Chapter 151: Lost Contact

"Fengniao, Fatty, go up and take a look."

Captain, Maiersi's voice came through the throat mic to each squad member's ears.

"Remember, keep your distance."

"Copy."

Two squad members held their rifles, using standard tactical alternating movements, and cautiously approached the stairs.

In the hall, the stretched, distorted waltz music still echoed faintly, viscous as if squeezed out of a rusted gramophone.

Every inch of air was filled with a nauseating smell of rotting seafood mixed with iron rust.

Fengniao stepped onto the seawater‑soaked carpet, and his feet made a sticky "puff‑ch, puff‑ch" sound.

He got closer and closer to that silhouette.

Ten meters.

Five meters.

Three meters.

He halted, raised his Tactical Flashlight, and the beam locked onto the figure, while he made a hand signal.

"Hey, ma'am? Do you need assistance?"

No response.

The woman still stood there quietly.

Fengniao's nerves were stretched to the limit, his finger hovering over the trigger.

However, just as he was about to speak again,

Mutation!

The standing "woman" fell forward straight down without any warning.

"Bang!"

A muffled, massive thud.

It wasn't the sound of a person hitting the ground; it resembled a huge sack of water‑soaked rotten flesh being slammed onto the floor.

Fengniao's Tactical Flashlight beam shifted downward as the figure collapsed.

When the beam illuminated the face, even these special‑ops veterans accustomed to life and death inhaled a sharp gasp of cold air.

That was not a face at all!

It was a clump of sea‑soaked, whitened, swollen rotting flesh!

The eyeballs were long gone, leaving only two black, hollow eye sockets.

The skin resembled over‑fermented dough, cracked everywhere, oozing yellow‑green, foul pus.

As she hit the ground, a few pale, maggot‑like tiny shrimp crawled out of her mouth and nostrils, wriggling on the Jiabǎn.

"My God..."

Fatty let out a dry retch, nearly vomiting up the leftover rice.

The corpse's decay level far exceeded normal expectations!

She seemed to have been soaked in water for at least a week!

Maiersi's heart sank sharply.

One week.

The ship had been out of contact for just over a week.

He jerked his head up and looked around.

The metal walls inside the hull were covered with large patches of dark brown rust and clear marks left after the waterline receded.

These marks silently told one fact.

The ship had once been completely submerged to the seabed!

But now, it Weirdly floats on the sea surface, still sailing!

A chill crawled up Maiersi's spine, racing upward.

Physical laws fail here.

"Jingti Hao, this is Hammerhead, reply if you hear me!"

Maiersi acted decisively, immediately contacting the mothership via the encrypted channel.

"Hammerhead, this is Jingti Hao, your voice sounds off, report the situation!"

"Sir, the situation has changed!"

Maiersi spoke at breakneck speed, reporting the Weird corpse on board, the abnormal decay level, and the inference that the hull had been fully submerged, using the most concise language.

"We may have entered a... extremely sinister place."

The other end of the comms was silent for a few seconds, then the commander's voice came again, tinged with incomprehensible shock but mostly with an unquestionable order.

"I don't care what place you entered, retrieve the torpedo fragments! Find the navigation recorder!"

"Confirm what exactly happened on Haiyang Ningjing Hao! We must know why it turned into this!"

"Copy!"

Maiersi cut the comms, his gaze becoming razor‑sharp. "Squad, commence now; divide by member numbers into Alpha and Beta teams."

"Alpha Squad, go to Chuangzhang Shi, locate the navigation recorder!"

"Beta Squad, follow me to the lower engine room, retrieve that damned target!"

"Action!"

The squad immediately split into two routes.

"Bang!"

Alpha Squad used a battering ram to smash open the door of the Chuangzhang Shi.

Inside the cockpit, it was pitch black and icy.

All the electronic device screens were dead silent, the needles frozen at chaotic positions.

They found that heavy navigation log on the main console.

They opened it.

The earlier entries were all normal, the handwriting neat.

However, when they turned to the last page, everyone's breath halted.

The final entry, the time was frozen at one minute before the cruise ship was supposed to be "sunk".

Then.

It was gone.

The rest was a sprawling, unsettling blank.

It was as if, after that minute, the ship vanished from this world out of thin air.

A team member pointed at the helm in front of the pilot console, voice trembling.

"This? This is…"

Under everyone's horrified stare, the massive rust‑covered helm was turning of its own accord at a visibly, extremely slow speed.

Creak—

As if invisible hands were steering this ghost ship.

Meanwhile.

The Beta Squad, deep in the hull's lower levels, also reached the engine room.

According to Intelligence, this should be the explosion's Core area.

"Prepare to breach!"

Fatty affixed high‑explosive to the heavy steel hatch.

"Boom!"

After the huge blast, the hatch was blown open with a big hole.

However, when they rushed in, everyone froze in place.

In the engine room, the massive engine stood silently.

The surrounding pipelines and gauges were intact.

But the surroundings bore marks of an explosion.

Twisted steel plates, charred walls…

No matter how you look, the scale of the blast was enormous.

Yet the engine room's critical systems were unscathed, as if some Weird force had restored them to the moment before damage.

A team member, on a toolbox, discovered their "target".

The so‑called "torpedo fragment" used to frame them.

It lay there all alone.

"All squads, target recovered, assemble on the Jiabǎn, prepare to evacuate!"

Maiersi picked up the fish fragment, handed it to a teammate, and immediately issued a new order through the Communicator.

He didn't want to linger in this creepy Weird place.

Then, he switched to the channel with the mother ship.

"Jingti Hao! This is Hammerhead, we are beginning to return, requesting aerial extraction!"

But the only response was a harsh electric static noise.

Zzz— Zzz—

"Damn it, what's going on!"

Maiersi furrowed his brow hard, "Switch to backup channel! Everyone, all switch to backup channel!"

The team members hurriedly switched their communication devices.

Result: it was the same.

A death‑like silence.

All their communication equipment failed at that moment.

That Weird, viscous waltz, at an unknown time, began playing again, echoing faintly through the spacious, dark ship corridor, as if mocking the intruders.

Meanwhile, the Atlantic Ocean surface.

On the bridge of the Jingti Hao patrol vessel, the Radar operator pointed at the screen, letting out a terrified scream.

"Commander! The target vanished! We've lost Haiyang Ningjing Hao's signal!"

The commander lunged forward to the radar.

On the screen, the huge light representing the cruise ship vanished into thin air, leaving only an empty blue sea.

He snatched the binoculars and rushed off the bridge.

The sight before him made his blood freeze.

Ahead, the dense fog that once only shrouded the cruise ship had expanded into an impermeable gray wall linking sky and sea!

The mist churned and swirled, like a living thing, devouring the sea entirely.

"Haiyang Ningjing Hao"… vanished without a trace.

"Ghost Squad! Hammerhead! If you hear, respond!"

"Hummingbird! Fatty! Anyone, answer me!"

The commander shouted into the radio.

But the only response to him was the eternal, despair‑inducing rustle.

His twelve elite subordinates, along with the ghost ship that shouldn't exist, disappeared into the uncanny mist right before his eyes.