From the Ship of Fools to Earl of Wugang

"What's going on?" Jacob's voice suddenly turned icy.

"Someone is transferring money!" the technician's voice trembled. "All our major accounts in seventeen jurisdictions are being transferred simultaneously!"

"Stop it!"

"We've tried!" The technician's fingers were frantically typing on the keyboard, but the waterfall of numbers on the screen showed no sign of slowing down.

"The other side has higher command privileges than us, and their default commands have locked all modification ports—I cannot interrupt them!"

"Impossible!" Jacob pushed the technician aside and sat down in front of the terminal himself.

The numbers on the screen were still scrolling rapidly. He didn't understand computers—which was why he had always relied on Edmund—but he could read the amounts.

Fifty thousand, one hundred thousand, three hundred thousand... each sum tore a piece of flesh from the lifeline of the religious order.

"Disconnect! Turn off the power! Shut down this damn machine!"

The technician stammered, "It's no use. The instruction has already been sent through the bank's system. Our terminal is just a monitoring terminal; disconnecting won't affect the transfer instructions that have already been sent."

"Furthermore, the other party's transfer script appears to have been initiated using our own identifier, which the system considers a legitimate operation..."

"Identification code?" The voice coming from under Jacob's hood carried the oppressive feeling of the sea before a storm.

"It's the machine's identification code; all commands are marked as originating from this terminal—"

Jacob didn't let him finish. In his view, this damned machine was the root of the problem.

If the instruction originated from this machine, then destroying this machine might stop the remaining transfers.

This judgment is actually wrong, completely wrong. But Jacob is no longer in a state of rational thinking.

A sickeningly loud bang came from under his hood, and his black robe began to twist and swell.

Two of the three technicians instinctively screamed, but their suppressed will prevented them from escaping.

Old Gerard calmly rose from his chair and stepped back—he had seen it far too many times.

Jacob's right sleeve suddenly swelled up, and a cluster of red and blue intertwined tentacles flew out and slammed into the computer host.

The metal chassis was instantly flattened by the extraordinary force, shattering circuit boards and hard drive fragments flying out, sparks flashing among the debris.

The monitor bounced off the table and shattered on the ground, the residual fluorescent light from the lamp illuminating the debris.

Old Gerard watched the whole thing from the sidelines, his silver-gray eyes filled only with exhaustion, perhaps with a hint of irony in his heart.

"Use the spare one." He looked at the technician and pointed to a spare computer in the corner that had not yet been opened.

The two controlled technicians snapped out of their shock and mechanically carried out the instructions.

Ten minutes later, the new machine was fully operational, and Jacob had regained his human form—at least superficially.

His breathing was heavy, and under his hood, one could vaguely see some unnatural textures on his face, as if something was wriggling under his skin.

The account overview page loads, showing the balances of all major accounts—

Approaching zero.

Each account had only a symbolic few dollars left, as if someone had deliberately left it as a mockery.

Old Gerard stared at the screen for a few seconds, then slowly leaned back in his chair, letting out a sigh that vibrated with the sound of his gills.

He stated a simple life lesson he had just learned: "Computers are unreliable."

Jacob didn't speak; he stood motionless beside the shattered wreckage of the mainframe.

But in the shadows beneath the hood, something was writhing in a highly unnatural way.

"They've all been transferred?" Jacob's voice was as soft as a whisper.

"Well, actually I saved a few dollars, which might be enough to buy a steak." Old Gerard rubbed his thick, fish-like lips, confirming this harsh reality.

The silence lasted for about five seconds, and then the temperature in the room suddenly dropped.

The three technicians almost simultaneously felt an invisible pressure squeezing in from all directions, as if they were being stared at by the terrifying gaze of an endless abyss.

In their extreme terror, their suppressed self-awareness even awoke for a fleeting moment.

With a huge, sticky explosion, countless pieces of flesh and blood burst out from under Jacob's burqa, and his body turned into a twisted mass of tentacles, scales, and some kind of dark gray gelatinous substance.

Before the first technician could even scream, a tentacle wrapped around his head and easily twisted it off his neck.

Blood gushed out like a fountain, rushing towards the dark ceiling before falling limply to the ground, forming a dark red stream.

The second technician tried to escape, but his legs were entangled by another tentacle, and he was lifted up and slammed against the wall, his body folded at an impossible angle and thrown to the ground.

The third technician was the youngest; before he was taken into custody, he was probably an outstanding student in the computer science department of some university.

At that moment, his self-awareness was briefly and fully awakened in fear. He stared wide-eyed as the indescribable monster approached him, and squeezed out a final plea with a touch of humanity from his throat.

"Please—I won't—"

The tentacles pierced through his chest cavity.

Three bodies lay in pools of blood, which slowly seeped through the cracks in the stone floor, mingling with the inherent dampness of the basement.

Jacob regained his human form within minutes, now completely naked due to the damage to his cloak. His breathing was still heavy, and he glanced down at his hands, where the tentacle tissues were slowly retracting under his skin.

"Glad."

The old accountant, calmly observing the bloody scene before him, tilted his head slightly. In his forty years of service in the religious order, he had seen things far worse.

"This must not be told, do you understand?" Jacob's voice returned to its cold calm, as if his rage had never happened.

"I see."

"Neither the cult members, the remnants of those white gloves, nor the divine messengers could know that our funds had been emptied. At least not until I get them back."

"Catch them back?" Old Gerard's gills twitched. "How are you going to catch them? For example, do you know who did it?"

"I don't know. But I do know that the fact that the other party can initiate a transfer using our own identification code means they possess something left behind by Lockman."

Jacob picked up a piece of hard drive fragment from the pool of blood and crushed it in his hand.

"Logically speaking, Lockman should have already perished at sea."

He stood up and walked towards the door.

"I need to go out for a bit and bring in a new batch of technicians. This bunch of useless people are no good—but the new ones might be able to trace the funds through the transfer records."

He stopped at the doorway and glanced at old Gerard.

"While I'm gone, you stay here. Anyone who approaches the castle without authorization will be dealt with immediately."

"certainly."

Jacob stepped out of the basement. His footsteps echoed in the stone corridor, gradually fading into the distance.