Ashes Of Deep Sea Chapter 423

Chapter 423: 426 Chapter 423: 426 They rushed toward the deepest part of the corridor, where, in that space of darkness and chaos, thick malice churned like substantial sludge in his perception.

“I get it!” Lawrence suddenly shouted loudly.

Martha's voice came from the mirror, “What do you get?!”

But Lawrence was already too preoccupied to answer the question from the person in the mirror. After vaguely sensing what he must do, he immediately led his men and hastened forward.

Meanwhile, the battle in the corridor was reaching its climax. The Queen's Guard was mounting their final assault–countless phantoms coalesced into warriors roaring and wielding weapons to destroy the monsters in front of them. Warriors kept falling, dissolving into bubbles that faded into the air, as monsters were slain, turning into mud that flowed into the drainage on either side. With this fierce battle continuing, the charging troops finally reached the end of the corridor.

Lawrence finally saw the endpoint of this dreadful battle, the obstacle that had thwarted the Queen's Guard for half a century–
It was a door, a sinister door covered with countless thorns and filthy black mud that sent a chill to one's heart.

On the surface of that door, the crisscrossing thorns were like a crown formed by dry tree branches, and the dim lights wandered aimlessly in the depths of the thorns, as if countless eyes were hidden within, simply one glance in that direction, and an ordinary person would be gripped by fear and madness.

Even Lawrence, now a carrier of the Spiritual Fire, couldn't help but feel a surge of shock that shook his mind upon seeing that gate blocked by thorns.

And that was the target of the Queen's Guard's assault.

In front of the door, countless pools of black mud were converging, and myriad demonic creatures were emerging from the mud–they clumsily mimicked human forms, some dressed as soldiers of the City-State Guards and navy, others as variously equipped pirates and armed civilians, and even… antiquated cannons and heaps of bones shaped like demonic creatures.

These monsters, using the rough fortifications in the hall, defended the Thorn Gate, akin to zealots guarding their deity.

The final battle began.

While the Queen's Guard directed all their firepower at the monsters across the corridor, their counterattack shook the entire second waterway. Both sides of the fierce battle suffered over half their strength in nearly the blink of an eye, and Lawrence and his mere dozen or so sailors could only desperately seek cover at the edge of this catastrophic battlefield.

Amid such concentrated gunfire, even Lawrence, protected by the Spiritual Body's fire, dared not wager whether he was truly invulnerable.

But he wasn't just hiding–he was observing.

He observed the extent to which the Queen's Guard had come in this battle.

And as the battle wore on, and the combatants on both sides dwindled, the defenses in front of the gate finally weakened–the lethal cannons and demonic creatures were torn to shreds, and gaps appeared in the defense line in front of the thorns.

“Demolitions team! Go!”

Hiding beside the Queen's Guard's position, Lawrence suddenly heard a voice, the voice of one of the Guards' commanders.

The next second, his peripheral vision caught sight of several figures crawling forward at the edge of the battlefield.

A squad had broken away from the main position, entering the drainage at the hall's edge out of the monsters' line of sight, and inch by inch, they moved toward a concealed spot at the side of the Thorn Gate.

Meanwhile, the firepower from the main position also suddenly intensified, and a barrage of bullets poured down, striving to suppress and attract the attention of the monsters in front of the gate.

Lawrence involuntarily held his breath–even though he knew that this could just be a mirage impervious to the outside world, he instinctively did so.

But what he feared still happened.

The demolition team nearing the Thorn Gate along the edge of the battlefield was discovered.

A volley of bullets ripped into the drainage, and several soldiers carrying explosives were instantly downed in the trench.

But almost simultaneously, another demolition squad entered the trench on the other side of the hall, continuing their creep towards the Thorn Gate that was shrouded in thorns.

They too were spotted–the second demolition squad fell mere meters from the Thorn Gate.

It was then that a sailor's low call suddenly reached Lawrence's ears, “They're disappearing!”

Immediately, Lawrence looked up to see the scene in the corridor before him–
The Queen's Guard was vanishing.

After the second demolition squad's failure, all the soldiers of the Guard paused for a moment, and then each of them began to fade and dissipate; a third of them turned into semi-transparent phantoms in the blink of an eye!

A phrase Martha once said suddenly surfaced in Lawrence's mind:
“…they could never break through the barrier at the end…”

Lawrence suddenly understood the meaning of that sentence, the outcome of each battle–The Queen's Guard had failed, despite their continual fighting, despite their persistent repetition, the unchangeable truth was that in this “last counter-attack” at midnight, they had failed.

The operation had failed fifty years ago.

Every repetition since then was a reenactment of that failure.

Lawrence was briefly dazed, but just then, his peripheral vision caught another figure appearing on the battlefield.

Chapter end

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