“What the hell is that?”
Elias blurted out.
The howling wind, carrying freezing seawater, slapped him hard across the face.
Battling the increasingly heavy, low atmospheric pressure, his facial muscles grew stiff.
Yet, his immediate reaction wasn't pure terror.
It was utter bewilderment.
Queen Adelaide’s Revenge?
Why did that name sound so long and clunky?
It instantly reminded him of a famous pirate from his past life.
“It's the Gray Candle Queen!”
Crowley roared back through the howling wind.
The old man's voice was whipped and fractured by the gale.
The moment he heard that name, a jolt went through the depths of Elias's mind.
A piece of knowledge belonging to his original body welled up from a dusty corner of his memory.
It was a historical tale the original Elias had once read in a book.
Unlike trashy pulp fiction, this piece of history actually carried a heavy, tragic undertone.
Legend had it that before the Octowin Dynasty, there was a queen named Adelaide during the Silver Sail Dynasty.
She did not hail from the lineage of the traditional high nobility of southern Velen, but rather from an old noble family in the north.
In her youth, this queen had spent time in the Ascetic Society, deeply studying the lunar phase rituals.
Later, she married the third king of the Silver Sail Dynasty and became queen.
One would have thought she would enjoy her wealth and honor in peace.
Yet, as fate would have it, one year a bizarre plague erupted along the eastern coast of the Kingdom of Velen.
This plague behaved in a highly unusual manner.
Those afflicted did not die immediately.
Instead, they fell into a prolonged lethargy.
When they finally woke up, they became dull and forgetful.
Their memories seemed to be erased bit by bit by something invisible.
In the end, they could not even recognize their own parents or their own names.
The kingdom's orthodox medical officers could not find a cause and termed it “sleeping sickness.”
Meanwhile, the suffering lower-class commoners along the eastern coast called it something more direct: “the name-forgetting fever.”
At that time, both the Dawn Church and the high-ranking officials of the kingdom panicked.
Faced with this unprecedented and bizarre disaster, they made the coldest decision:
To forcibly quarantine several port towns along the eastern coast.
No one was allowed in or out.
A massive number of the poor, innocent children, and the families of sailors were thus penned in and left to die in the quarantine zones.
There was a severe lack of medicine and rations inside.
To put it bluntly, those noble lords simply wanted to wall them in and leave them to fend for themselves.
Any ordinary noble queen would likely be hiding in the safety of the royal palace at such a time, elegantly sipping black tea while sighing at the cruelty of fate.
But Queen Adelaide was different.
Ignoring the fierce opposition of the entire kingdom's council and weathering immense political pressure, she ordered the royal family's private granaries to be opened.
Not only that, she personally led a team deep into the hazardous plague zone, converting an abandoned old convent into a temporary relief shelter.
Those sick citizens who had been abandoned by the state and left to wait for death in despair were all secretly taken in by her.
She did not just provide food and shelter.
Disregarding the risk of infection, she would personally inspect the wards every single night.
There was no light in the plague zone at night.
Carrying only a single gray candle each night, she quietly walked past every sickbed, wiping the sweat from the brows of those delirious commoners and bringing them a sliver of solace.
Throughout countless freezing nights, that single, fragile spark of gray candlelight became the only salvation in the eyes of those desperate souls.
Because of this courageous habit, the common people later respectfully referred to her as “the Gray Candle Queen.”
Although the queen's benevolence saved countless lives, the bizarre nature of the plague ultimately caused the quarantine measures to fail.
The plague inevitably spread to two nearby major urban districts.
To appease the public's outrage, Queen Adelaide was forced to leave the royal palace and enter a remote convent.
A few years later, she passed away from illness.
The history books left a commentary at the bottom of that page:
“Queen Adelaide's benevolence was excessive, ultimately leading her to ruin the nation with her kindness.”
Having sorted through the clues in his mind, Elias wiped the freezing seawater from his face.
The waves grew larger, each impact causing the wooden hull of the Nightgull to emit heavy, groaning creaks.
He had to shout over the rising wind and waves:
“So, this ship is related to Queen Adelaide?!”
“Not at all!”
Crowley shook his head vigorously.
“The spiritual body on that ship is probably just using Queen Adelaide's name to exact revenge on this world!”
“To be honest, compared to that ship behind us, your ship's name is incredibly lame.”
Elias grumbled. He watched Crowley shrug at this, then frowned again.
“Are you kidding me?”
He countered with a cold laugh.
“The problem is, since Queen Adelaide died of illness, what is there to seek revenge for?!”
As they spoke, the Nightgull had finished turning.
Its thick masts swayed violently in the wind as the entire ship practically fled in panic across the sea.
It had only one objective: to get as far away as possible from that pale, eerie “Gray Candle Queen.”
However, old Crowley had no time to debate historical trivia with him.
The old man turned around and roared hysterically toward the lower deck:
“Malcolm! Tell all the sailors to prepare for battle! Things are looking bad!!”
The first mate Malcolm's hoarse voice quickly drifted up from below, accompanied by a series of sharp clicks of rifle bolts racking and heavy ammunition being moved.
The sailors' panic was violently suppressed, and the atmosphere in the air instantly turned grim and tense.
Only after arranging all this did old Crowley turn back around.
“Because among transcendents, that history is a bit different from what you know.”
The old man's tone was filled with a frustration that had nowhere to go.
“And now, that damn ghost ship is about to catch up.”
Elias looked in the direction the old man was pointing.
Under normal circumstances, in such terrible winds and waves, any wooden warship would have to carefully adjust its course.
Yet, that pale, colossal vessel sailed as if it were gliding over flat ground.
“Because the damn ghost ship has no weight!!”
The veins on old Crowley's forehead throbbed.
He pointed at the white spiritual ship and cursed loudly.
“And sails made of spiritual bodies actually work!!”
This was simply blatant cheating.
No displacement limits, no frictional resistance.
“Whenever those sons of bitches appear, the damn sea conjures exactly the wind direction they need!!”
Crowley's voice had already taken on a desperate hoarseness.
“Now, I suggest you get ready as well.”
“We might very well end up at the bottom of the sea together soon!!”
Elias's expression turned completely grave at this moment.
He cursed inwardly. He had just had a friendly chat with the jellyfish of the Mist Veil Society last night.
Today, he had actually run into this godforsaken ghost ship.
What a nightmare!
Lately, he hadn't had a single moment of peace!
Even a donkey on a collective farm didn't work this many consecutive shifts.
Grumbling aside, Elias deftly reached out with his right hand and drew The Roaring Cane.
Its solid, hard texture calmed his agitated mind slightly.
Next, he prepared the bullets in his revolver, one by one.
As the ghost ship drew closer, through his Spirit Sensing, he could feel the heavy malice of a high-existence-level spiritual body pressing down on him even from afar.
Elias's breathing began to quicken.
Suddenly,
he froze.
A familiar, fragrant scent drifted into his nostrils.
“What's the rush?”
A familiar female voice quietly rang out behind Elias without any warning.
The voice was light and airy, yet it easily drowned out the roaring of the surrounding waves.
The moment he heard this voice, Elias's pupils dilated.
It was a voice he would never forget for the rest of his life.
He whipped his head around.
There stood the lady who had once subjected him to spiritual hijacking back in the Ascetic Society, standing quietly on the deck.
She faced him and Crowley with perfect composure.
Moonlight rippled across her long dress, as if the storm and the ghost ship had absolutely nothing to do with her.
Elias's voice cracked completely from sheer shock.
“It's you?!”
Rate on N.U.
