Yarra’s Adventure Notes
Chapter 487 - 51 Sunken Ship_1

Chapter 487: Chapter 51 Sunken Ship_1

"There’s something I’ve been wondering," Lina said, nudging Catherine to spin around in place, the light pillar on her back illuminating the expansive space around them. "If the merfolk and this giant beast were fighting side by side, I’m curious about how it died. Conventional wisdom suggests that killing such a massive creature would leave large wounds, but so far, we haven’t found any signs of skeletal damage."

"You probably don’t understand, but killing a creature of this size won’t necessarily leave marks on its bones." Pannis explained. "To inflict a lethal wound on such a beast, the best method is to attack from the inside. Trying to pierce their tough skin and muscle — thicker than a human’s — from the outside is nearly impossible. So, if I were to battle this beast, I would thrust full force into its mouth and aim to destroy its brain or its organs. Either way, there would be no damage visible on the skeleton."

"Hmm, so this person wanted to rush into the beast’s mouth but was bitten in half along the way?" Catherine mumbled to herself. "That could be possible, but a person with half a body obviously couldn’t kill the giant beast."

"Not necessarily one person. Maybe..." Lina started, then shook her head. "Let’s search the surrounding area again. There might be other humanoid skeletons. If we find them, we can test our conjectures."

"That’s going to be incredibly difficult. I’ve been on such search efforts before. Just searching the area inside the beast’s mouth would take days, let alone the rest of the area. You can forget about getting through it in less than a few months. Instead of wasting time on that, we could check the shipwreck. There might be more clues there," Pannis disagreed, shaking his head.

"And this corpse... it must be Doris’s ancestor," Catherine said, glancing at the mermaid’s remains and gritting her teeth before continuing. "Let’s leave it here for now. If we solve things, we’ll let Doris and others handle it. If we can’t, we will deal with it. As for this unknown corpse, we’ll bury it right here, as is customary among adventurers."

The group quickly buried the remains back in the seabed. Instead of jumping back onto the ocean floor, they swam straight towards the shipwreck.

From a distance, the sunken ship was covered with phosphorescent algae, bright as the moon on the dark seabed. The cold white light illuminated everything around the ship. Upon reaching it, everyone exchanged glances: it was as they’d expected. An ancient vessel from an indistinguishable era, its original wooden structure had decayed. But the growth of coral insects and seaweed strengthened the decaying parts, preserving the ship’s original shape.

Half of the ship was buried in the muddy sand, the front half of the hull elevated, exposed to seawater. Soft-bodied sea creatures occasionally crawled along the hull, swiftly retreating into the cabin through open portholes as the group’s approach disturbed the water. The ship, circling around it, found no significant damage on the exposed hull. Its reason for sinking remained unclear. Of course, it was possible the buried half was damaged, but that could not be confirmed presently. The ship was medium-sized and couldn’t survive a journey in the navigation hazard zone, yet it was resting here all the same.

The group reached the slanting deck of the ship and saw no sailors around. The ship’s wheel near the prow was gone, most of the mast was broken, leaving a scene of devastation. However, they found that the door to the cabin on the deck was not buried, so they wouldn’t need to crawl through the narrow portholes. Switching to walking mode, they carefully descended the stairs into the cabin.

The cabin’s interior contrasted starkly with the outside. No phosphorescent algae grew here. With portholes in some rooms, the incoming light was enough to see by. But in most rooms with no portholes, darkness prevailed. Catherine activated the Illuminator on her back once again. Even though it had been of marginal use on the open ocean floor, inside the ship, it was very efficient. When turned on, it lit the entire environment clearly.

As they descended, a long corridor came into view, lined with doors leading to various rooms. Floating at the top of the corridor was various debris, as if gravity had been reversed. As they slowly advanced, various small marine creatures swam away in fear, some even hitting members of the group in their panic.

They opened several rooms, seemingly ordinary sailor quarters. Narrow rooms with beds fixed along the walls, all the linens decayed to dust. Even the bed slats broke into large holes at the slightest touch. The bare sailor quarters outside of the needed beds were empty, as expected for sailors. After all, the primary requirement on a ship is space conservation, and these lowest-ranked sailors would not get much of it.

"Huh?" Catherine exclaimed in surprise as she opened another door. Floating at the top of this room were six skeletonized corpses. The corpses clearly belonged to humanoids, and judging by their skeletal structures, it was likely that they had been humans. Floating at the top of the cabin because of the water, in this still space, these skeletons managed to maintain a human shape.

Catherine silently slipped on a glove, picked up a leg bone to inspect it, and with a light twist, snapped it in two. She shook her head. "These sailors weren’t professionals. These bones are from ordinary people."

"As one would assume," Freya agreed, "Even a lower rank professional, if employed as a sailor, would be higher ranking than most. The captain wouldn’t subject such a sailor to these cramped conditions."

Upon leaving the room and continuing down the corridor, the number of rooms filled with sailor skeletons increased. Sometimes, countless skeletons even floated in the corridor itself. Surveying the scene, Catherine frowned and murmured under her breath, "Something isn’t right."

"Indeed, something is awry," Pannis agreed, "Sailors daring to navigate in the navigation hazard zone are without exception, old hands, well experienced in their craft. They would know their ship as well as their own homes. Even in the event of a shipwreck, regardless of how quickly the vessel foundered, it’s unlikely so many of them would be locked in the cabin and drowned."

"That’s right, a ship of this scale would have a crew of two hundred, possibly three hundred," Catherine added, biting her lip, an air of disbelief replaced confusion on her face, "From the external structure, this ship appears to have five decks, and even if the lowest one is a warehouse, there are still three decks used by the sailors. Therefore, by this ratio, at least half of the sailors drowned trapped within the cabin, which really doesn’t make sense. The only plausible explanation I can think of is bizarre, and it seems impossible."

"After eliminating all other possibilities, the only answer left, no matter how preposterous, might very well be the correct one," Pannis said, "Unless an accident happened, this ship didn’t encounter a shipwreck but was pulled into the sea from the surface within seconds."

"So, these sailors didn’t have the chance to escape in time?" Catherine asked, her voice grave, "No, even then, these sailors theoretically should have had the chance to escape. Their swimming skills are far superior to ours, as is their familiarity with the sea. Even if thrust into the water, they should have been able to escape via the corridor. Unless, unless, unless, the ship was rapidly pulled into the deep sea, an abrupt increase in water pressure gave them no chance to escape and directly resulted in their deaths."

"Good heavens," Freya exclaimed, "Even a demigod wouldn’t be capable of such a thing, pulling such a large ship from the surface into the seabed abruptly. It sounds inconceivable."

"What if the perpetrator was the giant beast outside?" Catherine retorted, "Judging from its size, I think it’s certainly capable of such a feat."

"A giant beast..." Freya smirked bitterly, "Maybe you’re right. It might indeed have the strength to accomplish that."

"I think we’ve found our clue," said Catherine, her face grave, "I’m trying to hypothesize here. Many, many years ago, a ship carrying the secret to controlling the Sea Race entered this area. I don’t know the exact purpose, but it surely did venture into this area. The Sea Race discovered this, so their strongest member, riding the deep-sea giant beast, initiated a surprise attack on the ship. The result is obvious, the Sea Race and the giant beast died in combat, as did the top power on board the ship before doing the same. Consequently, this secret was left to rest on the seabed."

"Two questions," Pannis interjected, raising his fingers, "First, if there truly was a secret to controlling the Sea Race, why wasn’t the Sea Race member who was fighting affected by it? Second, if the issue was so serious, the strong ones in the Sea Race are numerous, why wouldn’t many come together to fight? If these two issues are left unanswered, your hypothesis is merely conjecture."

"I indeed cannot explain that," Catherine conceded with a shake of her head, "However, I have a strong feeling that this is the right path."

"Why’s that?" Pannis inquired.

"Women’s intuition," Catherine rolled her eyes at Pannis, "If you don’t believe me, keep on searching. We might find evidence to support my conjecture." (To be continued. If you like this work, we welcome your vote at qidian.com. Your support is my greatest motivation. Mobile users can read at m.qidian.com.)