Chapter 107

Returning to the small cabin with a heavy heart, Lin Tu tore off a peach blossom petal as promised. About half an hour later, Da Jun arrived.

Only two days had passed since they last met, yet it felt like an eternity. The beautiful life she had been looking forward to just two days ago was already gone, and the person she had been searching for just two days ago had long been dead.

As one of the few people who knew the truth, Lin Tu was the first to recount the story of Dr. Qiu's rescue in the ballroom, her exile, and her eventual death. "I didn't expect Dr. Qiu Minsha to be shot. By the time I got there, it was already too late. Her body had gone stiff."

"It's not your fault; you didn't know anything. But your instincts were right. My memory tells me Qiu Minsha indeed held the key data to ending the disaster."

So she really could have developed a cure! Lin Tu thought of what Qiu Minsha had said in the ballroom and let out a long sigh, lost for words. Lin Tu knew nothing, but Qiu Minsha should have reported her findings to the higher-ups. Those people, knowing she might develop a cure, were still driven by fear to kill her. The absurdity of it was that her corpse accelerated the plague's spread, and her death eliminated any possibility of it ending.

What a bunch of beasts.

"It's not too late to know now," Da Jun said, rubbing his brow. "Qiu Minsha's experimental data and results are stored in the lab. As long as we get the Black Pearl to the Watchman, there's still a chance. But the bad news is..."

Lin Tu interrupted him. "The odds are slim. The authorities are moving supplies."

"I found someone stealing oil."

The two spoke simultaneously, then stared at each other in shock.

"They're still stealing oil?"

"It's the authorities?"

"To be honest, I noticed someone siphoning oil in the middle of the night a few days ago, but I intercepted that batch," Lin Tu said, briefly recounting what had happened that night. "Before I entered the disaster, I saw another cruise ship where civilians were hiding in shipping containers on the open deck, gaunt and emaciated."

"A precognition skill?"

It wasn't that sophisticated—it was a perk from under-the-table work. The impressive one was her grandfather, not her. Lin Tu grumbled inwardly and continued. "When I entered the disaster, I kept wondering how the ship could end up in such a state with so many supplies aboard. Now I get it. The authorities stripped the ship of everything, took the so-called upper class, and fled—leaving behind a complete mess."

As she spoke, she thought of Malin En and her daughter, and of the countless people on the ship.

"Absolutely not!" Da Jun snarled. "Are we just going to let them do whatever they want?"

"What are you going to do?" Lin Tu asked. If the ship reached the Watchman as originally planned, it would save her a lot of trouble. If Da Jun had a plan, she could help within her means.

"I have a plan, but I might need your help. You mentioned earlier you have some kind of portable space item? How much can it hold?"

Lin Tu nodded. "If you give me a private space and enough time, I can carry a mountain."

"That's perfect! I'll need your help then," Da Jun said. "But don't worry, just follow me. You don't have to do anything—just stow the supplies."

Two days passed in the blink of an eye.

During those two days, the military had stopped clearing out infected patients below Deck 2. They seemed to be hoping the infected would stop people from fleeing to the open deck, so they made no mention of their earlier promise. But they underestimated the resolve of these lower-class people.

Frantic roars echoed throughout the ship. Despite the infected outside their doors, people still threw open their doors and charged out. Chaotic footsteps mixed with screams rang out across the ship.

When the authorities broke their promise once, they chose to believe. When they broke it twice, they had to think about survival. If they didn't push forward now, they would starve to death in so-called self-isolation.

"Don't force us! We just want to live!" A pained, desperate howl seemed to come from very close by.

Malin En and her daughter seemed to hear the door next to them open and listened closely.

The people in the next room seemed well-prepared, with the clatter of pots and pans as they moved. They passed room 442 and pressed forward smoothly. But outside was chaos. Just as Malin En and her daughter breathed a sigh of relief, hoping they'd make it to the deck, a scream mingled with sobs erupted, and the group came running back.

"Daddy went up to the deck to find help. We're going back, wait..." The mother's attempt to comfort her child was cut short by a sudden shriek. "Run!"

Mamira rushed to the door and peered through the peephole. To her horror, she saw a highly infected patient standing right outside room 442. Its massive, reeking body nearly stopped her breath. She watched as the infected turned its gaze toward the mother.

"Hey!" Mamira pounded on the door, trying to draw the infected's attention. "Run!" She called out while telling her mother to move a cabinet to block the door.

She dared not open the door—it was all she could do.

Mamira kept taunting, and suddenly she felt the infected slamming against the door. Fear and relief warred within her as she helped her mother brace the cabinet against it, hoping the mother could escape. But screams came from every direction—where could they run? Mamira looked at her mother across from her, both pressed against the cabinet, and felt a hollow emptiness in her chest.

On Lin Tu's video monitor, countless people surged up the stairs like ants clustering over a fire. Those on the outside hurled their bodies into the infected, clearing a path for those inside to break through. In the process, countless others joined the ranks of the infected, the infection rate climbing relentlessly—a new, higher number appearing nearly every second.

Two figures marked in green appeared on the monitor. One wielded two massive meteor hammers, smashing into the highly infected patients blocking the way. The spikes on the hammers, controlled with precision, burst the tumors on the infected. Behind him, another figure held a long spear, shooting accurately at the fragile flesh beneath those tumors.

The two were none other than Lin Tu and Da Jun, advancing toward the broadcast room at the innermost part of Deck 2. The infected had all been drawn toward the open deck by the crowd, leaving this area quieter the deeper they went.

Finally reaching the broadcast room, Da Jun smashed the door open with his hammer, entered first to check for threats, and then waved Lin Tu in after confirming it was safe.

"You take it. I'll guard the door," he said, pointing at the broadcasting equipment.

Lin Tu nodded and walked up to the microphone. She had done campus broadcasting back in school, so the advanced equipment didn't intimidate her. She pressed the button, cleared her throat, and her voice echoed overhead.

At the same time, across the entire ship—from Deck 7 to the open deck—whether they were people cowering in their rooms, desperate souls charging up the stairs, or those making a last stand against the infected so their relatives, friends, or partners could go first—everyone heard that cough and looked up in confusion.

"There are a great many infected patients on the ship right now. Highly infected ones are mixed among them—already dozens and growing by the minute. Moreover, since infected patients tend to gravitate toward life forms with lower contamination levels, the number of patients jammed between Deck 2 and the open deck is enormous. There's absolutely no way we can break through!"

In room 442, Mamira's worry instantly turned to joy. "It's Miss Lin's voice!"

"Miss Lin knows the situation on the ship, so she's telling us not to go out!" Malin En said. "But... if things are this serious, what are we supposed to do?"

Elsewhere on the ship, people were also frightened by the severity of the plague she described. Were they doomed to wait for death in despair?

"I know you're all rushing to the open deck for the food in the containers. Please rest assured—all the food has now been moved to Deck 7. There's enough supplies there to feed everyone on this ship for six months, enough to last until the next supply point or until we reach the Watchman."

What? The people couldn't believe it. When did this happen? How did they not know? Not a word, not a sound, not a single clue. Was this voice lying?

Lin Tu had anticipated this reaction. Following her prepared script, she continued. "If you don't believe me, wait a few hours and go check Deck 7 yourselves. You've endured days—what are a few more hours? Besides, in a few hours, the infected will all be drawn up to the open deck. By then, the lower you are, the safer you'll be."

"So no matter what, please return to your rooms as soon as possible. In a few minutes, we'll send someone out to lure the infected up to the open deck. That person is taking an enormous risk, so please don't interfere with his work. I repeat: return to your rooms, lock your doors, and don't come out until a few hours have passed!"

After saying this, Lin Tu turned to look at Da Jun—the "worker" she'd mentioned. "Anything else to add?"

Da Jun shook his head. "No."

Lin Tu paused, then spoke into the microphone. "I wish you all safety in the days ahead."

"Bzzz—"

On the open deck, a high-ranking official screamed at the captain in fury. "This is what you meant by things being stolen by ghosts?! This is your ghost? Since when can ghosts use microphones?!"

The captain scrambled to plead his innocence. "I swear, I knew nothing! My crew really did say they saw ghosts! The oil, the supplies—they just vanished into thin air!"

"I think you're the ghost, you traitor! Are you colluding with that bitch on the broadcast to haul our stuff down?"

"I didn't!" The captain let out a wail and fell to his knees. "You promised me a spot on that ship! For that alone, I'd never betray you! To keep my crew in line, I even threw two sailors overboard and killed them! If it were me, how could I have done something like that!"

"Four days ago, you were supposed to finish pumping the oil, but because a highly infected patient showed up, I let it slide. Two days ago? You pumped a little oil and then said it vanished again. What, did the oil grow legs? Then yesterday—" The official gritted his teeth. "Yesterday you were supposed to have everything loaded onto the ship! And what happened? There's barely anything on board now. I was wondering what was going on, and then that damn broadcast tells me everything's been moved to Deck 7?!"

"I... I really don't..." The captain wished he had a lie detector to prove his innocence. It was a grave injustice! He raised his face, wracked with resentment, and a bloody hole suddenly appeared in the center of his wrinkled forehead.

"You useless piece of shit! Serves you right that you don't get on the ship! Let me tell you—even if you'd done the job right, I'd have killed you anyway!" The official kicked the captain's body, abandoning all pretense of decorum, looking like a common laborer used to rough work.

"Alright, we don't have much, but it'll hold until the next supply point. Get the crane started. Those infected are about to rush up here," Secretary Pang De said, stepping out from behind the curtain. He holstered his gun and shook the still-warm barrel. "It's a shame about those supplies, though. They should have been ours."

"Yes! Yes!" The official straightened his clothes, a fawning smile spreading across his face. "I'll have them start the crane right away! We'll lower the ship into the water before the infected get up here."

Meanwhile, on Deck 2, Lin Tu was preparing to part ways with Da Jun for now.

"Are you sure you don't want to come with me? You don't have to do this, you know. I can protect you," Da Jun asked.

"No need. You handle the rest yourself. I have something to do," Lin Tu replied, looking at the small bottle of chicken blood in his hand—one she'd given him. He'd found it insufficient and mixed in some of his own blood to make it a better lure.

"Alright," Da Jun said with an awkward smile, a hint of regret in his voice. While he genuinely wanted to protect Lin Tu, from another angle, having her at his back also made him feel safer.

"Stay safe," Lin Tu said, then dashed out ahead of him.

Their plan was to set timed explosives on the crane, forcing the upper echelon to stay and use their military to deal with the infected. But Lin Tu felt that wasn't enough. She had an even more brilliant idea. However, it involved the functions of the Anju cabin and carried some risk, so she hadn't told Da Jun.

Before doing that, Lin Tu had also promised someone else something, and she needed to take care of that first.

Mamira and Malin En, having heard the broadcast, finally relaxed. They sat on the floor in front of the cabinet, smiling at each other, when a knock came at the door.

Mamira guessed who it was from the polite rhythm of the knock alone, though she couldn't quite believe it. "Miss Lin?"

"It's me. Could you open the door?"

Mamira and her mother quickly moved the cabinet aside and welcomed Lin Tu in.

Without wasting words, Lin Tu pulled a bag of medicine and food from her backpack. "Taking medicine and eating healthy can both lower the infection rate. It won't bring it to zero, but it can be controlled."

Then she pulled out a stack of books and handed them to Mamira.

These were all books Lin Tu had read, so they likely contained her annotations on things she'd had to look up online. Besides the chicken-raising books she'd bought at the bookstore, there were also finance texts she'd collected from the "Land of the Sunken."

Mamira looked at Lin Tu in confusion. She had so many questions—like why finance books? Why was Lin Tu visiting now when she'd just told everyone not to leave their rooms? And why was she talking about things that seemed so unimportant, at least compared to what Mamira felt mattered more?

"I've studied finance too," Lin Tu said, playing the part of a finance enthusiast to stay in character as Deng Haixiang. "In the stock market, there's a type of stock called chicken-raising concept stocks. They mainly include food processing, animal husbandry, and agricultural product processing industries. These listed companies are all in the business of feeding chickens, raising them, and using their manure to generate electricity. At their peak, they can sell tens of millions of commercial chickens and produce thousands of tons of fresh eggs a year. They're one of the hottest sectors in the market."

Mamira stared blankly at Lin Tu. She instinctively wanted to smile, but her intuition told her Lin Tu was about to say something big.

"Ridiculous, isn't it? Because on our ship, the people who feed the chickens and shovel their shit are the lower class. But then why can chicken farming become such a big business? Because everyone needs chicken meat. So if you farm chickens to the absolute fullest—enough to feed this many people—doesn't that mean you could become one of the upper class too?"

Lin Tu tilted her head slightly, smiling at Mamira.

"But..." Mamira hesitated, pointing at the ceiling. "They'd never allow that, unless you spent an enormous amount of money. But chicken farming can't withstand that kind of..."

"They'll be gone soon," Lin Tu said, cutting her off as she shoved the books into her hands. "Take care of yourself. I hope to see you become one of the upper class one day. When that happens, you won't make things hard for others, will you?"

"Of course I won't!" Malin En chimed in with a gentle smile, but Mamira instinctively felt a sense of farewell in Lin Tu's words.

She watched Lin Tu sling her backpack on and stride out the door with purposeful haste, then quickly chased after her. "Miss Lin! No matter what happens—whether they're here or gone—I'll work hard. You'll always be watching over me, right!"

"I won't be staying here. You have to rely on yourself!" Lin Tu called back as she walked.

"Then how do I find you?" If she wasn't staying here, where was she going? Would she come back? It was only now Mamira realized that every time, Lin Tu had come to them. She'd never left any contact information. But she also didn't want to force Lin Tu to visit. Every meeting, Lin Tu gave them so many supplies; she didn't want to be a burden.

Seeing Lin Tu getting farther away, she shouted, "I'll work hard! Contact me when you're free! Wherever you are, no matter the cost, I'll find you—or come pick you up! You have to come see me in person!"

Her voice echoed down the corridor, drawing the attention of a few infected.

The room next door cursed at her. "Are you out of your mind?! If you want to die, do it yourself! The broadcast said not to cause trouble, stay in your room!"

"Shut up! I'm going back right now!" Mamira snapped, a mix of embarrassment and annoyance coloring her voice. She strained to listen for a reply, but it already seemed too late. The corridor held only silence and the occasional growl.

"Mom," Mamira said, stepping back into the room and closing the door. "Will Miss Lin be okay?"

"You have to trust her. Miss Lin is a smart, learned woman. She wouldn't do anything foolish," Malin En reassured her daughter, though her own heart wasn't entirely at ease. "Check if there's a guest registration form on the door. It's what stewards use to contact a guest's relatives in case of an emergency. It only has basic info, but maybe we can find Miss Lin's... family or friends. We must not offend Miss Lin. We can only use it in a true life-or-death emergency for her..."

"There is!" Mamira's face lit up as she pulled out the form, but her expression gradually dimmed. "Deng Haixiang? Family and friends... Xu Xuhai, Luo Qu, Si... There's no one with the surname Lin."

...

In reality, Lin Tu hadn't heard the rest of Mamira's words. She'd sped into the stairwell and immediately used "I, Lin Han San, Have Returned" to teleport back to the small cabin on the open deck.

"Carry with me," Lin Tu said, holding out her hand.

In an instant, the cabin transformed into a palm-sized miniature model, spinning as it dropped into her hand. The furniture inside couldn't be moved, but the recliner could sway at the touch of a finger. The fridge door could open too, and she could even fold the blanket—quite amusing. But Lin Tu had no time for such fun right now.

She looked up at the enormous mass suspended in midair, blotting out nearly half the sky, and let out a cold laugh as she opened the monitor.

"It's no good! As soon as it went up, it stopped moving left and right for some reason!" the crane operator shouted in panic. "It can only be lowered! It moved fine when it was just scraping the deck!"

"What's going on?!" The communicator was passed from hand to hand a few times before finally reaching Secretary Pang De.

The ship was suspended in midair and couldn't move laterally—that meant its landing point would always be over the ship itself, not the water?

"The system must be malfunctioning! It can't handle this much weight," the operator quickly said, insisting it wasn't his fault. "Just lower it a bit, and it can move while scraping the deck!"

"It had better be!" Pang De said before cutting the comm. "And don't forget—your family is still on board!"

"Yes, yes, yes!"

Lin Tu turned off the monitor and shook her phone. Whose fault was it that the crane couldn't move? Certainly not the operator's. It was her professional electronic butler's fault—or, to be more precise, Lin Tu's own. The butler hadn't done anything that broke the rules; it had simply downloaded a software for Lin Tu from the internet and taught her how to use it to modify the crane's control system.

She watched the ship slowly lower, like seeing the long night that had hung over the lower class gradually descend. The sun in the sky revealed itself to Lin Tu bit by bit, the shadow on the deck shrinking until finally, most of the open deck was bathed in sunlight.

Only most of it—not enough, Lin Tu thought.

Following her plan, she moved from the shaded side of the containers along a route she'd already mapped out, arriving near the ship's designated landing point to wait.

Meanwhile, Da Jun had run from Deck 6 all the way to Deck 1 with his blood bottle, shouting and hollering the whole way—quite the workout.

By now, a trail of infected had formed behind him. He shook his hand and finally activated his skill. A rescue safety helmet appeared on his head, and in an instant, his speed, strength—all his physical attributes surged dramatically. Especially his speed. As a rescue captain, he had to be fast. Fast enough, even, to slip through narrow gaps.

He weaved through the infected and the military blocking the doorways with ease. When he stood on the open deck, almost no one had seen him move. He brushed off a speck of non-existent dust from his clothes—a true master of leaving no trace. The job of detonating the bomb should fall to him, he thought. He wondered what Lin Tu was up to. Earlier, he'd seen her head downstairs.

Just as he was thinking this, Da Jun suddenly noticed that the ship, which should have been rising into the air according to plan, was still on the deck. What the...? As he puzzled over it, he saw someone standing at the very top of the ship, holding a basin of chicken blood, diligently pouring it down—left, right, left, right.

"You're finally up!" Da Jun's enhanced body caught Lin Tu's voice instantly. "Hurry and lure those infected over! Let this ship take them all away!"

Da Jun: "?"

"Damn it! That's the bitch who stole our stuff!" came a voice from the crane operator's communicator. "Quick! Get us out of here! Don't let that bitch have her way!"

Da Jun heard a roar from someone's walkie-talkie behind him. "How the hell did you let people get on the deck?! Someone get up there and take down that damn ant!"