Chapter 560 – The Heart of the Ghost Ship

Fortunately, Mo Lan was a curse Witch, with her dispel skill ranked at Peak level.

Given Valen’s world tier, even against the ghost ship’s core curse, Mo Lan was confident she could bypass the original dispel pathway entirely and use her own Magic to undo the curse here.

She channeled her Mana, converting it into the power of curse, and cast her dispel on the captain’s body inside the bronze coffin, dissolving the curse upon him bit by bit.

As the curse lifted, the blood in the pool gradually dried up, and the flesh clinging to the anchor chains and cabin walls rapidly sloughed off, rotting away at a speed visible to the naked eye.

The cracks that had been filled with flesh, the marks of time that had been buried by the curse—all of them emerged.

But Mo Lan had no attention to spare for any of this. Her focus was entirely on the dispel.

The curse on the captain—or rather, the curse of this ghost ship—was harder to break than she had anticipated.

It didn’t seem to be purely the power of curse. Something else was mixed in.

While she was dispelling, this other force swiftly spirited away the souls of the captain and crew that had been bound to the ghost ship.

Had she not reacted in time—slowing her dispel speed and using her Mana to intercept this suddenly appearing force—even the energy within the gold coin heart would have been siphoned away.

And then the “heart of the ghost ship” would have been ruined.

Fortunately, in the end, she managed to preserve the “heart of the ghost ship.”

Mo Lan handed the acquired “heart of the ghost ship” to the Book of Cards as card-crafting material, designing and producing a {Material Card—Heart of the Ghost Ship}. Only then did she carefully analyze and examine the cluster of energy she had intercepted.

It resembled dark elemental force, yet seemed somehow different. Not only did it carry characteristics of psychic power and psychic power, capable of influencing the mind and thoughts, it also had a faint quality of power of contract.

On the Continent of Valen, only one thing matched this energy profile.

“Demonic power?” The more Mo Lan thought about it, the more certain she became. What Demons wielded was precisely this—an energy resembling dark elemental force, yet possessing the ability to beguile hearts and harvest souls.

Contracts crafted with Demonic power were no less binding than Lady Carmela’s contracts.

The only difference was that Demonic contracts demanded life and soul as their price.

“Aren’t ghost ships supposed to form naturally? How did Demons get involved?”

Mo Lan studied the captain’s corpse in the coffin with puzzlement, suddenly curious about what exactly had transpired aboard this ship.

Unfortunately, the captain’s soul hadn’t survived either. Otherwise, she could have used Undead Raising to call him up and ask.

Now her only option was to try the Origin-Tracing Spell.

With the curse lifted, the ghost ship had truly died, and the vessel was sinking fast.

This ship’s past might stretch back who knew how many years. Mo Lan didn’t dare waste time. She immediately channeled her Mana and cast the Origin-Tracing Spell on the captain’s corpse.

The Origin-Tracing Spell immediately traced back through the corpse’s past, and the events that had befallen him flashed rapidly through Mo Lan’s mind.

Skipping past the scenes of him lying in the bronze coffin, Mo Lan finally witnessed what this corpse had experienced when it still had the ability to move.

He had once been a fine navigator, whose dream was to find the “Sunken Kingdom of Gold.”

Marriage and fatherhood had done nothing to quell his thirst for wealth.

To raise expedition funds, he had even deliberately falsified navigation logs, causing a merchant vessel to run aground, then disguised it as an “accident” to salvage the cargo.

But no matter how he searched, he could never find the legendary “Kingdom of Gold.”

After seven consecutive failed voyages, one night he prayed to the Deep Sea Lord: “Grant me boundless wealth, grant me an eternal voyage, grant me an unsinkable ship!” The Deep Sea Lord answered him—so long as he was willing to gouge out his own child’s eyes and offer the souls of everyone aboard as the price, his wish would be fulfilled.

His heart had long been blinded by greed and obsession. He signed the contract without hesitation.

He couldn’t read the text along the contract’s edges, disguised as decorative patterns, but Mo Lan could see it clearly.

It was unmistakably Demonic from the Abyss, reading: “Thy bones shall be the ship, thy blood shall be the sea, thy soul shall be the sails—never to make port for all eternity.”

Mo Lan had seen the title “Deep Sea Lord” in history books from the Divine Descent Era. It was indeed one of the identities Demons had used.

In that era, Demons still roamed the surface world. Their favorite pastime was amplifying the desires within human hearts and swindling away their souls. It was not the least bit strange that someone like the captain would have been targeted.

No wonder lifting the curse hadn’t released the souls of the dead aboard the ship, as legends claimed it should. This was, at its core, a ghost ship catalyzed using the captain’s own body and soul as nourishment, his child’s resentment as the source of the curse, and the souls of everyone aboard as the catalyst.

The souls of the captain and crew had long been branded by the Demonic contract. Their presence on the ship had only ever served to help him hunt more souls.

The moment the curse was lifted, these souls were naturally harvested by Demonic power.

Even Mo Lan had been unable to stop it.

Because this was the “agreement” between the captain, the crew, and the Demon.

Even though it had been signed through deceit and trickery, it still held power—not something that could be easily broken.

But the heart of the ghost ship was a byproduct of the ghost ship’s creation, with a weaker connection to the Demon. That was the only reason she had been able to gain the upper hand when contesting ownership of the ghost ship’s heart.

Seawater flooded into the cabin, and the captain’s corpse rapidly decomposed. Mo Lan’s Origin-Tracing Spell lost its target and came to an abrupt halt.

Though she hadn’t seen the very end, she’d seen enough.

Mo Lan used Teleportation to transport herself out of the cabin. Sitting on her flying carpet, she watched as the ghost ship was gradually swallowed by the sea.

This time, it was sinking forever.

Zhizhi and Clack had come out too. Clack looked at her expectantly.

Mo Lan produced the {Material Card—Heart of the Ghost Ship} and materialized it. “Here you go! There’s more where that came from.”

The heart of the ghost ship was rich in soul energy—even more beneficial to undead creatures than soul essence.

Clack detached its own jawbone and stuffed the heart of the ghost ship into its skull.

Soul fire enveloped the heart of the ghost ship, burning slowly.

Clack’s head lolled to one side, and it collapsed to the ground.

“Squeak!” Zhizhi was so startled it forgot it had learned to speak the common tongue.

“It’s fine,” Mo Lan said.

If not for the fact that the skeleton was still intact, not falling apart, and the soul fire still burned strong, and the undead servant contract was still in good order, Mo Lan herself might have thought the heart of the ghost ship had caused some kind of problem. “It just ate too well. It needs some time to sleep before it can digest.”

When Zhizhi heard that Clack needed to sleep, it immediately flipped open the coffin lid, bundled Clack up, and stuffed it back inside. It even remembered to reattach the jawbone.

However, Zhizhi’s understanding of skeletal anatomy seemed to be lacking—it had put the jawbone on backwards.

Before Mo Lan could point this out, Zhizhi had already closed the coffin lid with a satisfied air.