Chapter 116: Bronze Statue
“Huh? I recall there being an island near Liuhua Port, and one can see it across the sea from the cape. It shouldn’t be too far, so why after about an hour of driving, have we not reached it?” Li Nuowei felt deeply puzzled. As a citizen who grew up in Liuhua Port, he remembered the island Drake mentioned. Although he had never had the chance to go ashore on that small island, based on his estimation of the distance and the speedboat’s horsepower, he should have reached the shore within half an hour, even if they had slowed down for safety.
“Shall we check the radar and other instruments?” Drake also sensed something unusual about this mist.
Li Nuowei furrowed his brow and said, “I’ve already checked. The radar is calm, and the other instruments show no reaction. While this level of thick fog can interfere with instruments to some extent, it shouldn’t result in absolutely no reaction… It’s as if we’ve deviated from our course and are sailing on a sea where there’s nothing for miles around, not even a single fish in the water.”
Just as he finished speaking, the two heard a beep from the reconnaissance instruments, and a signal source appeared within their vessel’s detection range.
“It seems to be the signal from another boat,” Li Nuowei said.
“Let’s get closer and see,” Drake said. As he spoke, he turned to prepare his weapon. The boat was equipped with fishing and hunting gear, and even strange, prohibited items like a machete and a harpoon.
The owner of this speedboat was likely a veteran angler.
Li Nuowei and Drake were fully armed. As the speedboat drew closer to the signal source, they both felt the air temperature on the sea drop by a few degrees, sending a chill down to their bones.
However, as the speedboat neared the signal source, Li Nuowei and Drake saw no intact vessel. All they saw was wreckage of a yacht torn to pieces by some terrifying force, and two mangled corpses floating and sinking with the debris on the sea.
Drake, gathering his courage, leaned over the railing and recognized the identities of the two floating corpses. They were dressed in black, and their clothes bore the unique organizational mark of the Mystic Investigators. They were the Mystic Investigators who had gone to the island to investigate earlier, and they had met a pitiful end here.
There were no strong winds or waves on the sea at this moment, yet Drake felt a chill that originated from the bottom of his heart and spread throughout his body, freezing his cursed and transforming form.
Although he didn’t know what those two deceased Mystic Investigators had experienced in their final moments, the terror was still evident on their mangled faces, which had been gnawed by an unknown creature.
Drake thought of the damned mermen from his nightmares. Only those dull-witted, terrifying creatures could inflict such destructive power. Those two unfortunate souls who had fallen into the sea were surrounded and entangled by those mermen, their bodies torn apart by their sharp teeth, their internal organs hollowed out, and their blood staining the sea red…
He gritted his teeth, his mouth oozing saliva and blood.
“Drake! Look ahead!” Just as Drake was lost in his gruesome fantasies, Li Nuowei’s voice startled him. He broke out in a cold sweat, annoyed at his own thoughts, but his gaze instinctively followed Li Nuowei’s prompt.
In the vast, foggy sea, a colossal dark shadow was hidden behind the white mist. It resembled a terrifying, crouching giant beast lurking on the sea. Yet, its immense and massive body could not be fully concealed by the ocean; this was only a part of its body exposed on the sea surface.
Drake couldn’t help but recall the giant merman that appeared in his nightmares, the celestial beast that its fanatical followers believed to be the “Sea God of Anhai.”
He gripped his harpoon tightly, his yellow eyes fixed ahead, feeling as though the black shadow was moving yet not moving.
The speedboat advanced, parting the mist. Drake slowly exhaled, for he saw a beach. The dark shadow they had seen earlier was an island, and it was the very island he and Li Nuowei were supposed to land on.
The speedboat docked, and Drake and Li Nuowei disembarked with their weapons, standing at the island’s pier and looking at the deathly silent small island. The sense of unease in their hearts surged once more, like hearing the final ten-second countdown of a game of hide-and-seek, their hearts pounding.
Stepping onto the island, Drake saw several sets of human footprints and footprints of unknown reptiles on the path. Judging by the footprints left on the beach, the “animal” had webbed structures, making it easy to deduce that it was those mermen.
Li Nuowei and Drake exchanged glances without a word. They could already feel the state of mind of the Mystic Investigators who had landed on the island from the messy and dense footprints on the beach. Faced with such a dense encirclement and attack by mutant monsters, even veteran investigators who had weathered many storms would have lost their composure.
They dared not speak for another reason: they feared that the mermen who had come ashore might still be lurking on the island. Those seemingly dull-witted, possessed mermen might be quite cunning and treacherous. They might still be hidden in the island’s dark corners, searching for signs of living people. If they were unfortunately discovered, they would suffer the same fate as the two floating corpses they saw at sea.
However, after they had walked around the island somewhat carelessly for over ten minutes without encountering any mermen, their taut nerves began to relax.
The island seemed to have experienced an earthquake of unknown origin. Many of the island’s buildings had collapsed, with debris and broken tiles everywhere. The dilapidated walls stood like scarecrows in dry fields, erected amidst the ruins.
“Did an earthquake happen here?” Li Nuowei picked up a damp wall brick. It was heavy and solid.
Drake had a different opinion, saying, “Perhaps it wasn’t an earthquake. It looks more like something stepped on it.”
“Stepped on?” Li Nuowei scratched his suddenly itchy scalp. “Does that mean the Sea God of Anhai has awakened?”
“I’m worried it’s not,” Drake said with a heavy expression. “This one is large, but it doesn’t feel like enough. Also, I remember what the taxi driver said about that nursery rhyme… ‘When the stars align, it will awaken from its slumber and break the seal.’ It’s clearly not time yet.”
Upon hearing this, Li Nuowei was silent for a moment and said, “What you’re saying is not without reason. If everything here was indeed crushed, then based on my previous experiences, the shadow I saw in the mist should have been much larger. After all, that’s the kind of creature that can stir the ocean and create tsunamis just by moving on the sea surface.”
Although the giant beast that could crush houses was also large enough, it might pale in comparison to that creature.
Drake let out a dry laugh, saying somewhat feebly, “This is truly a disorienting fact. I remember you saying you wanted to ‘slay gods.’ Is this something within our human capability to deal with?”
“We have to try and find a way,” Li Nuowei said without much hesitation. He looked at the other person with amusement and said, “I, who have died thousands of times, haven’t given up, yet you’re already thinking of the impossible?”
“I just can’t think of a way,” Drake shook his head.
Li Nuowei smiled and said, “I’ll think of the way. You just need to keep hoping and live on.”
Drake looked at Li Nuowei, who always displayed an unassailable confidence, and felt a strange sense of trust and peace. But he said nothing, and together they continued walking through the ruins.
Before long, Li Nuowei and Drake discovered a dilapidated ancestral hall.
The statue of the Dragon King enshrined within the ancestral hall had shattered after an incident. However, strangely, the interior of the broken statue was not empty but contained a bronze statue of a merman, which, in form, resembled the Sea God of Anhai from Drake’s memory.
If it were merely a bronze statue of the Sea God of Anhai, neither Drake nor Li Nuowei would have been particularly surprised. What sent shivers down their spines was that the bronze statue seemed alive, covered in countless dense, black flesh eggs, like a multitude of crab eyes staring at them.
Some of the flesh eggs had already burst open, and unknown soft-bodied flesh worms were wriggling out from the thick viscous fluid that flowed from within.
“Disgusting,” Drake’s entire face contorted in disgust, making him feel utterly uncomfortable.
Although Li Nuowei was also disgusted, his expression was one of calm observation. He then said, “Those things are mostly gooseneck barnacles, a type of parasitic worm that attaches to marine life like fish and crabs.”
“I know they’re parasites, but how are they parasitic on a bronze statue? Don’t parasites get lonely when they attach to inanimate objects? And they’ve even managed to live and hatch.” Drake asked curiously.
Li Nuowei: “I don’t know. That bronze statue might have some special power.”
“Is it possible the bronze statue is alive?” Drake speculated. Having encountered too many strange events, he was now trying to think and deduce by abandoning his conventional worldview.
Li Nuowei: “It’s possible. Shall we try burning it?”
Drake glanced at him and agreed, “Let’s give it a try then.”
Immediately after, the two found dry cloth from other parts of the ancestral hall and retrieved an oil lamp, matches, and candles from under the shrine. They used these to fashion makeshift torches. Drake poured kerosene on the bronze statue and piled dry firewood around it, then set them ablaze.
Boom!
Fierce flames instantly engulfed the bronze statue. The statue, bathed in fire, and the gooseneck barnacles covering its entire body, were silently scorched and curled up in the flames, eventually turning into charcoal.
The strong smell of kerosene filled Li Nuowei and Drake’s nostrils. Suddenly, a strong wind blew from the west, rustling the surrounding trees and making their leaves whisper. Strange, eerie sounds emanated from the gaps in the ruins, like the wails of some creature in its death throes. The fire on the bronze statue was also quickly fanned and dispersed by the wind.
The wind subsided, the fire died down, but Li Nuowei and Drake saw a scene that made their scalps tingle.
The already grotesque merman bronze statue now presented a completely different posture. Its face bared fangs in a ferocious expression, its entire body was charred black, and its posture was contorted and strange. Half of its body had emerged from the Dragon King statue.
They had been intently watching the merman bronze statue being burned by the intense fire, yet they had never seen the bronze statue move. They were also certain that their memories were not mistaken; the merman bronze statue had indeed undergone a different transformation after being burned by the fire. This supported the fact that the “bronze statue” might be alive, because if it were a real bronze statue, such an intensity of flame would not have deformed it.
Reacting instinctively to the terrifying object, Drake, to confirm that the creature disguised as a bronze statue was truly dead, picked up a brick and precisely hurled it at the statue.
With a crisp “crack,” the bronze statue broke into several pieces and fell apart, each piece emitting the smell of roasted gelatinous matter and a faint odor of toxic plastic.
The pungent smell made the two cover their noses and mouths. Seeing the internal structure of the bronze statue, they finally confirmed that it was a living creature.
They couldn’t help but feel fortunate. Perhaps the bronze statue had been in slumber, and thus had not noticed their actions of harming it, so they had not sustained any injuries when they set it on fire and killed it.
“What a bizarre and sinister thing,” Drake wiped the cold sweat from his forehead.
Afterward, the two cautiously investigated the ancestral hall and found an entrance to a tunnel in the woodshed behind the hall. However, upon opening the entrance, they discovered that the tunnel had been blocked by collapsed stones. They quickly inferred that someone had deliberately blown up the tunnel, and this was likely the work of the Mystic Investigators who had landed on the island.
It was clear that the Mystic Investigators had already surveyed the houses here, making further investigation of little value.
“Do you think any of the Mystic Investigators who came to investigate are still alive?” Li Nuowei looked at Drake and asked.
Drake thought for a moment and said, “There’s a chance of their survival. If we find them, we might be able to get more useful information from them.”
If any Mystic Investigators were still alive and had indeed discovered something else on this island, it would be more efficient to obtain information from them than to spend time sifting through the ruins here.
The two then left the small town’s ruins and searched for traces of the Mystic Investigators’ activities in the mountains and forests outside the town.
While searching for traces of the Mystic Investigators in the mountains and forests, Drake suddenly felt dizzy. Immediately, the world before his eyes turned to a cold, gray-blue hue, and he felt a burning sensation in his throat. A surge of heat and the smell of blood then rose, and he violently spat out a mouthful of black blood and unknown bodily tissues.
His heartbeat began to accelerate, the flow of blood throughout his body quickened, and even his metabolism seemed to change. Drake felt a chill that one only experiences when having a fever.
Li Nuowei, witnessing this, did not panic. Instead, he said as if accustomed to it, “Has the Mermaid Disease progressed to the next stage?”
“Hada… hada…” Drake raised his head, wanting to say something to Li Nuowei, when he suddenly, with horror, realized that his vocal cords could no longer produce human sounds.
Li Nuowei reached out and touched the scaly structure that had appeared on Drake’s face, then placed his finger in front of the other’s nose and calmly asked, “How is it? Do you feel the urge to take a bite?”
