Chapter 100 A Wall Behind Three Doors

The limited and easily visible area of the Obsidian’s deck was quickly searched by the group, and they found nothing suspicious.

Except for the fact that places that should have been damp and pooling with water were now unusually dry, the Obsidian’s deck looked no different from any ordinary derelict ship: heavily rusted, uneven, and damaged in many places, but not yet completely collapsed.

After inspecting the deck area, Duncan decided to go inside the ship.

They quickly found a door leading into the ship’s cabin.

It was a rusty iron door set into a white wall. The handle of the iron door was severely decayed, and the lock had long been ruined by seawater. The entire door was tightly shut, and it was clear that it could not be opened by conventional means.

Morris examined the door and gave up on the idea of opening it normally. He turned to the others and said, "We might have to use some force."

"I'll do it," Vanna volunteered before anyone else could speak. "Everyone else, step back a little to avoid getting hurt by the debris."

Shirley and Alice immediately retreated a good distance. Duncan didn't move much, just took a couple of steps to the side to avoid getting his clothes dirty, and curiously watched Vanna's movements. He saw the female warrior approach the completely rusted-out iron door, and then...casually tapped the door panel.

There was a short buzzing sound, and the middle of the iron door shattered and collapsed directly, the solid and heavy steel turning into countless fragments that scattered in all directions, smoke and dust filling the opening.

Then Vanna reached into the hole and tore at the edges a few times, tearing the remaining steel plates from the frame as easily as tearing paper, and casually threw them aside.

Shirley and A Gou stared blankly at this scene, and after a long silence, they exclaimed in unison, "…...Holy crap, is that even human?"

Vanna, of course, heard Shirley and A Gou's voices, and turned to smile. "I've always been diligent about exercising."

Shirley's mouth twitched visibly, and she muttered under her breath, "That's got nothing to do with exercising anymore, does it?"

Duncan also admired Vanna's simple and brutal solution, but he had witnessed the spectacle of this beautiful warrior single-handedly conquering a city-state, so he didn't have any extra reaction. He simply looked up at the smoke-filled doorway. "What's the situation inside?"

Vanna waved her hand, and after the dust settled a little, she leaned her head in to take a look, her expression immediately turning strange.

A few seconds later, she backed away and turned to Duncan. "Inside...it's another door."

"Another door?" Duncan was taken aback. He strode forward and took a look himself, and sure enough, he saw another rusty iron door standing right in front of him, only a few meters away from the outer door.

However, the space between the two doors was neither a corridor nor a foyer, nor did it seem like some kind of specially designed safety barrier. It was just an empty space with no equipment or furnishings, no extra windows, just bare walls and a ceiling that seemed to be crooked for some reason.

"…I'm not sure if this is the normal structure of the Obsidian," Morris said, after taking a look. He shook his head. "I only knew about the ship before, but I've never seen it in person."

Duncan frowned slightly, then quickly nodded to Vanna. "Open that door."

Vanna immediately stepped forward and shattered the inner door in the same way. Then she leaned in to take a look, and turned back with a look of astonishment. "Inside...it's another door."

"Another one?!" Even Shirley was surprised this time. She couldn't care less about the safe distance, and she pulled A Gou over. "I'm going to…there really is one?!"

Behind the second door was a third door, and the structure was exactly the same, the same strange "compartment."

If there was only a second door, it could still be explained as a "special design of the Obsidian," but now there was another "third door" with no apparent purpose and only a sense of unease...it was hard to dismiss it by saying, "This ship's design concept is just ahead of its time."

"The structure of this ship is not right," Duncan said, looking back at the previous two doors, his expression slightly serious. "It shouldn't have this kind of design, whether it's normal or not...Vanna, open that door too."

"Okay." Vanna did not hesitate.

She stepped forward and punched the third door, but this time she only punched a large hole and stopped, not bothering to clear the remaining steel plates from the door frame—because through the hole, she could already see what was inside.

"Cap...tain," she said, a little unaccustomed to the title, her expression even stranger than before, "There's a wall inside."

"A wall?!" Duncan's eyes twitched. He glanced into the hole and saw what Vanna called a "wall."

There really was only a wall on the other side of the door, and the wall was less than half a meter away from the third door—almost touching it. The space between the door and the wall was meaningless, and there was no room for anything.

"Why is this ship designed like this?" Nina muttered in confusion. "A wall behind three doors…then where's the cabin? How do you get into the cabin?"

Duncan did not speak. He simply stared quietly at the strangely structured "overlapping area," a thoughtful look in his eyes, as if he had thought of something.

After a moment, he nodded to Vanna. "Keep making holes."

Vanna immediately stepped forward, first kicking away the remaining door panels on the lower half of the third door, and then punching the strange wall—a hole even larger than before appeared before everyone's eyes with a loud roar.

"It's a corridor," Vanna said, glancing inside.

"Great," Shirley immediately breathed a sigh of relief. "Finally something normal…."

"It's upside down," Vanna continued before Shirley could finish. "The ceiling is under your feet, and the floor is over your head."

Shirley: "····Holy crap."

Just as Vanna said, behind that wall was only an upside-down corridor—like the previous three repeating doors, there was no normal structure inside the ghostly ship's cabin!

"This ship has been distorted…"

Even a knowledgeable scholar like Morris was a little dazed at this moment. He looked in disbelief at the corridor structure on the other side of the wall, muttering to himself, "What twisted the Obsidian into this…"

"Let's think differently," Duncan interrupted the old scholar. "Is this really the Obsidian?"

Morris suddenly looked up, staring at Duncan in astonishment. "You mean…"

"This is near Frost, and terrible things have happened beneath the deep sea of Frost," Duncan said casually, glancing at Alice, who was curiously looking around, "Remember what Tyrian said about the 'Submersible Project'?"

"I remember, I remember," Alice nodded quickly. "And a lot of submersibles and stuff…"

"It's enough that you remember that,"

Duncan said, tapping Alice's head. "Stop nodding, it's already starting to sway."

Then he raised his hand and tapped the wall next to him.

The metal bulkhead made a hollow thumping sound when tapped.

"A normal exterior, but actually a chaotic mess, a clumsy imitation and duplication, a misstacked interior space—this shouldn't be the real Obsidian, but it's hard to say which 'number' Obsidian it is."

Alice didn't know how much she understood, but she drew out a long "Oh—" sound and nodded slowly, pretending to understand. On the other hand, Vanna quickly reacted. "But I remember you saying before that only the crew inside the submersibles that surfaced during the Submersible Project had distortion errors during the copying process. The submersibles themselves were correctly copied. You speculated at the time that this error should be limited to people or organisms…"

"Yes, limited to people or organisms—at least that's how it was half a century ago when the Frost Queen was still alive," Duncan said slowly. "So the current situation is obviously worse. Copying is no longer limited to Submersible Three, and the distortion has expanded to inorganic matter…Whatever is in the deep sea of Frost, after fifty years of dormancy, it has obviously started to move again, and its scope and intensity are far beyond what they were half a century ago."

Shirley blinked as she listened. Everyone on the ship of the lost had heard about the Submersible Project from the captain, so everyone knew how strange and evil it was, which made her mutter subconsciously, "I…I'm starting to get nervous…"

"Let's think differently, the captain is investigating this—I think it's not us who should be nervous," A Gou muttered softly. "Don't scare yourself, my heart rate is going up too."

Shirley was stunned. "A Gou, do you have a heart?"

"I'm a demon with a heart!"

"A heart and 'heart' are not the same thing—isn't your cavity empty?"

"…What if, maybe there's something jumping inside."

"Want to pry it open and take a look?"

"That won't work."

Duncan didn't pay attention to the increasingly bizarre muttering beside him. After briefly speculating about the situation of the ghostly ship, he focused his attention on the corridor that he didn't know where it would lead.

After a brief thought, he stepped towards the hole that Vanna had blasted open. "Let's go in and see what's going on."