Chapter 554: Surrounded by Mist

"My father saw many unusual and strange lifeforms within the sea of mists, along with all sorts of mysterious existences."

"Like?"

Zhu's body curled up. "My father told me that ghosts really existed within the sea of mists."

"Oh? In what sense?" After realizing that ghosts were just spiritual lifeforms, Zhang Lie had lost all fear he had of them.

Zhu replied, "Father was alone on the boat on which he sailed into the sea of mists, but a number of people appeared on it as he went deeper and deeper within. However, these people died all of a sudden, all from seemingly random causes."

"Seemingly random?"

"Not long after Father got onto the boat, it became very lively. There was even a banquet that was hosted on deck, at which point he met an alien explorer from a hundred years ago. My father told me he recounted a large number of tales. Without these tales, he might never have escaped from the sea of mists."

Zhang Lie frowned. "Just what did he say?"

Zhu pursed her lips. "He said that they were in a cycle of reincarnation, that they had all died and were simply phantoms passing through time, living within the cracks of the sea of mists, that he was the only living person there. He warned my father that, if he were to die within the sea of mists, he too would become part of the ship, swallowed up by the sea and inserted into the same cycle of reincarnation."

"It sounds like a fantasy," Zhang Lie replied.

"Isn't that so? My father wouldn't believe it, either, but he had heard of that very explorer before. He should have died a hundred years before, and there was no way he could have been within the sea of mists! My father cautiously and curiously prodded further, but just then, a murder unfolded on the boat. All the passengers went crazy."

They recognized that there was a murderer on board, and if they couldn't find that murderer, they might be the next one to die. Everyone tried to search for the killer, but none were able to succeed. Absurdly, they descended into a frenzy—someone suggested that they had to kill everyone else in order to avoid dying themselves.

"Furthermore, the boat traversed through siren-infested waters, and it was even attacked by humongous lifeforms. It started out with a hundred or so passengers, but only a scant few escaped the massacre."

"How did your father survive?"

"That explorer seemed to have a limited ability to predict the future—according to him, his necklace allowed him to preserve his memories between each cycle of reincarnation. The two of them worked together and ultimately managed to survive the onslaught. Just as my father thought he was safe, however, the next reincarnation began."

Zhang Lie paid Zhu rapt attention.

"The second time around, my father killed the murderer before he could strike, but he was branded as a killer instead. The third time around, he pointed out the murderer as soon as the murder happened, but the passengers on the boat began to vanish."

Zhu continued, "The actions my father took led to unexpected changes in the cycle of events that took place, and he almost died quite a few times."

By then, Zhang Lie was even more curious about how Zhu's father had made it out of the sea of mists.

According to Zhu's description, the sea of mists was a place of significant spatial and temporal distortion. Dying within the sea would lock a person's soul within, pulling them into a cycle of infinite reincarnations.

In the end, after repeating these cycles for what seemed like an eternity, the boat sailed out of the sea of mists, with my father still on it. He never dared to head back within."

"Did he do anything special?"

"Nothing more than persevering through each scenario until the boat had passed through the mists."

Zhang Lie fell into deep thought. He would be willing to believe that the sea of mists possessed temporal distortions, but not this 'infinite reincarnation' that Zhu had described. His reasoning was simple: they had gone within the sea of mists, and nothing of the like had happened to them.

They hadn't seen a single person on their warship, let alone a murder.

"This sea of mists could very well be an agglomeration of different and mysterious forces, including that of space and time, but..."

There was still something wrong. Zhang Lie had destroyed a ship he had seen in the distance. Its passengers should have been the ghosts that Zhu had described, but the shadowy passengers certainly weren't ghosts according to his dragon's eye soulshard.

In that case, what were they? Could they simply be a mirage? Mirages were possible in the oceans and seas, just like in deserts—but no, these mirages were caused by sunlight, and the mists blocked all sunlight from filtering within.

Could it have been a temporal distortion, one in which a horrifying scene had been preserved like a memory? Surely not—no person in such a scene would have the agency to talk to Zhu's father.

Zhang Lie didn't think that Zhu was lying, but rather that there was something wrong with Zhu's father's account of events.

There were three possibilities. The first, and which Zhang Lie privately found the most likely, was that he had spiced up his narrative with fantastic and mysterious elements to make more of an impact on Zhu. The second was that even Zhu's father had no idea what was going on; this was also a very likely situation. The third and final possibility was that Zhu's father's experience in the sea of mists had been different from theirs.

According to Zhu, the sea of mists would consume people whole. Those boats and ships that sailed the sea of mists, along with their passengers, were once living historical figures who had perished within the sea and hence become part of the sea.

Zhang Lie thought this impossible, and a vital part of his reasoning was the warship they were on. How could this understanding of events explain the warship on which they were standing? No human could have brought such a warship into the second realm, and yet...

𝚏𝗿𝗲𝐞𝐰𝚎𝕓𝐧𝚘𝘃𝗲𝐥.𝐜𝚘𝕞

There were simply too many possibilities and too few hints for the truth to be deduced immediately.

"It feels like this situation is getting more and more interesting."

Just as Zhang Lie smiled to himself, something finally happened on the warship.

The rusted cannons suddenly fired. Many soldiers appeared on the warship out of thin air.

"We're being attacked—prepare for counter-fire!"

Each soldier—each sailor—was wearing a dated navy uniform.

Zhu shrieked. "Ghosts!"

She attracted the attention of a commander, who walked toward them with a frown. "What are all of you doing here? Return to your positions!"

Zhang Lie punched the commander in the head, killing him instantly. He wasn't going to participate in this strange re-enactment, and the simplest way to break free was with brute force.

The remaining soldiers on the boat glanced at Zhang Lie in shock, but they quickly perished to Zhang Lie's attacks. They were each only as strong as a regular human, and Zhang Lie dealt with them easily with a snap of his fingers. After the soldiers died, they vanished with a puff of mist.

"Mister, are these ghosts?"

Zhang Lie chuckled. "Ghosts are the manifestation of people's souls. These apparitions don't even have any souls—how can they be considered ghosts?"

"In that case, what are they? No, wait, Mister! Didn't they say they were being attacked?"

As if waiting for Zhu's words, a huge beam of light shot toward them, as bright as the midday sun—a laser cannon!