The Creature Keeper - chapter 39

The sky grew overcast again, dark clouds gathering, and soon heavy rain began to fall.

On the sea, hundreds of kilometers away from the Babel Tower, a massive, classical Ghost Ship floated.

Fully armed Mercenaries had boarded the deck, their entry unusually smooth. They wore heavy protective suits, shielding themselves from possible radiation and hazardous substances.

Patch-style headphones clung to their ears, keeping them in constant communication with the outside.

They pushed open the first door, and the light suddenly brightened.

The lavishly decorated interior made the ship appear all the more luxurious and mysterious. The enormous crystal chandelier cast dazzling colors, dreamlike and surreal.

Everything was pristine and spotless, as if a banquet had just been held. Under the play of optics, one could even glimpse the graceful figures mingling with glasses raised in a toast.

Were these scenes real, or mere illusions?

The Mercenaries were stunned.

Music gradually began to play in their ears.

Someone was the first to snap out of it, only to discover that his attire had changed-from the heavy protective suit to an exquisite, luxurious tuxedo.

A Tuxedo Attendant, origin unknown, approached and handed him a glass of swirling red wine. The Hexagonal Wine Glass had sharp edges, refracting the light from the massive chandelier above, and for a moment, it seemed as if someone was weeping.

The second, the third.

The entire team was entranced, lost in the dazzling feast of lights and shadows.

They forgot their names, forgot their mission, forgot where they were.

The patch headphones had vanished; no one heard the increasingly urgent commands from outside.

“The ship is sinking, return immediately!”

“Copy, please respond, the ship is sinking…”

Unfortunately, these commands became nothing but empty echoes, swallowed by the sea.

Humanity has always harbored a spirit of exploration and curiosity.

These two unique qualities set humans apart from other animals: learning to use fire, building civilizations, gazing at the vast starry sky, flying into the blue heavens without wings, diving into the deep sea despite being unable to breathe underwater.

Even as the planet’s rotation divides day and night, humans can use artificial light to rival the moon.

Exploration led humanity to the top of the food chain, becoming the rulers of this planet-and will ultimately push them toward self-dug graves and extinction.

What, after all, is the end point of civilization?

……

“Beep-”

Aselan frantically slammed the horn, lowered the car window, and shouted at the people ahead, “The light’s green, why aren’t you moving? Are you blind?”

The traffic jam had made her extremely irritable.

Tang Rou, browsing messages from inside the Babel Tower in the passenger seat, said, “Calm down. Road rage easily causes accidents.”

“We’ve been stuck on this street for fifty minutes. Even childbirth doesn’t take this long.”

Tang Rou replied, “That’s because modern medicine is advanced enough. In the past, no woman spent less than five or six hours in the delivery room.”

Aselan kept slamming the horn.

A hundred years ago, the population of this blue planet surged dramatically.

Space capacity, food capacity, and energy capacity all reached their limits. With only ten percent of the land above the sea, the population exploded to twenty-five billion.

At the same time, birth rates suddenly dropped, and countless women were stripped of their fertility by unknown forces.

It was as if a third hand was suppressing human reproduction.

Thus, under the pressure of aging and medical burdens, the Fetal Cultivation Chamber came into being.

Women who still retained fertility were protected by the Union, lured by generous material conditions to “voluntarily” bear children. Tang Rou’s generation of newborns all underwent genetic modification, with diseases caused by genetic defects cured.
For example, cancer, tumors, bone and blood diseases.

But the continuous population expansion has brought more pressure to daily life.

Take traffic, for instance.

Aselan kept honking the horn until a traffic officer walked over and raised a warning sign. “There’s a sudden accident ahead, you can’t go through. Please make a U-turn from the left.”

“An accident? May I ask what kind of accident?”

“Sorry, I can’t disclose that.”

The car’s AI immediately plotted a new route, and Aselan turned onto the Coastal Ring Road.

From afar, the previous road was already blocked off with a large Cordon. Many vehicles were turning around, while others were stuck in a jam, forming a circle of onlookers.

“What kind of accident happened?” Aselan glanced at Tang Rou. “What are you looking at so seriously?”

Tang Rou closed her laptop. “An internal notice. A Mercenary Corps of forty people disappeared at sea. The details haven’t been released, but the Hotdan Virus Research Center has issued a request for assistance.”

“Hotdan-is that the Union’s Military virus base?”

Tang Rou nodded.

With the sea level continuously rising, the world’s landmasses have been redistributed. All countries have merged into a single continent, and national systems have basically ceased to exist. A brand new system has emerged: the Human United Community.

Hotdan’s virus research is the most advanced in the Union.

Tang Rou rested her chin on her hand and sighed. “My name is on the support team list.”

Aselan let out a gleeful “Wow.”

Not long ago, living people were continuously being salvaged from the ocean, all of whom had been declared dead in shipwrecks over the past century.

Soon after, these salvaged individuals began to mutate, attacking and preying on the living.

Five days ago, a “Ghost Ship” with a style from the last century appeared in the waters near Hotdan. A Mercenary Corps of forty landed on it and lost contact twenty minutes later.

Afterwards, the “Ghost Ship” vanished from the sea surface.

This request for support from major Bases is precisely to investigate what these anomalies really are.

The fresh sea breeze briefly scattered the clouds overhead.

The air along the Coastal Ring Road was quite nice. For once, it wasn’t raining. Aselan opened the convertible roof and raised her hand to feel the wind.

Tang Rou turned her head and saw a crowd gathered on the nearby shore.

She could vaguely see a whale on the beach.

“It looks like a whale has stranded itself!”

Tang Rou found the rescue number and dialed. “Hello, I’m currently on the Coastal Ring at 148 Binhai Road. It seems a whale has stranded here. Can you send help?”

Aselan parked the car by the roadside, got out, and the two of them walked toward the stranded whale.

Only when they got closer did they realize that the whale’s lower half wasn’t submerged in the sea, but seemed to have been bitten off by something, disappearing into thin air and exposing a bloody cross-section.

A large crowd surrounded the whale’s corpse, taking photos with their phones.

“My god, what happened here?”

“Was it bitten by something? Poor thing!”

But what kind of creature could possibly bite the largest animal on Earth in half?

Tang Rou and Aselan looked at each other, seeing gravity in each other’s eyes.