164: Chapter 164 The Ship Without Lights

The moment the Black Sea overturned, the entire Wanghai No. 7 exploration platform let out a groaning sound of collapse first.

The wind was silent; there were no waves, no howling.

It was as if an invisible giant hand had reached down from the Void Realm, gripping the platform's steel frame tightly. One by one, the load-bearing beams tightened and twisted, and the piercing sound of metal grinding echoed through the entire offshore platform, carrying with it the suffocating sensation of being forcibly crushed.

Space Venerable suddenly looked up, his face, which had been relatively calm just moments ago, instantly turning as pale as paper.

"It doesn't intend to flood the platform."

Zhao Ye's heart sank: "Then what does it want to do?"

"It wants to flip the entire platform over completely."

Before the words had even faded, all the windows at the end of the corridor suddenly lit up.

There were no lamps, no electricity, and no artificial light sources whatsoever.

Outside the windows, a layer of pale seawater was pressed tightly against the glass. In the murky, dark water, countless pitch-black shadows slowly drifted and swam.

Those shadows were definitely not schools of fish or sea beasts; instead, they resembled empty ships that had shed their sails and abandoned their lamps. They hovered in silence, all their bows pointed directly at Wanghai No. 7, poised to strike.

Xingkong suddenly gripped the record book on the desk, the veins on the back of his hand bulging, and he couldn't stop himself from trembling.

"It's the Lamp-less Ships."

Bai Ya glanced at him, cold light gathering in his eyes.

"After they dock, they will knock on the door." Xingkong's voice was dry and hoarse, revealing a deep-seated dread. "Whoever answers from behind the door, whoever asks who they are, will be taken away on the spot."

Zhao Ye frowned tightly, his tone firm: "Then we won't open the door. We'll ignore them."

Xingkong forced a bitter smile, his eyes filled with helplessness: "It's useless. This door will open on its own."

The next instant, the first knock came from the outer deck.

It was extremely light, extremely slow.

It was as if someone were using cool knuckles to gently tap against the heavy iron door, the dull sound penetrating the metal and reaching everyone's ears.

After two light knocks, the lock on the platform's side door, untouched by anyone, sprang open on its own. The door gaped open, revealing a bone-chilling, ghostly cold air from the sea.

Zhao Ye stepped forward to block it, but Bai Ya suddenly reached out and grabbed his forearm with a cold, firm grip.

"Don't touch it."

A wisp of fine fire thread extended from his fingertip, gently adhering to the gap in the door.

The Fire Seal patterns, which usually incinerated everything, were unusually calm at this moment; they did not burn, nor did they heat up, simply tracing slowly along the rusted, mottled metal grooves.

Upon reaching the edge of the deck, the fire thread suddenly split into three, and three slender threads of fire extended straight down, piercing into the pitch-Black Sea below.

"There are three ships in total," Bai Ya warned in a low voice, his gaze locked on the churning black fog of the sea. "But one of them is fake."

"How can you tell?"

"The fake one has no shadow."

In the center of the corridor, Wu stood silently, turning the Fire Seal engraved with the two characters "Empty Space" in his palm.

On the originally clean and smooth surface of the tablet, a string of crooked, fine short lines had quietly appeared, chaotic and disorderly, yet revealing an eerie pattern.

He lowered his eyes and stared at it for a long time before speaking slowly, overturning his previous judgment.

"It's not three ships."

"It is a tribulation of three knocks."

Outside the door, the third knock was slow to come.

A new round of knocking sounded abruptly, but from a different location, echoing from the iron door at the very bottom of the platform, dull and heavy, penetrating through layers of decks.

The last trace of color drained from Xingkong's face, and his entire body went cold.

"They will knock three times on the same door. You must never respond to the first two knocks, never make eye contact, and never make a sound. When the third knock comes... on the third knock, they will bring the person you most want to see, most miss, and can never let go of in your entire life, and stand outside the door."

Zhao Ye stared at his pale profile: "Have you seen it? Who was it?"

Xingkong pressed his lips together, remaining silent and refusing to answer.

From outside the cold, dark gap of the door, a soft female voice suddenly drifted in, gentle and lingering, painfully familiar.

"A-Xing."

With just that one soft call, it precisely shattered all of Xingkong's defenses.

His whole body suddenly stiffened, his limbs went cold, his breathing stopped instantly, and he was rooted to the spot.

Zhao Ye instinctively looked at Bai Ya, who shook his head slightly, signaling with his eyes not to speak or interrupt.

The second heavy knock fell with a boom.

The entire Wanghai No. 7 platform suddenly tilted violently, the steel frame twisting and trembling.

The steel cables of the qingsuo no. 2 moored below tightened and pulled, emitting a piercing, sharp grinding sound.

Tide's urgent shouts came through the communicator, filled with anxiety.

"Deputy Captain He Yuan is forcibly dragging the ship away from the dock! If you don't get off the platform now, everyone will be trapped and die here, and the ship won't be saved either!"

Space Venerable rushed to the structural blueprints on the side, his finger pointing firmly at a narrow vertical maintenance ladder.

"Go this way! Before the platform flips over completely, this is the only ladder that remains on the real spatial plane!"

Zhao Ye did not hesitate any longer and sprinted towards the ladder.

Only Xingkong remained standing where he was, not moving an inch.

He gripped the record book in his arms tightly, his knuckles turning white, his gaze fixed unblinkingly on the half-open iron door, as if he were completely trapped by the obsession behind it.

The female voice outside the door rang out again, its gentle tone hiding an irresistible lure.

"A-Xing, open the door and see me."

Wu walked slowly to his side, not touching him at all, and simply held the Fire Seal from his palm in front of him.

"Write down what you see."

Xingkong looked up in a daze, his eyes full of confusion: "What?"

"Don't write who she is, don't write who she looks like, don't write what she is calling you." Wu's voice was calm and cold, breaking through his obsession-filled maze. "Only write what is at her feet."

This sentence suddenly pulled Xingkong awake from the sinking dream.

He looked down sharply, his gaze piercing the gloom of the door gap, staring fixedly at the shadow extending outside the door.

The shadow was slender, complete, and clung to the ground.

But at the bottom of that shadow, it was empty.

No feet.

He immediately gripped his pencil and pressed hard on the back of the Fire Seal, his handwriting sharp and heavy, carving the truth stroke by stroke: No feet.

The third knock, which should have fallen, was suddenly cut off in mid-air.

The fire thread on Bai Ya's fingertip tightened suddenly, binding the gap in the door lock like a chain.

Zhao Ye stepped forward and slammed his fist hard against the load-bearing steel beam next to the side door.

The exorcising Fire Seal patterns did not erupt outwards but instead vibrated inwards along the texture of the iron, sweeping across the entire door.

A sharp, piercing, and strange scraping sound came from deep within the door gap, like countless cold fingernails scratching hard against glass—eerie and wretched.

The shadows of the Lamp-less Ships drifting outside the windows instantly dissipated and dissolved, sinking into the depths of the Black Sea.

The platform tilted violently again, its flipping momentum becoming even more rapid.

"Go! Go now!" Zhao Ye roared in a low voice.

The group did not linger, quickly descending along the narrow, slippery maintenance ladder.

The surface of the ladder was covered in cold sea dew, making it slippery and difficult to step on.

Space Venerable led the way, his nerves taut the entire time, constantly calling out safe spots in a loud voice.

"Don't grab the red paint with your left hand! The ladder sections covered in red paint are illusions! Step on the places mottled with white rust; only under the white rust is there a real steel beam for support!"

As Zhao Ye descended quickly, he couldn't help but curse under his breath: "You surveyors, why do you speak so cryptically in moments of crisis?"

"I usually draw arrows on the blueprints!" Space Venerable retorted, his voice already cracking from tension.

Halfway down, the entire Black Sea suddenly poured and overturned from the top of the platform.

The pitch-black, icy seawater slid down along the outer wall with a roar, leaving only half an arm's length from their shoulders. The chill was bone-piercing, and the sense of oppression was suffocating.

The Fire Seal in Wu's palm suddenly became scorching hot, the heat penetrating his palm.

He clearly saw countless snow-white slips of paper floating in the churning black water, each one neatly inscribed with the name of a stranger.

Densely packed, layer upon layer.

And the piece of white paper at the very front clearly read—Xingkong.

Xingkong also caught a glimpse of his own name; his pupils shrank, and he instinctively raised his hand to grab it from the water.

Wu moved extremely fast, pressing down firmly on his wrist with a steady, decisive force.

"Don't touch it."

"That is my name—"

"It has written your name, but that does not mean this thing, this fate, belongs to you." Wu's words were cold and bone-piercing, instantly shattering the illusion trap.

The two stood in a stalemate for a moment before Deputy Captain He Yuan's urgent roar came from below.

"Jump!"

The qingsuo no. 2 was already pressed close to the edge of the platform, its hull pushed by huge waves, rising and falling violently, tossing up and down. The waves were churning, and it was extremely dangerous.

Zhao Ye exerted his strength first, steadily sending Space Venerable down to the ship.

Bai Ya followed closely behind, vaulting over the railing and landing steadily.

Xingkong was the last to go. Before he jumped, he couldn't help but look back at the Wanghai No. 7 that was about to overturn.

The iron door to the corridor, which had been half-closed just moments ago, was now completely wide open.

Deep in the gloom behind the door, a row of figures stood silently, soaked through, dripping with water.

The woman at the front slowly looked up and, facing him, gently raised a tender smile.

Xingkong closed his eyes tightly, cutting off all obsessions, and leapt, landing in the tossing cabin.

Throughout the entire journey of the qingsuo no. 2 sailing away from the platform, Deputy Captain He Yuan never straightened the bow of the ship.

He deliberately kept the hull at an extremely awkward tilted angle, refusing to fully break free from the range of that eerie black water.

A Sheng, standing beside him, was pale and full of anxiety, urging him urgently: "Deputy Captain He! If we delay any longer, the ship will be dragged back by the black water currents and trapped to death!"

"I know." Deputy Captain He Yuan stared fixedly at the rearview mirror at the stern, his eyes heavy and focused. "But it has been looking for the lamps, aura, and traces we left behind."

Inside the cabin, all lighting had been extinguished.

Everyone could only rely on the faint fluorescence of the instruments to see each other's tense and stiff silhouettes.

When Zhao Ye jumped onto the ship earlier, the back of his hand had been cut by the sharp edge of the iron ladder. Blood slowly seeped out, but it was soon dried by the biting sea wind, forming a dark red scab.

Xingkong curled up alone in the corner of the cabin, arms tightly hugging the record book, his head bowed, silent the entire time, refusing to look up.

Wu walked slowly to his side and gently placed the Fire Seal back into his palm.

"You did the right thing just now."

Xingkong was taken aback, his fingertips curling slightly.

"No feet." Wu repeated in a low voice, teaching him to remember the way to break the situation. "In the future, if you encounter such illusions again, only write the truth, not your obsession. Don't be led by its appearance or titles."

Xingkong gripped the warm Fire Seal tightly and remained silent for a long time before squeezing out a very light response from his throat.

Just at that moment, a third clear knock suddenly rang out on the stern deck.

Thud.

The entire ship's crew instantly stiffened, their nerves stretched to the limit.

Deputy Captain He Yuan did not look back, but instead jerked the steering wheel.

The qingsuo no. 2 scraped hard against the boundary of the black water, the hull rubbing against hidden reefs, sparking a shower of piercing sparks.

The pursuing knock ultimately failed to get close, only dragging out a long, wet, heavy sound of footsteps in the distant darkness, as if someone wearing water-soaked shoes was slowly walking across the empty deck, gradually moving further and further away.

Space Venerable finally steadied himself and looked back at the platform maintenance ladder, which was already far away.

That ladder had long since lost its original vertical structure, as if bent and broken from the middle by an invisible force, with the other end of the ladder reaching deep into the inverted Void Realm of the Black Sea.

The white-rusted steel beams and safe landing spots they had stepped on just moments ago had now all turned into a damp, cold cabin floor—truth and falsehood were inverted, reality and illusion indistinguishable.

"This place has no fixed structure at all." He concluded in a low voice, his tone solemn.

Bai Ya raised his hand to wipe away the blood seeping from the corner of his eye, his voice slightly hoarse: "Are you sure?"

"Sure." Space Venerable folded the structural blueprints tightly and clenched them in his palm. "It was never an offshore exploration platform. It just borrowed the outer shell of Wanghai No. 7 and disguised itself."

Hearing this, Zhao Ye turned to look at the boundless, pitch-Black Sea behind them, cold sharpness gathering in his eyes.

"If it's just borrowing an appearance, then that's easy to handle."

"How is it easy to handle?" someone asked in a low voice.

"One day, we will tear down all the shells, all the illusions, and all the disguises it borrowed, one by one."

No one took this statement as a joke. The whole ship was filled with the solemnity and gloom of having just survived a disaster.

The qingsuo no. 2 set sail at full speed, breaking through the waves.

Behind them, Wanghai No. 7 turned slowly in the deep night.

It did not sink to the bottom of the sea.

Instead, it was gently lifted from below by the endless Black Sea, the entire platform inverted against the sky, suspended in the Void Realm.

In the extreme darkness, the originally dim Wanghai No. 7 sign finally flashed with a faint light.

A line of text, rotted and whitened by soaking in seawater, floated silently above the pitch-Black Sea, clearly revealed—

[Linhai has been recorded on the shore.]