The Black Seagull departed from the clamor of Port Said, slowly cutting into the Suez Canal.

On both banks stretched endless yellow sand, heat waves distorting the light along the dune ridges, with occasional glimpses of withered shrubs or bleached camel bones.

The leather boots named [Gravity Dancer] looked inconspicuous, even somewhat bulky.

The uppers, stitched from Giant Nabau Serpent skin, displayed a rough, grainy texture.

But only the wearer knew what kind of gripping power lay hidden beneath that roughness.

Lin Jie lowered his head to inspect the boots, trying to shift his center of gravity slightly downward.

The layer of gray gelatin at the soles, forged from the core of the parasitic anchor cluster, immediately reacted.

It captured the faint kinetic energy transmitted from Lin Jie's muscles, altering its own density structure within a thousandth of a second.

The soft rubber sole hardened like iron, biting fiercely into the grain of the teakwood deck.

As if taking root.

Lin Jie soon relaxed his muscles, and the mountain-like heaviness dissipated, the boots reverting to ordinary footwear.

This sense of effortless control satisfied him.

"The grip on these shoes is terrifying."

William walked over, cradling his rifle. He still maintained the vigilance of a sentry, his gaze sweeping over the dunes on both banks.

"But I'm worried about your knees." The veteran glanced at Lin Jie's legs. "All the reactive force from that instantaneous hardening and weight increase travels up your bones. In high-intensity combat, your meniscus might give out before the shoe soles do."

"I'll be careful to control the frequency."

Lin Jie nodded. He pulled a pocket watch from his pocket and checked it. 𝐟𝐫𝕖𝗲𝘄𝚎𝗯𝕟𝐨𝕧𝐞𝚕.𝕔𝕠𝐦

"How long have we been in the canal?"

"Three hours," William replied. "The pilot boat ahead signaled us to maintain five knots. This channel is too narrow. If we scrape the sides, the entire canal could be paralyzed."

Lin Jie looked ahead.

The canal's water surface was as calm as stagnant water.

The water color was a murky yellow-green, a product of seawater mixing with desert dust. But beneath this murkiness seemed to lurk a disturbing sense of viscosity.

This feeling was different from the previous "Spiritual Blind Zone."

That place was deathly silent.

Here, it seemed... too noisy.

"This water isn't right."

Evelyn, who was adjusting her new goggles, suddenly spoke up.

She was sitting on a crate, the newly repaired [Echo Goggles] perched on her nose.

In her vision, the deck, railings, and the distant water surface were all resolved into countless lines and geometric cross-sections.

"What's wrong?" Lin Jie asked.

"The water's structure... is chaotic."

Evelyn adjusted her frames. Her face was somewhat pale, clearly not yet accustomed to this new visual feedback.

"A normal water surface in my vision should be a smooth grid. But the water below is like a tangled ball of yarn. There are many tiny, irregular 'knots' moving beneath the surface."

"Moving?"

Lin Jie walked to the railing and looked down.

The water surface remained calm.

But he keenly noticed that within the murky water, there indeed floated a large number of translucent gelatinous objects.

They were only the size of fingernails, but their numbers were astonishing, densely distributed around the hull, rising and falling with the current.

They looked like the larvae of some kind of jellyfish.

Or perhaps some kind of... secretion.

Just then, a fierce quarrel erupted from the foredeck.

It was two sailors cleaning the deck.

Friction between sailors was common during such dull and scorching voyages.

But these two seemed to be arguing a bit too intensely.

One burly sailor threw down his mop, his face flushed red as he pointed at the other man's nose.

"You idiot! I told you to bring a shovel, not this rotten piece of wood!"

The sailor being cursed at refused to back down, craning his neck and roaring back, "Shut your stinking mouth! You rum-crazed barrel! Did you stuff hot coals down your throat? Why are you yelling so loud!"

These were just two ordinary curses.

In the profanity-filled maritime world, this level of verbal attack didn't even count as a provocation.

But the moment the word "hot coals" was uttered, something bizarre happened.

Just as the burly sailor was about to open his mouth to retort, his face suddenly twisted grotesquely.

A visible plume of black smoke billowed from his mouth.

Then came flames.

The fire seemed to spontaneously ignite on his tongue.

"Ahhh—!"

The sailor let out a piercing shriek. He frantically slapped his own mouth, trying to spit out whatever was inside.

But the fire clung like a stubborn parasite, burning fiercely on the mucous membrane of his mouth, emitting a sizzling sound like roasting meat.

This was just the beginning.

The cursing sailor was stunned by the sight. He instinctively took a step back, bumping into the capstan behind him.

The edge of the capstan had a piece of upturned sheet metal. Though somewhat rusty, its edge was still sharp.

"Careful! That thing is sharp!"

The boatswain nearby instinctively shouted, trying to warn him.

"Sharp."

That word acted like a decree.

The sailor who had bumped into the sheet metal merely brushed his back lightly against it.

Under normal circumstances, this would at most tear his coarse linen shirt, leaving a red mark.

But the moment the word "sharp" reached his ears...

*Riiip.*

A horrifying tearing sound rang out.

The rusty sheet metal effortlessly sliced through the sailor's thick canvas shirt, through his tough skin, through his muscles and spinal column.

Blood gushed out.

The sailor didn't even have time to scream. His whole body went limp as if cut in half, sliding down into the pool of blood.

Panic erupted instantly.

"Damn it! What the hell is going on?"

"Help! Doctor! Get the doctor!"

"He's on fire! His mouth is on fire!"

The crew fell into chaos, with various shouts, cries for help, and curses rising one after another.

And as these sounds arose, disaster began to spread exponentially.

A sailor shouting "Help!" suddenly felt an invisible noose tighten around his neck. He was hoisted into the air, legs kicking wildly, his face turning purple.

An engineer shouting "I'm going to split open!" really began to develop countless fine cracks on his skin's surface, blood seeping out like sweat.

Language.

Language was no longer a carrier of information.

It had become a mold for reality.

Once spoken aloud, as long as the word carried a clear physical meaning, it would transform into an objectively existing physical phenomenon.

"Shut up!"

Lin Jie had already rushed to the foredeck.

He immediately drew [Silencer], pointing the blade at the screaming, fire-spewing sailor, and slammed the hilt hard against the back of the sailor's head.

Physical knockout.

The scream abruptly ceased.

As the sound vanished, the fire in the sailor's mouth also seemed to lose its fuel, extinguishing, leaving behind only a mouthful of charred, ruined flesh.

"Everyone, shut up!"

Lin Jie turned around, his eyes coldly sweeping over the panicked crew.

His left hand made a "cutting" gesture across his throat.

It was a life-saving warning.

William and Julian also arrived.

Though they hadn't fully grasped the situation, their instincts as seasoned investigators immediately told them something was wrong here.

"Don't speak."

Lin Jie said in an extremely low voice to his teammates, simultaneously pointing to his own ear, then to the water surface.

"Sound is the Medium."

"There's something in the water."

Evelyn leaned against the railing, her [Echo Goggles] operating frantically.

In her structural perspective vision, she saw a scene that made her scalp tingle.

The gelatinous objects underwater were rapidly aggregating.

Every time someone on the deck uttered a syllable, those gelatinous objects below would produce a violent vibration.

This vibration released a kind of deep purple mist visible in the structural vision.

This was probably the truth behind "words becoming reality."

Julian, his face pale, pulled out the notebook he bought from the Port Said antique shop and flipped through it rapidly.

Soon, his finger stopped on a page with a hand-drawn illustration.

The illustration depicted a jellyfish that looked like a brain slice. The annotation below was written in ancient Greek.

He took out a pen, wrote two words on his palm, and showed them to Lin Jie.

Syllable Medusa.

Lin Jie nodded.

The notebook recorded that these were highly social predators that had somehow appeared within the Suez Canal.

They lurked in the narrow channels. Once prey made a sound, especially sounds carrying strong emotional colors like fear or anger, those sounds would transform into lethal weapons.

Sailors would die from their own screams, from their companions' cries for help.

In the end, the ship would become a ghost ship laden with corpses.

This cycle had to be broken.

But how to fight under such circumstances?

Any tactical command, any spell incantation, even the "click" sound when pulling a trigger could become a deadly physical attack.

The entire ship fell into a suffocating dead silence.

The surviving sailors covered their mouths in terror. Even the injured could only grit their teeth, swallowing painful groans back down their throats.

Because they had witnessed with their own eyes that the person who had just cried out in pain had truly died from the "pain."

Lin Jie surveyed his surroundings.

The Black Seagull was currently stopped in the middle of the canal.

This was a death trap.

If they didn't deal with the things underwater, they would eventually break down mentally and make a sound.

Or, if someone passed by on the canal banks, if someone spoke...

Lin Jie's gaze fell on the pile of wooden crates stacked on the deck for camouflage.

That was their cargo.

As a smuggling ship, besides opium and spices, the hold usually carried some heavier, more dangerous items.

During the previous inspection, Lin Jie remembered seeing dozens of barrels marked with red paint in a corner of the lower hold.

That was strong alkali.

Sodium hydroxide.

It was a raw material used for dyeing textiles or making soap, also a major item on the smuggling list.

Jellyfish.

No matter how bizarre their abilities, whether they were conceptual beings or physical entities.

They were still life forms based on protein structures.

And strong alkali was the bane of proteins.

By altering the pH of this body of water, destroying the chemical environment they depended on for survival, or even directly corroding their bodily structures, this intricate "pheromone field" would collapse.

Lin Jie looked at William.

He didn't speak, but made a series of not-so-standard Association tactical hand signals.

William understood immediately.

He put down his rifle, patted the bewildered first mate on the shoulder, pointed to the entrance leading to the cargo hold, and made a lifting motion.

Though the first mate didn't understand sign language, in this life-or-death situation, human survival instinct made him quickly grasp William's intent.

He pointed to a few physically strong sailors and followed William as they rushed toward the lower hold.

The entire process involved no verbal communication.

Only hurried but deliberately muffled footsteps.

A few minutes later.

Heavy iron barrels were carried up to the deck one by one.

Lin Jie walked to the gunwale, looking at the dense mass of gelatinous objects underwater.

They seemed to sense the prey's silence, becoming somewhat restless.

The purple pheromone mist grew denser, beginning to spread toward the ship.

Small sparks and frost appeared in the air.

These were the precursors of ambient noise being materialized.

They couldn't wait any longer.

Lin Jie raised his hand.

William, the first mate, and several sailors acted simultaneously.

They used crowbars to pry open the lids of the iron barrels.

Inside were white, flaky solid alkali.

*Splash!*

Ten barrels of strong alkali were dumped into the canal at the same time.

White powder cascaded into the murky water like an avalanche.

Intense heat was released. The river water began to boil, emitting billowing white steam.

The yellow-green water quickly turned turbid, transforming into a corrosive milky white.

Movement came from underwater.

Countless gelatinous objects contracted violently and dissolved in the strong alkali solution.

Their fragile protein structures were destroyed, their bodily fluids leaking out, further exacerbating the chaos in the water.

The purple mist began to dissipate.

Breaches appeared in the logic-distorting force field.

Just then, the water surface suddenly erupted.

A massive, translucent creature over three meters in diameter burst out from beneath the ship.

It looked like a huge, swollen human brain, trailing countless nerve fiber-like tentacles beneath.

It thrashed painfully on the water's surface. The alkali corrosion was causing its epidermis to peel off rapidly.

It made a sound.

A series of complex, meaningless syllables.

"Ka... Ta... Pa..."

As it shrieked, the surrounding space began to visibly distort.

The railings on the deck suddenly bent into serpentine shapes. Several rusty blades materialized out of thin air.

This was a dying counterattack.

It was trying to drag everyone down with it using chaotic linguistic logic.

The crew covered their ears in agony. Some had already ruptured their eardrums, blood flowing out.

William raised his rifle, but found the barrel had turned into limp noodles.

The concept of "firing" had been altered.

Lin Jie stood in place.

His right hand slowly rose—the hand holding [Serene Heart].

Embedded in the grip of this gun was the Hearing Bone of the deep-sea demon monk.

Fused within the gun body was the Silent Bone of the Tongue-Ripper.

It was the nemesis of sound.

It was absolute silence.

Lin Jie pulled the trigger.

There was no gunshot.

In this world filled with chaotic syllables and screams, this gunshot was like a black hole, instantly devouring all noise.

The specially crafted alchemical bullet cut through the distorted air.

*Thump.*

The bullet accurately drilled into the core of the Mother Body.

After being struck, the brain-like creature became like a muted video frame.

Its shriek abruptly ceased.

The spatial distortions around its body also smoothed out.

Immediately after, its body began to collapse from within.

Not rotting, but disintegrating into countless tiny white bubbles.

With the death of the Mother Body, the oppressive feeling surrounding the "Black Seagull" disappeared.

The railings regained their hardness.

The blades in the air dissipated into nothingness.

The fear of being killed by one's own voice finally receded.

"Cough, cough..."

The first mate slumped to the deck, tentatively coughing twice.

No flames shot out. No knives cut his throat.

"We... we survived?"

He asked in a hoarse voice. This simple sentence now sounded like heavenly music.

Lin Jie holstered his gun and straightened his slightly disheveled collar.

He looked at the slowly dissolving jellyfish remnants in the alkaline water, his gaze calm.

"Clean the deck."

"Dump the remaining alkali down to ensure no residue remains."

Lin Jie turned and walked toward the cabin.

"Also, tell the Captain."

"We need to buy more chemical reagents at the next supply point."

"In this world, some things are more effective than bullets."

Evelyn took off her goggles, wiping the moisture from them. Watching Lin Jie's retreating back, a flicker of admiration passed through her eyes.

This wasn't a victory achieved through brute force.

This was a perfect deconstruction of the rules.

On this journey filled with unknowns and grotesqueries, knowledge and calmness were the sharpest weapons.

The Black Seagull restarted its engines.

Stirred by the propeller, the milky-white waters were gradually left behind.

Ahead, the breeze of the Mediterranean Sea was already faintly perceptible.