1888, Indian Ocean.

The metal skeleton of the steam freighter "Sea Witch" groaned under the relentless monsoon winds.

The air in the hold was thick, mixing the charred scent of coal dust, the fishy stench of engine oil, the sour odor of sweat, and the spoiled smell of vomit into a putrid poison that could soften a person's will.

In this floating hell, Lin Jie curled up in a corner too small to stretch his legs, trying to keep his breathing steady and deep.

A piercing scream tore through the dimness of the hold, followed immediately by the sharp crack of leather striking flesh.

A sallow and emaciated coolie had collapsed from dysentery and was quickly dragged out by a tall Indian overseer, the rough wooden planks scraping bloody marks across his back.

Lin Jie's eyelids merely twitched without opening.

He had long grown accustomed to such scenes since being sold as a "piglet" onto this ship at Guangzhou Port two months ago - this had become the normal state of life.

Resistance meant sinking to the ocean floor; numbness was the only way to survive.

Yet unlike his submissive, hollow-eyed companions, Lin Jie's eyes, hidden beneath disheveled hair, always retained a clarity and scrutiny that didn't belong to this era.

"Waste! If you can't get up, go feed the sharks!" the overseer cursed in heavily accented English, his leather boot kicking hard into the man's ribs.

No one pleaded for mercy.

Everyone watched silently like livestock awaiting slaughter.

In the shadows where no one noticed, Lin Jie's fingernails dug deeply into his palms.

He wasn't truly numb - as a 21st-century world history student who had accidentally fallen into this barbaric era, he understood their situation better than anyone.

There was no law, no human rights, only the most naked law of the jungle.

His knowledge was worthless in the face of absolute violence. His only option was to disguise himself as a harmless lamb, absorbing all information around him while waiting for that one-in-a-million chance that might never come.

Mealtime arrived, and a spoonful of sticky paste barely recognizable as oatmeal was roughly thrown into each person's wooden bowl, emitting a sour smell.

Scrambling and shoving immediately erupted, but Lin Jie, using his slender build, slipped through the crowd's gaps before the chaos began to claim his portion, then retreated to his corner, swallowing small, quick mouthfuls to deny anyone the chance to snatch it away.

Yet in recent days, an indescribable abnormality had broken this "routine."

He himself was the first to notice something was wrong.

Based on his memory of vague world navigation charts and estimates of the sun's angle, the "Sea Witch" had long deviated from the normal commercial route to the Suez Canal.

They were sailing toward an unknown sea area that appeared blank on all nautical charts and was rarely visited by ships.

This discovery sent chills down Lin Jie's spine.

What reason could make a profit-driven freighter willingly consume extra fuel and time to avoid busy main shipping lanes?

Soon after, the atmosphere aboard the ship turned eerie.

The sailors, who usually only sang lewd sea shanties, had recently begun humming a gloomy folk song on deck in dreamlike tones.

Lin Jie had caught fragments of it - ancient, obscure lyrics telling of a woman thrown into the sea, her resentment, and how she used her long hair to entangle the ship's anchor, dragging sailors down to the cold seabed.

Panic erupted like plague among the lowest coolies first.

Three days ago, a young fellow from the Chaoshan region suddenly went mad at midnight, clawing desperately at his own throat, scratching bloody marks on his neck with his nails, screaming "Water... there's hair in the water! Hanging all over the ship's sides!"

The next day, he was gone.

The overseer's explanation was dismissive - "Fell overboard by accident, happens every year with these fools."

But Lin Jie clearly remembered that the night had been calm, and all coolies were locked in the hold with no chance to approach the ship's sides.

From that day on, an invisible pressure enveloped the entire ship.

Even the thick air seemed soaked in malice originating from the deep sea.

Tonight, this malice reached its peak.

The night was deep, the sea calm.

Most people in the hold had fallen into exhausted sleep, occasionally punctuated by suppressed sobs and sickly moans.

Lin Jie leaned against the ship's hull, forcing himself to maintain light sleep.

He was suddenly awakened by an extremely faint yet unnervingly clear noise.

It wasn't the creaking of ship timbers, nor the dull thud of waves.

The sound was like someone with extremely long fingernails deliberately scraping their fingertips slowly against the ship's outer hull, against the thick iron plates covered in moss and barnacles.

Scraaape...

The sound was steady and continuous.

Every hair on Lin Jie's body stood on end.

Holding his breath, he silently moved to the nearest round porthole.

The window was covered in grime and salt stains, barely allowing a sliver of faint phosphorescent light from the sea surface to penetrate.

He squinted, straining to peer into the blurred darkness outside.

He saw it.

Just meters from the ship's side in the sea fog, a vaguely humanoid outline glowing with unnatural paleness flickered past.

The thing seemed to have no legs, its elongated body twisting unnaturally in the water. Faintly visible was its lower half - countless tangled black hairs like seaweed mixed with slippery gray tentacles.

Just as Lin Jie tried to see more clearly, the outline detected his gaze.

It stopped, slowly "turning" in the fog toward the porthole.

Lin Jie couldn't make out its features, only seeing two points emitting faint red light on a pale plane.

This wasn't reflection, but some kind of self-luminous tissue.

The pair of red points simply "stared" quietly at the small window.

No killing intent, no anger.

The moment he was "stared at," a chill from the deepest part of his soul swept through Lin Jie's entire body.

It was an emotion beyond fear - the nausea and trembling of reason being torn apart, of life's hierarchy being negated.

His mind went blank, his stomach churned violently, and he nearly vomited on the spot.

He jerked his gaze away, clamping his hand over his mouth, his body slamming against the ship's wall from violent trembling.

At that same moment, the scraping noise against the hull ceased.

But something more terrifying happened.

The steam engine - the ship's "heart" that had provided propulsion and psychological comfort to everyone - with its heavy, rhythmic "thump... thump..." after emitting one final strained metallic groan, abruptly stopped.

The steel giant's heart had stopped beating.

The entire "Sea Witch" shuddered violently, the life-pulsing vibration disappearing.

After a brief silence, panicked commotion erupted throughout the hold.

On this deathly still sea glowing with pale phosphorescence, the ship had completely stalled.

Simultaneously, an eerie humming grew from distant and blurred to crystal clear.

No longer coming from a single source, but from all directions, from every part of the ship simultaneously, layer upon layer, weaving together into a grand requiem.

A requiem prepared for their entire ship of sacrificial offerings.