No, Alice and the others went down!
"Gray, let's go."
Lu Yuan stood up and walked quickly out of the captain's quarters, "Get to the lower cabins, now."
Gray, who was on guard outside, didn't ask why; he picked up his weapon and followed with large strides.
The lower they went, the thicker the stench in the air became.
It wasn't the saltiness of the sea, but the smell of blood—so heavy it was nauseating.
The cabin stairwells were piled high with clutter: wooden barrels, crates, and even a few doors that had been torn off their hinges.
They were deliberately stacked together to form a crude barricade; someone had tried to seal off the way to the lower decks.
They were trying to stop something from coming up, but that barricade had already been torn open.
Barrels were snapped in half, crates were smashed to pieces, and there were deep claw marks on the doors—as if they had been violently split open by some immense force.
Splinters were scattered on both sides of the stairs, some still stained with dried black blood.
But what made Lu Yuan even more uneasy was that faint, indistinct whispering sound drifting up from below.
Once they rushed all the way down, Alice was already waiting at the cabin entrance.
Her expression was grim, her warhammer gripped in her hands with lightning constantly flickering across it.
But she hadn't gone inside; Lu Yuan followed Alice's gaze.
The cabin entrance was shrouded in a pale blue film of light, like an invisible water screen.
Fine runes flowed across the surface of the film, radiating an unsettling aura.
【Detected anomalous barrier: Deep Sea Scale】
【Characteristics: A special barrier created by mimicking the body structure of ██, capable of absorbing most transcendent powers and possessing a certain degree of immunity to physical attacks.】
【Weakness: Lacks resistance to purification-type powers.】
"Someone inside is maintaining this barrier," Alice said, her brow furrowed.
With that, Alice raised her warhammer; lightning coiled around it as she slammed it down onto the film of light.
Bang!
The lightning exploded, but Lu Yuan witnessed a bizarre scene: all the power was absorbed by the film, like a stone falling into deep water, barely even causing a ripple.
"I can't break it." Alice had clearly tried several times already, her voice tinged with anger, "This thing counters transcendent power. We have to wait for those religious nuts from the Church."
Just as she finished speaking, footsteps echoed behind them.
Philip arrived with the deacons, followed closely by Marcus and the Descendant.
"Miss Alice, the Church does not consist of 'nuts.' Hmm? A barrier of the Deep Sea Church." Philip glanced at the film of light, his brow furrowing deeply, "It's specifically designed to counter transcendent power; the stronger the power, the easier it is to be swallowed."
"Can it be broken?" Alice didn't want to waste words with him.
"It can be purified." Philip raised the holy emblem in his hand and began to chant a prayer, "Most loyal believer of the Great Angel..."
A golden holy light surged from the holy emblem; it didn't attack but instead slowly seeped into the blue film of light.
As the golden light descended, the film began to tremble, and the runes upon it twisted.
Sizzle—
Like boiling water being poured onto ice, blue and gold interlaced, clashing against each other.
But in the next second, Philip's face turned pious, and a scripture interlaced with gold and white emerged from his robes; the golden light spilling from the holy emblem instantly grew even more intense.
The blue runes that had been able to resist began to vibrate, and after a few breaths, the film of light became like corroded thin paper, disintegrating from the center and vanishing into specks of fluorescent light.
"The Angel grants you holy light." The scripture in front of Philip flickered, and a layer of golden light covered everyone except for those from the Ascension Society; as the golden light settled, Philip's face appeared somewhat pale.
"Quickly, go in. This layer of holy light can help you resist the contamination."
As the cabin door opened...
A heavy scent of blood rushed toward them, and the faint whispering became clearly audible.
Alice was the first to charge in, with Lu Yuan following right behind.
The next moment, he froze.
The sight before him seemed to freeze the very blood in Lu Yuan's veins.
Twenty-three corpses.
They were suspended from the ceiling by iron hooks.
Arranged in a radial pattern, they looked like a grotesque "flower."
Each corpse was hung upside down, hands dangling toward the floor, with a neat incision across the neck.
The skin of the corpses was a grayish-white, like shriveled leather pouches, drained of every drop of blood.
Yet their eyes were all wide open, their expressions twisted; they had clearly been tortured by the Deep Sea Church before they died.
Beneath each corpse was a groove; blood flowed along these grooves toward the center, converging into a river, with dried, blackened blood still lingering in the channels.
On the floor next to the grooves, runes drawn in blood covered the surface; in the center of the runes was a circular hole with torn edges, as if something had been "released" from there.
But none of that was the most terrifying part.
The most terrifying thing was that the hanging corpses were trembling; the moment everyone stepped into the room, those hollow eye sockets slowly turned toward the door, as if sensing the arrival of intruders.
And in the center of the "flower" formed by the corpses stood a grey-cloaked figure.
He had his back to the door, hands raised high, chanting in a low voice—a chanting that was bizarrely distorted, carrying a rhythm that made one's heart skip a beat.
"Great Mother... grant your children power..."
"The flesh and souls of the Outsiders... are all your nourishment..."
【Witnessing large-scale blood sacrifice array】【Sanity check in progress... check failed】
【Warning: Ritual is in progress with high-intensity contamination; please move away immediately.】
【Sanity: -2, 58/70】
As Alice surveyed the surroundings, the anger in her eyes could no longer be suppressed; her aura surged violently, her already burly frame growing even taller, and the lightning on her warhammer roared! Protected by the golden holy light, she launched herself forward like a cannonball.
"Kill him!" Marcus's voice came from behind.
The Descendant followed closely behind to strike, a long sword snapping out from its arm as it charged.
But the grey-cloaked figure did not dodge.
He slowly turned around, his face pale as paper, a murky blue light spilling from his eyes and a grotesque smile hanging on his lips.
He simply raised his hand slightly.
"Too hurried."
The moment those words fell, the upside-down corpses moved simultaneously.
Over a dozen corpses tore themselves free from the iron hooks and dropped from the ceiling, crashing straight toward Alice!
Their shriveled bodies twisted violently in mid-air, skin tearing to reveal the rotting flesh beneath as they lunged with claws bared.
Alice's warhammer swept across, lightning exploding and shattering the lunging corpses into pieces!
Flesh flew and severed limbs splattered everywhere.
But this was exactly what the grey-cloaked figure wanted.
"Come, children." His voice sounded like water gurgling in his throat, "Mother is calling you."
The remaining corpses did not continue to attack but began to move toward each other.
Broken bones reorganized, rotting muscles writhed, and those blood-drained husks seemed to be refilled by some power, swelling, twisting, and merging—
Crunch—crunch—
The sound of bones snapping and then mending was incessant.
Even more bizarrely, the severed limbs Alice had shattered were also writhing on the ground, as if they had their own consciousness, crawling toward that mass of flesh and merging back into it.
They were fusing.
Becoming a single entity.
The Descendant's long sword slashed toward the grey-cloaked figure but was blocked by a blue water screen—the black blood flowing from the corpses condensed in front of the grey-cloaked figure, forming a fluid shield.
"Focus on dealing with it." The grey-cloaked figure stepped back a few paces, hiding behind the mass of flesh that was currently taking shape, his voice carrying a taunting tone, "Mother's children... are not easy to deal with."
【Witnessing Deep Mutation: Flesh Agglomerate (forming)】
【Warning: Sanity check in progress... check failed】
【Sanity: -1... -1, 56/70】
Rate on N.U.
