Chapter 479: Chapter 480: Blueprint Chapter 479: Chapter 480: Blueprint As the lights from the subrsible swept across the surroundings, the figures floating in the dark waters ca fully into Duncan’s view—people, an uncountable number of people, floating in the water.
However, as Duncan observed them more carefully, he noticed sothing odd about these human figures.
They had no facial features, not even distinct and clear limbs, nor were they clothed—their forms were rely rough approximations of human shapes, with coarse textures and pitch-black hues on the surface.
It was as if they were clay figures crudely fashioned from black mud.
Duncan relayed the details of what he was seeing to Agatha.
“Only silhouettes?” Agatha’s tone was full of surprise and uncertainty, “But in my eyes… they seem to radiate a spiritual luminosity like the living people within the City-State…”
Duncan did not respond but simply furrowed his brows slightly, cautiously steering the subrsible closer to a “figure” floating not far outside the porthole.
The water currents stirred by the subrsible disrupted the deep-sea tranquility, causing the pitch-black human-shaped object to slowly roll at an angle in the water, its flat and smooth spherical “head” turning towards the direction of the porthole first, followed by its short, bare, and seemingly incomplete arm structures.
The chanical arm extended slowly forward, its grappling hook resting on the torso of the figure, gingerly prodding at it.
It showed no response, exhibited no signs of “life.”
Duncan raised his head again, gazing through the porthole at the silently floating human shapes in the distance, observing how they extended further away in the light until finally disappearing into the darkness of the deep sea.
How many were there? Thousands? Tens of thousands? Or perhaps several million?
Suddenly, a mory flashed to mind—Duncan rembered a detail from when he first spoke with Tyrion about the Abyssal Plan. The No. 3 subrsible had surfaced frantically in its last deep-sea mission, and the explorer who descended into madness had shouted a phrase in a frenzy after returning to sunlight:
“We all died there!”
Duncan’s brows furrowed tighter as he gravely gazed at the countless human bodies floating outside the porthole—was this the sight the explorer had seen before descending into madness?
Agatha suddenly broke the silence next to him, her tone serious, “This reminds of those ‘counterfeits’ that invaded the City-State before.”
“I was thinking the sa,” Duncan nodded gently, “but it’s different—those counterfeits, even with their various non-human characteristics, at least had facial features, limbs, and details like that. They also tried to mimic humans by wearing normal clothes. But these ‘human forms’ here only have the most basic outlines; if anything… they seem like even cruder ‘blanks’ than the counterfeits.”
“So kind of unfinished product?” Agatha suddenly thought, “Were those counterfeits ‘manufactured’ based on these ‘blanks’?”
“Hard to say,” Duncan said, his tone uncertain, “these things might have been floating in the deep sea for many years, already there when the Abyssal Plan began. Moreover, the force that invaded the City-State intervened in reality through the properties of ‘mirrors,’ while these are ‘entities’ in the deep sea—there might be a connection, but it’s probably not directly that of ‘unfinished products’ and ‘finished products.'”
Listening thoughtfully, Agatha couldn’t help but recall a sentence she had heard spoken by the Heretics during a confrontation—
“From the beginning, there were never any counterfeits, or rather… we are all counterfeits…”
At almost the sa ti, Duncan seed to think of sothing too, his gaze moving past the floating figures towards the unknown depths below, then reaching for the control lever.
A sound resembling a dying beast’s growl along with resonant moans emitted from deep within the machinery compartnt, and the subrsible’s hull creaked under strain, the sound of water ballast tanks filling up, as the subrsible continued to descend.
Agatha, hearing the terrifying noises all around, couldn’t help looking towards Duncan, “Captain, can it hold up?”
Duncan’s eyes swept over the various instrunts on the control panel, perceiving the faint ssages from the Spiritual Body’s fla transmitted to him; his hand on the diving control lever did not relax.
“It will hold up,” he said with a deep voice, “we should be nearing it.”
“Nearing it?” Agatha was startled, “Do you know what’s below us?”
Duncan did not answer but continued to control the subrsible as it descended, also making extrely fine adjustnts to the angle of the propellers—the subrsible’s hull, teetering on the edge of collapse and balance, emitted a spine-chilling noise almost every second, with even the area where the portholes joined the hull making a terrifying crackling sound as if the fragile equilibrium could break at any mont and the entire subrsible would crumble under the water’s pressure into a twisted piece of tal.
But it kept descending, balancing on the narrow knife’s edge between breakdown and stability, delving deeper into that utter darkness.
Yet the noises from the hull and machinery compartnt weren’t the only terrifying sounds. Another sound was even more chilling—the real, tangible impacts heard from outside the hull:
“Bang,” “Bang,” “Bang”…
The clay-like human-shaped objects occasionally struck the subrsible’s outer shell, much like stones hitting a skull. The dull thuds sounded particularly horrifying.
Even Agatha couldn’t help gripping the handrail in front of her tightly.
She could feel the subrsible tilting forward, the angle of inclination reaching the point where she would hardly be able to stand without holding on.
Suddenly, she “saw” sothing appear outside the porthole.
A series of undulating, chaotic silhouettes appeared at the edge of the searchlight’s beam, near the bottom of the porthole.
It seed… as if it were a stretch of the earth’s surface.
“The seabed?” Agatha exclaid in startled confusion, “What did I see… Is that the seabed?”
Duncan watched silently through the porthole, observing the uneven terrain that suddenly erged in the pitch-black deep sea, observing its jagged “coastline” and the distant, indistinct blur of structures, and after a long ti, he slowly shook his head, “It’s not the seabed. We’re far from touching what’s called the ‘seabed’—that is a piece of land floating in the water.”
Agatha asked with confusion, “Floating land?”
“…Another Frost Island,” Duncan answered softly, “Although only a short stretch of coastline is visible, I am quite familiar with this terrain. That is Frost Island—in its original form without the City-State, without ports, without any buildings.”
Agatha’s body visibly shuddered slightly.
Duncan, however, lifted his gaze, looking at the sea surrounding the “Frost Island” and above.
Countless human-shaped entities floated around this “deep-sea floating island,” like a swarm of bees flitting around a hive.
And this scene, it was sealed in the deep, cold, and dark depths like amber, as if ti had been paused, quietly immobile with an incredibly ancient mont.
Agatha’s voice arose beside him, “What exactly is this place…?”
“…The Primordial Blueprint,” Duncan said softly.
In the third long night, the “Crawling King” bestowed the blueprint upon the Cluster and began the work of Creation, to avoid falling into the sa pit as the Dreaming King and the King of the Pale Giants, He divided it, so that the mortal world would no longer have nations, and He turned nations into twelve hundred cities…
Civilization continued after the third long night, the deep-sea era thus began, and everything in the deep-sea era was built upon the Crawling King’s blueprint of “twelve hundred cities.”
Part of the content recorded in the “Book of Desecration” had now been proven.
But could there be other possibilities?
Duncan’s thoughts churned in his mind, and he fell silent for a mont. anwhile, Agatha had already co around, realizing the significance of the “Primordial Blueprint,” she said incredulously, “You an… the current Frost Island and the Frostfolk, and even all the City-States and mortals in the world… were all created based on these ‘things’ in the deep sea…?”
“It is a possibility,” Duncan shook his head slightly and said gravely, “The heretical theories of the obliterated heretics recorded the Creation process of The Saint, which certainly belongs to heretical blasphemy, but what cannot be denied is that the ancient texts in their hands could also reveal part of the truth of history.”
Agatha opened her mouth but couldn’t say anything.
From the mont she dived into the deep sea, the world in her cognition seed to be undergoing a world-shattering Reshaping, too much wavering, too many doubts, left even the ntally strong gatekeeper temporarily unable to clear her own thoughts.
The floating primal island “templates” in the deep sea, innurable human-shaped “blanks”… If the heretical claims of the obliterated about “The Saint creating the world” were true, then… would all beings in the mortal world not be equivalent to The Saint’s creations?
Even after experiencing the mirror crisis of Frost Island and solidifying her faith through the great trials, strengthening her convictions, Agatha found it difficult to accept this kind of “possibility,” which challenged her worldviews too radically.
Yet, she did not blindly deny everything she had seen amid the vast contradictions and hesitation.
At the mont she decided to undertake this deep-sea dive, she had prepared herself ntally—
In the depths of the sea, anything was possible.
“Shall we… get closer?” she turned and asked Duncan in as calm a tone as possible.
But Duncan did not reach for the control stick again.
His gaze swept over the many instrunts on the control panel.
His awareness perated throughout the subrsible.
“…We’ve reached the limit,” he said, “The subrsible’s hull can’t withstand it.”
“…Just a little bit further,” Agatha said, clearly filled with imnse regret, “and we would have reached that floating island in the sea…”
“It’s fine, it’s just that the subrsible can’t withstand it,” Duncan shook his head gently and looked out the porthole, “There’s sothing here that can.”
Agatha turned her head with confusion.
But Duncan still watched quietly out the window, observing those floating in the light… the human-shaped things.
“I recall you said earlier that in your eyes, these ‘blank’ human-shaped things radiated a kind of spiritual glow akin to living beings.”
Outside the porthole, a roughly contoured “human-shaped thing” slowly turned its head toward Agatha.
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