Bab 360: Chapter 364: Leaving Secretly

Martha had disappeared, as if she had never existed from the start.

Yet the warm touch still lingered on his temples, the slightly lemon-scented breath still swirling around his nose—she seemed as if she had never come, yet also as if she had never left.

Lawrence felt his fingers trembling slightly. Bowing his head, he tried several times before successfully resealing the small bottle cap, and it took him a long while to place it back into his inner pocket. His heart pounded fiercely—even during great storms, it had never thumped like this.

Rationality arrived belatedly, as if awakening from a long dream. He realized that he had just brushed against madness and nearly fallen into a state of persistent delusion. For a captain who had been drifting on the Endless Sea for most of his life, once engulfed in such a state, retrieving his sanity would be impossible, yet at this moment, he felt neither the relief of a narrow escape nor the residual fear from facing madness.