The Informal Tomb Raiding Diary: She is the occupant of the tomb!-Chapter 192 - 93: Isn’t Carrying a Boat Exhausting?
The laboratory staff were acting strangely, not sure what kind of research they were conducting. Lu Xiaodao said they haven’t had a break these days, seemingly having their own tasks, unlike being here to pick people up.
Maybe Captain Jack’s support team and the laboratory are just two independent departments working in the same office building.
Moreover, Lu Xiaodao saw cages for animals in the laboratory, of various sizes. What he saw were all empty, but there were bloodstains inside the cages.
There are no mice to be found at sea, so they must have started or prepared to conduct experiments before setting out.
So, their experiments shouldn’t have anything to do with us. I heard that some illegal experiments are conducted on the high seas, disguised as fishing boats, avoiding much scrutiny.
If what’s stored in the laboratory’s refrigeration unit is some kind of dangerous virus, once spread, the team leader and others would also suffer.
So Chen Qinghan was right, we must not damage the ship’s power system. Even if the laboratory has a backup power supply, it generally won’t last long. We haven’t reached the island, and the return time hasn’t been set.
The current problem is that the fishing boat is being dragged towards the island by unknown creatures. If we don’t stop them first, we will run aground on the shoal even if we seize the ship.
Bi Shi agreed to dive into the sea with me to take a look. Chen Qinghan gave me his treasure sword, and Lu Xiaodao handed his flying knives to Bi Shi for self-defense.
He seems to have a good impression of Bi Shi and started paying attention to her in the jungle.
Maybe Bi Shi stunned him for a moment with her skills and courage that he admired.
We decided to act separately, with Chen Qinghan leading the team leader and others to take control of the cockpit.
Bi Shi and I would dive underwater to solve the problem of the blood handprints.
The hatch of this fishing boat can also be locked from the outside. Captain Jack might regret allowing us to roam freely, as the guards he left on the deck are no match for us.
I first disabled the mini-bombs strapped to our ankles. The team leader pointed out the position of the wires for me, and I burned through them one by one, then removed them and threw them into the sea.
When the alarm went off, Bi Shi already snuck He Su out of the infirmary, and Cong Zhibo was also carried out by the team leader and Guan Hai.
They knocked out the guards at the infirmary door, triggering alarms on the ship. We locked the hatch from the outside, and Chen Qinghan and Lu Xiaodao went to the cockpit to control the crew inside.
The guards on the deck were also knocked out by Bi Shi and me, thrown into the fish hold.
Returning to the railing, we tied a rope to the railing posts and slipped into the sea along it.
The midnight seawater was icy cold. Holding a flashlight, we swam to the ship’s bottom and saw blood-red handprints all over it.
It felt like hundreds or thousands of people were supporting the bottom of the ship with their hands, dragging it to an unknown Death Land instead of relying on waves and propulsion.
Bi Shi was at the bow, and I was at the stern. In the initial few minutes, we saw nothing, but about ten minutes later, a large swath of red human figures appeared before my eyes.
They were all crowded at the ship’s bottom, raised their arms high, supporting the bottom of the ship with their palms. The scene was eerie, like a group of people carrying a bus running on the road.
In just the blink of an eye, the scene vanished again, leaving only the blood handprints on the bottom with no red human figures.
I guess that the captain’s underwater camera never recorded this scene, or he might not have the mind to sit in the office drinking to calm down.
Their pupils had already dispersed, leaving only the whites of their eyes. Through the seawater, I couldn’t smell them, but in this state, they were unlikely to be living people.
Chen Qinghan told us that the surviving woman said all her companions perished. She wasn’t from any specific team; they came to the island for construction work.
Over six months, more than 300 people landed on the island, and that’s just the technical personnel, excluding the workers.
Initially, everything was normal, and the project advanced smoothly. She and the core team brought initial results to report back to the organization.
However, just before a storm arrived, a worker found something at the construction site. She thought it was an ancient artifact left by the island’s ancestors and planned to take it back to the lab for research.
Unexpectedly, when the storm hit, someone suddenly fell ill at the site. From the onset of the symptoms to death, it took less than an hour.
The storm obstructed all signals, and there were no medicines on the island for such sudden illnesses, so they could only isolate the patients at first.
But it was of no use. The illness struck them down in batches. The woman said she might have some innate immunity as she was the only one not ill on the island.
But that was not a blessing because, on that night, the dead came back to life.
They didn’t actually come back to life; the woman used the same term I did to refer to them—living dead.
That is to say, they were clearly dead but still able to walk, as she played a role in an episode of the walking dead on the island alone.
Hiding and dodging throughout the night, she finally waited out the storm and fled to the seaside to start a small boat. But the living dead blocked her way even at the coast, and she barely managed to break out of the encirclement by a stroke of luck.
It surprised me the most after hearing Chen Qinghan’s retelling. The wild story I randomly made up turned out to be true.
The woman said that when she escaped, she still had that thing dug out from the construction site, but it was probably taken by Captain Jack.
Hundreds or thousands of people were infected by the same virus, yet she alone was immune by chance. I can barely accept this coincidence.
But why can she perceive those living dead?
Others thought it was her stress response to being terrified, not actual perception of the living dead approaching the fishing boat, but I don’t think so.
Given the number of handprints on the outside of the boat, it was enough to change its course, and even overturning it would be easy.
Her escape in such a situation seems quite abnormal to me.
If the blood handprints could push the fishing boat towards the island, they could also push the small boat toward the fishing boat.
Before, I didn’t know what those blood handprints meant and even guessed it was evidence of her escaping alone, abandoning her companions.
Now it seems I was completely wrong. I think the woman must have hidden something from Chen Qinghan.
Perhaps she won’t tell the truth to anyone, as I now suspect she is a spy sent by the Red Handprint.
She might or might not know, but the Red Handprints likely followed her here.
The alarm kept blaring, and Bi Shi and I surfaced. Just like me, she also saw those red living dead.
The boat kept moving toward the island, and I asked Bi Shi if she had ever seen such self-invisible living corpses before.
She shook her head, saying no. We dived underwater again, and I wanted to try if the treasure sword could harm them.
They had no thoughts; as humans, they were completely dead. But as other creatures, they were living colorfully, well-organized and disciplined, taking action as commanded, working together to achieve great results.
