Lu Li and his companions had been staying in the Vena Refuge for nearly a month.
This was a deviation from the plan to repair Andrea and return to the Land of Light—but considering they were helping humans and allies, spending ti aiding the Vena Refuge was necessary.
The changes over the month not only transford the Vena Refuge dramatically or made Lu Li’s complexion slightly paler, but the surface also beca less cold with the arrival of April.
Although the surface remained gloomy with low temperatures due to the pervasive primordial darkness, long-term exposure could still cause frostbite, but no longer did chilling winds from the mysterious northern sea blow.
These matters, however, no longer concerned humanity. With the construction of the underground city, citizens no longer had reasons to flee, and the survivors remaining on the surface would be the last batch they would receive.
Splash—splash—
In the park district, still far from the coast, the sound of tidal waves echoed.
Filthy, foamy tides rolled in, washing away the dirt and debris brought by the old Vena Ice-Free Port, as they congregated around a central wave and slowly advanced.
As this unfamiliar sea advanced, the light from an oil lamp appeared intermittently amidst the waves—not waves, but twisted cultists undulating in clusters like waves.
The dense twisted cultists gathered around the central light, where their master and the Exorcist stood.
Holding the oil lamp, Lu Li’s footing remained untouched by seawater, yet twisted cultists stood around him in a ter-deep sea, resembling tall, grotesque shadows standing amidst underwater ruins.
The damp sea breeze, which turned the nose red, swept into the ruins, causing many lurking figures to swiftly flee.
The aura ford by hundreds of twisted cultists and their twisted figures was enough to make many anomalies shiver and flee in panic.
The goal of this action was not to hunt them but to pursue the threat indicated by the mist tendrils while clearing the entrance to the Vena Underground City.
The seawater turned into their tentacles, probing, driving, and inundating the lands they would traverse.
"Philona will soon beco a true Alien God..."
The voice of the Mother of the Marsh echoed from the Crown of Thorns: "I will help her ignite the Divine Fire and establish a cult."
Philona is the human na of the twisted figure.
Passing through the district, passing intersections, passing houses with sealed windows and doors, the twisted figure and its cultists were like beasts breaking into the Gloomy Forest. Although the beasts living in this forest did not fear them, they had no reason to fight them.
Leaving a trail of soaking marks several miles long, they approached a construction site.
"We are very close to the guided target."
The tidal waves stopped spreading.
"This is the ’Unfinished Garden of Plants,’" Lu Li murmured, bringing the oil lamp closer to the map.
It sounded strange, but it was indeed the na here.
This garden, ant for wonder, was constructed eight years ago when the Vena Ice-Free Port was in its pri. The forr mayor attempted to build a plant garden. However, until Matthias took over, and the Dark Era arrived, this garden, mockingly called the "Unfinished Garden of Plants," remained incomplete.
The mist threads drifted deeper into the garden.
Pale stone columns stood like skeletons among wilted shrubs, and seedlings supported by wooden fras decayed alongside them.
The garden had been under construction for eight years, Vena Ice-Free Port moved underground for half a year, and after enduring winter, yet shrubs still existed here?
Lu Li watched as the edges of the tide subrged into suspicious shrubs, which then uprooted their tendrils, fleeing from the salty cold seawater steeped in the presence of the Evil God.
The sound of tides suddenly intensified, and the surging seawater completely subrged them.
They truly seed just like withered shrubs, weak and dry, like dead coral enveloped by seawater.
Except their forms gradually changed; their withered branches arranged into narrow, dense breathing gills.
The twisted figure lifted an arm, the seawater rose, enclosing the "shrubs" in water spheres.
More shrubs with gill branches erged, with the pioneers even starting to move their withered branches to propel themselves. Perhaps soon they would grow scales and fins, swimming like fish.
However, all this abruptly ceased when the twisted figure infused its breath into the water sphere.
The feeble creatures could not withstand the contamination of the Alien God, losing both transformation and struggle.
"The anomalies turning into humans are indeed them."
The water spheres fell back into the sea, washing the "shrubs" corpses towards the edge.
The twisted cultists officially invaded the unfinished garden, with whispers and raging waters lashing at the garden.
Suddenly, the garden seed to co alive, withered shrubs, dead seedlings, rotting wood, and stones fleeing from the inundated areas of seawater, and just as the rciless waves were about to surge into the garden, they glimpsed this anomaly’s primitive form.
Like phlegm coughed up by a consumptive patient, it appeared opaque and brown-yellow, wriggling to evade the seawater.
The sa as Lu Li had seen in the Death Retrace.
Yet the strange species did not exhibit the imagined resistance; they only focused on escaping, even the Mimicking Leader mimicked as a stone pillar engraved with ancient Runes, fled in panic from the invasion of the twisted figure.
Lu Li suddenly lost his hearing, leaving only the voice of the Mother of the Marsh: "They are summoning power..."
The surrounding seawater rose into a terrifying curtain, transforming into a tsunami capable of overturning giant ships, crashing upon the stone pillar, engulfing it. Then, flippers, caudal fins, gills, and cilia, belonging to aquatic or amphibious creatures, twisted and grew from the stone pillar’s surface. They revealed no commonality, resembling a group fond of dismbering prey bodies and pasting trophies onto the stone pillar. These organs moved simultaneously, generating a force almost propelling it out of the seawater.
At this mont, Lu Li lost his hearing again, and the cultists stood in his vision with arms raised, chanting quietly in unison. The dreadful aura he was not privileged to feel swirled towards the stone pillar.
Nurous eyeball-patterned details surfaced on the giant stone pillar, struggling and undulating.
"Philona is about to unleash Her power..."
The sole sound resounded in the silence, Lu Li saw the outline of the twisted figure "Aileen" collapse into its ever-twisting true form. The light around began to distort, squirming, trembling as if a reflection in a breaking mirror was spreading its cracks across everything in sight.
Suddenly, the light went out, and the world plunged into pitch-black silence.
Lu Li’s vision was robbed again.
When the sound of waves again reached Lu Li’s ears, and the dim oil lamp lit up the surroundings, the Mimicking Leader had already shattered and sunk to the seabed.
The terrifying, rampant seawater gradually cald down, and the broken carved stone pillar was scattered on the seabed, covered with a layer of dust and sand, as if buried there since ancient tis.
"It almost held on."
The Mother of the Marsh described the scene Lu Li did not witness.
The Mimicking Leader possessed quite dreadful adaptability. It grew gills and fins to breathe and move because of the seawater, manifested shells to block the pollution from the presence of the Alien God, even attempted to adapt to the twisted figure’s power to change its body.
If it didn’t have the hard yet fragile stone pillar as its body, it might have succeeded.
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