Chapter 3214: The Haze of Faraines (22)

Batman and Schiller entered the bottommost level of the ship's cabin. There was almost no light here, but it seemed there were no Deep Ones either, so Schiller opened his flashlight with peace of mind.

Under the illumination of the flashlight, he discovered that this ship should have been built by humans, but it seemed to have sunk to the bottom of the sea many years ago. The wooden structure was severely corroded. It could be said that it hadn't fallen apart yet, so there should be some mysterious power protecting it.

What was placed in the bottommost level of the ship's cabin was cargo. After some boxes were corroded and broken, they revealed their true appearance. The goods here were roughly divided into two parts: one part was spices, and the other part was minerals.

Batman picked up a bit of mineral powder and said, "This should be a cargo ship from the Age of Discovery. It's hard to judge the specific era."

Schiller's judgment was about the same as his. Just from the appearance of these three ships, one could tell they weren't modern products. From the corrosion and damage of the ship's hull, they also had some age.

What truly made Schiller feel puzzled was that if the Deep Ones wanted to go ashore, they didn't need to sail ships, which was why these three ships seemed particularly eerie.

Although the ships and the Deep Ones arrived at the same time, they didn't necessarily have the same purpose. If the Deep Ones were the product of Old Siltek's conspiracy combined with Joker's setting, would these three ships be related to the Church?

If it was the Church that found a way to summon these three long-sunken cargo ships, why would they do that? What secrets were on the ships?

Schiller told Batman his conjecture. Batman said, "Old Siltek thinks he can calculate the Church, but perhaps he is just a pawn of the Church. We must hurry; perhaps there won't be much time left."

Just at this moment, Schiller suddenly heard a clear sound from the other end of the cabin.

He instantly turned off the flashlight and hid behind several wooden barrels with Batman.

The footsteps that followed made the two understand that there were other intruders on this ship. These weren't the footsteps of Deep Ones.

The two exchanged a look and immediately understood each other's thoughts. They pressed their bodies lower, reducing their breathing frequency as much as possible. Schiller silently put on his night-vision goggles.

Their location was in the corner at the very front of the cabin. From Schiller's angle, he could see a corner of the stairs leading upstairs. And in the night-vision goggles, a human figure flashed by and instantly went up the stairs.

After this human left, Schiller and Batman arrived at the place where he had walked at the fastest speed.

Because the floor was severely corroded, the surface wood was loose, and there were some slippery algae attached to it, so it was easy to leave footprints.

Batman activated his investigation skill. Agility 20 > 15, check successful. He stated his discovery.

"A human male, estimated height around 1.75 meters, build not very strong, balanced physique, good balance."

"Do you think there might be outsiders who have come to the village?" Schiller asked.

"It's hard to say now. Maybe someone has been hiding in the village all along and only just showed up." A cold glint flashed in Batman's eyes. He said, "He shouldn't be a good person. Regardless of what he wants to do, we can't let him succeed."

"I'll lead the way. Let's go." Schiller took his pistol in his hand, put on his night-vision goggles, didn't say much, and went up the stairs one after the other with Batman.

"Don't you intend to listen to my judgment of him?"

Schiller turned his head and looked at him. Only then did he remember that he still had wall-hack on, but he still said, "I thought what you said just now about him not being a good person was your judgment."

"Then you underestimate yourself too much," Batman said after a slight pause.

"What high opinion do you have?"

"The other party isn't panicked at all," Batman said. "Besides meaning he might have night-vision equipment like you, indicating he is well-prepared, it also means he had long anticipated the situation here."

"What are you referring to? The Deep Ones?"

"It's more likely the situation inside the ship." Batman reached out and touched the wallboard of the stairwell and said, "From his movement trajectory, it can be seen that after he came up from the door on the other side, he went straight to the stairs. He is very familiar with the terrain here. It's possible it's not his first time here."

Schiller frowned. Actually, the three ships had been here for a while. If someone had really been prepared early, they would have definitely come up the first time, not waiting until now.

"And if someone is intruding now, it means he might have come in and out many times." Schiller asked, "What do you think he is here for?"

This time Batman was silent for a longer time. He seemed to be trying hard to understand what he saw in the hallucination, and then he said, "He is looking for something. He didn't find it before, and now he's come again."

"Alright, assuming what you say is true, but why couldn't he find it?"

Schiller wasn't testing Batman, just finding it interesting to watch him try hard to find useful information in the hallucination, as if watching someone panning for gold in feces.

"The ship is big, and the terrain is complex. It's normal not to find it," Batman said. "This place doesn't look like a place to stay for long. He can't stay here indefinitely. If he can't find it once, naturally he has to come a few more times."

The two went up the stairs and soon saw footprints at the top of the stairs again. This time the footprints were somewhat messy. The other party seemed to have wandered at the top of the stairs for a while before leaving.

Schiller also discovered the footprints of Deep Ones nearby at the same time, which meant the other party might also have been waiting for the Deep Ones to leave.

This was actually good news, meaning the other party didn't actually have the ability to confront the Deep Ones head-on. As long as there were no superpowers, it couldn't be considered dangerous.

This level seemed to be the crew's bedroom. The other party only stayed here for a very short period of time before going up again.

Batman also wanted to chase up, but Schiller pulled him and said, "Let's look around here."

"Look for what?"

"I don't know either," Schiller took a deep breath and said, "My intuition tells me there might be clues here. Let's look for them anyway."

Batman didn't object, so the two began to search here.

This level was larger than the one downstairs. The crew's bedrooms were distributed in a fishbone shape. A main road was obliquely divided into many small paths on both sides, and on both sides of the small paths were the crew's rooms.

The two went left and right, respectively, and began to check from both sides at a very fast speed.

The evidence-gathering speed of the two was very fast. Almost at a glance, they could roughly judge which clues were useful. Schiller checked room by room. Most of the rooms were corroded beyond recognition, and there was nothing.

Some bedrooms were slightly better preserved because the doors were closed, and one could roughly see the shape of the beds.

When searching to the eleventh bedroom, Schiller had an amazing discovery—under the bed board of this bedroom, Schiller saw a familiar name—"Pike."

The name Pike was crookedly carved on the bed board with a small knife, but above it was a line of words, writing "It's here."

Schiller took out Pike's diary. Although carving words and writing words were not quite the same, one could still see from the writing of some letters that these two places of handwriting came from the same person. It should be the sailor Pike.

Wait a minute. Schiller flipped to the last few pages of the diary at the fastest speed. After comparing the handwriting on it, he found that the ending of the story recorded in the diary was problematic.

Although the handwriting was about the same, and some superficial details were very similar, after careful observation, Schiller still found that the writing habits were slightly different. The handwriting behind seemed to be forged.

That is to say, the ending of the safe return recorded in the diary might be fake.

Also, the three ships they were currently on had already sunk. This sailor Pike shouldn't have escaped either.

But if the ship he was on had already sunk, how did this diary of his end up flowing out?

Just at this time, Batman came in. Schiller handed the diary to him and stated his doubts. Batman thought for a moment and said, "Do you know about shipwreck salvage companies?"

Schiller looked at him, and Batman continued, "There is a type of company that specializes in salvaging shipwrecks in major sea areas. The ship fragments and cargo samples salvaged all have a certain economic value and can be sold to private collectors and museums who are interested."

"From the scale of the fleet in the Age of Discovery, it's impossible that there were only three ships. If an entire fleet was wiped out, there should be other shipwrecks in the same area."

"You mean other shipwrecks were salvaged? Then why weren't these three?"

"Salvage companies aren't doing charity," Batman explained. "They only salvage those goods with more value. The better the goods are preserved, the higher the value of selling them. And there aren't many types of goods that can be kept in good condition, such as porcelain, gold, silverware, etc. Taking a step back, there should also be things with textual and historical value."

"To ensure that the things they salvage have value, they usually conduct exploratory salvage first to determine the value of the goods in a certain area. If they find that the goods on this ship are suitable, they will conduct large-scale salvage. If not suitable, they will give up."

Schiller understood somewhat. He said, "The things loaded on this ship clearly weren't what they wanted. The spices were long destroyed, and the minerals were long corroded, so they didn't salvage this ship."

"Exactly, but this doesn't mean that ships in the same fleet loaded with more valuable goods weren't salvaged. The diary might have been discovered on that ship."

Schiller began to think. What Batman said wasn't unreasonable. The scale of the fleet in the Age of Discovery was very large, especially in Spain's most glorious era. A fleet could have dozens of ships, and a sailor wouldn't necessarily work on one ship until death.

When they docked for resupply, there would be personnel transfers. Maybe they worked on this ship the day before, and went to another ship after setting off again. Pike might have died here, but he wouldn't necessarily have left the diary here.

If he left the diary on a ship with more valuable cargo, it might have been salvaged by a shipwreck salvage company, thereby seeing the light of day again.

Although the Age of Discovery wasn't particularly far from modern times, such classics with well-preserved text still had a certain historical value.

After the shipwreck company salvaged it, it might have been sold to someone, and then found by British plunderers and loaded onto a ship bound for the British Museum.

And Jeff happened to have been a sailor on this ship. In order to pay off gambling debts, he went to steal these valuable classics, and this thing fell into his hands.

Schiller was thinking, if sailor Pike's diary fell into Jeff's hands this way, what about *Cthaya, the Water God*? Could it also have come from this ship?

Schiller thought this was possible, because Pike's fleet encountered a disaster, which might have been caused by someone using the incantations on this book *Cthaya, the Water God*.

In that case, everything made sense. ===== CHAPTER 3215 =====