IWOL Chapter 90: Course Deviation

Cui Zuojing told the captain about the bones they’d found in the engine room.

The captain immediately sent someone to check, and at the same time, confirmed whether anyone was missing.

The result came out very quickly. Indeed, someone was missing. To everyone’s surprise, the missing person was not a crew member, nor was he an NPC from the program crew.

He was a pilgrim.

The victim was a member of a four-person team. Everyone in this team were all older men. Cui Zuojing also vaguely remembered that one of these vicious men also had a female prisoner.

The first mate asked, “When was the last time you saw Job?”

“One day ago? Or, two days ago? I forgot,” the team captain replied without any sense of gravity. “He was caught early in the first round of games. After being eliminated, he went to play on his own. This ship is so large. Who knew where he went? Anyway, I don’t remember. You can try asking other people.”

The other members of the team sat on the side, smoking cigarettes and fondling the woman next to them. No one seemed to care.

The first mate frowned. He was very dissatisfied with the team captain’s statement, but the ship was full of distinguished guests, and he couldn’t say anything.

Victor lay in a hidden spot on the balcony where no one would notice and listened to the first mate’s inquiries from beginning to end.

The white cat jumped from the railing onto the window sill on the other side. The window opened, and Cui Zuojing carried him into the room.

“How was it?”

Victor said, “The missing pilgrim was a man named Job. The exact time of his disappearance is unclear, but someone is checking the monitors.”

Dong Linhai was puzzled. “Doesn’t even his teammates know?”

Cui Zuojing explained, “Not all teams are as close as we are now. After all, not many people are determined to go on the pilgrimage. There are a greater number of people who only hoped to safely pass a box and earn points. These people will team up to improve their survival rate, but they will give priority to their own interests if anything should happen. As a result, the relationship between these team members won’t be very close.”

Victor smiled. “So, meeting the right teammates is really not easy. Everyone must cherish each other.”

Back then, their team also had a great many people coming and going. After a player died, they would accept fresh blood. It took more than a year to finally stabilize and form the final composition of their team, which was renamed the Afternoon Tea Party.

“There is another problem.” Dong Zheng was the first to notice the incongruity. “One of the pilgrims on the ship died in his bedroom when he first arrived, and another was found in the engine room. But, there are still 29 pilgrims alive.”

When he said this, everyone was stunned.

“The ship…has 31 players on board?” Allen could hardly believe it. “But when we first came in, wasn’t it pointed out that the count was 30/30? Could it be that you’re wrong?”

“Impossible. I remembered everyone I met on the ship clearly. There are exactly 29 people.” Dong Zheng began to reason it out. “Only 29 people were present at the luncheon on the first day. Aside from the one who died in his room, there was someone else who didn’t come.”

“Do you remember who it is?”

Dong Zheng shook his head. “At that time, we weren’t able to recognize all of them.”

Lin Hangzhi said, “This is easy to manage. Just go and check. You can find out by checking the monitors, or by asking the program staff who they invited to participate in the film. It’s impossible that they wouldn’t know.”

Cui Zuojing said, “I’m afraid it’s not that simple. We still haven’t even started the main storyline in the box yet. But, in my experience, all these recent incidents are likely in preparations for sending us to the island. Therefore, it’s possible that their management wouldn’t be too strict.”

Lin Hangzhi said, “It wouldn’t hurt to ask. What if there is a clue?”

The task of inquiring was left to him. Lin Hangzhi went to ask the planning leader of the program group. As Cui Zuojing expected, the planning leader gave him a negative answer.

“The guests are all invited by sponsors. We don’t even know who you are until you boarded the ship.”

Ling Hangzhi was speechless. “You don’t even know who we are, so what about the script and the program settings?

“We just set up each issue of the game in advance. This is a reality TV show. If everything is designed, what’s the point? Audiences nowadays like to watch the most realistic reaction.”

Lin Hangzhi: “……………”

Sure enough, nothing was gained.

Dong Zheng went to ask the captain if he could look at the monitoring videos. The captain was in the ship’s wheelhouse. Dong Zheng told him that he found an extra person, but replaced the term pilgrim with guest.

The captain was discomforted. But, since Ding Zheng helped him locate the monsters on the ship, he had a good impression of Dong Zheng, so he directly agreed.

Dong Zheng asked for the location of the surveillance room, thanked the captain, and was about to leave when he suddenly heard the voices of the sailors on the observation deck coming from the speaker:

“There’s an unknown island ahead. Slow down and change direction! Slow down and change direction! Bridge, please reply. If you receive this, please reply!”

An island?

This word startled Dong Zheng. He looked outside the wheelhouse window but could only see the deep blue sea.

He immediately reacted. The wheelhouse was at the stern of the ship.

The crew member stared at the radar on the dashboard and thought that he might have perhaps misheard. “What island? The radar shows nothing at all. In the numbers of times we’ve traveled this same route, have you seen an island?”

“There really is an island! Turn quickly! 15° to the left!”

“Then, we’ll go off course!” Despite this, the crew member still chose to trust his companion. He turned the steering wheel and adjusted their course.

Immediately afterwards, the first mate’s panicked voice also came through the speaker, “Oh my God, how can there be an island here?!”

Dong Zheng immediately ran out of the wheelhouse and onto the observation deck. The cruise ship began to slow down and shift direction, making him a little unsteady so that he had to grab onto the handrail to stabilize his figure.

He looked at the distant horizon, where the sea and sky met, and saw the lush green of the island breaking through the contrasting the deep blue and light blue.

At last, they were finally almost at their destination.

Dong Zheng heaved a sigh of relief. He’d been on the ship for so many days without entering the main plot that it was starting to make him a little anxious.

Although their life won’t be as comfortable after getting off the ship, it wasn’t a good thing to stay for too long in a box.

He closed his eyes, reached out his sense for Cui Zuojing’s position, and ran toward the billiard room.

When the hull suddenly shook, Cui Zuojing’s arm tilted and he missed the ball. The white ball rolled over, rubbed against the red ball, and knocked twice on the edge of the table.

He straightened up, put the cue stick on his shoulder like a hooligan, looked out the window, and asked, “What’s going on?”

Allen found his position. Between the ship’s shaking, he hit the red ball with his cue stick, sending it directly into a hole. “I don’t know.”

Wang Que didn’t understand how to play snooker. As a result, Dong Linhai used Cui Zuojing’s game as an example in introducing her to the rules.

Lin Hangzhi had gone to find the program staff and had yet to return. Cui Zuojing vaguely sensed that something was wrong. At this moment, he received a signal from Dong Zheng.

Dong Zheng’s mood was strange, with many intermixing emotions, such as relief, eagerness, excitement, and more.

Three minutes later, the members of the Wonton Insurgency saw their team captain rushing in through the door. Dong Zheng ran, panting, and waved his hand. “Get ready. We’re going to the island.”

With almost no mobile phones on the high seas, the only means of communication was either with walkie-talkies or in person.

“The island?”

Everyone put their things aside and ran to the window to see what was going on.

Aside from them, the billiard room also had about a dozen crew members who were taking a break. After receiving news that an island had suddenly appeared out of nowhere, they all returned to their posts to help the ship safely change course.

“Let’s go downstairs first. My guess is that we’ll probably get to the island through an unconventional method.”

Everyone immediately packed up their things. They’d been waiting for this moment. There were many waterproof bags in their pockets, and they collected some necessities needed for survival.

Ships do not normally turn as quickly as other means of transportation, much less a large and heavy luxury cruise ship. Although the ship had slowed down significantly, the island that had suddenly appeared in the distance was getting closer and closer to them.

Many people had arrived on the deck. All they could see these days was the blue sky and ocean. No matter how beautiful the scenery was, it had become rather boring. Seeing an unknown land, they couldn’t help but wish to stop.

“How do you think we’ll land?” Cui Zuojing asked Dong Zheng in a low voice.

“An encounter with a reef?”

“I guess not. Do you want to make a bet?”

“Bet with what?”

Cui Zuojing touched his chin and pondered. “I haven’t figured it out yet. I’ll tell you when I think of it.”

“Sure.” Dong Zheng agreed. He found that Cui Zuojing particularly liked all things with gambling elements.

Dong Zheng was still worried about who the extra pilgrim was, but obviously, he probably won’t have the opportunity to check the monitor.

A group of people leaned against the railing to look at the island, and the crew had to run over and politely tell them to stand further away.

An island that couldn’t be seen on the radar suddenly appeared on a route that had been sailed hundreds of times—Only a professional crew could understand how dangerous and terrifying it was.

NASA once suddenly discovered a small island on the surface of the Carolinas that seemed to have risen up overnight. After so many years, no one could come up with a concrete explanation. It seemed as if an unknown mysterious power had simply created it and placed it on the sea.

This incident once caused a lot of panic, but now this situation was even stranger—At least that other island could still be detected by radar.

Wang Que was first person to discover that the seafloor near the ship seemed to have gotten deeper.

The girl was particularly sensitive to light, shadows and color changes. She frowned and had an ominous premonition in her heart. She pulled Dong Zheng’s sleeve and asked softly, ”Brother Dong, do you feel that the color of the sea has become much darker?”

Darker?

Dong Zheng took a closer look. At this moment, he suddenly felt a very powerful mental fluctuation. It spread rapidly from below the sea surface in ripples and chaotically slammed against the firewall of his inner kernel.

“Get down!” Dong Zheng roared. He pushed Wang Que and Dong Linhai, both of whom had yet to react, and quickly dropped down.

Red tentacles tens of meters long pierced the sea surface with a bang and grabbed the railing where people had been leaning on. The suckers on the tentacles were densely packed, shaped like a disc, and were constantly wriggling.

Boom boom boom boom—

The entire sea immediately exploded in tsunami waves as the massive red tentacles stabbed the sky and curled around the ship, instantly “holding” the entire hull!

Allen, Lin Hangzhi, Dong Linhai and Wang Que screamed, bent over, and scrambled away from the edge of the deck like everyone else. Knowing that something would happen to force them onto the island and personally experiencing it were entirely different things.

Dong Zheng cursed. He seemed fairly calm, but only Cui Zuojing knew how nervous and fearful he’d been when those tentacles appeared one after another.

Crash—

The waves stirred up by the tentacles splashed high, and salty sea water poured down, drenching everyone.

“I’ll go back first. You guys pay attention to safety.” After saying these words, the grass pattern on the back of Dong Zheng’s hand flashed and Cui Zuojing disappeared, slipping away before things became too chaotic.

Victor was at the edge of the ship. When the ship shook violently, Victor was too lightweight and was almost thrown out. Allen grabbed Victor and shouted, “Hold on to me!”

Lin Hangzhi and Dong Linhai pulled Wang Que, who’d fallen, back up and they all supported each as they went in search of a relatively safe place.

The ship’s sirens blared shrilly, and people shouted in fear and despair. The aluminum alloy railings began to snap off in succession like small wooden sticks. More and more tentacles protruded from the surface of the sea and imprisoned the entire ship.

A tentacle swept across the deck, abruptly scattering half the people there.

Blood stained the sea red.

A shadow of the huge ocean overlord’s head broke the sea surface. It swam directly under the big ship and clung it’s body tightly to the ship’s underbelly.

Above it’s massive body, the 300-meter-long Gabriel II began to sway helplessly like a leaf boat.

—The thing was like a curious child, hugging this little toy that had suddenly broken into its territorial waters.