Sail Shadows in the Sea of ​​Fog

Chapter 138 The Ghost Ship Returns to the Ocean
"Perhaps I can help him."

After a moment's thought, Cheng Lang, standing outside the fence, said, "Casper, I'll be bringing my companions to visit Captain Horace later. Is that alright?"

"sure"

Kasper replied nonchalantly, “Horace is just crazy, but he’s not a prisoner, so you can visit him anytime. Of course, you should be careful when you’re with him.”

I'll come back here later.

As Cheng Lang spoke, he turned and walked back the way he came.

He genuinely didn't mind helping the madman, but at the same time, a crazy idea popped into his head that he wanted to test.

She hurried back to the large windmill in the heart of the island, but unfortunately, Yun Ji and the others had already returned with their spoils. Kotoo Fishman and Mist Shadow were still singing with the children.

Without disturbing them, Cheng Lang turned and headed back towards the dock, where he encountered Yun Ji and the others who were walking back.

He recounted his encounter with the mad captain Horace, then asked Yavso, "I was thinking that your big pair of scissors might be of help to Captain Horace."

"It does seem possible."

Holding a few seedlings in her arms, Yafso thought for a moment and said, "Although I can't graft a watermelon onto an apple tree, grafting an orange branch onto an apple tree should be no problem. Of course, I haven't tried it."

"Then let's give it a try," Cheng Lang suggested.

"Why would you want to help a madman?" Yun Lan asked curiously, then added, "The generous captain?"

"That mad captain Horace gave me an idea."

As Cheng Lang walked back, he explained, "I was thinking, if grafting is feasible, could grafting also be carried out on the Thorn?"

"The Thorn Ship? To perform grafting?"

Yun Lan and Ya Fu Suo exchanged a glance; they had never thought about this question before.

"The keel of the Thorn is special, and the mast also secretes drinkable sap."

Cheng Lang casually picked an unidentified fruit from the tree and weighed it in his hand. "If Yavso's scissors can help Captain Horace graft the kind of tree he wants to see, then the Thorn might be able to as well."

"I'll take the scissors and try it out later!"

Yavso made a decision immediately. At this moment, she was wearing a mask of hypocrisy, and her image as a sleazy old man was really not good.

"The existence of the scissors must be kept secret."

Yun Ji cautiously suggested, "If we fail, it's nothing, but if we succeed... We live on an island where people rely on growing fruit, and the scissors are too tempting for the islanders."

“From now on, Yafso, no, Mr. Yafso, is the Valkyrie’s official captain,” Cheng Lang said with a smile.

"So this is the power that the ship's heart gave me, right?" Yavso asked with unusual enthusiasm.

“That’s right, thank you, Chuanxin,” Cheng Lang replied in a serious tone.

As they walked back, they fabricated the abilities that the ship's heart had given Yafso. When the three of them returned to the dock, villagers were already driving horse-drawn carts to deliver boxes of fruit and buckets of freshly squeezed juice. Some even brought pigs and sheep in cages, as well as clipped hens.

Without getting involved in the resupply work of the two ships, Cheng Lang personally put the water-filled ship bottles back into the boiler, and then reunited with Yun Lan and her first mate Yafso. This time, the four of them didn't even bring those little wooden figures, and headed back to Captain Mad Horace's orchard.

When they returned, Casper was still there, helping Captain Horace the Madman clear weeds from the orchard.

"You really came?"

Casper greeted Cheng Lang and the others warmly, "I've already spoken to Mr. Horace beforehand. He's in a pretty good mood today, so although he doesn't allow you to touch the fruit trees on his deck, you can try using these from the orchard."

They all glanced at Horace, who stood at the bow of the ship as if facing a formidable enemy. Yafso, with a serious but actually pretentious air, pulled out the large pair of scissors tucked at his waist, walked to an orange tree, and began to prune it on tiptoe.

Soon, she pruned the orange tree, which was about as thick as an arm, down to just the main trunk and one of its many branches.

Without even glancing at the old captain who had already drawn his scimitar, Yafso walked to the other fruit trees and casually cut off some branches that were already bearing fruit. Then, with the help of the thorns summoned by Yun Lan, he used the power of the scissors to graft these branches one by one onto the bare orange tree.

As she continued her actions, Horace's aged face grew increasingly mocking. This was a rare moment of clarity for him, but if this were all it took, he wouldn't have wasted so much time here.

Yafso didn't care about any of that. After grafting the fruit-bearing branches, she took out some of her own concocted nutrient solution and applied it to the grafting wounds. She also poured the rest onto the exposed roots of the orange tree.

What happened next made Horace think he had really gone mad: under the infusion of nutrient solution, the bark of the wound grew and healed rapidly, eventually merging into one.

"This is the limit of what the ship's heart has given me."

Dressed as an old man, Yavso put away her scissors and said, "If this tree were on a ship, and if the ship's interior could also provide nutrients, perhaps it could grow more luxuriantly."

"If on a ship, if on a ship..."

Captain Horace muttered to himself over and over again, and the gleaming scimitar in his hand slipped from his grasp and fell onto the nearly rotten deck.

"Help"

Horace pointed to the fruit trees on the deck, "Help me, help me, help my sailors, please, help me."

As he spoke, Captain Horace, the Mad Captain, knelt down on the overgrown floor with a thud.

Yafso glanced back at Cheng Lang, then at Yun Lan, before taking a deep breath, pulling out her large scissors again, and stepping onto the old pirate ship that had been away from the ocean for who knows how long.

As the scissors snipped and trimmed, the fruit trees on the ship's deck gradually became just like the one in the orchard.

As the nutrient solution was poured onto the grafted fruit trees, everyone present could clearly hear the slow but powerful heartbeat coming from the cabin. The successfully grafted fruit trees also began to rustle slightly with their leaves of various shapes in sync with the heartbeat.

The ship's core is still alive!

"I'm the only one left, wait for me, I'm the only one left!"

Captain Horace, the Mad Captain, stood up muttering to himself and staggered into the sterncastle hidden in the overgrown weeds.

"He's probably..."

He might already be dead.

Kasper sighed, “In any case, sailors, thank you for helping Captain Horace put an end to his obsession.”

As he spoke, Casper stepped onto the sailboat that was buried in the ground.

At the same time, as a sea breeze blew by, the leaves of the neglected fruit trees in the orchard rustled and swayed in the wind.

"No, Yavso, get out of here!"

As Cheng Lang spoke, he swung his whip and wrapped it around Yafso's waist, pulling her off the boat amidst her screams.

Before Yafso, who had been caught by Yunji, could even stand up, the ground began to tremble. The wrecked ship, with most of its hull buried in the orchard and its mast cut off, shook off the mud and began to move slowly with the wind!
Just then, a series of undead phantoms emerged from the stern, each holding a fruit in its hand. Horace, dressed as a captain, led the way, while Casper stood in the position of first mate.

"Sailors, thank you for your help."

Horace gave a salute to the people below the ship, then shouted, "Let's go! We'll continue our exploration of the Sea of ​​Despair!"

"what!"

The many undead on the ship raised their weapons and responded in unison to their captain.

In the howling sea breeze, the ship sped up and sped away, crashing through the fence made of branches to the astonished gazes of Cheng Lang and the others, and using the slowly descending terrain, it rushed towards the sea beyond the island.

"Come with me!"

As Yun Lan spoke, she had already created a thorny staircase that spiraled upwards along a fruit tree.

Cheng Lang and his two companions reacted quickly and ran up the thorny steps to the top of the tree canopy. They then saw the boat "plundering" a large amount of fruit along the way as it rushed downhill, and they also saw the fruit trees that seemed to be serving as masts and sails gradually becoming laden with fruit.

Of course, they also saw the islanders who were terrified by the ship and were scrambling to their feet.

Finally, after a perfect leap through the air, the increasingly fast sailboat landed steadily on the rippling blue sea and disappeared without a trace in the blink of an eye.

“That is…it is…” Yun Lan paused, “It’s a real ghost ship, isn’t it?”

"I guess so. Maybe so," Yun Ji said uncertainly, and subconsciously glanced at Cheng Lang, who was shading his eyes with his hand.

"I am not sure as well"

Cheng Lang said, "But I remember the Magic Mirror telling me the reason why the ghost ship appeared."

"Legend has it that when all the crew members of a ship die in a civil war on the same ship, but the ship's core is not destroyed, there is a certain chance that the ship will become a ghost ship. Ghost ships will plunder sailors, but they can never fill the empty core of the ship," Yun Lan said blankly.

“But that ship didn’t take us aboard,” Yavso said. “And it was full of sailors, undead sailors.”

"So Casper is also an undead?" Cheng Lang muttered to himself as he walked back. "I didn't even realize it."

"Maybe so."

It was Yafso who answered the question. The simple-minded girl happily said, "If our ship... never mind, I didn't say anything."

"Look, there seems to be something left where that ghost ship was."

As the topic shifted, Cheng Lang and the others looked over and discovered an oak barrel in the dent left by the ship. Inside the oak barrel grew a fruit tree that was half a person tall but had lush branches and leaves.

Although the fruit tree planted in the oak barrel did not bear a single fruit, it grew leaves of various shapes in a chaotic manner.

"Take it away!" Cheng Lang made the decision without hesitation. "Hurry up."

Upon hearing this, Yun Ji immediately whistled.

Before long, Shenba dragged his broken sickle and ran off in a flash.

“Carry it onto the boat,” Yun Ji said, pointing to the fruit tree.

“Let’s carry it onto the Thorn,” Cheng Lang added.

"anything else?"

Seeing Cheng Lang and the other three shake their heads, Shenba immediately picked up the oak barrel with fruit trees growing on it, put it on his shoulder, and started running back the way he came.

"Shall we go check on that well tonight?"

As Yun Lan lifted her skirt and quickened her pace to leave the crime scene, she asked in a low voice, "I insist that I really saw that passage."

"Then go and have a look."

Cheng Lang replied absentmindedly, still pondering the problem of the ghost ship.

“I’m not going.”

Yavso said, "I want to try the captain's idea and see if we can graft some fruit onto our ship, just like that ghost ship."

“Alright, let the wooden man cooperate with you.” Yun Lan said generously, “All the healing potions in the captain’s cabin can be used.”

"I won't be polite," Yavso confidently assured him.

Before the surrounding villagers could follow the trail left by the ghost ship to find the "crime scene," Cheng Lang and the others had already taken a detour and returned to the Thorn.

After some gesturing, Yavso eagerly used scissors to graft all the roots of the strange fruit tree onto the deck between the mainmast and the sterncastle.

Then she ordered the wooden figures to find fruit that could be grafted onto the Thorn Ship.

As Yavso made his attempts and failed time and time again, Cheng Lang and the others learned about a legend from the villagers through Gerta.

According to these villagers, the first person to come to Windmill Island to plant fruit trees was a captain named Horace, who also had a first mate named Casper, who was also Horace's son.

Their initial motivation for coming here to grow fruit was no different from what Casper had told Cheng Lang about Captain Horace's experiences.

However, when asked if there was anyone in the village with that name, they received an unexpected response.

After arriving on Windmill Island, these villagers all adopted either Horace or Casper as their surname. In other words, they were all Horace and Casper.

As the discussion of the legends surrounding Captain Horace grew darker, the Valkyrie and the Thorn had finished resupplying, but the grafting work on Yavso remained completely unresolved.

However, Cheng Lang, Yun Ji, and Yun Lan were not going to wait any longer.

While Gerta was having a dinner party with the sailors and villagers on the open ground by the dock, they secretly took two mirrors and a few wooden figurines and, under the cover of night, sneaked into the orchard and quietly made their way to the foot of the big windmill.

At this moment, the rooftop of the building where the creaking windmill was making noise was lit up with flashing lights, and they could even see someone seemingly sitting in the window on top of the windmill.

She quietly approached the well and went down into it. The water level in the well had dropped considerably, but there was still no passage to be found, which inevitably made Yun Lan begin to doubt herself.

In contrast, Yun Ji's attitude was much more resolute. She whispered in Yun Lan's ear, "I brought a boat bottle that has been emptied at least halfway. Now go down and do what you did during the day again."

"it is good"

Yun Lan nodded, causing a spiral staircase of thorns to grow down the well wall. After the three of them went down, Yun Ji took out the boat bottle from her bag and soaked it in the well water again.

As well water continued to flow into the boat bottle, Yun Lan manipulated the thorny staircase to spiral downwards.

Finally, just as the boat bottle was about to be filled, all three of them clearly saw a narrow passage quietly appear on the well wall right below the waterline.

(End of this chapter)