Ashes Of Deep Sea Chapter 724

Chapter 724: Chapter 721: Through the Dome Chapter 724: Chapter 721: Through the Dome The illusory, fleeting voice vanished in an instant, as if it had never existed.

Alice blinked in the dark “tunnel,” her mind a mix of doubt and confusion about what she had just heard. She wondered if she had misheard, but…

The captain had said that in this peculiar place, no matter what you hear or see, you must speak up immediately, even if it might be a hallucination.

So, she immediately grabbed Duncan's arm forcefully, “Captain, I just heard a voice!”

“A voice?” Duncan turned around instantly, staring into the puppet's eyes in the darkness, “What kind of voice?”

Alice immediately relayed what she had heard to the captain–including the unidentifiable short burst of noise and the strange “name,” LH-03, “Navigation Three.”

In the dark, endless tunnel, Duncan's eyes slowly widened. He looked at the puppet before him with an odd and astonished gaze, then a flicker of realization suddenly appeared in his eyes.

So, that's it… Could it actually be like this?!

With a series of chaotic thoughts and astonishing conjectures surging to his mind, he understood many things almost instantly–at the same time, he noticed intricate and magnificent patterns of light and shadow appearing from the corner of his eye.

Duncan turned back abruptly, looking in the direction where the patterns of light manifested.

The next second, he saw the “starry sky” above the Dome Layer of the Mysterious Deep Sea–
Majestic starlight appeared at the end of the “tunnel,” a grand sight composed of myriad stars, star-forming nebulae, and high-energy radiation clouds interwoven in endless darkness. The starry river spanned the void, while violently erupting massive celestial bodies were torn into luminescent clouds spreading between galaxies. All of it fell upon Duncan and Alice's view like a lavish, twinkling curtain with the overwhelming force of a turbulent sea!

Duncan's eyes widened at once.

This was the “starry sky” well known to captains sailing the Endless Sea, located between the Spirit Realm and the Mysterious Deep Sea, which normally could only be observed from above through the complex Spirit Realm's lens–mariners of the mortal realm could only cautiously glimpse through a thick lens and multiple protective layers. But here, the most genuine appearance and every detail of this starry sky filled his sight.

Duncan and Alice accelerated their fall towards the static starry sky, drawn swiftly into the “Dome Layer” above the Mysterious Deep Sea by an unseen force.

They plunged into the “starlight” and began to pass quickly between the stationary celestial bodies.

In a brief hesitation, Duncan reached out towards the unfamiliar starlight.

A dazzling orange-yellow star passed through his palm like a phantom–he noticed that his hand, too, began to show speckles of starlight, but clearly, the two did not interact.

Then, he suddenly noticed Alice's unusual silence by his side–normally, the puppet would have been making a fuss upon seeing such a magnificent starry sky.

However, Alice just stared with wide eyes at her surroundings, seemingly captivated by something, the resplendent and glittering starlight reflecting in her deep purple pupils, flickering with spirited luster–after quite a while, the puppet suddenly raised her hand, pointing in a direction as if muttering in her sleep, “Coordinates misaligned.”

Duncan frowned, “What did you say?”

Alice seemed not to hear the captain's voice, as she kept watching the starlight around her; then, she raised her hand again, pointing in another direction, “Coordinates misaligned.”

“Coordinates misaligned.” “Coordinates misaligned.” “Coordinates misaligned…”

Alice spoke rapidly, her gaze sweeping back and forth among the stars as if desperately searching for some kind of “reference” that could help her find her way. Right when Duncan was about to forcefully “wake” her, she suddenly stopped again, as if she had been jolted awake from a muddled dream, and turned to Duncan with a dazed look, “… Report, navigation system malfunction.”

She paused, seeming a bit more lucid than before, and slapped her head with her hand, then scratched her hair in confusion, “Ah… Captain, I think my head just filled up with lots of weird stuff all of a sudden…”
Duncan quickly grabbed Alice's arm, as wisps of fire danced at his fingertips, and he asked in a softened voice, “What did you see?”

“Stars… there were lines among the stars, and numbers and symbols,” Alice's gaze still carried a touch of bewilderment as she answered the captain's question, though it seemed like part of her mind was still busy with something else, “I should find a path, avoid those collapsing gravity wells… but the coordinates are misaligned, we… have no safe path…”
She looked up in confusion, surveying the “starry sky” around her–the static group of stars seemed to document a distant voyage, in a distant past, in a universe that had long since perished, she had once navigated through here, guiding the last of the refugees seeking an escape route… But escape… from what?

A spreading dark red glow emerged in her mind.

The entire universe was red-shifting… stars disintegrating, the fabric of space collapsing… matter breaking apart… servosystems wailing with the cry of imminent collapse…

The spaceship was disintegrating, the navigation chamber ablaze… commencing emergency backup procedures.

Alice suddenly opened her eyes wide. The chaotic information in her mind seemed to be smoothed over by some powerful force in an instant. She shook her head, loosening her neck slightly, and forgetting the messy thoughts that had just swirled in her head.

A warm flame burned quietly beside her, the power emanating from it gradually stabilizing her mind. She turned her head and saw the Captain standing beside her, giving her a concerned look, “Alice, don't think too much for now.”

Alice pondered for a moment and shook her head in confusion, “Captain, I think I saw something… but I've forgotten it!”

“I know, but it doesn't matter, just let it be forgotten,” Duncan said softly, patting Alice's arm, “We're going to find the answers now.”

“Oh.” Alice nodded, not quite understanding.

Duncan didn't say anything more. He was cautiously maintaining the flame to protect Alice's mind while casting his grave gaze towards the depths of the starry river.

A series of intelligence reports surfaced in his mind and finally began to link together–
Here there was a still stars' “holographic snapshot,” which had floated in the “Dome Layer” of the Mysterious Deep Sea for long ages, providing “navigation” for sailors throughout the world;
The master of the Mysterious Deep Sea, The Saint, was called Pilot One, code LH-01;
When Alice entered the “black gate,” she briefly heard a voice that called her LH-03, Pilot Three;
God of Wisdom Rahm's real name was LH-02, Pilot Two, whose image in the archives made Duncan think of a large server flickering with countless lights;
Ten thousand years ago, a spaceship called New Hope crashed into this “world ruin,” apparently trying to escape the doom of its home universe, but ultimately disintegrated during the final stage of its voyage, breaking into three parts…

Three parts, perfectly corresponding to three modular “hosts”…

Duncan exhaled softly, letting the stormy thoughts in his mind calm down and glanced out of the corner of his eye at the doll following obediently by his side.

Now… he finally knew what the replication of The Saint had stuffed into this doll's shell back in the Frost Deep Sea.

The starlight in front of them was gradually reaching its end–in the depths of the Dome Layer, there were countless broken floating islands drifting in the dark chaos.

The Mysterious Deep Sea.

A monstrous limb with countless ghastly barbs descended from the sky, pinning a writhing deformed lump of flesh, that kept bulging and squirming on the ground, firmly onto the rocks.

The entity known as the Fear Demon, a Profound Demon, let out a terrifying series of screams, but no matter how it struggled, it couldn't break free from those skeletal limbs, and in almost the blink of an eye, it deflated rapidly like a punctured balloon. Clouds of murky smoke dust evaporated from its surface, and the remaining parts turned into a sludge-like “mud,” swiftly absorbed by the skeletal limb.

The towering skeletal limb curved upward, and from the center of its twelve symmetrical limbs, a Profound Demon retaining some aspects of a human female form, gigantic in size, was slowly raising its head.

Sherry glanced calmly over the desolate landscape's many remnants–ripped apart Abyssal Hounds, death heralding birds struggling and jumping on the ground, Smoke Dust Jellyfish and Fear Demons melting into sludge, and that crooked black skull floating in the sky, its eye sockets flickering red intermittently.

More Profound Demons gathered in the distance, hesitating.

Profound Demons have no hearts, but even heartless demons have some instinct for self-preservation when the threat reaches a certain level–at least, they were not here to become food for a more powerful demon.

Sherry moved her twelve long limbs as if walking on the ground with curved bone wings. She continued to approach the edge of the barren plain, occasionally impaling an injured demon that failed to dodge with her “long legs,” turning it into sustenance absorbed by her limbs.

At first, she despised this, picking clean areas to walk to avoid “eating” the disgusting mud as much as possible.

But now she didn't care so much anymore.

“Sherry… relax…”

She just muttered softly, passing through the many severely injured demons, heading towards a direction she deemed correct.

The battered black skull flew to the side almost in fear, avoiding the path of this “strange intruder.”

But Sherry's gaze didn't rest on the skull for even a second.

She just murmured, continuing to move forward: “…don't be afraid.”

The demons on the plain opened a path in fear.

Chapter end

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