Deep Sea Embers

Amidst a series of skeletal deformation sounds and rising black smoke, twelve symmetrical black limbs spread and grew again, pitch-black bone armor gradually covered the body surface, and sharp blade-like bone spurs shone with blood-colored cold light - Shirley once again recovered. The form of a deep demon.

She is adapting to how to control her two forms at an alarming speed, and is becoming more and more comfortable controlling this body. The whole process is not so much "learning" from scratch, but more like this part of the knowledge has already been infiltrated in her mind. and deep inside her body, and now she is just "recalling" it gradually.

After slightly moving the joints behind her that were used to assist walking, and then turning her arms and legs, Shirley nodded with satisfaction: "It makes me feel a little more at ease in such a hellish place."

Agou raised his head and glanced at Shirley, who was now much taller than him. Then his body was suddenly enveloped by a swirling smoke, as if it was melting, shrinking and merging into the shadow around Shirley.

Duncan watched this scene silently from the side, and waited until Shirley's form stabilized before he stepped forward and said: "I thought you would resist your demon body - after all, such a violent form transformation is not something ordinary people can do. It’s something that…challenges your outlook.”

"You've already reached the deep sea, and you still care about whether it looks good or not?" Shirley poked the rocks on the ground with her arthralgia and said nonchalantly, "I'm...how do you say that word? Oh, I'm a 'pragmatist' '——Make sure you can live safely first, and then consider whether your life is good or not. In my opinion, there is nothing wrong with this devil's body. It is very capable of fighting and resisting fighting. It is very useful in the deep sea. If you have to If there is any disadvantage, it is that it will absorb the remains of dead demons uncontrollably, evil... I still feel a little disgusting when I think about it..."

As soon as she finished speaking, a dog's head emerged from the shadows at her feet: "...Actually, I think it tastes pretty good - Shirley, do you really not want to taste the bone I brought you?"

Shirley said without hesitation: "No, it tastes terrible!"

Duncan watched this scene silently, and a smile finally appeared on his face.

"Then the only thing we have to do next is to find the 'Sacred Lord of the Underworld'," he said, bringing the topic back to the topic, "There are countless floating islands here, and the scale of the entire space Far beyond our initial expectations—Ogou, can you determine where we are?”

The dog's head emerged from the shadows again. Agou took a serious look around and nodded slightly to the captain: "This should be the upper level of the desolate ring - the area closest to the 'starry sky', if I'm right." , we need to go 'down'."

Duncan looked curious: "Down?"

Agou nodded, and then communicated with Shirley, then came to the edge of the broken wasteland and looked down at the boundless chaotic darkness.

In the long void below the floating island, the chaotic and dim starlight becomes fainter and fainter, and more floating islands can be vaguely seen floating messily in the darkness. However, at the bottom of all darkness, one can vaguely see Something else... shimmered.

At first, Duncan thought it was another "starry sky" hanging upside down at the bottom of the deep sea, but soon he realized that those faint light spots were the faint flickering on the surface of some incredibly large structure. The... lights.

Those faint light spots, almost shrouded in darkness, are arranged in a distant place, vaguely outlining the winding branches and a "trunk" located in the center of all branches. The lights on the trunk are more dense and appear to be alive. It looks like a slow moving thing.

Duncan stood at the edge of the broken earth, quietly staring at the dim and dense spot of light. He could not judge how far it was from here to below, nor could he judge the scale of the "body" behind the spot of light. , but with just such a cursory observation, he could imagine what kind of behemoth it was.

"That is the Holy Lord Netherworld - the 'matrix' of all demons, and the destination of demons after death," Agou said in the shadows, with a hint of inexplicable emotion in his voice, "At the bottom of all the broken islands, His limbs spread to the end of the entire deep sea, and its visible physical parts alone are equivalent to dozens or hundreds of city-states, while the invisible parts - the ends of those tentacles, they pierced the 'bottom' of the deep sea. , extending all the way into the subspace, cannot be calculated and judged in any language that conforms to mathematical logic.

"Every minute and every second, countless demon substrates will breed in that dark abyss - they are like light smoke, leaving the 'bottom' on the irregular invisible wind, and passing through a series of discontinuous space faults Being sent to the floating islands above, they ate each other and turned into various entities in the process. Then they fought and fought endlessly, and the dead demons turned into smoke and mud again. , after wandering for a short or long time, they return to the abyss below and are absorbed by the Holy Lord. The cycle starts over and over again.

"I have escaped from this cycle... but this has a negligible impact on the entire deep sea. The devouring cycle between demons will not stop, and the 'operation' of the 'Holy Lord' will never end."

Duncan listened to Agou's story quietly without saying anything. It wasn't until the other person finished speaking that he nodded slightly: "Then we just need to go down?"

"That's the problem. 'Going down' here is not an easy task." Agou raised his head from the shadows and looked into Duncan's eyes. "Do you remember that there is a very strange and difficult person in the deep sea?" Characteristics'?"

"...You mean the space is discontinuous?" Duncan thought thoughtfully, "I remember we talked about this before. In the deep sea, 'arriving' from one place to another is a very uncertain thing. The direction and Distance is completely random here - but we've been going all the way before and didn't feel that problem."

"This is because we are on an island, within the confines of a single floating island, and the space still follows the continuous structure that we know, but if you break away from these islands..."

Agou said as he walked out of the shadows. He picked up a piece of gravel nearby, picked it up and threw it far away into the vast darkness outside the floating island.

The rubble disappeared in front of everyone in the blink of an eye - as soon as it left two or three meters around the floating island, it disappeared out of thin air.

Alice stared wide-eyed at the direction in which the stone disappeared. After a few seconds, she couldn't help but ask, "Where did the stone go?"

"I don't know. Anyway, there is only a small chance of 'falling down'." Agou shook his head, "Up, down, left, right, front, back, any direction, any distance, any landing point, it is possible. It may be falling from The star space fell downwards, maybe it had hit the head of some unlucky demon, of course - it might also have fallen directly on the Holy Lord of the Netherworld. This is how the entity moves in the 'nihility' zone between the floating islands, completely randomly. .”

Duncan frowned: "...So those 'loops' you mentioned just now, the 'loops' between the devil's floating island and the Holy Lord, are also so random?"

"Yes," Agou nodded, "Everything is based on uncertainty - it may take hundreds of years for a demon born from the Holy Lord to obtain an entity on a floating island, and a demon that is The remains of demons killed by the same kind and thrown into the void may have to 'fall' in the darkness for a thousand years before they reach the deepest depths of the deep. This 'fall' may be in any direction..."

As it spoke, it raised its head and looked at the dim starry sky above its head.

"Given the scale of the Deep Sea and the endless number of demons, we can even suspect that some of the demon matrix that was initially differentiated from the Holy Body of the Deep Sea are still floating in the darkness and have never obtained an entity. Among the demons of death, some are still 'falling' in the darkness for ten thousand years and have not yet fallen to the bottom - this is very possible."

Uncertain, discontinuous, a "chaotic cycle" system based on huge random events...

How weird!

Duncan frowned, and while drawing a picture of a completely counterintuitive world "order" in his mind based on Agou's description, he said thoughtfully: "...but the Homeless Ship once smashed straight through the deep. deep sea."

"Yes, so this is the most terrifying thing." The green fire in Agou's eyes shrank slightly, "In fact, compared to being killed by a ball of flames falling from the sky, a thing It can actually fall from above, and then it will definitely fall to the bottom. This is even more shocking to the demons in the deep sea - demons have no mind, but at least they can live in this land of chaos by instinct, and the appearance of the Lost Home is completely contrary to the situation. The 'rules' here, this incomprehensible, unreasonable, and law-violating 'phenomenon' are what made many demons go crazy on the spot."

Agou paused and said in a very serious tone: "Do you understand what I mean? For the deep sea, 'an object can fall from above to below, and the falling process is true every time'. This is true in the real world What is taken for granted in the world is 'indescribable' here - the crash of the Homeless Ship here did not just destroy a few islands and kill hundreds of thousands of demons, it 'pierced' the profound The order of the deep itself.”

Duncan thought for a while: "...In other words, for the physical and mental health of the demons here, I'd better not do any more 'falling' here?"

"It's not for the physical and mental health of the demons - their lifestyle is not very healthy anyway," Agou shook his head, "It's for the 'health' of the deep sea. This place is not very stable anymore. If you smash it again, Maybe it really missed it.”

Duncan touched his chin and said nothing for a while.

And just as he was thinking hard about how to solve the problem of spatial discontinuity outside the floating island, and how to reach the "bottom" where the Lord of the Deep was, he suddenly felt someone tugging on his arm.

He turned his head and saw Alice's beautiful big eyes.

The puppet raised his hand and handed a dark object to him: "Captain! Stone!"

Duncan was stunned for a moment, his expression a little subtle: "Well, Alice, not now..."

He stopped suddenly.

The stone in Alice's hand...is the one Agou threw just now!