There was a knock on the door of a certain guest room, the sound was very soft, as if deliberately avoiding attracting the attention of anyone except the owner of the room.
Soon, a young male's voice came from the room.
"who is it?"
The person outside replied: "It's me!"
The door opened, and the red-haired man inside stared at the empty corridor and frowned.
The next second, he noticed that he was pushed into the room by a force. He was so frightened that he took two steps back and drew out the rapier beside the bed with his backhand.
At this time, the door closed, and Victor's figure was revealed, and he comforted the other party: "Don't panic, Sir Li Anlong."
Staring at the other person's same red hair, the young scholar was stunned for a moment. He turned around and took out a pair of exquisite glasses from the drawer and put them on, looking at Victor with a smile.
"You are really shocking. Aren't you afraid that I will stab you directly?"
These words were not a threat. After all, the two of them were not that familiar. Breaking into someone else's room in the middle of the night and becoming invisible was an exaggeration to say that they had ulterior motives.
However, Victor quickly explained.
"We may be in trouble, Your Excellency Li Anlong. For the sake of both being agents of the Anti-Suppression Department, we have to help each other and be careful."
Hearing this, Li Anlong pushed up his glasses and frowned: "Are you talking about the gunshot just now?"
"It seems you heard me."
"I believe I am not the only one who heard it. Now there is martial law everywhere on the ship. The room has been searched twice, and there are gunshots. I guess... it won't be long before someone will take the initiative to open the door and go to the captain to ask for an explanation."
"It's far more than..." Victor's expression became serious, and then he told Lianlong about the scenes he discovered while wandering around the ship after becoming invisible.
Li Anlong did show his surprise. He said in disbelief: "I boarded the ship from Ruimanland and took this ship all the way. After more than half a month of journey, I saw all kinds of seascapes and island scenery.
All this time, nothing weird has ever happened."
As soon as he finished speaking, his head hung down, as if thinking: "You just said that you found that a crew member secretly hid a human skin?"
"I believe my eyes, and I am also convinced that it is human skin." Victor replied firmly.
He is not a fledgling, and has had a lot of blood on his hands, so he is very familiar with this kind of human tissue.
Li Anlong is rich in knowledge. Although he claims to be the seer of Esoteric One, his understanding of invisible arts and historical secrets is definitely broader than Victor's.
He thought of something and told Victor: "I have heard of a kind of creature that lives in the depths of the sea. It is little known. It was first spread from the mouths of fishermen."
"Legend has it that a fishing boat took three fishermen out to sea for fishing, but only one person was left when they came back. That person never mentioned what happened at sea or where the other two went..."
"Later, people discovered that the surviving fisherman's temperament changed drastically, his appetite increased, and he liked to eat raw fish. His wife discovered her husband's weirdness while sleeping at night. The latter hid in the toilet and bit live fish, and his skin changed.
It was so wrinkled that it looked like a foot rag that had been used for a long time. It looked like a snake that shed its skin and would fall off at any time. It looked very scary."
"The woman screamed, attracting a large number of neighbors, but when people kicked open the toilet door, they found that the woman's husband was missing. There was only soft human skin on the ground and a large pool of wriggling black sea cucumbers. The sea cucumbers were
Squeeze into the hole in the sewer and quickly disappear from people's sight."
After hearing this story, Victor imagined the scene and felt a little sick.
Lianlong continued: "There are very few records about that kind of creature, but those who studied it gave it a name, called 'Painted Skin Bug', or 'Abyss Painted Skin'."
"Painted Skin of the Abyss?" Victor repeated.
Li Anlong nodded slightly: "Yes, they are the sea cucumber-like bugs I mentioned. They are not one, but a group of them. They seem to be controlled by Gestalt consciousness and act as a whole. In this story, the worms in the man's body
The flesh and blood has been eaten clean by the painted bugs, but they don’t just end up sucking the flesh and blood, they also wear human skin and continue to mix among humans, looking for their next prey.”
Victor understood, and Rianlong suspected that the human skin hidden by the crew was shed by the Abyss Painted Insect.
He showed a worried look: "The skin was hidden deliberately. Is there a possibility that there are many such painted skinworms hidden on the ship, and they have skinned some of the crew?"
"It would be terrible if this is the case, but it is also possible that the shipping staff wanted to prevent panic..." Li Anlong analyzed.
Victor once again made fortune-telling decisions, but he was still naked.
His expression changed slightly, and he asked Li Anlong to use the fortune teller's pendulum to take a test.
Li Anlong said that he didn't have a pendulum, but he could try it with the divination rod he had during the day.
"The left side is for confirmation, and the right side is for denial." Li Anlong stood the divination staff in front of him, "Is there any abyss painting mixed into the ship?"
After he finished speaking, he let go. The divining staff only held steady for a second before falling to the left.
"It seems that our conjecture is correct. The problem is a bit big. We have to find a way to find these monsters." Li Anlong hummed, and then continued to use the divination staff, "First confirm whether all the shipping staff are infected.
Painted insect."
As soon as he finished speaking, there was a commotion outside again.
Sure enough, some passengers noticed something was wrong with the cruise ship and had already gathered in the corridor to start a conflict with the security officer.
The people who can live on this floor are all rich guys, at least middle class, and they are the kind of people that the shipping company does not dare to offend easily.
After opening the door, Victor found that more and more people had gathered. The doors of all guest rooms were opened, and everyone came out to watch the excitement and observe the passenger who had a conflict with the security officer.
"I heard gunshots! You also restricted my personal freedom! What's going on? I promised that dinner would be delivered to the room, but now I don't even have a piece of rye bread!"
Probably because after the accident, the kitchen staff were also restricted from traveling, or they were also cooperating with other shipyard staff to conduct cruise inspections. There was no time to prepare dinner, and many guests were still hungry.
Incited by this, the onlookers started to boo, and the three security officers on this floor were instantly surrounded.
Rianlong held up the divining staff and told Victor: "There is none here. Come with me and we will go find those monsters."
…
At the same time, Mate Clark in the cab was cutting chains while talking to Captain Morgan about the deep sea monster.
"Eating human flesh and disguising yourself in human skin?" Captain Morgan seemed to be less knowledgeable than his first mate.
Clark wiped his sweat and continued to chop with the ax high.
boom!
The broken iron fragments bounced up and cut his cheek.
First mate Clark cursed and kicked the chain away: "I have never seen that kind of creature, I have only heard fishermen mention it, but what happened tonight reminded me of them. You don't know what we just saw on the sea level.
What, those thieves who jumped into the sea to escape were dragged into the sea by something one after another."
"Maybe it's a shark, or if you're bold, it's also possible a siren. They like to do this the most. After all, we have entered the scope of the Sea of Tranquility." Captain Morgan touched his chin, "I won't pity those criminals."
Chief Officer Clark went to the helm, carefully studied the navigation chart and sextant, and used force to straighten the rudder.
However, he found that it was very difficult to turn the rudder, it was too heavy, and even if it turned a certain angle, the rudder would turn back on its own!