Chapter 41 The Ghost Ship Reappears
Her gaze suddenly locked onto the kerosene lamp at the bow, which was burning with an unstable deep-green flame—more accurately, the lamp's copper shade and base! Copper was an excellent conductor!
A crazy yet precise emergency plan formed instantly in her mind!
"Aya! Forget about the beetle shell!" Suliu’s voice was decisive, cutting cleanly through the roaring thunder, "Take off the lamp shade! Quick! Dismantle that copper shade and the base!"
Although Aya was still worried about Zhizhi, her trust in Suliu’s instructions and her engineer’s instinct made her react immediately.
Enduring the numbness and burning pain across half her body, she rushed to the bow kerosene lamp. The wrench remaining in her tool pouch swiftly unscrewed the fastening bolts—*shriik!*
The green-flaming copper lamp shade and a short section of the connecting metal base were violently torn off by her!
"Brother Chen! Help her wedge the beetle shell fragment back into the gap! Make sure it touches the seawater!" Suliu barked out rapid commands.
Though Chen Wu did not understand the purpose, he didn't hesitate for a second. He immediately grabbed the conductive beetle shell piece and slammed it back into the massive gap at the stern—which had originally fused from the shell itself—ensuring that a portion of it dipped straight into the ocean!
"Give it to me!"
Suliu snatched the scorching copper shade and metal pipe from Aya’s hands. In that shape, it was practically a crude metal rod!
With a dash, she rushed to the stern gap. Under the startled gazes of Chen Wu and the others, she drove one end of the copper shade ruthlessly into the conductive beetle shell fragment that Chen Wu had just pressed back into place!
"Conductive?! Then let it conduct!"
Facing the wind and rain, the crackling flames, and the flashing lightning, Suliu’s voice was crisp yet brimming with power, "Turn it into a lightning rod! Guide the heavenly lightning straight into the ocean!"
This was the principle of using metal conductors and grounding to create a temporary lightning rod!
The moment Suliu’s words fell, as if her declaration had angered the core of the thunderstorm—
A purple pillar of lightning, thicker than any seen before and carrying an aura of absolute destruction, guided by the roiling, electro-charged black thunderclouds hovering over the ghost ship, crashed straight down toward the stern of the symbiotic boat—right toward the burning abyss-grease and the newly erected "metal rod"!
The opportunity was fleeting!
Without a shred of hesitation, Suliu sent a mental command to the fluffy little creature standing bristling on her shoulder:
"Tuanzi! Do it! Target the path right beneath the thundercloud—[Spatial Scar], cut open the space right in front of that incoming lightning strike for me!"
Feeling its master’s boiling willpower, Tuanzi locked its silvery pupils onto the terrifying pillar of lightning about to strike.
"Squeak—!"
The fully charged [Spatial Scar] was unleashed with ferocious might!
*Sizzz—!*
Not aimed at the lightning itself, but precisely cutting across the space right along the path where the lightning was about to strike, the fabric of space was ripped apart!
A narrow, pitch-black, and twisted irregular spatial rift instantly stood between the lightning pillar and the hull!
That was not a barrier; it was a dislocation of space!
The very instant that terrifying pillar of lightning was about to pierce through the torn spatial rift—
*Splat!* The lightning pillar was slammed violently on its side by an invisible, massive hand!
The laws of physics forced an unavoidable deflection in the trajectory of the raging energy!
That streak of purple heavenly lightning, which should have struck the stern dead-on, was violently diverted away from its original vertical trajectory by the spatial turbulence torn open by [Spatial Scar]. By a hair's breadth, it grazed the absolute highest point of the symbiotic boat—
With a deafening crash, it struck the seawater a mere half-meter away from the copper "lightning rod" inserted into the beetle shell!
*Boom—!*
A colossal column of water mixed with scalding steam burst upward once more. The seawater was instantly ionized, emitting a pungent scent of ozone.
The overwhelming current surged wildly along the copper rod, passing through the conductive shell of the deep-dive carapace beetle, and poured unhindered into the fathomless ocean!
The hull merely shook violently. Wisps of white smoke rose from the lightning-discharge device and the beetle shell joint, but it had withstood the surge!
It worked!
Suliu let out a long sigh of relief. Good thing her high school physics hadn't entirely gone to waste.
Right then, the kerosene lamp at the bow flickered with a steady blue glow, illuminating everyone's taut faces.
The welded seam where Aya had fused the beetle shell gap was still smoking faintly. Chen Wu gripped the steering wheel tightly, his eyes locked on the churning sea of blood ahead.
Moyu’s black raven circled like a hyper-sensitive radar, standing guard.
Yet, fate always seemed to strike hardest just as one caught a breath.
"Wooo—roar——!!!"
That familiar, low horn-like sound, as if echoing from the nethermost hells of the Jiuyou underworld, abruptly shattered the brief peace, carrying a venom and oppression far surpassing before, roaring from all directions!
*Clang! Clang! Clang!*
Heavy impacts resounded simultaneously from both sides of the hull, the bottom, and even the stern!
Through the turbid water curtain stained crimson by the blood sea, several gigantic, twisted, decaying ship silhouettes slowly emerged, resembling rotting giant whales crawling out of the abyss, completely surrounding the tiny symbiotic boat!
Several grotesque, thick bone arms—pieced together from pale bone joints and entwined with foul-smelling bloody water like spears hurled from hell—lunged fiercely at various parts of the hull with ear-piercing shrieks of displaced air!
This time, the goal wasn't just to tear; it was to shatter and devour this battered wooden boat entirely!
*Splat!*
*Crack!*
The deck fractured amidst piercing shrieks!
The beetle shell plates along the edges of the newly patched stern gap shattered and flew off under the immense impact!
Lorraine, standing close to the gunwale, was nearly knocked off her feet by the shockwave. The hull let out a despairing groan, its durability plunging at lightspeed!
Luke’s lingering system penalty manifested once more—the bow light wavered violently, its pale blue halo shrinking back to a mere two-meter radius!
"All hands, defense! Hold the line!"
Chen Wu’s eyes were split, his voice roaring like thunder.
The phantom of the Dark-Armored Turtle barely managed to expand around the hull, but it rapidly grew dim and shattered under the combined assault of the bone arms and the corrosive blood sea.
Moyu’s pupils constricted. The raven transformed into a black streak of lightning, darting rapidly through the violent onslaught, before dropping back onto Moyu’s shoulder a few breaths later, chirping hoarsely and urgently.
Moyu’s voice carried an unprecedented solemnity:
"The blood sea is a barrier, but also a cycle! The core! At the center of the fleet, where the blood is thickest—a rotting heart wrapped in blood vessels! Smash it, and the regeneration of the blood sea will shatter itself! But... any approaching attack gets weakened and absorbed... it is regenerating like... breathing!"
A rare trace of frustration tinged his voice as he pointed toward the central ghost ship core guarded by layers of bone arms and churning blood sea—
In the center where the thickest, foulest blood rolled, a massive, rotting, yet rhythmically pulsating dark red "heart" was faintly visible.
Everyone's heart sank.
The breakthrough point had been found, but those layers of blood-sea shields, that endless regeneration... this was practically an inescapable vicious circle!
Right at that moment, Suliu, who had been staring fixedly at the core area, felt her heart skip a beat.
Her gaze pierced through the violent attacks, as if capturing an extremely subtle... hesitation between every single pulsation of that rotting heart.
It was a brief... gap in the energy circulation cycle?
Much like the fleeting moment of calm between the rising and falling tides.
Unconsciously, she closed her eyes, her spirit sinking deep into the Hourglass of the Hour.
The fine sand flowed slowly, and she could clearly "feel" that if she exhausted every shred of spiritual power she could currently muster, she might just be able to carve out a fleeting, extremely tiny region of... temporal stagnation right during that hesitation of the core's pulsation, at that subtle "turning point" of its "breath."
As if forcefully casting a pebble into the surging torrent of destructive energy that could cause the water to "freeze" for just a fraction of a second.