Chapter 298: Chapter 302: Chaotic Structure
The deck of the Obsidian was limited in size and could be taken in at a glance; the group quickly finished searching the entire deck area and found nothing suspicious.
Aside from the areas that should have been damp and puddled now being abnormally dry, the deck of the Obsidian looked no different from that of any ordinary abandoned ship—severely rusted, uneven, with many deficiencies, but overall not yet to the point of complete collapse.
After inspecting the deck area, Duncan decided to enter the cabins of the ship.
They quickly found a large door leading to the ship’s cabin.
It was a rust-streaked iron door embedded in a white wall. The door handle was severely decayed, and the lock had long been ruined by the soaking of seawater; the entire door was firmly closed, obviously unable to be opened by conventional ans.
Morris stepped forward, examined the state of the door, then gave up on the idea of opening it normally and turned to the others, “We might need to use so force.”
“I’ll do it,” Fenna volunteered before anyone else could speak, “Everyone else step back a bit to avoid getting hit by debris.”
Sherry, Alice, and the others imdiately obediently moved back quite a distance; Duncan didn’t move much, just shifted slightly to the side to avoid getting his clothes dirty, then curiously watched Fenna’s movents—he saw this mighty woman co up to the rust-frozen large iron door, and then… casually knocked on the door panel.
There was a short, buzzing sound, and the middle of the large iron door directly shattered and collapsed into a large hole, the solid and heavy steel turning into countless fragnts that scattered in all directions, with dust billowing around the entrance.
After that, Fenna reached out and tore a few tis next to the big hole, ripping the remaining steel plates from the door fra as easily as tearing paper, and casually tossed them aside.
Sherry and A’Gou stared at the scene, dumbfounded, and after a long while, they spoke in unison, breaking the silence, “…Damn, is she even human?”
Of course, Fenna heard Sherry and A’Gou’s comnts, turned her head, and smiled, “I always keep up with my physical training.”
Sherry’s mouth twitched visibly, and she muttered under her breath, “This… has nothing to do with training anymore…”
Duncan was also quite impressed by Fenna’s straightforward solution to the problem. However, he had witnessed this beautiful Amazon’s feat of fighting through City-State and didn’t have any extra reaction, just looked up at the dusty doorway, “What’s the situation inside?”
Fenna waved her hand, waited for the dust to settle, then peeked inside. Her expression instantly turned peculiar.
A few seconds later, she backed out and turned to Duncan, “Inside… there’s another door.”
“Another door?” Duncan was montarily stunned, took a few steps to take a look for himself, and sure enough, he saw another rust-streaked big door standing right in front of him—just a few ters away from the outside one.
However, the space between the two doors was neither a corridor nor an entrance hall, nor did it appear to be so sort of specially designed safety compartnt—it was just an empty area with no equipnt or furnishings, no additional windows, only bare walls, and a ceiling that looked oddly twisted for so reason.
“…I’m not sure if this is a normal structure of the Obsidian,” Morris also ca over for a look and shook his head, “I had only heard of this ship before and never actually seen it.”
Duncan frowned slightly, quickly nodded to Fenna, “Open that door.”
“Okay,” Fenna imdiately stepped forward, and in the sa manner, smashed the second door, then peeked inside again, her face showing astonishnt as she turned back, “Inside… there’s yet another door.”
“Another?!” This ti, even Sherry was surprised, she too could no longer care about safety distance, dragged A’Gou over, “Oh my… it’s really there?!”
Beyond the second door was a third door, exactly the sa structure, exactly the sa eerie “compartnt.”
If only a second door had appeared, it might have been explained away as “Obsidian’s special design,” but now, faced with a third door that served no discernible purpose and only added an elent of creepiness… it beca difficult to brush off with “the ship’s design concept is just very avant-garde.”
“The structure of this ship is not quite right,” Duncan turned to look back at the previous two doors, his expression slightly more serious, “Normal or not, there shouldn’t be this kind of design… Fenna, open this door too.”
“Alright.” Fenna didn’t hesitate, stepped forward, and punched a big hole in the third door, but this ti she stopped after making the hole and didn’t continue to clear the remaining steel plates on the door fra—because through that hole, she had already seen the situation inside.
“Captain,” she said, sowhat uncomfortably using the title, her expression becoming even more bizarre than before, “inside is a wall.”
“A wall?!” Duncan’s eyes twitched, he looked through the hole, and indeed saw the “wall” Fenna was talking about.
Opposite the door was indeed just a wall, and that wall was less than half a ter away from the third door—practially adjoining it, the space between the door and the wall being entirely aningless, incapable of holding anything.
“Why is the ship designed like this?” Nina muttered in confusion, “There’s just a wall behind three doors… Where’s the cabin? How do we get into the cabin?”
Duncan, however, did not speak. He just quietly observed the strangely structured “overlap area,” his eyes thoughtful as if sothing had occurred to him.
A mont later, he nodded to Fenna, “Continue making holes.”
Fenna imdiately stepped forward, first kicking away the obtrusive remnants of the bottom half of the third door, then punched the odd wall—a hole larger than any before appeared, accompanied by a booming noise.
“It’s a corridor,” Fenna glanced inside and then turned to the others.
“That’s great,” Sherry imdiately breathed a sigh of relief, “At least there’s sothing normal…”
“It’s upside down,” Fenna said before Sherry could finish, “The ceiling is under our feet, and the floor is above our heads.”
Sherry: “…Fuck.”
Just as Fenna had described, behind the wall was nothing but an inverted corridor—just like the three repetitive doors before, the interior of this Ghost Ship had not a single normal structure!
“This ship has been distorted…” Even Morris, a scholar of extensive knowledge, was sowhat bewildered at this point, looking in disbelief at the structure of the corridor opposite the wall, murmuring to himself, “What’s twisted Obsidian into this shape…”
“Change the way of thinking,” Duncan interrupted the old scholar, “Is this really the Obsidian?”
Morris suddenly looked up, staring at Duncan in astonishnt, “You an…”
“We are near Frost, and beneath the Frost Deep Sea, terrible things have happened,” Duncan spoke casually, glancing at Alice who was curiously looking around, “Do you rember the ‘Abyssal Plan’ that Tyrion ntioned before?”
“I rember, I rember,” Alice quickly nodded eagerly, “and all the diving apparatus and stuff…”
“That’s enough to rember,” Duncan said patting Alice’s head, “Don’t nod so much, you are starting to sway.”
Then he raised his hand, knocking on the wall beside him.
The tal cabin wall produced a hollow thud under his knock.
“Normal on the outside, total chaos on the inside, shoddy imitations and Replications, incorrectly stacked internal spaces—this should not be the real Obsidian, but it’s hard to say which ‘number’ of Obsidian it might be.”
Alice didn’t know how much she understood, only stretching out an “Oh—” and slowly nodded, imitating understanding, while Fenna quickly caught on, “But I rember you saying before that when the Abyssal Plan vessels surfaced, only the crew inside were distorted during the Replication process, the subrsibles themselves were replicated correctly, and at the ti, you hypothesized that this kind of error should be limited to people or organic beings…”
“Yes, limited to people or organic beings—at least that was the case half a century ago when the Frost Queen was still alive,” Duncan spoke slowly, “So the current situation is clearly worse, the Replication is no longer confined to the number three subrsible, and the distortion has extended to inorganic matters… Whatever is in the Frost Deep Sea, it has obviously begun to stir again after fifty years of dormancy, and its range and intensity of influence are far greater than half a century ago.”
Sherry blinked while listening, everyone on Holoss had heard about the Abyssal Plan from the captain, so they all knew how bizarre and unnatural it was, prompting her to mutter subconsciously, “I’m… I’m starting to get nervous…”
“Think of it this way, the captain is investigating this matter—I think those who should be nervous are not us,” A-Gou also muttered quietly, “Don’t scare yourself—my heart rate is picking up.”
Sherry was taken aback, “A-Gou, do you have a heart?”
“I’m a demon with a heart!”
“A heart and ‘having heart’ are not the sa thing—isn’t your chest empty?”
“…What if there’s sothing jumping about in there?”
“Open it up and see?”
“No way.”
Duncan, however, paid no attention to the increasingly curious mutterings around him. He just made a simple conjecture about the situation of the Ghost Ship and then focused his attention on the corridor that led to who knows where.
After a brief contemplation, he stepped towards the large hole Fenna had made, “Let’s go in and take a look around.”
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