Chapter 96 Chapter 96 The Encounter of the Red Boat

That summer, when I was rower on the Lu Ruishi, another encounter with the Red Ship was so weird that it deserves a special record.It was a clear summer night, and we rolled out of our bunks in the crew cabin and hurried to our battleship.Verity senses a red ship approaching Bucks Point, and he wants us to capture it in the dark. Zegu stood on the bow of the battleship, and Duanning, who stood on the top of Verity's beacon, passed the message, and when Verity felt us heading towards that ship, he became a wordless mutter in my head.Is there any other situation?I felt him looking out beyond the red boat, like someone groping in the dark, and I felt his uneasiness.We are not allowed to talk to each other, but we can only approach quietly with oars.At this point, Nighteyes whispered to me that it smelled enemies, and then we saw them.In the distant darkness, as the Red Ships paddled across the water ahead of our frigate, there came a scream from their decks; they had spotted us.Our captain roared, ordering us to hold our oars and get ready, while a sickening sense of dread gripped me.My heart was beating like thunder, and my hands began to tremble.This sweeping horror is like a child's inexplicable fear in the face of darkness, a wave of helpless fear.I gripped the oar tightly, but I didn't have the strength to row it.

"Krykska." I heard someone moan in a thick Out-Island accent, and I thought it was Noju.I started to realize that I wasn't the only one who lost their paddling rhythm, in fact we didn't paddle to a fixed rhythm, some people sat on their glove boxes looking down at the paddles, others paddled in a panic without rhythm paddles, making the paddles frantically flap and paddle across the water.As we moved across the sea like a lame flying insect, I couldn't help but watch my end come before my eyes as the red boat came maliciously toward us.The blood in my ears was violently surging, but I couldn't hear the panicked shouts of the men and women around me, and I couldn't even breathe, so I had to look up at the sky.

Behind the red boat, a white ship gleamed on the black sea.This is not a pirate ship, but a huge ship, three times the size of the red ship, with the sails on both sides furled and moored on the calm sea.Its deck is full of ghosts, or forged people, and I can't feel any life in them.However, they moved with purpose, preparing to lower a small boat sideways to the surface.There was a man standing on the rear deck, and when I saw him I couldn't look away. He wore gray armor, but to me he shone in the dark night sky as if a lamp were shining on him.I swear I saw his eyes, the dark curly beard around his nose and mouth, and he just smiled at me. "There's one coming our way!" he yelled at someone, then pointed his finger at me and laughed so loudly that my heart pounded in my chest.He looked at me with terrifying concentration, as if I was the only prey of the crew.I looked back too, but couldn't feel him.there!there!I screamed, or perhaps it was the Skill that made the words pop out of my head uncontrollably.But there was no response from all around.No Verity, no Nighteyes, no one, no one thing.I was completely isolated, the whole world fell into a dead silence, and although the crew members around me shouted in panic, I didn't feel anything.There was no one around, no seabirds, no fish in the sea, and no life in my inner senses.The armored figure was still leaning on the railing and pointing at me. He continued to laugh wildly, but I was alone.The loneliness was too much to bear, it bound me up, it rolled me up, it enveloped me, and it started to suffocate me.

I want to resist it. After an involuntary reflex, I used my wits to stay away from it.I actually flew backwards and landed in the hollow in the beam, tangled up with the legs of the other rowers.I saw the figure trip over the ship, fall, and fall into the sea, and the splash was not loud, and there was only one sound.Even if he surfaced later, I didn't see it. I didn't have time to look at him, because the red boat hit the middle of our frigate and cut off the oars and sent the oarsmen flying.The Outislanders shouted confidently, laughing wildly at us, and leaping from their ships to ours.I staggered to my feet and crawled back to my seat, reaching for my axe, while those around me looked for their weapons.We were totally unprepared for the fight, but no one was paralyzed by fear, and we regrouped and fought on.

Nowhere is it darker than an ocean in the middle of the night, where it is impossible to tell friend from foe.One jumped on top of me, and I grabbed him by the leather armor, knocked him down, and strangled him.After the numbness just now, I had a wild sense of relief from his terrified mood, and I think it happened very quickly.Later when I stood upright, the other boat moved away from us, and that boat had half the oarsmen left, and there was still a fight on our deck, but the boat left its crew and went away.The captain yelled for us to kill them all and continue after the red ship, but that was a useless order.When we had killed them all and left the bodies on the deck, the other ship had disappeared into the darkness without a trace.Zegu fell on the deck, wounded all over his body, dying, he still had a breath but he was unable to pass the information technology to Verity.The oars on one side of the ship were broken into a mess.Then the captain reprimanded us, and at the same time reassigned the oars and continued to sail, but it was too late.He told us to be quiet, but we couldn't hear or see anything at all.I sat on my glove box and turned around slowly, but what was even stranger was the words I said out loud: "The white boat that was moored there is also gone!"

Everyone around me turned their heads and stared at me. "White boat?" "Are you all right, Fitz?" "It's the Red Boat, boy, we were fighting the Red Boat just now!" "Don't mention the white boat anymore. Seeing the white boat is equivalent to seeing your own death, which is bad luck." Finally, Nuoju yelled at me.I opened my mouth and argued that I saw a real white ship, and I was not dazzled.He shook his head at me, turned his head away to look at the empty sea, I also closed my mouth and sat down slowly.No one saw it, and no one talked about the boundless fear that turned our strategy into a panic.When we got back to town that night, the people in the tavern were talking about how we had let the red ship escape despite our bravery aboard the enemy ship, and the only visible evidence was a few broken oars and a few wounded men, and Some Outislander blood on the deck.

When I spoke privately with Nighteyes and Verity, none of them saw what I saw.Verity told me that I lost contact with him when I saw other ships, and Nighteyes angrily said that I had completely shut myself off so that he couldn't feel it at all. Nuoju didn't mention anything about Shirakawa to me; in fact, he didn't want to talk about anything at all.Later, I found an account of the White Ship in an ancient scroll. It was said that it was a cursed ship, and the souls of the sailors on it would never stop serving the ruthless captain. Force me not to bring it up again, or everyone will think I'm crazy.

For the rest of the summer, the Red Ship avoided the Luresh.We could see the Red Ship chasing it too, but it always escaped each time.Once we were lucky and caught up with a red ship that had just completed a raid. The outer islanders on board threw the captives overboard to reduce the weight and escaped.Twelve men were thrown from the ship, and we saved nine, and sent home the unsmelted ones, and the other three were mourned, but all agreed it was better than being forged .