Ashes Of Deep Sea-Chapter 316 - 320 Process number 22

Chapter 316: Chapter 320 Process number 22

Chapter 316 -320 Process number 22

The last corridor leading to the mechanical chamber was stuffy and dimly lit, with the incessant and vexatious mechanical vibrations and roaring noises as if they were drilling into one’s brain without respite. The wall-mounted lights seemed to flicker due to unstable airflow, with flames dancing and shimmering within the light fixtures.

But all of this was overshadowed by an increasingly strong sense of discord and tension that brought about a suffocating atmosphere and the disorienting tearing of thoughts.

Belazov controlled his steps, controlled his expression.

The closer he got to the innermost depths of the Sea Swallow, the more he ensured his steps were steady and his expression remained as usual, calm.

There were crew members standing and conversing in the corridor, wearing bizarre leather… “coats,” with facial skin wrinkled and stacked, their voices sounding like a buzzing noise.

Belazov walked towards them, telling himself that these few crew members were his own soldiers, but he couldn’t remember their names.

“General?” approached one soldier, curiously looking at Belazov, “Do you have any orders?”

“I’m just here to check on the situation in the mechanical chamber,” responded Belazov with a composed expression to the unfamiliar soldier, “Stay at your posts.”

The soldier watched him, saluted, and stepped back: “Yes, General.”

Belazov passed through the midst of these people, with steps as steady as ever. He felt their gazes linger on him for a while but soon move away.

Were they really his soldiers? Were they really crew members of the Sea Swallow? Were they that hidden entity? Or some kind of minion? Had they noticed? Or were they already on alert? Would these unremembered soldiers pounce on him the next second?

Belazov pushed all his thoughts down to the bottom of his heart until he reached the entrance of the mechanical chamber and opened the unlatched gate.

An even more piercing mechanical noise assaulted his ears.

The steam core was operating at full power, the spherical container brewing staggering surges of energy. The complex pipe system hissed on the ceiling of the mechanical chamber, massive connecting rods and gears spun rapidly in the steel frame at the end of the room.

The machinery operated very cheerfully, so much so… cheerfully to an almost fanatical extent.

As if an agitated soul was pushing those heavy steel gears to spin rapidly, driving the ship toward the cities of the civilized world at breakneck speed.

From the hissing sound of the steam pipes seemed to mix with a whispering murmur, unclear and vague.

Belazov’s body swayed a bit, but he quickly stabilized himself and walked toward the direction of the steam core.

A priest was shaking an incense burner in front of a valve when he suddenly turned his head to look at the General entering the mechanical chamber. The church emblem pinned on his chest seemed to be stained with grease, blurring the Holy Symbols on it.

“General?” the priest looked curiously at him, “What brings you here all of a sudden? This area…”

“I came to see… the condition of the steam core,” said Belazov, his gaze falling on the incense burner in the priest’s hands.

That little orb gently swayed in the air, a pale eye opening on top of it.

He then lifted his head again to look at those operating steam mechanisms and the hissing pipe systems.

The gases leaking from the steam pipes glowed blood-red, the edges of the rapidly spinning gears blurred and distorted, as if something was parasitizing this vast machinery, replacing the originally sacred steam with its malevolent soul.

The thought that the machinery had been corrupted, was in a state of blasphemy – this idea surfaced in Belazov’s mind for a second, but then it drifted away with the wind.

Still, he walked toward the control panel of the steam core – even though everything about this massive “steel heart” seemed normal to him at the moment, he slowly reached out to the control panel.

“General,” a greasy mechanic suddenly approached from the side, his hand blocking the control lever, “You better not touch these, the machines can be quite fragile sometimes.”

Belazov looked up at the mechanic.

The latter just calmly returned his gaze.

But suddenly, the mechanic’s lips moved slightly.

Belazov frowned slightly and read a few words from the mechanic’s mouth movements —

“The machine is possessed, unable to shut down or destroy.”

Belazov was stunned for a moment, then saw the mechanic turn to the side, manipulating the levers while his lips moved subtly.

“Don’t trust the priest… situation out of control… Transition twenty-two.”

Transition twenty-two?

Belazov’s heart tightened, but soon, he knew what he had to do.

The mechanic knew the “heart” of the ship better than anyone.

He turned away from the engine compartment, but instead of going to any other cabins, he maintained a calm demeanor after leaving the bottom deck corridor and made his way back to his own captain’s room.

Soldiers occasionally came up to greet him along the way, some of whom gave him a vague impression, while others he could not even name.

There must have been lucid, normal humans among these soldiers— but Belazov had no way to distinguish them anymore, nor the time to contact or screen the thirty humans on board besides himself and the mechanic.

He locked the captain’s room door from the inside and went to the safe next to his desk. He began to turn the dial of the combination lock, his finger growing paler from the effort as the crisp, pleasant clicks sounded.

With the light noise of the latch unlocking, the safe door swung open.

Belazov’s gaze skimmed over the compartment storing documents and landed on the red button at the bottom of the safe.

Beside the button, there was a line of small print: Protocol No. 22, for use in extreme circumstances only.

Belazov reached for the button when, almost at the same time, he heard a knock: “General, are you in there? We’ve received instructions from Frost and need you to handle them personally.”

It was the voice of his adjutant.

A flicker of hesitation suddenly rose in Belazov’s heart—

What if he was wrong?

What if there was actually no issue with the ship, and the only problem was with him? What if he had suffered mild contamination, leading to cognitive and memory distortions, even hallucinations, along the way… If that were the case, he’d be dooming an entire ship of people just to accompany his own neurotic overreaction!

“General, are you in there? We have received instructions from Frost…”

The knocking sounded more urgent than before.

But within these knocking sounds, Belazov suddenly snapped awake. He realized his previous thoughts might not have fit his character… He was not someone who would suddenly hesitate at the last step of an action.

Somebody was trying to inject “impurities” into his thoughts!

“Damn heretics!”

Belazov no longer hesitated and instantly pressed the red button.

After an extremely brief delay, a horrific explosion swept through the entire ship—The Sea Swallow, a mechanical fast ship, was instantly enveloped in flashes and flames, disintegrating amidst the terrifying destruction caused by the high explosives.

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The remains of the Sea Swallow, aflame, floated on the sea for a while before the currents gradually pushed them toward the northern waters of Frost. Then, its floating reached its limit— the burning wreckage began to sink rapidly as if dragged by some invisible force, its sinking speed increasing until it completely vanished from the surface of the sea.

…

At the same time, inside the Frost City-State, near Cemetery No. 3, an old watchman, dressed in a dark coat with a slightly hunched back, was slowly walking back from the urban area.

He had just gone to a nearby street to buy some daily necessities, and it was now nearing dusk, his aim to return to his post before the shift change.

The road to the cemetery was serene and secluded, sparsely populated, but even so, residents of the neighboring streets would occasionally pass through this path.

When they noticed the old watchman’s figure, they would unconsciously adjust their pace, keeping their distance from the hunched old man shrouded in melancholy.

It wasn’t that they disliked the watchman, but rather an instinctive fear. This wasn’t just due to the naturally eerie atmosphere near the cemetery, but also because of the old man’s solitary and cold nature— even among other cemetery guards, who were somewhat gloomy, the old guard from Cemetery No. 3 was the most daunting.

He had been at his post for so long that he had taken on a certain “aura of death” himself.

It even led to some terrifying rumors— there were those who claimed to have seen pale lights floating above the fences in the graveyard at night, that these were the watchman’s soul that had left his body; others said the dreadful old man would lie in a coffin at midnight, stopping his breathing along with the dead and only awakening with the rise of the sun the next day.

These eerie and thrilling rumors twined around the cemetery and its solitary guard, who seemed to never care about them— in fact, he rarely interacted with nearby residents, only occasionally stepping out to purchase some necessities like today, spending most of his time living in the little guardhouse in the cemetery, dealing only with the church officials who delivered the corpses.

He didn’t think there was anything wrong with it.

To keep the living away from the world of the dead, the former should not have excessive curiosity to avoid harm, and the latter should enjoy peace after death to ensure a tranquil departure. That was his duty.

He guarded the cemetery and the city outside it.

The old man looked up at the cemetery’s main gate in the distance and suddenly stopped.

Today seemed a bit unusual.

There was an unexpected young visitor.