It wasn’t until the man turned around and his back faced him that Ji Nansheng finally remembered where he had seen him.
His back resembled someone.
It looked like the man who had cornered the Countess in the corridor earlier.
The one the Countess referred to as the “Siren”.
The number of viewers in the live broadcast room was still climbing, and the barrage was scrolling rapidly.
[Wow, cool guy!]
[Another handsome man. We met Ji Nansheng, met the Countess, but who would have thought we’d meet this one? Nansheng, help me get this guy’s phone number, please!]
[Nansheng, you’ve got three seconds. I want to know everything about this man.]
[This man looks like a cheetah.]
[Clearly, he’s an eagle.]
Ji Nansheng was drenched in sweat.
Ask that man for his contact information?
You fake fans, are you trying to make him suffocate and die?
He cautiously lifted his eyes, but the man from earlier had already disappeared from where he was standing.
Ji Nansheng finally lifted his head, quickly scanning the crowd.
Suddenly, his gaze stopped.
He saw that the man had somehow gotten close to the Countess.
The Countess’s face was pale and she retreated step by step under the man’s advancing pressure, like a frightened little rabbit.
From the look on the Countess’s face, it was clear she was being coerced.
Ji Nansheng gradually began to believe the Countess’s words.
Maybe this time, he really had misjudged the situation. The Countess was just a beautiful NPC, while the real “Siren” was someone else.
“What’s going on here?” A deep, stern voice cut through all the noise, instantly silencing the entire deck.
The crowd parted, and the Count walked over with a grim expression. Dressed in a black fur-lined cloak and leaning on a cane, he asked, “Can anyone tell me what happened here?”
The man who had lost his wife and brother lay desperately at the Count’s feet. “Dear Count, forgive my rudeness, but I am overwhelmed with grief. My wife and brother jumped into the sea.”
“Poor child,” the Count said solemnly. “I’m sorry for what you’ve been through. I know you, you’re the manager of Jiaman Department Store.”
“That’s me. Thank you for remembering me.”
The Count: “Child, get up first. When we return to the capital, bring your company’s files to see me. Keeping busy will help ease the pain.”
The man looked at the Count sorrowfully before finally nodding heavily. “Understood, Count.”
With the situation settled, the crowd returned to the hall.
The Count immediately found his wife, and the two walked together into the ship’s cabin intimately.
Ji Nansheng scanned the crowd and spotted that terrifying man at the back.
His eyes were fixated on the Countess’s back, his gaze dark, obsessive, and so fervent it seemed he wanted to devour her.
Suddenly, the man looked at Ji Nansheng.
Ji Nansheng’s heart froze, and he quickly averted his gaze.
The crowd surged around him.
Ji Nansheng moved with the crowd while lost in thought.
At that moment, a tall figure appeared in front of him, blocking out all the light.
Ji Nansheng looked up in confusion, and when his eyes met the man’s deep, pitch-black ones, he instinctively took two steps back.
The man looked Ji Nansheng up and down, then scanned the four people around him.
He looked back at Ji Nansheng and said something that made Ji Nansheng’s heart sink.
“Player?”
“Uh, ah, yes, yes.” Ji Nansheng nodded. “You too?”
The man: “I’m a player as well.”
Ji Nansheng: “…”
‘What?’
‘What??’
‘This man is a player??’
The man’s next sentence struck like a thunderclap.
“I suspect the Countess is the Siren.”
Ji Nansheng was almost dumbfounded.
The Countess said the man was the Siren, but now the man was saying the Countess was the Siren.
The Countess was supposed to be an NPC, but the man claimed to be a player.
Ji Nansheng couldn’t help but think both of them seemed like Sirens. Were they playing a game of mutual destruction with him?
“But the Countess said you were the Siren,” among the five, the girl was the boldest. “Wasn’t it you who pushed the Countess against the wall a while ago?”
“Pervert,” she added in a low voice at the end.
The boys silently gave her a thumbs up in their hearts.
The man: “My name is Dijia.”
“At that time, I was forcing her to reveal her true Siren form.”
The Countess walking at the front of the crowd seemed to hear someone call her. She turned and glanced in their direction.
When she saw the man, her face turned white, and she immediately turned around and quickened her pace.
Ji Nansheng did not miss this scene.
The girl: “Did she show her true form?”
Dijia: “Not yet.”
The girl: “Then how can you prove what you’re saying is true?”
The man: “No disguise is flawless. If she’s truly the Siren, there will be a flaw eventually.”
As the man turned to leave, the pressure on Ji Nansheng’s shoulders finally eased.
But the girl suddenly spoke again, “You’re a player, aren’t you going to act with us?”
Ji Nansheng looked at the girl in shock, and the tension that had just left his shoulders returned.
‘Sister, are you really not afraid of death?’
‘What if he’s the Siren?’
‘You’re inviting the Siren to join us?’
Fortunately, the man declined her offer, saying, “I prefer to act alone,” and then left.
Only after the man had walked far away did Ji Nansheng breathe a long sigh of relief, feeling as if he had narrowly escaped death.
Glasses pushed up his glasses on the bridge of his nose and said, “Interesting. The Countess says the player Dijia is the Siren, and the player Dijia says the Countess is the Siren.”
Muscular man: “That makes it simple. They’re accusing each other, so one of them must be the Siren. The pool of suspects just shrank from over a thousand people to two. A fifty-percent chance.”
“Let me remind you that our task isn’t to find out who the Siren is,” the girl kindly pointed out.
Ji Nansheng added, “The task is to find a way out of the Siren’s territory. Maybe the way out lies with the real Siren.”
Glasses: “The fog doesn’t seem to have a hallucinatory effect anymore. Should we check the ship’s log now?”
The crowd surged toward the hall.
The players quietly slipped out of the group, sneaking toward the cockpit under the cover of the thick white fog.
They crouched by the windows and peeked inside. The windows revealed a large spindle-shaped cockpit.
When they saw the situation inside, the girl couldn’t help but exclaim, “Oh my God.”
There was no one steering the ship.
The cockpit was empty. The round ship’s wheel stood there, swaying back and forth with no one at the helm.
The girl was bewildered. “This ship’s steering wheel is remotely controlled, right?”
Ji Nansheng: “…”
‘Probably not.’
The ship’s design and the NPCs’ clothing were clearly from the seventeenth or eighteenth century, without any electronic devices. It was highly unlikely to be an automatic steering system.
Unable to convince herself otherwise, the girl quickly fell silent.
Ji Nansheng: “Besides the Siren, there are some other strange things on this ship.”
Glasses: “What strange things?”
Ji Nansheng: “The Count said the second mate was steering the ship, but there’s no one here.”
“The man who lost his wife and brother took out a pocket watch. Didn’t you find anything strange about it?”
Glasses: “What was strange? It seemed normal.”
Ji Nansheng: “It seems normal because you’ve watched too many retro TV dramas. Don’t forget that for us, this is happening right now.”
“The people in the photograph looked about the same age as they do in real life. The picture was probably taken in the last couple of years, so it shouldn’t have faded so much.”
Glasses suddenly realized, “Yeah, now that you mention it, I remember.”
“Damn, how did I not notice that? No wonder you’re a big anchor and I’m not. Awesome.”
The more Ji Nansheng talked, the more excited he became, and he had a look of eagerness on his face. “It seems like there are a lot of stories on this ship. I’m really looking forward to uncovering them.”
“Ah, I see the ship’s log!” The girl pointed through the window. “Look, it’s over there.”
Behind the cockpit was a large square room, with a table placed in the center.
A map covered the entire surface of the table, with a globe placed at one corner, and underneath the globe was a thick black book.
Faintly, a few faded gold letters were visible — Ship’s Log.
Since there was no one around, the five boldly pushed open the cockpit door and entered the navigation room.
As they passed the ship’s wheel, the girl glanced at the swaying wheel. Fog drifted over the wheel, and faint sunlight shone on the fog, vaguely revealing a blurry figure.
She subconsciously rubbed her eyes. When she looked again, the ship’s wheel was still swaying, but there was nothing in front of it. What she had seen earlier seemed to be a mere illusion.
Feeling a little scared, the girl quickly caught up with the others and hurried into the large room, heading straight for the ship’s log.
The log was a thick stack of yellowed papers.
The black cover was made of leather, with faded gold lettering.
It looked weathered, as if it had been through many storms.
She carefully opened the log. Inside were densely packed dates, routes, and weather records.
Since she wanted to see the most recent entries, she flipped directly to the last few pages.
