Ashes Of Deep Sea Chapter 720

Chapter 720: Chapter 717: Fracture Chapter 720: Chapter 717: Fracture Light and shadow collapsed once again–the spacious hall and the massive device at its end suddenly disintegrated into countless fragments of light and shadow, collapsing like an avalanche back into the dim appearance of a cave. Everything seemed like a brief illusion, an errant projection of another reality onto this dimension.

However, Duncan knew that he really “saw” it, and he could still see it now.

He looked towards the depths of the dim cave, blinking several times–during each extremely brief moment, with each blink, he saw something emerge in the instant his eyelids closed and darkness descended, the grand hall itself.

Gradually, he realized that two realities were overlapping here, in the depths beneath Holy Land Island, the “reality” that lay even deeper was unobservable by ordinary means, but it appeared within the 0.002 seconds of every blink of his eye.

For some reason, the unit “0.002 seconds” surfaced in Duncan's mind, and he was certain it was the exact time he saw the hall with each blink–an instant almost imperceptible to the human eye, yet sufficient to imprint on his perception.

He turned his head, looking at the “reliefs” on the wall beside him, and in the instant of his next blink, he saw a vivid bird-like creature appear in the specimen containment tank; then darkness surged, reality switched, and it again became a relief on the wall–that was the twisted and formidable “Gao Si Niao .”

Alice seemed to have noticed the change in Duncan's expression and immediately became worried, “Captain? Are you alright… Your face suddenly looks so serious…”
“… LH-01 failed to transfer everything in the database to the Shelter; those that failed during the process of Creation remained at the original 'hatching ground',” Duncan said softly out of the blue, “… this 'Shelter' was supposed to be larger and more perfected, but it failed…”
Morris looked at Duncan in astonishment, suddenly realized something, “What did you touch?”

“There's another pattern here, the way it was before the great annihilation… but you can't see or touch it,” Duncan raised his hand, gently pressing it against the stone wall next to him. When the Ghostly Green Fire spread into the crevices, he could faintly feel he was touching more than just these cold stones, “Two realities are superimposed here, but the one closer to the original form is almost completely devoured by the great annihilation. It only temporarily exists each time I blink.”

Morris tried to comprehend Duncan's description of that unbelievable “state” while the latter had already raised his head, eyes fixed on the deeper parts of the cave.

“There should be a 'contact point' here,” Duncan said in a deep voice, “The Heretics likely touched something here.”

As he spoke, he stepped into the darkness, followed by the slow spread of the Ghostly Green Fire, walking towards the end of the “hall.”

Morris and Alice quickly followed the captain's lead.

A Dog was walking silently beside Sherry with a look of weariness, the blood-red glow in his eyes flickering on and off. The sound of chains scraping against the ground seemed to become a distant noise. He walked a bit further, then, belatedly, lifted his head only to find that Sherry had advanced far ahead–the girl's silhouette seemed blurred, its edges trembling as if something unstable was superimposed upon her.

A Dog shook his head as if his hollow mind had briefly lost the ability to think and judge, but in the next moment, he was abruptly alert again, realizing he was, as usual, closely following Sherry–the scene just before in which they were far apart seemed like a bizarre illusion, vanishing in the blink of an eye.

Sherry looked down with a puzzled expression, noticing that A Dog was walking right beside her.

She also felt a prickling pain in her arm and some sort of burning sensation flowing through the Symbiotic Chains towards her, like… the blood that had just been shed.

“A Dog?” she said hesitantly in a low voice–not sure if she had actually spoken aloud or simply called out in her mind through the symbiotic link.

A Dog didn't respond. The only sounds reaching Sherry's ears were the “thump” “thump” of two beats.

It sounded like a heartbeat.

Something was off… Although she didn't know what exactly it was, something was definitely off!

Sherry tensed up suddenly, realizing there was something wrong at the moment she did, she turned her head sharply towards the direction of the captain, “Captain! Something's wrong with A Dog…”
There was no sight of the captain in front of her.

In the dark cave, only her own voice echoed, soon transforming into a vague noise. The captain was gone, Morris and Alice were gone too, and it seemed as if it had been just her and A Dog all along.

Sherry drew in a sharp breath as immense, boundless darkness transfigured into even more colossal fear–this fear was so familiar. She felt she had managed to forget this chilling sensation that penetrated to the bone, but now everything suddenly reemerged in her mind–fire, smoke, the smell of blood, the sound of something collapsing, something gnawing at her own flesh…
She stared into the darkness in terror, bone-like structures sprouted bit by bit from her arms, shoulders, and spine, blood-colored light filled her eyes, making everything in her vision slowly distort, and within the increasingly warped perception, she heard a slightly unfamiliar voice suddenly come from beside her, “Sherry… I feel… a bit cold…”
She turned her head slowly, looking towards the direction of the voice.

A Dog was sinking slowly–sink into the soil and rocks as though melting, its body being swallowed up by the ground that seemed to come alive, its surface rippling with thick and sluggish waves, inside which seemed to swarm billions of living creatures. A Dog's figure sank little by little into those “creatures,” first the limbs, then the torso, and now only the neck and part of the skull remained.

It opened its mouth towards Sherry, its skeletal jaws opening and closing as if straining to say something, or trying hard to spit something out–
“`
“A'gou!!!”

The numb and rigid mind finally began to function, and Sherry suddenly remembered the name on the other end of the chain. She dashed towards the ground that was slowly coming to life, pulling on the chain with all her might and shouting, “A'gou! I'm pulling you out! Hold on a bit longer!”

However, her efforts did nothing to prevent A'gou from sinking–just as the Abyssal Hound's head was about to be completely swallowed by the thick mud, a voice suddenly reached her ears.

“…Sherry, Dad and I are going to buy you a cake, today is your birthday… Wait for us to come back, then you won't be angry anymore, okay?”

The girl froze for a moment.

The voice that came from the other end of the chain briefly interrupted her reasoning–and during that moment of interruption, she heard a crisp snapping sound.

The chain in her hand suddenly became lighter.

The figure of the Abyssal Hound disappeared completely into the mud, the heavy pull from the end of the chain suddenly vanished, and Sherry stumbled backwards.

She saw the other end of the chain fly out of the mud–it had broken off, and at the severed end of the chain, A'gou was nowhere to be seen. Instead, two objects about the size of fists were pulled out of the mud and dropped beside her.

They thumped on the ground as if they were still alive.

Those were two hearts.

Sherry stared blankly at the scene, motionless like a statue.

The pitch-black mud began to churn slowly, converging from all directions, and within the mud, it seemed as if an illusion of a distant land emerged, with countless twisted and ferocious shadows floating around–
In the Mysterious Deep Sea, numerous Profound Demons had noticed that an uninvited guest was approaching their dimension.

And in the even more distant darkness, an immense structure lay dormant, its main body spanning like a mountain range across the shattered land, tendrils winding around countless floating isles, dark blue glimmers surging across its surface, with Profound Demons burgeoning from those tendrils and being constantly devoured by it every moment.

But it seemed as if Sherry didn't see those encroaching illusions–she sat dumbly on the ground for a while, finally got up slowly, crawled to the two hearts still throbbing, and then carefully picked them up, cradling them in her arms.

It had been a long time since she last held them.

“Dad… Mom…”

Darkness swarmed, and her figure disappeared into the Mysterious Deep Sea.

Duncan suddenly turned his head to look at the clearing not far behind him.

A blurry figure flickered there for a moment, disappearing in the blink of an eye.

He immediately realized, “Something's happened to Sherry!”

“Sherry!?” Morris, walking behind Duncan, was momentarily stunned, as if in that brief moment, he had even forgotten the name “Sherry.” The captain's words then instantly reset his memory to the correct “place.” Only after that did he belatedly look up, realizing that someone… along with a Profound Demon, was missing from the team.

“Hey! She was just walking beside me!” Alice also reacted, widening her eyes as she looked towards the location where Sherry and A'gou had been, “I heard her talking to A'gou…”

Duncan's expression instantly became grave, “None of you noticed when she disappeared?”

Morris and Alice shook their heads in succession.

Duncan's brow furrowed deeply, and after a brief moment of thought, he suddenly swung his hand through the air.

Ghostly Green Spectral Flame soared up in an instant, accompanied by a series of near-roaring explosions, the flames whirling around like a storm, sweeping through every corner of the cavern!

The howling of the flames seemed to shake the fabric of time itself, the entire cavern, even the whole Holy Land Island, trembled violently in that instant. And after this nearly dimension-shaking “tremor,” Duncan's face had already turned grim.

“The marks on Sherry and A'gou are there,” he looked up solemnly at Morris, “…but they have separated.”

Chapter end

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