Ashes Of Deep Sea Chapter 477

Chapter 477: Chapter 478: It Looms Over the Abyss Chapter 477: Chapter 478: It Looms Over the Abyss The submersible had passed beneath the “base” of the City-State, where the endless dark waters replaced the vertical and rough “cliff” that had been there before. The beams of the high-powered searchlights extended infinitely in the water, within their range, nothing could be seen.

Only occasionally would there be a small flash of light within the beam, which was either floating bubbles or some “debris” that had fallen from the upper layers, reflecting the light in the water.

Duncan was turning a crank on the control panel, and the sound of water being injected in the ballast tanks changed into a low roar. He slowed down the descent of the submersible and carefully tilted it upward at an angle.

After crossing that boundary, he wanted to “look back” and observe what the base of the City-State actually looked like.

The beam of light slowly swept through the darkness, revealing something so massive that it took one's breath away, with an overwhelming sense of oppression emanating from that inverted “rock layer” – even without any Transcendent factors causing mental contamination, this sight alone was enough to impose a heavy psychological weight on most ordinary people, to the extent of damaging their psyche.

The “base” of Frost City-State appeared outside the portholes, hanging upside down like the earth itself, crushing everything under its encompassing view. Countless jagged structures, resembling both clumps of stone pillars and forests of spires, could be seen with various protrusions, dozens to hundreds of meters tall, erratically arranged. Among these structures were things resembling some kind of adhesive substance stretching between the “pillars”.

However, amid the shock and oppression that bombarded him, what surged in Duncan's heart was an irrepressible curiosity–he cautiously maneuvered the rudimentary submersible machine toward the strange and jagged Inverted Jungle.

At the same time, aboard the Homeloss, Duncan had arrived in front of the captain's quarters and pushed open the door known as “The Displaced's Gateway”.

Zhou Ming entered his bachelor apartment and was unsurprised to see the newly formed collection item on the table, emitting a faint glow–the delicate “model” of Frost City-State.

He approached the table and picked up the strikingly detailed model of the City-State, carefully inspecting every part of it before turning it over to examine its underside structure.

The dense and complex protrusions looked like some kind of disorganized… tentacles, or to be more bold in conjecture–like some sort of limbs.

Compared to merely using fire to sense the structure at the bottom of the City-State, this “deep dive” had provided Zhou Ming with much finer details.

He slowly closed his eyes, feeling the messages from another world, the vibrations of the submersible, and the grand and moving “scenery” outside the portholes of the submersible.

This inconspicuous steel device was passing between two “pillars” that seemed to be one or two hundred meters tall, the light beams from the searchlights sweeping over the rugged protrusions in the distance, enabling Duncan to find a relatively safe path through them.

These were scenes never mentioned in the Abyssal Expedition Project documents–neither in the intelligence provided by Tyriante, nor in the dossiers left in the city hall had there been any mention of a submersible navigating through the “Inverted Jungle” beneath the base of the City-State.

Perhaps, the original explorers had focused their entire attention on the deep sea, neglecting to do such superfluous things, or perhaps, this Inverted Jungle of fierce and terrifying things was too dangerous in the darkness that the previous submersibles had opted not to rashly delve into it, or perhaps…

Someone had done so, but none had been able to bring the truth of what they saw back to the surface of the sea.

The beam of the searchlight swept over another area in the darkness.

Something appeared in Duncan's field of vision.

The next second, he abruptly pulled a lever on the control panel, the sudden reversal of the propellers causing an impact that even produced a series of squeaking and creaking noises inside the submersible. The fragile steel sphere trembled in the deep water, accompanied by the dreadful sound of mechanical structures under strain – it finally stopped just short of hitting a nearby “pillar”.

“What happened?” Agatha asked in a panic.

She looked up in the direction of the porthole but could only see many dangling luminous spots outside, and among them, a larger glowing body with a hazy light, its internal details indistinguishable.

But Duncan, for a moment, did not respond. He was just staring outside the porthole, at that thing that had just emerged from the darkness…

A huge and pale eye.

An enormous eye, wide open, situated amidst those black, tentacle-like protrusions, its diameter might span a hundred meters, making the small submersible appear like an insignificant pebble in its presence.

This eye, devoid of any signs of life, seemed to have been dead for hundreds, perhaps even thousands of years. It was pallid and hollow, embedded at the bottom of the City-State, hanging outside the porthole as if in its dying moments, it still calmly gazed down at the endless, profound darkness of the sea floor below. The submersible was now suspended right in front of its lifeless pupil, subject to its ancient and withered scrutiny.

“It's an eye,” Duncan finally broke the silence and spoke softly.

He turned his head again, observing other directions through another side window.

The residual light from the searchlight illuminated the surroundings, revealing the black “stalactites” dangling in the water, which he could now confirm were truly limbs.

They were mutated, degenerated tentacles that had lost their vitality.

These tentacles hung in the water like the withered vines suspended from the roof of a cave.

Agatha gripped the handrail tightly. Although her heart had stopped beating, she still felt like something was trying to burst out of her chest. When she realized what she had heard and understood the true nature of those glimmers in front of her, she even felt a rare sensation of suffocation, “You… you mean…”
“The City-State, built upon some vast creature,” Duncan said slowly, equally shocked by the sight before him, yet struggling to compose himself and organize his thoughts, “At least… it still retains some characteristics of a living being.”

Agatha was at a loss for words for a long time, after which she managed to articulate amid extreme astonishment and confusion, “Is it… dead?”

She unconsciously lowered her voice as if she were afraid that speaking too loudly might awaken that unimaginable, incomprehensible “creature.”

“It should be dead,” Duncan said while he cautiously operated the submarine, slowly moving away from the huge, pale eye. His movements were very careful–as much as he was almost certain the giant creature was dead, he still couldn't help but imagine a chilling scenario where if the submarine moved too abruptly, the eye might suddenly turn towards them, “And theoretically, it shouldn't look like this, this goes against biological norms… It looks more like a twisted cadaver, or something built using a cadaver as material…”
However, Agatha did not speak. She didn't know whether to marvel at Captain Duncan's ability to calmly analyze the situation under these circumstances, or whether a creature capable of carrying a City-State even needed to “conform to biological norms”–immense chaos and shock were filling her heart, to the point where she simply couldn't consider these matters as calmly as she normally would.

The worldview she had established for so long was being tested.

The true appearance beneath the City-State was so horrifying and strange, mankind's only haven in the Endless Sea was built upon an indescribable creature, beneath everyone's feet, at the bottom of hundreds of meters of rock and soil, the withered tentacles stretching into the deep sea, the pale eyes overlooking the abyss, and everyone was… completely unaware.

After a lengthy period of stunned silence, Agatha finally snapped out of it. She turned to Duncan, hesitating before asking, “Is it just Frost like this?”

She didn't know why she was asking Captain Duncan this question, and she hadn't even thought about what answer she might receive–it was just that her immense confusion was prompting her to speak, even if the question was destined to have no conclusion.

But the captain did answer.

“Perhaps all City-States are like this,” Duncan said slowly, recalling the “perception” he had of what lay beneath Plunder that he had felt before, and at the same time, he was examining the “collection” on the shelf of his bachelor apartment, “Under Plunder City-State there are structures similar to here–but no eyes; instead, where the eyes should be, there is only a mass of grotesquely swollen lumps.”

Startled, Agatha blurted out, “You've dived into the depths beneath Plunder?”

Duncan shook his head, “No, this is my first personal dive into the deep sea, but I have other means to roughly sense what lies beneath the City-States.”

As he spoke, he looked up, gazing out the window at the “jungle” of tentacles that hung upside-down in the darkness.

Rough perceptions have their limits; had he not personally come to look this time, he might never have imagined that the rugged, grotesque structures beneath the City-State… were actually unspeakable remains.

The giant, pale eyeball was gradually moving away from view, the beam of light from the searchlight sweeping across the tentacles surrounding it. However, even as the eye faded into the darkness, a sensation of being watched for a long time still haunted his mind, as if countless invisible tentacles were wrapping around the hull of the submarine from every direction.

Even the operation of the steam core seemed to become heavy and slow.

But these were all illusions–the submarine continued to smoothly move away from the “forest” and the eye, without any substantial hindrance.

“We need to dive deeper,” Duncan turned his head towards Agatha and said, “The true nature of the 'foundation' of the City-State is just the beginning. We're entering the blind spot of the civilized world, anything could happen next–do you have the courage?”

Agatha turned around as well, with the black curtain separating them, she met Duncan's gaze unflinchingly.

“I am ready,” said the Guardian of the City-State in a calm tone, “Let's continue to dive.”

Chapter end

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