Chapter 126: Dismemberment
“There’s no stool in the room. What’s the point of just having a desk?”
Looking at the solitary desk, Zhang Qian couldn’t help but feel some doubt.
The bed was right in the center of the room, yet the desk was in the corner. Even if it was meant to be a bedside table, this distance was too far.
Ruling out situations like the stool being lost or something, Zhang Qian was more inclined to believe that the desk’s purpose wasn’t for writing at all, so the people who built this ship didn’t provide it with a stool.
As for the desk’s true purpose, he was a bit curious, but he currently lacked the conditions to explore it, so he could only set it aside for now.
Confirming whether this thing was safe was what he needed to do right now.
“The previous mirror couldn’t reflect my reflection, but this desk doesn’t seem to have anything strange about it.”
Observing it again, the desk still showed no movement and seemed like just an ordinary piece of furniture. Apart from looking somewhat worn, there was nothing else special about it.
“No fierce ghost appeared as imagined, and this room feels much better than the corridor. Could the opened doorway represent a safe area?”
Burying his doubts in his heart, Zhang Qian still did not enter the room.
It was still better not to stir up trouble.
Retracting his gaze, he chose to go around the doorway and continue groping toward the depths of the corridor.
Accompanied by creaking footsteps, the glowing room continued to recede behind him.
Shortly after Zhang Qian left.
A, no, it should be called a half-humanoid object abruptly appeared in front of the desk.
It was like a human that had been vertically split open, with only half a torso and one foot.
The side of its body was a bloody, mangled cut surface, with various organs exposed inside yet not falling out; instead, they kept wriggling, seemingly full of vitality.
The remaining shoulder also had a huge gash, with the entire arm missing without a trace.
Logically speaking, such a thing shouldn’t be able to stand at all, but not only could it stand, it was also squatting in a horse stance in front of the desk.
That posture was like sitting on an invisible stool.
The remaining half of the upper body was slightly tilted, its dead gray eyes staring at the desktop, the meat stubs on its shoulder constantly twitching.
The figure seemed to want to write something, but this was impossible to accomplish.
Not to mention there being no paper or pen here—even if there were, with not even one arm, it couldn’t possibly hold a pen in its mouth to write, right?
But the fierce ghost wouldn’t care about that. Even if it was impossible, it would still stubbornly persist here to the end.
Not long after.
As if some boundary had been reached, the figure abruptly vanished again, leaving not a single trace behind.
The changes in the room went unnoticed by outsiders.
If Zhang Qian had walked a bit slower, he could have encountered this bizarre corpse, but at this moment, he was focused on the path ahead.
The iron doors on both sides kept receding, the darkness in front retreated, and more iron doors emerged from the darkness.
Not long after, a second opened doorway appeared not far ahead.
Unlike the previous one, this door was only cracked open a slit, and it was on the right side, with the opening blocked by the door itself, so Zhang Qian couldn’t directly see inside.
This wasn’t a big problem. After slowly taking a few steps, he went around the iron door to the other side and observed the room without touching the iron door.
The slit in the opened doorway was about the width of one head, not enough for a person to pass through, but sufficient for peeking inside.
It was still the assembly-line-like layout. Zhang Qian didn’t pay much attention to those places; his gaze kept scanning, as if searching for something.
“The previous two rooms each had one piece of furniture. I wonder what thing this one will have?”
But after roughly scanning around, there was actually no discovery.
“Empty?”
It seemed his previous inference wasn’t quite accurate.
Feeling slightly puzzled, just as he turned to leave, Zhang Qian suddenly felt something under his foot.
By the dim yellow light from the room, he discovered a fan had appeared under his foot at some point.
“It definitely wasn’t there when I looked before… Another supernatural event?”
Glancing at the cracked-open doorway—it wasn’t enough for a person to pass through, but more than enough for a fan.
No wonder he hadn’t noticed anything unusual; it had come from the room onto the corridor.
The bone fan bones emitted a faint cold glow. Whether due to lighting or corrosion from time, the originally white material now looked somewhat yellowed.
The blackened liquid in the carpet had soaked onto the fan, but after the liquid receded, it left no mark on the fan.
Clearly, this thing was not a normal item and was very likely related to the fierce ghost.
“It came right up to me. Does it want me to open it that badly…”
After lifting his foot, Zhang Qian didn’t touch the fan and continued walking into the aisle as if nothing had happened.
He didn’t know what this fan did or whether it was good or bad. He wasn’t at his wit’s end yet, so there was no need to gamble on a potentially useful item.
During the process of leaving, Zhang Qian still wasn’t at ease, looking back every three steps, worried that this teleporting fan would shamelessly follow him.
But he was overthinking it. The bone fan just lay quietly on the ground, showing no abnormalities until it disappeared from sight.
“Do ghosts still observe politeness?”
According to common legends, these fans mostly harbored fierce ghosts. Stepping on one might not kill you outright, but being haunted was inevitable.
But the fierce ghosts here hadn’t attacked him yet, just made some minor movements—much milder than fierce ghosts in the usual sense.
After about more than ten minutes.
Zhang Qian looked at the unchanging surroundings and fell into thought.
“If I didn’t miscount, I’ve already passed more than 200 doorways. Divided by 2 is more than 100. Each door is spaced about 5 meters apart, adding up to more than 500 meters, and still no end in sight…”
The Titanic was only a little over 200 meters long. Was this ship bigger than the Titanic?
Moreover, he was certain he hadn’t encountered something like a ghost wall.
Because along the way, he had come across a few ajar doorways, and from the things in the rooms, it didn’t seem like he was going in circles.
The proportion of such rooms wasn’t high, probably about one in fifty. After walking this long, he’d only encountered four.
At first, when encountering such rooms, he was extremely vigilant, afraid a fierce ghost or something would lunge out from inside.
But as the encounters increased, he found these rooms weren’t as terrifying as imagined, and he even had the mood to tally the items in each room.
“Beds and carpets seem to be standard items in every room. Every opened room has them, so they probably don’t have any special meaning—just adding the attribute of a guest room to the space.”
“Looking at it now, the real special aspect should be in those different places…”
