Chapter 63: Sea Without Light 63
What comes next is simply mechanical operation.
Kick the door, raise the gun. Kick the door, scan and search.
If no one is found, withdraw; if someone is there, sweep a line of bullets at their legs to take them down.
Every time the door bursts open, Kui Xin’s nerves tense up, this process repeated over a dozen times.
Behind the door there could be nothing, innocent crew members, or the ferocious xenomorphs, and heterogeneous blooded beings with special powers. Unfortunately, they haven’t seen any living creatures along the way… except for the shapeshifting monster that attacked them at the start.
The most dangerous things are often hidden deep within.
Opening a door is as thrilling as unboxing a blind box; it’s all about the heartbeat. Kui Xin felt as if she were standing on the edge of a cliff bungee jumping, her inner tension stretching alongside the elastic cord.
Her spirit was highly exhilarated, her blood boiling with the search’s progression, and her heartbeat gradually accelerating. Under the influence of hormones, her body was burning, yet her emotions felt as cold as ice.
This was a sign that she had fully entered a combat state; in close combat, the dual calm of mind and body actually performs better than an exhilarated state. Active thinking, responsive nerves, and slightly warmed muscles due to accelerated blood circulation… these are the keys to maintaining combat capability.
Finally, Kui Xin and her companions arrived near the crew quarters where she last encountered the mutated Red Spine Hunter.
Unlike last time, when Kui Xin and Xueyao Shu passed by these rooms, one of them had produced the sound of a xenomorph smashing against the door. This time, after continuously searching all the rooms and creating quite a commotion, the doors remained silent.
The entire lower deck was as dead silent as a graveyard.
Kui Xin tilted her chin up to Silverface, who immediately understood and stepped forward, kicking the door in after breaking the lock.
There were no flailing tentacles, no unexpected attacks, only a trace of a rancid smell, as if a pile of rotten fish and shrimp was decaying inside the room.
On the floor of the crew quarters lay two human bodies, one of which was deformed and twisted, its exposed skin covered in bizarre growths, and the remaining part had highly decayed. The other body was in slightly better condition but was also so deformed that it was hard to identify as a human corpse.
“Ugh…” Silverface covered his mouth, “This really kills my appetite; I don’t want to throw up what I ate for dinner tonight.”
Black Obsidian approached silently, wielding a scanner, quietly operating the device over the corpses on the ground until the device emitted a warning red light.
He drew a retractable long knife identical to Kui Xin’s from his belt, piercing the knife into the corpse’s abdomen before flipping the skin and flesh open.
A violently beating dark red embryo was hidden within the corpse’s abdomen!
Black Obsidian stepped back and shot the embryo until it became a puddle of mush.
“It’s an egg,” Black Obsidian said softly, “a Red Spine Hunter’s egg. Judging by the embryo’s growth, it has been developing for at least three days. Red Spine Hunters typically return to the sea to find mates; they lay eggs in the water since there are too few of their kind on land. Now that it laid eggs on land, it indicates that there is at least one female and one male Red Spine Hunter on this ship.”
This room was one that Kui Xin and Xueyao Shu had not searched; they had only checked a few rooms and the kitchen before retreating.
Silverface said, “The egg-laying xenomorph is nearby.”
He suspiciously observed all the doors in the corridor, worried that fierce predators were hiding behind them.
“This ship is like an isolated island, cut off from the outside world; the crew has never called for help. Has communication been severed?” Kui Xin retreated to the corridor.
Black Obsidian replied, “Or perhaps they’ve been controlled.”
The three of them approached the next door, with Silverface kicking it open, Kui Xin aiming her gun, and Black Obsidian guarding from behind.
As soon as the door opened, they were once again hit with a putrid stench.
Kui Xin’s pupils constricted as she saw a dark red, octopus-like monster on the ground. Its thick tentacles were wrapping around a human who was slightly convulsing, as it was transferring its body into the human shell!
Red Spine Hunters replace their host bodies every few days; it was in the process of changing its host to absorb more nutrients and grow stronger. Xueyao Shu had taught Kui Xin that parasitic xenomorphs are at their most vulnerable when performing a host transfer.
Instinctively, Kui Xin raised her gun, about to pull the trigger to kill the Red Spine Hunter, but suddenly remembered to keep an alive host, so she halted her action. Black Obsidian reached out to hold her gun, looking at her and saying, “That person below is still alive.”
“I know.” Kui Xin shuddered, shaking off Black Obsidian’s hand from her gun.
Silverface effortlessly controlled the water flow to compress the Red Spine Hunter in its vulnerable state into a puddle of mush, pulling out the crew member who had almost become a parasitic vessel with a water cord. The crew member was covered in the rancid, sticky fluid of the Red Spine Hunter, and Silverface disdainfully washed him off to lessen the nauseating smell.
The crew member stirred awake in the cold water, and upon seeing three humans in black combat suits before him, he almost cried out.
Tears streamed down his face as he trembled, saying, “Are you humans or monsters?”
The three present did not answer him.
The crew member suddenly shook uncontrollably, as if he were about to faint again.
“Don’t be afraid,” Kui Xin said then, “we are from the Federation Investigation Bureau.”
The crew member’s eyes sparkled with hope, “Are you here to save us? There are monsters everywhere on the ship!”
He was in tears, trying to hug Kui Xin’s legs, but she quickly dodged.
“We were ordered to execute the escort mission for the Kraken, but this ship seems off; you need to tell us what happened, explain to us what has transpired on the Kraken.” Kui Xin said, “Only by knowing where the trouble originates can we resolve it.”
However, the crew member had already lost his sanity; he struggled to stand, obsessively repeating, “I want to go home… I want to go home… there are monsters everywhere; my friends have also turned into monsters…”
Kui Xin grew impatient; she seized the crew member by his collar and lifted him off the ground, her eyes behind the helmet’s visor coldly staring at him, saying slowly, “Tell me, what happened!”
The crew member’s gaze gradually lost focus. Kui Xin raised her hand and slapped him to jolt him awake: “Answer my questions if you want to go home!”
Hearing the words “go home,” the crew member finally responded.
His face was pale. “At first, everything was normal… but later, the people around me started acting strangely.” He shivered, “They were vomiting and having diarrhea and were sent to the medical room for treatment, but the ones who went in didn’t come out the same; it was as if they were possessed by demons… I saw a friend I’d known for five or six years eat one of my colleagues…”
The crew member seemed trapped in a nightmare, trembling uncontrollably.
“Then something strange happened on the ship, and fights broke out; I didn’t even react before I was knocked out, locked in my room with a few others… Periodically, I would hear screams from the room next door; I thought the colleagues locked up were dead, one after another… today it’s my turn to die… someone opened my room door and let in the terrifying red monster; it wants to eat me…”
His words were disjointed and illogical, and Kui Xin gradually pieced together the events from his statements.
The shapeshifting monster boarded the ship and replaced some of the crew, then infighting broke out, and some surviving crew members were locked away as a reserve food supply for the xenomorphs.
Kui Xin asked again, “Who let the red monster into your room?”
The crew member seemed dazed and silent. Just as Kui Xin was about to lose patience and press him again, he suddenly exclaimed, “It’s Tang Guan! It was him!”
The crew member’s tears flowed down his face, “Why did he want to harm us?”
Kui Xin let go, and the crew member slumped back down, fainting.
Her heart sank to the bottom.
When she first met Tang Guan, he had given her hints to check the kitchen for those frozen crew corpses. Kui Xin hadn’t sensed any malice from Tang Guan; she thought that, if he wasn’t an ally, at least he wouldn’t be an enemy.
But the crew member’s words made her doubt her judgment.
If Tang Guan were the root cause of the tragedy on the ship, why did he give Kui Xin a hint and appear before her without hostility?
The developments had become increasingly mysterious.
“Eden, do you have any information on Tang Guan?” Kui Xin asked over her earpiece.
“Search completed; his employee information is available on the website of the Oceanic Freight Company. Tang Guan, male, twenty-eight years old, junior crew member, has been employed for just over a year.” Eden stated, “This is his ID photo.”
The ID photo displayed was indeed Tang Guan, the one she had briefed with earlier.
“We need to focus on finding him,” Kui Xin directed, “Send the information to Red and let them stay alert.”
“Understood,” Eden responded.
Kui Xin glanced at the unconscious crew member on the ground. “Handle it as necessary.”
“Oh.” Silverface raised his gun and fired a bullet to end his life.
Black Obsidian subtly shifted his gaze away, not looking at the corpse on the ground. With his helmet on, Kui Xin did not notice his minor change in demeanor.
Searching the rooms was a time-consuming task. In the following crew quarters, they discovered more human corpses, each one highly decayed with a stench so pervasive that, had it not been for the ventilation system and gas masks purging the air, Kui Xin would have definitely vomited on the spot.
She didn’t want to look at those corpses a second time, but Black Obsidian meticulously checked each one, finding Red Spine Hunter eggs hidden among several corpses, and he carefully destroyed each one.
After some time, they eventually arrived at the bloody drag marks’ end— the kitchen.
At the end of the bloodstains lay, indeed, the kitchen.
Kui Xin stood before the kitchen door, feeling a sense of anticipation.
Silverface, like a front-line enforcer or bodyguard, diligently took on the task of opening the door while holding up a water shield for defense.
Inside the chaotic kitchen stood a person, a living human.
“Tang Guan.” Kui Xin uttered the name of the live individual.
Tang Guan dully lifted his head; it was the same scruffy, haggard face. Strangely, Kui Xin’s “Absolute Prediction” still hadn’t sent her any warning; Tang Guan bore no intent to kill.
Tang Guan fell to his knees, murky tears streaming down his sunken cheeks as he moved his lips, pleading, “Please… kill me… let me be free.”
“Did you cause what happened on the ship?” Kui Xin quietly asked.
“Maybe it was me… it should have been me, right?” Tang Guan murmured in confusion.
“Why waste time with him?” Silverface stepped forward.
Black Obsidian asked, “Should we capture him?”
“No… it won’t be that easy.” Kui Xin raised her gun, aiming at Tang Guan’s shoulder.
With a bang, the gun fired, the bullet struck Tang Guan’s right shoulder, and a burst of blood bloomed.
However, this blood bloom acted like a droplet splashed into a hot oil pot, instantly triggering a violent reaction.
Tang Guan’s body suddenly swelled, flesh bursting through his clothes, transforming in an instant into a gigantic half-human, half-ghost monster.
On the right side of his body was a xenomorph covered in tentacles, while the left side was a perfectly normal human body. The most terrifying aspect was that two heads split from his neck; one was the head of a monstrous creature with a horrifying maw, and the other was Tang Guan’s own head!
“A two-headed monster!” Silverface exclaimed.
Black Obsidian stepped back in shock.
“Open fire!” Kui Xin shouted.
The three of them fired at Tang Guan simultaneously, bullets flying fiercely, but after embedding into the tentacles and the main body, they had no effect whatsoever. All the bullets were quickly expelled from the rapidly healing flesh, clattering to the ground. Even when the bullets struck the head and a large chunk of skull was blown off, the bones and flesh rapidly grew back; hitting the heart didn’t stop the flailing tentacles from wildly attacking.
This was a… undying monster!
The head resembling Tang Guan’s bore a tortured expression, silently screaming in agony, while the creature’s head wore a savage face filled with predatory excitement.
Tang Guan’s face was crying: “Kill me… kill me… please.”
He begged in pain, his eyes filled with despair, yet the tentacles growing from his body were attacking Kui Xin and the others.
The thick tentacles almost disregarded the bullets, shooting toward Kui Xin like lightning.
At that moment, Kui Xin decisively abandoned her gun, drawing a folding knife from her thigh; her right hand shook and flicked, and the thirty-centimeter blade suddenly extended to over a meter long.
She swung the knife horizontally, and the silver arc of the blade left a crescent-shaped afterimage on her retina, severing the flailing tentacles, blue blood gushing forth!
