Yarra’s Adventure Notes
Chapter 486 - 50 - The Corpse at the Bottom of the Sea_1

Chapter 486: Chapter 50 - The Corpse at the Bottom of the Sea_1

At a location where the presence of a ship was virtually impossible, the discovery of a sunken ship, especially in such a sensitive location, along with Catherine’s previous speculation, gave rise to potential hidden reasons, which momentarily silenced the five of them.

"Do you think Doris might have found this sunken ship during her explorations?" Standing atop the remains of the deep-sea beast, Catherine gazed at the vague shadow in the near distance. "I remember Badiya mentioning casually that Doris had explored every part of the sea floor. That’s why she suggested we search the central islands. Considering this, I reckon she must have explored here too."

"So that’s why Doris never mentioned it herself." Pannis nodded in agreement. "She probably didn’t want us to miss this clue."

"But why didn’t she just tell us directly?" Catherine voiced her perplexity. "If she had, we would have had a target. We could have saved time instead of aimlessly searching like this."

"Let’s go down." Pannis shook his head, without an answer. "Let’s check out the sunken ship for clues first."

Starting from the gargantuan beast’s skull, the group began to descend. Descending was much easier than ascending. No matter the height, one merely needed to jump down accurately, changing the Amphibian Beads from walking mode to diving mode just before landing, allowing the water’s resistance to easily absorb the impact. The five of them were as agile as rock beasts, leaping swiftly down from the skull, which was over four hundred feet high.

"Hold on." Freya, being a Crystal Gunner, had highly acute vision. In the midst of her descent, she seemed to have spotted something, but given her high-speed fall, she didn’t get the chance to voice it out. Once she landed, she hastily said, "While coming down, I saw something inside the beast’s mouth."

"Are you sure?" Upon landing gracefully with a splash, Catherine spun around to ask, "It’s so dark in there..."

"I’m not sure." Freya replied. "But we have already wasted quite a bit of time. Spending a few more minutes to take a closer look won’t hurt."

"Let’s check it out then." Catherine brightened the light on her back and started swimming upwards. Owing to the steep slope of the skull, it was quite seamless to swim straight up. Using the buoyancy of the water, they didn’t even need to exert much effort. They quickly reached the mouth of the beast and peered inside from atop its teeth.

The space inside the beast’s mouth was significantly large. Due to the covering of algae and sediment above, the interior was pitch-dark, lacking any source of light, akin to an underwater cave. From the outside, even with the Crystal Energy Illuminator adjusted to its maximum brightness, its light beam still failed to illuminate the bones on the sides. All they saw was a dark expanse. However, Freya’s eyes lit up. Pointing forward, she said, "Look there. I knew I wasn’t wrong."

Following Freya’s direction, they shone a light approximately seventy or eighty meters into the beast’s mouth, where they saw something white partially buried in the sediment below. Although they couldn’t really discern what it was from such a distance, their experience led them to a preliminary judgement. They exchanged surprised glances, cautiously approached, and took a closer look.

The water currents surged, and from the endless darkness suddenly emerged three elongated sea beasts. Each beast bore a sharp spear atop its head, as it tore through the water, fearlessly attacking the invaders who had infiltrated their territory. Catherine slightly furrowed her brows. Although she wore no armor, she still had her Magicsteel shield strapped on. At this moment, she thrust her shield out thrice in rapid succession, directly colliding with the spear on top of each beast’s head. The Beginner Gold Rank sea beasts were evidently incapable of posing any threat to a Legendary Rank warrior like Catherine. They couldn’t even cause her to wobble, so prepared was she for the impact. The resultant collision shattered their spears and disoriented them, leaving them to swim around in circles, dazed.

"Looks like we need to be careful of the sea beasts lurking around." Vivian advanced a few steps, and with a tap of her magic staff, completely froze the heads of the three dizzy sea beasts. Deprived of their heads’ control, their writhing bodies stiffened and fell straight to the ground.

After carefully examining the surrounding area with their lights to confirm that no other sea beasts were hidden in the darkness, the group gathered around their target. As they had initially guessed, they found another set of stark white skeletons. Only the upper half of the corpse was visible, while the rest was partially buried in the soil. The humanoid figure was covered in algae, making it difficult to identify the remains as a skeleton without closer examination.

"A victim’s body?" Lina asked quietly. "Did they escape from the ship and then die here?"

"That doesn’t make sense. The first instinct upon escaping would be to float upward, right? Even if they were severely wounded, it’s improbable that they would seek refuge in the depths of the sea," Catherine replied. "Plus, don’t forget, we’re in the deep sea — it has intense water pressure. Without the Amphibian Beads, who could stay here for long?"

"That’s a problem." Lina shook her head: "We need to dig it up and examine it thoroughly."

The five of them circled around the corpse and began to dig with their bare hands. The mud and sand at the bottom of the sea wasn’t soft; the heavy water pressure made each layer solid, though softened by water on the surface, it was incredibly hard and stubborn within. Fortunately, all of them were advanced professionals, with physical fitness far beyond that of ordinary people. Even without any tools, they managed to unearth the general outline of the corpse. Halfway through the process, the girls sighed inwardly. The corpse before them was not a human, but a member of the Sea Race. Its upper body was identical to a human, but from its spine down, there was just a long spine extending all the way to the tail end of its limbs.

"A mermaid." Catherine gave a bitter smile and groaned, "Why did this mermaid die here? Was it eaten by the giant beast?"

"That’s impossible," Pannis shook his head: "Theoretically, any member of the Sea Race can be devoured by a giant beast, except mermaids. Because they are the race closest to the gods under the sea. Even if the Sea Beasts lost their senses, they wouldn’t attack them."

"That’s interesting." Catherine ran her fingers over the remains saying, "Judging by their texture, their time of death isn’t that far apart, at most not more than three hundred years apart. I can’t think of any situation in which a mermaid hides inside the mouth of a giant beast and dies."

"Perhaps we can only speculate that she and the giant beast died at the same time." Vivian suggested, "Furthermore, according to Pannis, their relationship wasn’t antagonistic. Hmm, could they have been fighting side by side?"

"Fighting side by side? Against whom?" Freya suddenly pointed toward the direction of the sunken ship outside the body of the giant beast, "Against the enemy on the sunken ship? It’s not impossible, but is there any creature capable of defeating such a gigantic beast at the bottom of the sea? Pannis, could you pull it off?"

"I can’t guarantee it." Pannis shook her head, "I can only say that theoretically there’s a chance of victory, but the odds aren’t high if it’s just me."

"Her mortal wound is in her abdomen." Catherine said, "Look, three of her ribs are broken inwards. It should have been a heavy blow right here, not only breaking her ribs, but completely destroying her internal organs and snuffing out her life."

They dug around the area where the mermaid had died, but found nothing apart from the body. Catherine, gesturing to the mermaid’s body, speculated, "Long ago, she rode this giant Sea Beast into battle against an unknown enemy. During the battle, they managed to drag the enemy’s ship to the bottom of the sea. However, there were powerful warriors on the enemy’s ship, and they died under their counterattack."

"Sounds reasonable," Pannis agreed. "There’s just no evidence to support it, it’s just a conjecture out of thin air."

"There might be some evidence, I think I’ve found some." Vivian who had unknowingly ran over to a spot thirty meters away, looked down at the ground and said, "Look, this should be a human skull, right?"

Not far from Vivian’s feet, a curved bone structure protruded from the ground, slightly higher than the surrounding sediment. It was very well hidden, and they only discovered this bone structure wasn’t alone when they tried to pick it up. It was buried in the mud and sand with the other bones. After digging out the surrounding mud, what appeared before them was something all too familiar, something they might come across every now and then during their adventures - a skull. The skeletal features suggested it belonged to a normal human male.

"Keep digging." The girls fell silent for a while before Catherine sighed: "Since it has come to this, let’s just figure out what exactly happened."

The excavation of the second body was much more difficult than the first. Not just because it was buried deeper in the mud and sand, but also because of its posture. The mermaid’s body lay peacefully, as if silently accepting death. This second body, however, appeared to be in an upright position, with twisted limbs, as if it had suffered greatly before dying.

However, when they dug down to its chest, they couldn’t continue anymore. There was nothing below the chest of this corpse. The end of the spine was broken and distorted, as if someone had chopped off half his body with great force. This state of affairs left the girls stunned, and they immediately increased the speed of their digging. However, no matter how much they dug, they couldn’t find any more bones. Inside the mouth of the giant beast, there was only one seemingly human deceased, and the mermaid’s body. Based on the clues at hand, it seemed that this person too had died from some external attack. (To be continued. If you like this work, please recommend it at qidian.com and vote for it. Your support is my greatest motivation. Mobile users, please visit m.qidian.com to read.)