Chapter 1033: The World Is a Kaleidoscope (15)

Qing’s plan was simple.

One, pretend to be some mysterious survivor.

Two, they would take her away for questioning.

I mean, that was how it always went in the movies back home, wasn’t it? If there was a massacre and only one survivor was left at the scene—a blood-soaked survivor who looked half out of her mind—they always took that person away to question or protect them.

From the audience’s side, it always made you want to yell, That’s the culprit, you idiots! Why aren’t you shooting already?! But if they did that, the movie would not even exist in the first place.

That was just how horror movies worked.

People toured some abandoned house everyone said was haunted, went, Wow, what a nice place. We should move in right away, and then the whole family got massacred and all that.

So Qing—whose true identity at the moment was none other than the terrifying murder-ghost, the Five-Foot-Eight Ghost—stared blankly at the sailors who had shriveled up completely and thought:

All right, then. What are you going to do now?

Do you want to talk with swords, or with guns—no, that is not it, that makes them the same thing. All right, again.

Swords and guns, or conversation?

Honestly, Qing did not mind either way.

If they chose to fire their guns?

Then the Five-Foot-Eight Ghost would become a dreadful evil spirit that killed people on the spot.

Why, manners made the man, did they not? Men who did not know how to behave like gentlemen needed to have some manners hammered into them. Yes, be gentlemen.

She could rampage a bit, leave only a few of them alive, beat the answers out of them, and make them lead her straight to the flagship. That was all.

And if they chose conversation?

Then she could head to the flagship comfortably, though in the end the Five-Foot-Eight Ghost would still wind up becoming an evil spirit anyway.

The moment they had started pouring cannonballs into the city, they had already failed beyond saving at being gentlemen, so really, this was Qing’s deep consideration for them—burn the lesson into your bodies through pain, then look forward to your next life.

Still, if possible, she preferred the latter.

She wanted to have a nice honest talk with the witch.

What exactly was possible? Did the Western bastards have other people besides witches who could use strange powers? The Central Plains had martial arts, so it would not be strange if the West had magic.

And information like that was exactly what saved her and her friends—her people.

Just look at the county magistrate’s son. He had accepted that “good for stamina” gift with a huge grin and suffered absolute hell for it.

And it was the same with those Western bastards, who had gotten beaten for not knowing what a true master of the Central Plains was, or what such a person could do.

So Qing waited leisurely for the enemy to make their choice.

Only, the muscles in her neck were starting to ache.

She should have just tilted her head a little. Instead she had tried to set the mood and bent it nearly ninety degrees, and now she was about to end up with a full-blown crick.

But if she straightened her neck now, the Western bastards might get startled and open fire.

So she would just have to endure it. What else was there to do?

The existence of witches was an open secret.

Because every government, without exception, kept witches in the shadows.

A witch’s power was evil, yes, and ought to be rejected. But at the same time, was it not also irresistibly attractive? And if one wished to block the schemes worked by the witches of enemy nations, then one’s own country had to possess witches as well.

And because of that, there existed agents tasked with keeping these state-sanctioned witches under control.

Companions who shared names and understood one another better than anyone else in the world, yet at the same time enemies capable of destroying each other. Which was why they were each other’s most trusted comrades, and the dangerous blade each kept pointed at the other.

The witch’s companion.

The Familiar Soul.

In the homeland of witches, that was what they called the witch’s adjutants and monitors.

As with the first mate.

So as he looked at the mysterious survivor, a strange fire rose in the first mate’s eyes.

An abomination? Was it truly an abomination?

A naturally occurring abomination—what witches jokingly called a wild abomination?

Originally, there was a limit to how much a person could hate another person. No matter how much hatred they felt, they could not hate enough to exchange it for their own existence, to cast away their own existence entirely.

This was not about one’s safety.

There were plenty of people willing to trade their lives for revenge. But to trade away one’s existence was not something ordinary hatred could achieve.

Existence was something beyond life itself—dignity, soul, mind, the very something that made a person a person.

And when that existence was willingly abandoned, the person disappeared, and what remained was something that was not human.

An abomination.

Of course, the first mate only knew it that way. He did not really understand it.

A thing ceased to be human because it had given up being human of its own accord?

Taken roughly, that sounded obvious enough, but as for what, exactly, that human thing was, or how it could be abandoned, he knew nothing at all.

Still, was not magic made up of word games like that by nature?

The important thing was that witches were beings capable of taming abominations.

Abominations could not be fought by ordinary humans. Only heroes could oppose them. And this was an age in which heroes had disappeared.

Look at the horrifying destruction caused by the pig bastards’ abomination during the War of Independence.

If the Governor of the Six Cities had not personally stepped forward and cut it down, the republic would still be nothing more than their colony.

Which meant that an abomination was the most powerful weapon any nation could possess—and now an ownerless abomination had come walking right up to them on its own feet.

This could become the greatest achievement the Company had ever made, and perhaps a gift shocking enough to jolt Joanna out of her despair.

Once he thought that far, the first mate felt he could roughly guess what had happened aboard the United Company.

The sailors of the United Company must have secretly abducted some woman from the Central Plains and used her for one purpose or another.

Whether the abduction itself had been horrific, or what came after had been horrific, or both, one woman had come to hate enough to give up being human—and by ill luck, she {N•o•v•e•l•i•g•h•t} had been the sort of person for whom such a thing was possible.

The ghastly state inside the United Company, the horrible sight of people left behind in conditions from which no recovery was possible, as if someone had deliberately refused to let them die cleanly—that had to be the result of it.

Wait. But was it really an abomination?

Because monsters and abominations were different things.

You could call that an obvious statement if you liked, but monsters at least had some kind of form. The form of a beast, or mixed beasts, or perhaps something that was part beast and part man.

But an abomination, he had heard, was something that had originally been human and then ceased to be human—limbs twisted and melted, a shape that insulted humanity by its very existence, the embodiment of the most horrifying form one could not even imagine...

For something like that, though, it looked awfully neat.

Aside from the bent neck, was it not perfectly fine?

Even covered in blood, flesh, and yellow human fat, the figure was still rather beautiful, and the smile that had seemed so grotesque at first glance now almost looked like the strained shape of someone forcing herself to smile with all her might.

Truth be told, the first mate had never seen an abomination in person. He had only read about them in books. So he did not really know the exact details. Perhaps it was simply because this was an abomination from the Central Plains.

To put it in the style of Qing’s homeland, perhaps it was just a Chinese-made abomination with inferior quality.

“A survivor.”

“First mate! What are you saying? It is an abomination, an abomination!”

“Sergeant, did you not say you had seen an abomination with your own eyes? Did that abomination look like that? Because it is very different from what I have heard.”

“That is...”

Fortunately, the not-very-abomination-like appearance of this Central Plains abomination was a tremendous help.

“Everyone, raise your muzzles. It is an intact survivor. We will place her under temporary protection in order to hear what happened aboard ship.”

Then the first mate slowly raised both hands and carefully approached the abomination.

Just as the books had taught him, the way to handle an abomination was to be as gentle as possible. Show absolutely no hostility. Be exceedingly kind. Never provoke it. Guide it softly.

“Rest assured. I have no intention of attacking you. I am trying to protect you, so rest assured. I am safe, and you are safe. There is no one here who means to threaten you, and it is all over.”

Meanwhile.

Qing, listening, was honestly dumbfounded.

This works...?

Actually, it had been a pretty half-assed attempt to begin with, and she had not been all that bothered if it failed.

She had beaten and smashed them around plenty, sure, but what the hell was with this ship being packed so full of people?

The unlucky ones had died because she had misjudged her strength. The luckier ones definitely had to exist—men who had hidden and survived.

And most of the rest were just severely injured sailors who were still, technically, not dead, so there was no reason they could not tell people she was the culprit.

And yet here he was, with that skin-crawlingly greasy voice, both hands up, creeping slowly closer.

Was this not exactly the kind of attitude some men took when they hit on her every now and then, not even realizing they were talking to another man?

What was he, the same breed as Jo Ryung? Some bastard crazy about women?

Come to think of it, was he not one of the bastards who came with that witch? He had been plastered right next to her the whole time. So that was it. A woman-crazy bastard...

The first mate had been misunderstood without meaning to, but—

“I will not harm you. Here, take my hand. Hand. Hand. Like this, hand.”

The first mate carefully extended his right hand, then used his left to mime taking hold of it, slowly, and several times over.

But from Qing’s point of view, where she understood every word, the whole thing felt deeply unpleasant.

What was this now, was he trying to tame a dog?

Still, for now, she ought to play along.

Qing reached out.

No matter that she was in Five-Foot-Eight Ghost mode, grabbing another man’s hand was still a dreadful act no man should ever commit, so instead she pinched the end of his sleeve tightly between her fingertips.

“Good. That is right. Well done. Excellent. Now then, slowly. Let us go somewhere safe. Somewhere safe.”

Was she not seriously being treated like an animal at this point?

Was the Five-Foot-Eight Ghost really okay like this?

At this rate, was there not going to be a severe problem with the dignity of the Five-Foot-Eight Ghost, the most horrifying evil spirit to ever walk the human world?

Still, somehow, she decided to follow along for now.

From the look of it, this did not seem like the kind of situation where he would suddenly pull a knife, say Fool, you fell for it, and attack. So, roughly speaking, her survivor performance counted as a success.

The mood aboard the Golden Lion, flagship of the East India Company’s Eastern Fleet, could only be described as pure chaos.

“They brought an abomination aboard!”

“It was bad enough the captain was a witch, and now this? An abomination? Did they not say if you touched an abomination the wrong way, everyone died?”

“I swear I cannot do this anymore. The sea is going to take offense. Once we get back home, I am quitting, or at least applying to transfer to another ship.”

“No, I have had it. I am saying something to the first mate. A green little punk as the fleet’s first mate? I did not like that bastard from the start.”

So while the whole ship heaved with agitation, what exactly was the abomination—the Five-Foot-Eight Ghost—doing?

“Ha, look at that thing eat. Seven bowls already. That is not human. No way. It must not be full because it is not human meat. They say abominations eat people.”

“Shh. Did you not hear what the first mate said? He said it is sensitive to malice, that it understands whenever people badmouth it.”

“That is just something he said to scare us. Watch. Hey, you stupid crazy bitch, can you still stuff down rice after eating people? Filthy abomination whore. Bet you ate your mom and dad too, right?”

“Hey. Hey.”

“See? It cannot understand me.”

She could understand every word.

Seriously, was this their first time seeing someone eat? Even if it was, should they not just let her eat in peace? Why were they picking a fight?

For fuck’s sake. I swear.

The only reason I am holding back is because the food is good. Seriously.

And in fact, Qing was hungry.

It was already past lunchtime, and she had gone wild in grand style for the first time in a while, so her stomach did not just growl—it practically rumbled like THUNDER...!

That had startled the Dutch sailors badly enough that they hurried off and brought her food.

And, well.

Dutch food was actually pretty decent.

Carrots, onions, and oats? Then sliced sausage dropped in again and again and simmered into a thick porridge. There was no way that was going to taste bad.

Then lamb boiled until tender.

And above all, baked bread! Cheese! Butter!

Yes, there were things a little like this in the Central Plains too, but the taste was just not quite the same...

Hmm. But these bastards lived unexpectedly well, did they not? If they ate this well, what the hell were they lacking that made them start firing cannon into a city?

Qing found herself newly offended.

Though really, that was only natural. They were not out in mid-voyage. Up until now they had been trading with Shanghai and piling fresh ingredients aboard their fleet without restraint.

Anyway, the room was quite comfortable.

She had expected them to tie her up somewhere like a prison cell, but instead they had led her into what was obviously a high-class guest cabin.

That bastard, the first mate? It seemed to be a high position, but what exactly was he doing? Even if she was a survivor, after seeing the condition she was in, should he not have locked her up somewhere and kept a strict watch on her?

But when the man in charge was some high-ranking lunatic obsessed with women, the whole place was bound to start running like this.

So the first mate had ended up, through no fault of his own, as the officer in charge who had thrown away his judgment because he was crazy about women.

What he was actually trying to do was avoid provoking the abomination, while also winning its favor by giving it comfortable surroundings so it would be easier to tame.

Still, a minimum watch had been put in place, with marines stationed outside the room and two men inside as guards as well.

It was not as though they intended to keep it confined for long. All they had to do was hold it there until they somehow persuaded Joanna, who was shut up in her cabin, to come over.

At any rate, because Qing kept thoroughly ignoring everything around her, even the sailors who had been frozen stiff and trembling at first seemed to relax a great deal after only half a shichen.

“Ha. The first mate too, what the hell is going through his head, bringing an abomination aboard? I cannot do this anymore. I should never have boarded a witch’s ship in the first place.”

“Still, the pay is good.”

“What good is the pay? Once you get mixed up with a witch, weird things keep happening. You did not hear what the boys who went to the United Company said, did you?”

“No. What was it like?”

“Well, see...”

And the sailor began telling the story.

He clearly had some talent as a storyteller, because what came out sounded properly eerie, and the sailor listening frowned and shivered.

“I am telling you, all of this is because we got mixed up with a witch. You never heard the saying? Do not lend your ear to whispers from the dark. But we went and raised one up as captain, so what did you expect?”

“Hmm. But is the captain really a witch? Maybe it is just a rumor.”

“What are you talking about? If the captain is not a witch, then what the hell is a witch?”

“Mm. The captain is the real deal, all right.”

“How would you know?”

“How would I know? Because she does that. The witch’s banquet. You just fuck those unbelievable women and special bonuses start pouring down on you. Now that I think about it, maybe being on a witch’s ship is not so bad after all.”

“I could not do it. Back then I hid in the cargo hold and saw the state those bitches were in. They were all sleeping inside coffins like corpses. After seeing that once, I just could not do it. Felt like fucking a corpse.”

“Aw, come on. They probably drugged them with some witch medicine or something. If those bitches walked around normally all the time, how would anyone get any ship work done with everyone being so damn horny?”

“Wait, you mean you really get to fuck them? For real? Like, all together and everything?”

“What the hell are you talking about? Just the other day—”

The sailor, who had been about to answer casually, stopped short.

Wait.

Who was he talking to?

The sailor whipped his head around.

“W-what the hell? It talks, it talks?”

“Well, yes. I have a mouth, so obviously.”

“How do you know our language...?”

“In times like these, knowing at least one foreign language is the bare minimum. The age of globalization, you know? Anyway.”

Qing answered with perfect ease, then flashed a bright smile and continued.

“What did you call me earlier?”