Chapter 90 Ghost Ship on the Atlantic (5) “You must come and see…

The Bai Ma trio who were waiting for Si Ling's arrival in the cabin below saw Si Ling appear through the ceiling, and then disappear the next second. Only Xuan Chi landed steadily and stood beside the coffin.

The three of them were stunned for a moment, unable to believe what they saw. After hesitating for a moment, Bai Ma took two cautious steps forward.

"Si Ling...are you in there?" she asked nervously towards the coffin.

Si Ling was in the coffin, face to face with the coffin owner. Through the coffin, he heard Bai Ma's muffled voice, saying, "I'm here."

"Just, just went in?!" Li Qi was stunned. "Big sister, are you too fierce?"

Si Ling fell silent. Li Qi realized that he might be a little noisy, so he also shut up.

In the coffin, Si Ling observed the coffin owner for a while.

The coffin that drifted on the sea with the Mockingbird for more than three hundred years was not in any sealed environment, but the owner of the coffin was surprisingly well preserved. It did not turn into a skeleton, but just became a skinny mummy.

The clothes on his body were so old that the original color could not be seen, but Si Ling recognized his hat - although the color of the hat was completely dirty, it was obvious that it was a three-cornered hat. In the several encounters with the crew just now, only the captain wore such a hat.

She turned around and carefully examined other details. She did not see any scars or other marks that could indicate the manner of death. There were no burial objects in the coffin. She only found a small silver pendant on the chest of the coffin owner.

...The pendant was stuck in the wrinkles of the dry skin, and Si Ling took some effort to pick it out.

Looking closely, she found that it was not a cross as she had expected, nor was it an accessory with common patterns, but a... a bull's head.

Si Ling's intuition told him that this pendant was no ordinary ornament, so he floated out of the sarcophagus clutching the pendant and asked Xuan Chi, "How is it?"

Xuan Chi stood at the end of the coffin with his arms folded, gazing at it. "It's made of black walnut, painted with high-quality lacquer. The owner must have been quite wealthy."

Si Ling nodded: "It's the captain." She casually threw the pendant to Xuan Chi, who subconsciously caught it, took a closer look, and frowned: "What is this?"

"What was found on the captain? Can you think of anything?" She lowered her eyes and examined the coffin, pondering, "The coffin being here means they didn't die in a shipwreck... at least not the captain."

"Could that be the yellow fever Willey mentioned in the group chat?" Li Qi asked. "But... would someone who died of the disease hold such a deep grudge? Floating on the ship for hundreds of years and still lingering?" She looked around at the others. "Even if the black slaves hold a deep grudge, why should the crew members? Wouldn't it be better for them to be reincarnated quickly than to stay here?"

Zhu Mengwei had to remind her: "Have you forgotten the background story provided by Lucifer? The crew has been enslaving black slaves here."

"I know..." Li Qi said while shaking his head.

She hadn't forgotten this "backstory," but she still couldn't understand it—why would they give up reincarnation just to bully others? And all eighty-plus crew members thought the same, with no one making a different choice?

Li Qi thought this was quite strange.

Zhu Mengwei's words reminded Si Ling—yes, the information provided by Lucifer clearly mentioned the act of tyranny, but they hadn't seen any such sightings since they boarded the ship. Although the several waves of illusions that appeared before and after included both crew members and slaves, since they were illusions, they weren't real ghosts...

Moreover, even in those illusions, they did not see any scenes of crew members enslaving black slaves.

The strong sense of weirdness aroused Si Ling's curiosity. She was determined to find out what was so strange about this ship. However, considering that this was a collective action, she did not intend to keep everyone here just for her own reasons.

"Please listen to what I have to say." She picked up the sound transmission note and said.

The sound transmission note sensed her mood and sent her voice to the ears of every student on the ship. Everyone temporarily stopped what they were doing.

Si Ling spoke clearly, "We've discovered four things. First, there's the inexplicable illusion, and we're not sure where it came from yet. Second, it's very likely that this ship had an outbreak of yellow fever during its voyage. Third, the captain's coffin and remains are here. He didn't die in a shipwreck, but the specific cause of death remains to be verified. Fourth, we haven't seen anything like the crew's souls enslaving the slaves' souls that Lucifer mentioned."

"So in my opinion, this ship is full of doubts now. I don't know whether the mission can be completed, but out of curiosity, I want to find out the story here."

She was very frank, not hiding her curiosity at all. She then added, "Objectively speaking, it wouldn't be a bad idea to just abandon this mission. If we tell Lucifer the truth about what we've discovered here, he won't have any trouble explaining it to Satan."

"So, make up your mind - you can stay and find out what's going on with me, or you can go back directly," she said finally.

There was silence in the sound transmission talisman for a while. In the same cabin, Bai Ma shrugged and said, "We compatriots should advance and retreat together."

Li Qi and Bai Ma both nodded in agreement. At the same time, Ah Zhui's voice echoed through the sound transmission talisman: "I will definitely stay here with you."

Then came Aymeric's laughter: "Well... considering that you will most likely be dealing with some 17th century merchants, which is something of a specialty for us vampires, I'll stay too."

If Emmerich chooses to stay, it means that all the vampires will stay, including Elizabeth who is obsessed with Emmerich, and Elizabeth will also stay with Fredis.

The three werewolf brothers were very calm and didn't consider whether there would be any danger. They expressed their willingness to stay out of simple friendship.

More than half of the remaining people also chose to stay on the boat to find out what was going on, while the other small half decided to turn back for various considerations. Si Ling had no objection to their choice. He politely asked them to be careful and let them go.

After they left, the remaining people had two things to do: one was to wait and see whether the legendary "crew enslaving blacks" situation would begin to unfold as night fell; the other was to continue looking for useful clues.

They then gathered together and re-divided the work, leaving people in charge of "waiting" in the three-story cabins, and the remaining people were divided into several groups to search each cabin again, trying not to miss any corner.

A few hours later, night fell.

The sea seemed even quieter in the night. The three werewolf brothers were searching a room together. Orik was busy with his hands, but that didn't stop him from muttering, "Oh, silence, dead silence! Isn't it strange? There's always the sound of waves, but it seems even quieter!"

Ulric said sarcastically, "It's not quiet at all, Orric. There's a werewolf chattering beside me all the time."

"Do you understand what I'm saying?" Orric seemed not to understand his sarcasm. "What I mean is, if there is no sound at all, it doesn't seem so quiet, but with the sound of waves, it seems even quieter. How strange..."

As he spoke, he looked at Ulric, and when he saw Ulric rolling his eyes, Orik finally realized that his second brother was annoyed by him.

He smacked his lips, closed the wardrobe that had left him empty-handed, and began to search the bookshelf. Feeling irritated by being disliked, he threw books off the shelf one by one. "Maps, maps, and maps again. Poetry collections, novels, recipes, novels, what is this... Oh, astronomy books, marine life illustrations, poetry collections, diaries, novels..."

Fenric, who was concentrating on searching the desk drawers, suddenly raised his head and said, "Wait a minute!"

He quickly rushed behind Orrick, eagerly flipped through the books he had just thrown on the ground, and picked out the diary.

At the same time, the vampires also gained something.

Aymeric personally returned to the upper deck from the cabin below deck and found Si Ling: "You must come and see this!"

Si Ling really wanted to say that she could send a message next time, and it would be much faster for her to go directly through the deck than to walk down the stairs like this, but seeing Aymeric's excitement, she finally didn't become the one to spoil the fun.

He followed him below deck, and Aymeric pushed open the wooden door of the cabin on the right side at the end, the door opposite the captain's coffin.

In fact, Bai Ma and the others had checked this room before. There were a bunch of metal cans in it, which looked like goods, so they didn't pay much attention to it.

Now when Aymeric pushed open the door, what came into Si Ling's sight were indeed metal cans. Each one was about sixty to seventy centimeters high and looked exactly the same. They seemed to be produced in a unified manner. There were probably more than twenty of them placed in the entire room.

Aymeric first picked up a nearby jar at random, opened the round metal lid, and told Si Ling what had happened: "We just saw these jars and checked them out of caution. The first dozen or so looked like this. Look..."

Si Ling took a look into the bottle. It was pitch black inside, with only some powder vaguely visible at the bottom. He didn't know if it was the dust left by something that had decayed.

"But we looked a little further, and around the third or fourth row—" Aimerick's long legs crossed two rows of metal cans, picked one out from the fourth row, and opened it in front of Si Ling. "We found this."

Unlike the previous jar, this one was almost full, with a smooth yellow-white layer at the mouth.

Si Ling concentrated and identified it, frowning: "Is it grease?"

"Yes." Aymeric nodded. "The solidified grease sealed the jar. The enclosed space created a relatively stable environment, so the contents of the jar are still well preserved."

"What's inside?" Si Ling asked, touching a small piece of white that had spitted out from the center of the grease with his finger. "Is this the wick?"

Grease and wicks reminded Si Ling of ancient oil lamps. Similar oil lamps exist in many cultures, and it seems reasonable to use them for lighting on a boat.

But Aymeric's expression suddenly became hesitant. He looked at her and said softly, "Um... I don't mean to offend you, I'm just asking... If you evil spirits see or smell something disgusting, will you vomit?"

"?" Si Ling looked at Aymeric with amusement, "Although you stated in advance that you meant no offense, this really sounds like you are humiliating me."