Deep Sea Embers

When the lights of the submersible swept around, all the shapes floating in the dark water came into Duncan's field of vision—people, countless people, floating in the water.

However, with Duncan's careful observation, he discovered the strangeness of these human bodies.

They have no facial features, not even clear hands and feet, and no clothing on their bodies—they are just “figures” that roughly resemble human outlines, with a rough texture and a pitch-black color on the surface.

It's like a rough puppet made of black mud and kneaded with clumsy and rough techniques.

Duncan tells Agatha the details of what he saw.

"Only outlines?" Agatha's tone was uncertain, "but in my eyes... they exude spiritual radiance like living people in a city-state..."

Duncan didn't speak, but frowned slightly, carefully controlling the submersible to approach a "human figure" floating not far from the porthole.

The current driven by the submersible disturbed the calmness in the deep sea. The dark human-shaped object slowly rolled at an angle in the sea water. Its flat and smooth spherical "head" first turned to the direction of the porthole, followed by a stubby, bald, as if unfinished General arm structure.

The mechanical arm slowly protruded forward, the grapple at the end rested on the torso of the human body, and fiddled with it carefully.

It was completely unresponsive, showing no signs of being "alive".

Duncan raised his head again, looking through the porthole at the quietly floating figures in the distance, watching them continue to extend into the distance in the light, and finally disappear in the darkness of the deep sea.

How many are there? thousands? Tens of thousands? Or tens of millions?

Suddenly, memories came to mind, and Duncan remembered a detail he had heard when he talked about the abyss plan with Tirian—the No. After reaching the sun, he yelled frantically:

"We all died there!"

Duncan frowned a little bit, looking solemnly at the countless human bodies floating quietly outside the porthole—is this what the explorer saw before he fell into madness?

Agatha on the side suddenly broke the silence, her tone was serious: "This reminds me of...the 'fakes' that invaded the city-state before."

"I thought about it too," Duncan nodded lightly, "but it doesn't look like—even though those fakes will show various inhuman features, they at least have detailed structures such as facial features, hands and feet, and they will try their best to imitate them." Humans are wearing normal clothes, but the 'human figures' here have only the most basic outlines, if you have to say...they are more like 'rough blanks' than fakes."

"Some kind of semi-finished product?" Agatha suddenly thought, "Those fakes are 'manufactured' based on this 'rough blank'?"

"It's hard to say," Duncan said with uncertainty in his tone, "These things may have been floating in the deep sea for many, many years, at least they were there when the Abyss Project started. In addition, the power to invade the city-state is to use the 'mirror image' The characteristics of 'intervene in reality, but here is the 'entity' in the deep sea, there is a relationship between the two, but it should not be a direct relationship between 'semi-finished products' and 'finished products'."

Agatha listened thoughtfully. For some reason, she suddenly recalled a sentence that the other party said when confronting the cultist before——

"There were no fakes in the first place, or...we were all fakes..."

At almost the same time, Duncan also seemed to think of something. He looked beyond the floating bodies to the unknown deep sea below, and then stretched out his hand to the joystick.

Certain devices in the depths of the mechanical cabin made low growls and sounds as if they were dying, and there was an overwhelmed creaking noise from the hull. With the sound of water injection, the submersible began to continue to descend.

Agatha heard the terrifying movements coming from all around, and couldn't help but look at Duncan: "Captain, can this thing hold up?"

Duncan's eyes scanned the various instruments on the control console, and felt the weak message conveyed to him by the fire of the spirit body. The hand that pulled the dive control lever did not relax.

"It can still last," he said in a deep voice, "we should be almost there."

"Almost there?" Agatha was taken aback, "Do you know what's down here?"

Duncan didn't answer, but continued to carefully control the submersible to dive down, while adjusting the angle of the propeller very finely - the hull on the verge of the limit was making creepy noises almost every second, Even the edge where the porthole was connected to the hull began to make a terrible creaking sound, as if the fragile balance would be broken in the next second, and the entire submersible would become a wrinkle under the weight of the sea water Metal.

But it still kept diving, on the narrow blade edge of collapse and balance, continued to dive into the darkest place.

But the noise from the hull and machinery compartment was not the only scary sound. Another sound was even more creepy-it was the constant, real crashing sound coming from outside the hull:

"Bang", "Bang", "Bang"...

From time to time, human-shaped objects that looked like rough black mud slammed into the shell of the submersible, like a stone hitting a skull, and the dull sound sounded particularly terrifying.

Even Agatha couldn't help gripping the armrest in front of her.

She could feel the submersible as a whole leaning forward, at such an angle that it was difficult to stand without holding on to the handrails.

Then, she suddenly "saw" something outside the porthole.

A continuous, seemingly endless outline of chaos appeared at the edge of the beam of the searchlight and near the lower edge of the porthole.

It looked... like a piece of land.

"The bottom of the sea?" Agatha exclaimed in astonishment, "I saw something... Is that the bottom of the sea?"

Duncan stared out of the porthole in silence, at the undulating surface that suddenly appeared in the dark deep sea, at its rugged "coast" and the hazy structure that could not be seen in the distance, and shook his head after a long time: " Not the bottom of the ocean, we're nowhere near what's called the 'bottom of the sea' - that's a piece of land floating in the water."

Agatha said with doubts: "Land floating in the water?"

"...another Frost Isle," Duncan replied softly, "although only a small section of the coastline can be seen clearly, the terrain is familiar to me. That is the Frost Isle--no city-state, no port, no buildings of any kind , Frost Island in its original form."

Agatha's body visibly shook slightly.

Duncan raised his head, looking at the sea water around and above the "Frost Island".

Countless human-shaped objects floated around the "deep-sea floating island", like a swarm of bees surrounding a hive.

And this scene, like amber, was sealed in the depths of the dark and cold deep sea, as if the time when the pause button was pressed, quietly frozen in an extremely ancient moment.

Agatha's voice sounded beside him: "Here...is it..."

"...the original blueprint." Duncan said softly.

In the third long night, the "King of Creeping" bestowed the blueprint to the cluster and began the work of Genesis. country, and turned the kingdoms into 1,200 cities...

Civilization continued after the third long night, and the Deep Sea Age began, and everything in the Deep Sea Age was built on the blueprint of the "1,200 cities" of the Creeping King.

Another part of the content recorded in the "Book of Blasphemy" has been confirmed.

But are there other possibilities?

Thoughts were churning in Duncan's mind, and he fell silent for a while, but Agatha beside him had already reacted. After realizing the meaning of the "original blueprint", she said in disbelief: "You mean... the current Frost As well as the Frost People, and even all the city-states and mortals in this world... are all based on these 'things' in the deep sea..."

"This is a possibility," Duncan shook his head lightly, and said in a deep voice, "The heretical theory of the Annihilation Cultists records the creation process of the Usher Lord, which is of course a heresy, but it is undeniable that they It is also possible that the ancient classics may reveal part of the truth of history."

Agatha opened her mouth, but couldn't say anything.

From the moment she dived into the deep sea, the world she knew seemed to be undergoing an earth-shaking reshaping. There were too many shakes and doubts, which made it difficult for the tenacious gatekeeper to clarify his thoughts for a while. .

The "template" of primitive islands floating in the deep sea, and the countless "rough blanks" of human figures... If the statement of the Annihilation Cultists about "the Lord of the Deep created the world" is true, then...don't all the living beings in the world are equivalent to Creation of the Profound Lord?

Even after experiencing the frosty mirror image crisis, re-consolidating her beliefs and strengthening her beliefs in the huge test, Agatha can hardly accept this "possibility" that challenges the three views too much.

But she did not blindly deny what she saw amidst the huge contradictions and hesitation.

The moment she decided to take this deep dive, she was mentally prepared——

In the deep sea, everything is possible.

"Should we... keep getting closer?" She turned her head and said to Duncan as calmly as possible.

Duncan didn't touch the joystick again.

His eyes scanned the many instruments on the console.

His perception permeated the submersible.

"...the limit has been reached," he said, "the shell of the submersible will not hold up."

"...It's just a little short of the last point," Agatha obviously had great regret, "We are about to touch that floating island in the sea..."

"It's okay, it's just that the submersible can't hold it up." Duncan shook his head lightly, and looked out the porthole. "There's something here that can hold it up."

Agatha turned her head suspiciously.

Duncan still stared out of the window quietly, watching those...humanoid objects floating in the lights.

"I remember you said just now that in your eyes, these 'rough' human-shaped objects exude a spiritual glow like living people."

Outside the porthole, a "humanoid" with a rough outline slowly turned its head towards Agatha.