Ashes Of Deep Sea
Chapter 783 - Chapter 783 Chapter 780 Remains

Chapter 783: Chapter 780: Remains Chapter 783: Chapter 780: Remains Walking along the broad “Pilgrim’s Path,” Duncan reached the grand entrance of the temple–a colossal opening that seemed large enough for giants, narrow at the top and wide at the bottom, with towering doors made of some unidentifiable material that had long since fallen into disrepair. One door lay collapsed on the ground, while the other leaned crookedly against the palace wall.

A faint sound of ocean waves emanated from the entrance, mingled with a chaotic, low noise, as if some giant beast was emitting labored breaths and murmurs in the darkness. A slightly fishy, salty sea breeze swirled at the end of the Pilgrim’s Path, carrying a chill with it.

“It’s an incredible creation…” Morris reached the outer wall of the palace, the socket of one eye deforming and retreating as a set of lenses extended along a copper track from within, closely examining the rough, dilapidated dark green boulders, “So tightly fitted… it’s almost as though they were ‘grown’ this way…”

“I’ve seen such walls in some Dreamscapes,” Fenna said, gently caressing the outer walls, “and in visions during prayer too… many saints see bizarre high walls or stacked boulders in their hallucinations, it turns out… those visions pointed to this…”

Lucritia stood before the massive entrance, casually tossing a piece of white paper into the dark corridor. Upon leaving her hand, the paper spontaneously burst into flames, forming a vaguely human-shaped firelight that flew a short distance in the darkness.

“Inside… it’s very calm,” Witch Lady hesitated, “but my Spell disperses quickly as if there’s some kind of invisible suppression.”

Duncan glanced inside the palace, then looked back at his followers who had embarked on the island with him. After a moment of thought, he raised his hand and gently waved–ghastly green flames immediately ignited out of nowhere, spreading over each person.

Nina was startled at first, but quickly became curious, playing with the flames on her arm and rolling them into a small ball in her palm. Fenna and Morris moved within the flames–Fenna drew her greatsword for a few swings, and Morris’s joints crackled. Lucritia, however, seemed a bit at a loss; she was not yet accustomed to her father’s habit of ‘lighting a little fire when inspired,’ and she was visibly tense.

But Witch Lady was clearly not the most nervous one present–nearby, Subject 077 practically jumped up instantaneously, bellowing as he sprang nearly two meters high, his voice breaking when he landed: “Fire fire fire… Captain’s on fire, I’m ablaze ah ah ah–”

A bone spike immediately shot out from behind Sherry, knocking Subject 077 to the ground: “Stop your howling, it’s just a bit of fire–Ah Dog isn’t even…”

Ah Dog’s bones clattered like a typewriter: “I…I’m not shivering…I’m calm…”

“It’s just a layer of protection,” Duncan turned back somewhat helplessly, looking at his lively group, lamenting inwardly that in other stories, explorers facing their final challenge would either be solemn, sorrowful, or frantically clutching a fiancee’s photo, yet the people he brought, even at the world’s end, were as noisy as a market. Yet he patiently explained, “We are entering the ancient gods’ resting place–your minds will face a great test, so throughout this journey, I will envelop you in flames to protect you from the temple’s powers.”

Subject 077 finally caught on, smacking his hand: “Oh, so it’s like killing the hostages before they can get hurt…”

Sherry flipped him over again, but after doing so, she pensively nodded: “Actually, I think you’re right.”

The mummy climbed back up, glaring: “Then why did you hit me!?”

“Captain probably wanted to hit you,” Sherry casually remarked, then turned to Duncan with a grin, “Right, Captain?”

Duncan nodded expressionlessly, while suddenly feeling a subtle sensation–

It might have been his imagination, but it seemed that only after his flames had covered everyone did the atmosphere abruptly change– including Sherry and the sailor. Upon setting foot on this island, everyone had initially fallen into a slightly gloomy, even heavy mood. But now, their usual “vitality” seemed to suddenly return.

He frowned, gaining a deeper understanding of the island, then looked toward the dark entrance…

The eerie green firelight illuminated the palace’s dim corridors. Cautious footsteps broke the age-old silence, casting long shadows of the visitors on the mottled, ancient stone walls and floors–Duncan’s group moved forward in the palace that was nearly suffocatingly vast. And as they ventured deeper, the fishy ocean odor and the surrounding sounds of waves, murmurs, and noises became increasingly evident.

“Watch the shadows under your feet, observe the abnormal light and dark shifts reflected by the firelight,” Fenna, leading the group, carefully watched the surroundings while reminding others, “Don’t respond to calls from outside the group, and…”

She paused, looking back at Morris: “Don’t touch anything around you.”

“I didn’t touch anything,” the old scholar suddenly felt a bit embarrassed, raising his hands to show his innocence.

Duncan, at the front of the group, continuously swept his eyes over every corner of the magnificent structure. The ghastly green fire flowed like a living entity with his gaze, illuminating the dark, ancient places. Suddenly, his steps slowed down.

A massive, vine-like structure appeared on the nearby ceiling, winding its way along the arch and stretching to the opposite wall, where it passed through a hole at the top of the wall and vanished into the depths of the building.

Sherry instinctively followed Duncan’s gaze and looked up, and in that instant, she felt her heart abruptly stop beating–both of them stopped.

She felt a loud boom in her mind, then another boom–the flames that enveloped her body and soul “pulled” her back as she lapsed into madness, fiercely burning at the edges of her vision, dissipating the intense spiritual impact brought on by witnessing the body of an ancient deity.

“It’s a limb of a god…” Lucricia quickly came to her senses, looking up and murmuring to herself, “Those pale structures spreading out from the palace we saw from afar… Did they extend from here?”

“Seeing up close really is different from just getting a glimpse from afar,” A’Dog murmured, “I almost thought I had a heartbeat again.”

“Be careful not to look at these limbs for too long.” Duncan casually warned, then continued walking forward.

As the team ventured deeper into the palace, they encountered… more.

Pale tentacles–some only as thick as a mast, others nearly filling the entire roof and wider than some mid-sized ships–wove uncontrollably like entangled roots, almost piercing through and permeating every corridor and hall of the palace, this astonishing biological structure spreading and growing within the ancient grand building, withering away as if becoming part of the structure itself, even physically devouring and replacing the original pillars and beams in some areas.

When traversing a certain hall, the crisscrossed tentacles and unidentifiable organ structures nearly filled the entire space.

Astonishing, shocking, awe-inspiring, even fearful–without the mental corruption from the gods, simply witnessing such “limbs” on this scale could easily send a mentally fragile mortal into collapse and madness.

Duncan suspected that even these astonishing biological structures were merely a small part of a vast entity–perhaps more of it was hidden beneath this island, in the dark deep sea.

This temple was merely a space for the vast entity to interact with “pilgrims from the land,” a small reception room, a conference hall, where the queen of Leviathan extended a few of her tendrils from the deep sea into this building just to communicate conveniently with those humans she had sheltered in ancient times.

The team finally stopped at the end of another long corridor.

Instead of a hall or a room at the end of the corridor, there was… a pool almost resembling an “indoor lake.”

This was a huge circular space, with a masonry floor that dipped progressively towards the center, with two-thirds of the space occupied by a faintly glowing round water pool. Numerous doors and window openings distributed on the surrounding walls, countless tentacles and vessels, nerve tracts passing through those openings, submerged into the depths of the pool, forming a massive complex structure that was hard to discern with the naked eye in the glowing “lake water.”

Part of it protruded out of the water pool, lying lifelessly on the stone floor, and near that protruded limb structure, there seemed to also be some “debris” scattered around.

“…Is this building that big?” After being astonished for a long time, Sherry couldn’t help but murmur, “How come I feel like this ‘hall’ is about the size of the entire palace we saw from the outside…”

“Did you notice that too?” Maurice glanced at Sherry, then around thoughtfully, “The internal space of it… seems to defy common sense, it must have been greatly expanded, or… when we passed through a certain door or corridor, we were no longer inside that palace but had entered a connected secret space.”

Fenna stayed silent, just quietly watching the lifeless, pale limbs at the edge of the water pool, her expression complex and sorrowful.

Many layers of whispers lingered in her ears, the gentle sound of sea waves unceasing, yet she couldn’t understand anything. From the moment she stepped into the palace, the clear will of the goddess seemed to have vanished, and she could no longer hear any of Her voices.

Duncan stood beside Fenna, his brows tightly furrowed, his countenance hinting at confusion.

He had thought that by coming here, he would be able to converse face-to-face with Gomona, even if the other was in a strange “dead” state. He should have been able to hear her voice–echoes, illusions, spirits, or whatever else, just like in his previous dealings with odd things. But…

There was nothing.

Here was just a long-deceased corpse, devoid of everything that had once emanated from it.