ever managed to overcome throughout history.

But an entire ship's crew made of Artificial Humans? And for them to appear so lifelike, even possessing remarkable strength—it was simply unbelievable.

"Stop spacing out," Ai Qing suddenly snapped, her awareness returning. "To the captain's room, immediately!"

Huai Shi nodded and, following Ai Qing's instructions, turned and slipped into the ship's interior, silently racing towards the captain's room on the uppermost deck.

Regardless of whether the captain was still alive, if there was any foul play on this ship, traces of it would surely be in the captain's room. Even if there was nothing, they could at least find information about the ship and news concerning the New World.

But he was too slow. As he hurried towards the captain's room, he saw other figures also rushing in that direction. It wasn't just Old Xiao and his group; the odd couple from the restaurant the previous night were also rapidly heading to the captain's room.

As she ran, the wife, whose face was etched with the marks of time, was scolding her husband for delaying them. But when they violently pushed open the slightly ajar door of the captain's room, they saw only a chair. The room was empty.

Besides that one chair, there was nothing else. On the chair lay the captain's loose, baggy uniform and the remaining ashes.

A tipped liquor bottle on the floor still contained some alcohol, and the carpet was stained where it had soaked through.

It was as if, in the final moment before dissolving, he had still been drinking, unaware of the impending destruction. Or perhaps he had anticipated it and simply chose to indulge in pleasure at the last moment.

Now the bottle lay on the ground, its contents soaking the ashes left from his disintegration. Among the dust, a wildflower could be seen, as if plucked from a tree on the shore.

It still held a faint fragrance.

It was as if, in that brief existence from dusk till dawn, it had found the meaning of life, and so departed with a sense of serene release.

Though they were mere Puppets with hollow shells, they seemed just like real humans.

Among those who followed them in, someone let out a soft cry of surprise. When Huai Shi turned to look, he saw Hela, her expression stunned.

She glanced at the ashes on the ground, her expression changing, as if touched by Pieta.

Soon, she turned and left. They had found nothing.

Huai Shi sighed and turned to leave, but he paused. Amid the cacophony of voices and the sounds of searching, he heard an extra set of footsteps.

Thanks to his Vampire's exceptional hearing and vision, Huai Shi even saw dust motes inexplicably rise from the floor.

As if Card in the cracks of a pair of shoes.

He narrowed his eyes, staring at those few grains of dust quietly making their way out of the chaos. He hung back, following the sound of those footsteps from a distance.

He reached the now desolate aft deck. Watching the faint light of dawn, he sighed and lowered his head to pull a bag of tobacco and a stack of papers from his chest. He deftly rolled a cigarette and lit it at the corner of his mouth, as if merely strolling.

Then, from behind his waist, Drawing Sword, his Short Knife wailed as he slashed towards the silent footsteps behind him.

"Get out here!"

In an instant, the blade sliced through the air. A figure suddenly emerged from the void, awkwardly parrying the attack. It was, to his surprise, Yin Yan.

Red Hat's invisibility Ability was indeed terrifying; even a Vampire's unique thermal vision struggled to find any trace. But Yin Yan's stealth skills were laughably poor; he hadn't even noticed the two dust motes that had followed him all the way.

"Don't fight!" he waved his hands frantically. "I'm on your side... on your side..."

"It's precisely someone 'on my side' I'm cutting!"

A grating sound erupted.

The Short Knife grazed past his ear and embedded itself in the bulkhead, startling him. Before he could react, Huai Shi pinned him down, grabbing his throat.

"Brother, spare me, please spare me..." His eyes widened, and he raised his hands. "I surrender, how about that? There's no need for us two to fight over Ai Qing, that wretched woman, right?"

Huai Shi was startled, then a chill ran down his spine. How did he know that he was acting independently now, not under Ai Qing's control?

"I know her well, my friend, far better than you do." Yin Yan saw his astonished expression and knew he'd guessed right. He couldn't help grinning. "That mad dog—the moment she opens her mouth, I know who she's going to bite... You act so harmless, so genuinely innocent it almost fooled me.

"Don't kill me. What if I give you money to let me go? Don't worry, I absolutely won't tell anyone else, really!

"Besides, risking your life for that cripple isn't worth it. You have no idea how many people she's screwed over, do you? If there's profit in it, she'd even sell her own father..."

BANG!

Huai Shi, expressionless, raised a fist and punched him, knocking out a tooth. "Keep your mouth shut, and no one will mistake you for a corpse!"

Yin Yan obediently shut up, raising his hands and blinking rapidly.

Ai Qing, it seemed, was not going to offer an opinion, leaving the decision to Huai Shi.

"What did you take from the captain's room?" Huai Shi asked coldly. "Don't lie. You only have one chance. You need to understand: even as a teammate... you're not indispensable."

Yin Yan had definitely reached the captain's room first; the slightly ajar door, easily pushed open, was proof enough. If he had found nothing, there would have been no need for him to sneak out invisibly; he could have just stood there.

"I... I just wanted to avoid trouble..."

Hearing this, Huai Shi coldly drew a poisoned Flying Knife from his sleeve. "If your next words are a lie, I'll ask your cousin how to use this on you."

"Wait, wait!"

Yin Yan hastily begged for mercy. Just as he was about to speak, his eyes suddenly lit up, and he looked behind Huai Shi with an expression of delighted surprise.

Huai Shi sneered, not turning his head. You think you can pull off such tricks on me, Huahai Road Little Peppa? I've been playing this game since I was eight!

Yet, immediately afterward, a sharp and somber voice spoke from the space behind him, which should have been empty.

"Young man, what do you intend to do to my dear companion?"

Huai Shi turned in shock, only to see an elderly noblewoman who had appeared behind him at some point. Her elegant long dress was now splattered with blood, and she clutched a dead chicken in one hand. Her hair was disheveled, and she looked like a madwoman.

But for such a crazy old woman to have inexplicably appeared behind him...

Seizing the opportunity, Yin Yan broke free and scrambled to her side, spewing flattery as if it cost nothing. "Darling, your timing is perfect!

"Otherwise, the secret I intended to share only with you would have been snatched away by this fellow!"

As he spoke, he pulled a piece of paper from his pocket and handed it to the old woman like a loyal dog. Huai Shi, with his sharp eyes, noticed it was the captain's relic.

Yes, it was the paper the captain had read aloud in the dining room the previous night.

The crazed woman looked coldly at Huai Shi. A murderous intent locked onto him, causing him to break out in a cold sweat... Was he going to die at the hands of this Wang Ba's dame today?

Mother, I should have known you were a Second fifth!

But the murderous intent quickly dissipated as she took the paper from Yin Yan. When she lowered her eyes to the page, she froze. Then, her expression changed to one of unmistakable shock... and fear.

Her hand trembled.

Huai Shi craned his neck, trying to peer at the paper. It contained the same words the captain had read aloud the previous night, but with an addition: a strange signature.

It appeared to be hastily scrawled ancient characters. Instead of flowing conventionally from left to right or top to bottom, the writing twisted arbitrarily across the page, with sharp turns, ultimately connecting end to end.

It formed a star-like sigil.

Fine threads of pitch-black ink extended from its lines, radiating outward like starlight.

Huai Shi could almost decipher the scrawled characters. They were from records the Raven had forced into his mind—into the Book of Fate—when teaching him the origins of Alchemy. It was one of the oldest alphabets in the West: Hebrew.

"He Lailer... Ben... Shahar?"

He furrowed his brow, hesitantly sounding out the characters on the page.

That instant, the elderly woman's head snapped up. Her blue eyes had turned blood-red, whether from fear or madness. Her face twisted in a spasm, and she roared at him, almost howling:

"—You must not speak that name!!!"