When he said this, I was immediately curious, so I lowered my head and opened the cover of the notebook.

On the white pad paper inside the cover, there are two bold words written in black oil paint: black death.

These two words are written in the very center of the white pad paper, which contrasts with the surrounding white, so that it seems so clear that it seems to be imprinted in one's mind at once.

Just as I was about to open the pad paper and look at the contents of the notes, Lao Tang reached out a hand and grabbed my wrist, he shook his head at me: "The things recorded in it are too striking, let's drink tea first, and then look at it carefully if you are interested in the content of it." ”

At that time, I could feel that Lao Tang seemed to be full of fear of what was written in the notebook, and the fear was not only slowly emerging in the depths of his heart, but also reflected in his limbs, and the hand he was holding me at this time was trembling slightly.

I nodded and closed the notebook again, and Tang let out a sigh of relief and said to my master, "You don't know what happened to us since you left the Iron Maiden. ”

The master looked relaxed: "Yo, listen to what you mean, in recent years, you have not had a good time." ”

Lao Tang sighed: "After you leave, I have to recruit fighters almost every other year, because every combatant who sets foot on the Iron Lady will not live for a year, these people are really ...... They died worse than the other, and each one died on the ship, and I don't even know how they died. ”

Only then did the master frown: "Only the combatants were killed, and everyone else was okay?" ”

Lao Tang nodded: "Everyone else is fine." ”

As he spoke, he took a pipe out of his pocket, polished the match, lit the pot, and then continued: "The point is that we don't know whether those combatants killed him or committed suicide. Now the Iron Maiden is almost a wreck, and no one wants to go up except for a few of us old fellows and the captain who came on board six years ago. All told, we haven't been able to get any business from the sea market for eighteen months. ”

Lu Shengcai got up and poured tea for the people present, Lao Tang took the teacup handed over by Lu Shengcai and said "thank you", but his speech was interrupted.

The Master stared at the teacup in his hand and pondered for a moment before he spoke, "Are there similar situations with other ships?" ”

Lao Tang pouted: "There are some who have not encountered abnormalities, and there are some cases that are more serious than us." Didn't I say it before, from '96 to the present, the sea market has folded many boats, from small fishing boats to cruise ships. ”

At this, Old Town paused, as if trying to calm his fluctuating mind.

After a while, he continued: "The common denominator of these ships is that, when we found them, they were as if they had existed for a whole century, broken, decaying, and overgrown with unknown sea creatures. And all the people on the ship have disappeared, not only the people, but even the traces of their life on the ship have disappeared. The clothes they had worn, the shoes they had worn, the everyday items they had used, and the captain's logbook, were all missing. It was as if there was an invisible force that deliberately erased all traces of the ship. ”

The master rubbed his temples: "I still haven't figured out what's going on?" ”

Lao Tang shook his head: "No." But one thing is certain, the ocean is not the same as it used to be. ”

When he said this, his eyes were filled with fear.

The master asked, "If you say these things, will it have anything to do with the Four Directions?" ”

Lao Tang still shook his head: "I can't tell, maybe there is, maybe not." ”

After speaking, Lao Tang turned to me again: "For the sake of livelihood, I hope that you will get on the ship, if we still can't get business from the sea market in the next fifteen months, the Iron Lady will definitely cease to exist." But the current ocean is too dangerous, Lao Du is my friend, and you are his disciple, I don't want you to have an accident. I know that in your business, there is nothing more important than legacy. ”

I wanted to respond to Lao Tang, but Lao Tang's words were not finished: "You don't have to make a decision in a hurry now, find a time to read the notes I gave you, if you read the content and still decide to get on the boat, I won't stop you." ”

It seems that Lao Tang has made a choice for me, and I can only nod silently about this.

With me nodding like this, Lao Tang seemed to have solved a big problem, and spit out a long, long breath of turbidity.

As if to dilute the oppressive atmosphere that permeated the air, Master stopped talking about the sea and turned to talk about the trivialities of life and the anecdotes in China over the years.

In the course of their small talk, I learned that Lao Tang had a pair of children, but he had not seen them for a long time, and only occasionally contacted them by letter, and his children only knew that he had been going to sea all year round, and did not know what he was going to sea for, and he did not know very well what his children were relying on to make a living now, but only vaguely knew that his daughter was a lawyer.

I didn't interject a few words almost the whole time, just listened to other people's small talk, for Lu Shengcai and Yunshang, this seemed to be a good opportunity to practice their spoken English, the two of them had a few words with Lao Tang from time to time, but they could understand what Lao Tang said, and the accents of the two of them, Lao Tang sounded very difficult.

But I don't have the extra heart to pay attention to these, and now my mind is all tempted by Lao Tang's notebook.

It was close to noon that Lao Tang said goodbye to us, and Master kept sending him to the dock before reluctantly taking us away.

That time, I didn't see the Iron Lady as Master said, and Old Tang said that I could only see the ship when I was sure to follow him out to sea.

When I got back to the hotel, I didn't bother to have lunch, so I quickly returned to my room, closed the curtains, turned on the fluorescent lamp, and opened the old notes of Lao Tang.

Why close the curtains? Because I have a very strange feeling in my heart that if I don't pull the curtains to death, when I open the note, some person, or something, will peek into the content of the note through the window on the north wall of the room.

I lifted the cover again, and the words on the pad paper came to me again, and this time, they looked extremely glaring, immersed in the black lines of pure white, like dead snakes on a pile of paper.

Suppressing the discomfort in my heart, I flipped through the pad paper.

The note begins with a few lines of scribbled English: "I tried to find a cure for these patients, but I failed, and now, the damn crow has found me......"

At the end of these lines of handwriting, there was a long, narrow dark red smear, like a dried bloodstain.