CH 38.2

Jiuge was sitting beside him, looking out to the horizon. He held his flask of health tea in his hand, a perfect portrait of stillness.

After a while, Lin Xinghe smiled and said to the captain, “Captain, you guys are very dishonest and didn’t cooperate with us well. You knew of Lilith’s existence, but you hid this fact because you thought we couldn’t find the hidden painting. Thank you for your concealment and letting me know that you and the hadal ogres are actually in cahoots.”

The captain’s expression changed slightly. He seemed to want to say something, but Lin Xinghe didn’t give him the opportunity and continued, “If you couldn’t enter the hidden room, you definitely wouldn’t know that it’s a bride’s room with Lilith’s handwritten notes. According to the notes, you can’t go in because the special hadal ogre doesn’t want you to hurt the person in the room.

“The hadal ogres need a place that is safe from you and need you to do things for them, but you are obviously also souls and they haven’t eaten you…”

She smiled and said, “That’s right, who would deliver fresh ingredients to them every month if they ate you? The hadal ogres must have given you a lot of benefits and powers? Otherwise, why do the passengers stay ordinary ghosts but you guys get stronger? It is precisely because of the influence of the hadal ogres that you don’t want to turn back to land…”

There was a hint of panic in the captain’s eyes.

Lin Xinghe smirked, “It was just a reasonable conjecture, but your expression tells me that my conjecture is right.” She paused for dramatic effect and then continued, “You, as the original inhabitants of the cruise ship, were later invaded by the hadal ogres, so you must also have attended Lilith’s wedding. What happened after that?”

The captain opened and closed his mouth a few times.

Lin Xinghe added, “I hope you can understand one thing. Sooner or later, I will be able to dig out the truth. You will pay the price for lying the moment I dig out the truth.”

Lin Xinghe looked at the deputy captain with one arm left and said, “How about you speak. I’ll give you a chance to be a one-armed warrior. If you don’t tell me everything you know, you can only be an armless warrior.”

Just at this moment, Ling Xiran entered through the wall, floated to Lin Xinghe, and said, “Master, I found you, I have already…” Her voice trailed off, and she picked up,

“Oh, so there are other people…”

She closed her mouth and gulped quietly next to Lin Xinghe, looking at the other arm of the  deputy captain.

The deputy captain shuddered.

Lin Xinghe didn’t expect Ling Xiran’s assistance to be so timely, and commanded, “Tell me, what happened to Lilith after the wedding?”

The deputy captain stammered, “A-after the wedding, the leader of the hadal ogres brought Lilith back to the sea to live.” He glanced at the captain, then at Ling Xiran, gritted his teeth, and said, “This was a hundred years ago. It’s in the past! A hundred years ago, the hadal ogres occupied our cruise ship. Our route changed then because they asked us to provide fresh and delicious human souls for them, and Lilith was in our first batch of passengers…”

“And Lilith fell in love with the chief of the hadal ogres? What about the other passengers?”

The deputy captain winced, “They all became food for the hadal ogres.”

“It was also a two-week voyage cycle a hundred years ago?”

“Yes.”

Lin Xinghe thought that even if it was an interspecies relationship, as long as it was true love and didn’t hurt others, it deserved respect. But now she thought that Lilith was a lunatic, what with her falling in love with a creature of a different species that ate her companions.

Lin Xinghe asked coldly, “What’s up with that safe room? Lilith’s room?”

The deputy captain whimpered,  “We can’t get in, and we don’t know what’s inside. We only know that it’s a room built by the hadal ogres a year after the chief of the hadal ogres and Lilith got married. It was made from a special material in the deep sea, and only the chief can enter the room. When the construction finished, Lilith surfaced once. We only glanced at her from a distance. She was no longer human at that time—she was as tall as the hadal ogres. But we were driven to the deck by other hadal ogres not long after. After that, Lilith never appeared again…”

Lin Xinghe asked, “Will the chief of the hadal ogres come aboard every time?”

The deputy captain replied, “Not necessarily, there is no pattern, it all depends on the mood of the chief. Sometimes only a few hadal ogres come on board and collect the souls in a huge basket to take back into the sea.”

The deputy captain really smelled too sweet.

Ling Xiran couldn’t hold back and floated behind the deputy captain, sniffing deeply at his neck.

The deputy captain, a giant man with a height of more than two meters, shook, his voice trembling.

“The-the-the-the ch-chi-chief… ch-changes ev-v-v-ery th-th????? years.”

Lin Xinghe felt it was too tiring to listen to and asked Ling Xiran to come back to her side.

His voice stabilized.

“The c-current ch-chief rarely boards the ship and only comes biannually to clear out the safe space. Before, the other chiefs would kidnap the women and kill the men in the room.”

Lin Xinghe suddenly felt the puzzle pieces click into place.

… It would be too contradictory if there hadn’t been different chiefs.

Lin Xinghe asked, “Did the new chief bring a woman back to the sea yet?”

The deputy captain replied, “None were spared in the six-month massacre.”

Lin Xinghe had a general understanding of the plot of this exam room.

It seemed that the hidden room was where the human brides were screened.

She had one last question left.

“Lilith was human, so how did she live in the sea?”

“The chief gave her something—we don’t know what.” He gestured and said, “It was about palm-sized, white, and looked very similar to the alpine rimerose you’re looking for. But it wasn’t a flower, I saw Lilith eat a bite at a time, chewing thoroughly before swallowing.”