Chapter 80: One Day on the Ice Sea

Simon took the rope without understanding the situation and adjusted the sails under the bosun's command.

Last night, the people on deck were replaced one by one; a new batch took over from those who had spent the night on deck. Finally, the first mate, yawning, emerged from the cabin to take command of the ship.

The bosun, exhausted from the night, did not go down to rest immediately. He pulled the first mate aside at the stern to explain something.

"Hah?" The latter let out a dismissive sound of inquiry, not taking it much to heart.

Perhaps the bosun also felt he was making a mountain out of a molehill, so he shook his head and left, going down to call the lazy ghosts still hiding in the cabin up to get some cold air. Since he had reported the only minor disturbance worth mentioning, his duty was done.

After a night and a half of sailing, most of the work was finished. The cargo was stowed, the sails were set at the correct angles and filled with wind, but not fully unfurled. Sailing on the Ice Sea required careful speed control; otherwise, colliding with a medium-sized piece of floating ice would not be pleasant.

This ship was not in a hurry. Their cargo was not time-sensitive; ores and furs would not spoil just because they were ten or half a month late.

Seeing the clear weather and stable wind direction, the idle sailors, with the first mate's permission, gathered in groups of three or five to rest on the deck.

Normally, the deck might still need scrubbing, but before sailing out of the Ice Sea, the water on the deck would not dry naturally; instead, it would turn into a layer of slippery thin ice, thus sparing them one troublesome daily chore.

Simon was no exception. He found a few familiar sailors, itching to take a break and gamble. However, these gambling partners who had come up later claimed they had no interest for the moment, continuing to dive into some new topic of discussion, leaving their shared hobby aside.

Amidst the idle chatter, two words were repeatedly mentioned: "last night" and "Bingshan".

If those large floating ice chunks not even as tall as a ship were counted within the category of Bingshan, then such things were nothing unusual in the Ice Sea; it was truly hard to think of anything worth caring about.

"Isn't Bingshan everywhere? Is it worth making such a fuss?"

The person nearby quickly covered his mouth, looking toward the first mate. This temporary captain, who was performing the captain's duties, had not noticed them.

Such a tense reaction only piqued his interest. On the ship, aside from navigation where the captain's word was law, there were not many rules. As long as one did not question openly, sometimes even cursing the captain behind his back was ignored. What could be so taboo that it caused such reaction, unless it was ghostly content that easily unsettled people's minds?

Just like late-night ghost stories, the bosun's extreme reaction was because it was easy to spread; the scarier it was, the more people wanted to hear it. Finding a spot in the small circle and squeezing in, Simon leaned close to the cluster of heads and lowered his voice to join the discussion.

"What exactly is this Bingshan? Did the people who went down tell you?"

After drifting at sea for a long time, the sailors had developed some qualities of bards. The companion who had covered his mouth looked mysteriously at him, leaned close to his ear, and revealed what they were discussing in a voice no louder than ice shards in the wind, syllable by syllable:

"A 'real' Bingshan."

The word "real" was pronounced with particular emphasis. Simon paused, then understood the meaning behind the words.

Looking up at the surrounding sea surface, many white floating ice chunks drifted in the waves. Even the largest one in the distance was no bigger than two people hugging it. Among these small ones, finding a floating ice chunk worthy of being called a "mountain" was indeed rare.

Having been on this ship for four or five years, Simon could guarantee that no one had ever seen a real Bingshan. As far as he knew, no one on other ships heading to the Ice Plains had seen one either; if they had, it would have long become tavern gossip, spreading everywhere within the industry.

However, he still didn't quite understand: "Then why did the bosun act like that? Just because of a Bingshan?"

The small circle fell silent. Several sailors who had been discussing heatedly just moments ago suddenly shut their mouths. Frightened, Simon turned to look back, finding the first mate still resting in the same spot, with no person of status approaching silently.

"Scared me to death. I thought I was going to be punished to scrub the deck again. If they think they can do that now." He pounded his chest a few times, putting on an exaggerated look of fright. His companions exchanged glances; no one was amused by him, as if communicating who should answer.

"Hah? I think you guys are stranger. It wasn't the captain himself who gave the order; are you afraid of a bosun? I thought I was chatting with a few Ice Plains rabbits."

"Tsk, look at you. It's not that we don't want to say, it's just that even that guy didn't explain it clearly."

"Yes, that person couldn't explain it clearly either; he just rushed us up to change shifts." Someone chimed in, sounding like the people who had come up from the lower deck to change shifts hadn't had time to say much.

They explained to each other and assured him they absolutely weren't unable to speak out because they were afraid of the bosun. Finally, they brushed Simon off with a very perfunctory reason, saying they had heard it from the previous shift while coming up:

【Someone said it doesn't look like a Bingshan】

Seeing that this topic couldn't be continued, everyone consciously dropped it and discussed whether they could slack off on their way back and boast in the tavern about seeing that unprecedented Bingshan together.

Unfortunately, happy times are always short. They quickly exhausted the fun brought by the rare novelty, and the wind began to change.

The first mate noticed the wind weakening and the direction shifting. He called the sailors up to adjust the sails, unfurling a larger area of canvas and turning the angle.

So everyone got up to tend to the rigging and turn the capstans. As Simon and his companions worked together to turn the mainsail, a commotion erupted at the stern.

"A bunch of lazy slackers." He put in extra effort, intending to finish the task faster and go to the stern to join the excitement.

By the time he secured the sail's new position, the commotion behind had already drawn everyone's attention. Simon and the others followed the first mate, who had just confirmed the course, to the stern. They boldly pushed aside the people leaning against the railing, making room large enough for the first mate and them to see clearly.

Facing the direction pointed out by the crowd, Simon squinted, gazing at the horizon far, far away. At the very end of the vision, meeting the sky with few clouds, a small, somewhat discordant gap appeared on the straight line.

With the eyesight of the sailors present, they couldn't make out exactly what it was. Judging by the general outline, it didn't look like another sailing ship. Estimating its size, it far exceeded the largest ship they knew; perhaps it was even taller than the masthead.

"What the heck?" The first mate leaned his hands on the railing, his upper body half extending outward. Since the Norsemen arrived, the two-masted sloop had firmly occupied the position of the largest object on the Ice Sea; nothing could shake that.

No one answered him. At this moment, the sailors' entire attention was sucked away by the thing appearing on the horizon. They estimated its size with rough intuition, guessing what it might be.

In the silence, Simon heard someone in the crowd whisper a word. The sound was quickly torn away by the sea breeze, but due to the unusual quiet, most people inevitably heard it.

"Bingshan?"

Bingshan? Simon was sure the first mate had heard the word too. The first mate turned around and dispersed the onlooking crew, using his authority to drive them back to their posts. The witnesses left tacitly; no one knew exactly how many people had connected that thing with last night's events.

Before leaving, Simon looked back at the sea. The gap on the horizon that might be a huge Bingshan showed a line of hazy daylight chewed into a small break by an irregular object.

Seeing the legendary huge Bingshan gave them no satisfaction of curiosity; the imagined excitement was absent. Instead, a doubt about understanding the Ice Sea arose.

You see, the person who had stayed on this ship the shortest had been here for over three years. The captain had spent nearly a third of his current life in waters covered with floating ice, believing he knew it inside out.

Yet today's events gave their foolish confidence a resounding slap. Such a massive thing, floating on the unobstructed sea surface, had never once been recorded before.

A sense of blank unfamiliarity surged in his heart. Simon realized he was actually in a realm he knew nothing about, mistaking a narrow route and limited experience for the whole picture.

He returned to his post. Actually, there was nothing much to do. The first mate ordered them to fully unfurl the sails and left the deck.

Everyone just squatted in place, tightening their collars, talking about old topics long worn out, bringing up the taverns they often visited in Wendeng Port to criticize, always complaining that the grilled fish they had grown tired of was a shared memory of that place.

No one talked about Bingshan anymore.

Simon endured an unpleasant day on the deck. When he returned to the cabin in the evening, he looked in that direction one last time.

The sinking sun orb spewed forth red hues, coloring the sky, the water, and the thick layers of clouds. Of course, also the horizon, as if the part of that sphere submerged in water dissolved and spread along this line, strengthening the sense of the boundary's existence and making it even more prominent.

In a band of warm-colored light, it was the only distinct foreign object. The red light outlined the contour of its dark side clearly. This time, Simon saw much more clearly: the shape of a mountain, small on top and large on the bottom, with somewhat irregular edges.

Under the setting sun, the covered ice and snow plated it with a golden-red border, no different from a snow mountain in winter, contrasting with the gloomy darkness on the side facing away from the light.

Footsteps from the next shift came from the cabin, calling the dazed Simon back. The people behind him, blocked on the deck, did not urge him. Their eyes reflected the red of the sunset, looking in the same direction he had just been.

"Stop looking. It's just a bigger piece of ice. Haven't you seen enough ice usually?" He tugged at his companion, who seemed to have just woken from a dream, pulling him down, but couldn't move him.

"No, something's not right." The companion looked up. The mainsail, filled by the wind, pulled the rigging tight. The night's increasingly strong Ice Wind still pushed the ship forward; everything on the deck was normal.

In just this brief delay, the sky darkened a bit more. Half his face was in shadow, while the other half was flushed red by the afterglow. His face, hardened by years of Ice Wind, no longer changed color at stormy waves, yet was now covered with panic unfit for an old sailor.

"When did we go full sail?"

Kraft recalled the time the first mate had left today. "Probably before noon?"

"When did we see it?"

The reference in the question carried no modifiers, yet Kraft knew what he meant and remembered the time; the words felt more like a request for verification born of self-doubt.

"Also in the morning, even earlier."

"Then how can we still see it?"