Chapter 477: Chapter 478: It Looms Over the Abyss Chapter 477: Chapter 478: It Looms Over the Abyss The subrsible 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 so “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 subrsible 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 sothing 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 ntal 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 ters tall, erratically arranged. Among these structures were things resembling so 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 rudintary subrsible machine toward the strange and jagged Inverted Jungle.
At the sa ti, aboard the Holoss, 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 apartnt and was unsurprised to see the newly ford 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 so kind of disorganized… tentacles, or to be more bold in conjecture—like so sort of limbs.
Compared to rely 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 ssages from another world, the vibrations of the subrsible, and the grand and moving “scenery” outside the portholes of the subrsible.
This inconspicuous steel device was passing between two “pillars” that seed to be one or two hundred ters 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 ntioned in the Abyssal Expedition Project docunts—neither in the intelligence provided by Tyriante, nor in the dossiers left in the city hall had there been any ntion of a subrsible 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 subrsibles had opted not to rashly delve into it, or perhaps…
Soone 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.
Sothing 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 subrsible. The fragile steel sphere trembled in the deep water, accompanied by the dreadful sound of chanical 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 mont, did not respond. He was just staring outside the porthole, at that thing that had just erged from the darkness…
A huge and pale eye.
An enormous eye, wide open, situated amidst those black, tentacle-like protrusions, its diater might span a hundred ters, making the small subrsible appear like an insignificant pebble in its presence.
This eye, devoid of any signs of life, seed 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 monts, it still calmly gazed down at the endless, profound darkness of the sea floor below. The subrsible 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 sothing was trying to burst out of her chest. When she realized what she had heard and understood the true nature of those glimrs in front of her, she even felt a rare sensation of suffocation, “You… you an…”
“The City-State, built upon so 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 so characteristics of a living being.”
Agatha was at a loss for words for a long ti, after which she managed to articulate amid extre astonishnt 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 movents 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 sothing 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”—imnse 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 ters 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 imnse 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 sa ti, he was examining the “collection” on the shelf of his bachelor apartnt, “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 ans 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 co to look this ti, 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 ti 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 seed to beco 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 t Duncan’s gaze unflinchingly.
“I am ready,” said the Guardian of the City-State in a calm tone, “Let’s continue to dive.”
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