Promotion

The sea breeze grew colder and colder, carrying fine flakes of snow.

The corpses on the deck had already been cleared away by the crew, leaving only a few faint red stains of blood that the rain had not yet washed clean, clinging stubbornly to the crevices of the blackened wooden planks.

Not far away, the shouting of the first mate echoed as he directed the crew to patch the sails and tighten the chains.

Beneath the poop deck, in a sheltered teak recess, Ryan, Simon, and Alvin sat together against a barnacle-encrusted railing.

All three of them looked morbidly exhausted, carrying the haggard air of those who had barely escaped death.

No one spoke at first. The only sound in the recess was the monotonous, heavy crash of the waves against the ship's hull.

It was a long time before Simon spat out a mouthful of blood-streaked saliva and broke the dead silence.

“So... are the three of us not far from the madhouse now?”

Alvin didn't even raise his eyelids. His voice was as hard as pig iron.

“You don't look mad. With your heart rate, you're closer to dropping dead at any second.”

“...”

“Do you want me to draw a few more vials of your blood to lower your blood pressure?”

Simon rolled his eyes dramatically and leaned back weakly. “Thanks, Chief Engineer. Your way of comforting people is as stellar as always.”

The heavy atmosphere eased slightly.

Ryan remained leaning against the railing. His right eye gazed at the churning, lead-gray sea in the distance, while his left eye was squinted slightly due to the recently faded Glory, a pale double image still lingering deep within his pupil.

“Did you notice?” Ryan suddenly spoke in a low voice.

“Notice what?” Simon turned his head.

“The knowledge.”

As soon as the word was uttered, Simon and Alvin fell silent. They both felt a subtle, instinctual resistance, because they knew all too well what Ryan meant.

Simon slowly raised his calloused palm, staring intently at the lines on it. His expression became unsettled and uncertain.

“I noticed... I didn't feel it when I was trading blades with those bastards just now, but now that things have quieted down, stuff keeps popping up in my head. It's not memories someone else shoved into me, nor is it words I've studied. It's more like... an instinct I was always supposed to have.”

He paused, seemingly trying to find the words to describe the bizarre experience.

“I know how to adjust my breathing to stop my muscles from spasming when I've lost too much blood. I know how to keep my balance on the slickest of decks. It's as if... as if I've lived on this ship for over a decade.”

Alvin nodded in agreement, staring blankly at the smokestack belching black smoke not far away.

“Me too. When I was down there repairing the cannons and calibrating the bearings, I only had to look. I didn't even need a wrench to measure; I just instinctively knew which rivet was loose by half a turn, and which valve should be opened under this steam pressure. I can even draw from memory the spare pipes under the engine room floor that were laid thirty years ago.”

Simon was stunned. “Did you know any of this when you were back in East Port?”

“Of course I didn't know how to repair ships,” Alvin said, shaking his head as his expression grew even darker. “But now I just do. And I am one hundred percent certain that this damn, seasoned craftsman's experience absolutely does not belong to the original 'Alvin'.”

The three of them fell into silence once more.

“It's an assimilation,” Ryan said, withdrawing his gaze and lightly tapping his temple. “Or rather, it's this history accepting us.”

Simon frowned. “What do you mean?”

Ryan carefully sorted through the continuous stream of maritime and meteorological knowledge flooding his mind. After a moment, he offered a calm analysis.

“When we entered this slice of Secret Histories, we were forcibly assigned the identities of 'crew members.' Captain, Chief Engineer, sailor. If this were a mere illusion or a play, the rules wouldn't need to pour knowledge into our minds.”

“The only explanation is that this is a reality that once truly existed, carrying the full gravity of history. While we use extraordinary power to interfere with the historical script, history is also demanding anchors from us. The more convincingly we act, the closer we get to those deceased identities, the more information and instincts we receive.”

“Whatever the captain of The Voyager knew will appear in my head. Whatever the Chief Engineer of that year mastered, Alvin's body will remember.”

Simon's face paled instantly. Following this logic, he immediately realized a terrifying consequence.

“Doesn't that mean... if we sink too deep in the coming voyage, once this knowledge completely fills our brains, we'll entirely become 'them'?”

Ryan glanced at Simon. “In all likelihood, yes.”

The sheltered recess fell silent, save for the howling wind.

In the distance, the damaged bronze ship's bell still swayed on its own, tolling with a dull, rhythmic clang, clang, clang.

Simon couldn't help but curse under his breath. “Damn it, this is way more disgusting than the melee with those pirates. I can run a pirate through with a blade, but how do you defend against this? I won't even know where a piece of my mind is being carved out.”

Alvin, however, suddenly pressed his right hand, which was still slightly numb.

“But looking at it from another angle, this might not be entirely a bad thing.”

Ryan and Simon looked at him simultaneously.

“Without the sudden craftsman's intuition in my head, I wouldn't have been able to fix that jammed smoothbore cannon. Before their second volley came, the three of us would have already turned into shredded meat in the sea.”

Alvin looked down at the dark gray grime beneath his fingernails, his eyes deep. “The assimilation is real, and the danger is real. But the power gained through this assimilation is also very real, held firmly in our hands.”

Ryan gave a noncommittal smile. “Here, danger and reward are always bound to the same bill. Reject assimilation, and we revert to mere mortals in this treacherous history, ready to be torn apart by a storm or anything else at any moment. But if we accept it without restraint, we will naturally become the next mummified corpses on this ship.”

Simon rubbed his aching temples and muttered, “Dead ends on both sides. What kind of bullshit rule is that?”

“It's called promotion,” Alvin slowly uttered the words.

Simon snapped his head up. “What?”

“We could spend our entire lives in the East End and never find the rituals and potions for high-level Lore, right?” Alvin turned to look at Ryan, his gaze lingering for a moment on Ryan's left eye, which still bore a faint red thread.

“Now it seems that an extraordinary being's promotion doesn't necessarily require those tedious bottles and jars. It is more like... a process where one's cognition is forcibly aligned with certain Principles of the Hours. Simon, the inhuman self-healing ability you showed when you were injured earlier has already exceeded the limits of an ordinary Heart Disciple. The sense of reshaping I felt when I touched iron is the same. As for Ryan... when you stood on the poop deck just now, your aura was practically like a living Lantern.”

Simon subconsciously followed Alvin's gaze to Ryan.

He had to admit that at the most intense and desperate moment of the battle earlier, the scene of Ryan taking off his glasses and sweeping the sea with The Glory had left a profound impression on him. He also hadn't expected this guy to grow so quickly in just a few short months—mostly because he was far too prone to courting death.

Ryan did not refute them. Only he knew that at that moment, when the colorless Glory poured back through his eyes and into his brain, he had actually experienced a near-morbid pleasure amidst the extreme agony.

That sensation of fully perceiving the secrets and trajectories of all things in the world, of ruthlessly peeling away mortal ignorance and madness like an onion, was truly addictive.

“I think I understand.”

“Understand what?” Simon asked.

Ryan stood up.

“This place is an exam paper being handed to us. Every deceased post on this ship represents the promotion coordinates of a Principle. Those 'people'—if we can still call them that—who have truly reached the heights must have gone through a similar assimilation when they were still humble Apprentices.”

“Accept the power, bear the cost, maintain sanity, and then forge a path through the cracks of history. Those who cannot survive will have their cognition completely erased by the rules, becoming ghosts on this ship. But those who survive and make it to shore...”

Ryan did not finish the sentence, but Alvin's and Simon's breathing grew heavy at the same time.

The wind grew stronger, and the damaged sails of The Voyager made a heavy, straining sound in the gale.

“Will complete their promotion.”