Kaleidoscope of Death

Chapter 126: Getting Off the Ship

With the key finally in hand, Lin Qiushi quickly returned to the hallway where Ruan Nanzhu and Gu Longming were. But when he returned to the hallway, all he found was an empty chair and a rumped bedsheet on the ground. Both Ruan Nanzhu, who should've been tied to that chair, and Gu Longming had disappeared.

Seeing such a sight, Lin Qiushi's brow instantly broke out in cold sweat. His mind turned rapidly, hundreds of thoughts surfacing, and immediately he was running off in the direction of the dining room.

When Lin Qiushi got to the doorway, he could hear a spine-chilling chewing noise without even going inside.

Lin Qiushi had a very bad feeling about this sound. He didn't dare burst straight in, instead slowly shifted to the window and looked in from the outside.

He saw that everybody still alive had gathered in the dining room, including Gu Longming, who hadn't seemed affected earlier. They surrounded a circular table, each with a dead white fish in hand and shoving it into their mouths with horrifying looks of indulgence. And sitting right next to Gu Longming was the person Lin Qiushi was most concerned about, Ruan Nanzhu.

Ruan Nanzhu was eating fish too, though compared to those around him, his motions weren't so brutish. Still he was definitely picking up bite after bite of fish and placing it into his mouth.

Watching the scene before him, Lin Qiushi didn't actually know what to do, and when he glanced at the fish on the table, an odd sense of craving reared from somewhere deep within him...like Ruan Nanzhu had said, it as if the dead fish before them didn't taste so bad after all.

The thought only had to flash across Lin Qiushi's mind for him to detect that his own condition seemed strange. He glanced down at the key in his hand. Knowing something was wrong, Lin Qiushi gritted his teeth and darted into the dining room.

The people with their heads buried in fish inside didn't notice someone enter at all. Their attentions were completely fixed on the dining table, uncaring of what was happening around them. Which was actually convenient for Lin Qiushi. He took a spin around the dining room but couldn't find what he was looking for. Then he thought of another location—the ship's galley.

The dining room and kitchen were the only two rooms that didn't change location on this ship. Lin Qiushi had already found the key, so he was guessing that the door to leave was in one of these two rooms.

It wasn't in the dining room, so only the galley was left.

As he was leaving the dining room, Lin Qiushi peered at the people eating fish around the table. When he spotted a particular detail, a deep chill shot through his back.

On the face of the person who'd first started the fish-eating, green scales had appeared. These scales emerged from his skin and spread up from his neck toward his cheeks. This change seemed to have been happening for a bit now, and if it continued, what would the end result look like?

Either way, Lin Qiushi didn't want to see it.

And so he quickly left the dining room, glancing back at Ruan Nanzhu one last time.

Ruan Nanzhu's head was still bowed, and he languidly consumed the fish before him. His indifferent expression made something clench in Lin Qiushi's chest, but Lin Qiushi didn't dare dawdle any longer—because he discovered that he himself didn't seem to hate the smell of the fish so much anymore either. He was even unconsciously salivating.

Lin Qiushi left the dining room and went into the adjacent galley.

The galley was currently empty of people. There was only stale dead fish covering the entire room. On the chopping board, on the floor, in the barrels—it was all fish, and the entire room was filled with that nauseating stench of rot. But Lin Qiushi didn't have time to care about all that. He dropped his head and began turning over the room in search for what he wanted.