Chapter 187 The Abyss Mother

In a series of bone deformation sounds and rising black smoke, twelve symmetrical black appendages spread and grew again, pitch-black bone armor gradually covering her body, and sharp, blade-like bone spurs gleamed with a bloody chill—Shirley had once again returned to her abyssal demon form.

She was adapting at an astonishing rate to how to control her two forms, mastering this body more and more skillfully. The entire process was less like "learning" from scratch and more like this knowledge had already permeated the depths of her mind and limbs, and now she was simply "recalling" it.

Slightly moving the appendages behind her that aided in walking, and rotating her hands and feet, Shirley nodded in satisfaction, "In a hellhole like this, it's still a little more reassuring to be like this."

Agou, on the other hand, looked up at Shirley, who was now much taller than it, and then its body was suddenly enveloped in a swirling cloud of smoke. As if melting, it shrunk and merged into the shadows around Shirley.

Duncan silently watched this scene from the side. After Shirley's form stabilized, he stepped forward and said, "I thought you would resist your demonic body—after all, such a drastic transformation would be very...challenging to one's worldview for an ordinary person."

"We're already in the Abyssal Deep Sea, who cares about looks?" Shirley poked at the stones on the ground with the appendages behind her, and said with an indifferent expression, "I'm a...what's that word again, oh, I'm a 'pragmatist'—first make sure I can live safely, and then consider living well. In my opinion, there's nothing wrong with this demon body, it can fight well and take a beating. It's very useful in the Abyssal Deep Sea. If there's any downside, it's that it uncontrollably absorbs the remains of dead demons. Ugh...just thinking about it makes me feel a little sick..."

As soon as she finished speaking, a dog's head emerged from the shadows beneath her feet, "...Actually, I think it tastes pretty good—Shirley, don't you want to try the bone I brought you?"

Shirley didn't hesitate: "No, it's disgusting!"

Duncan silently watched this scene, and a faint smile gradually appeared on his face.

"Then the only thing left for us to do is find that 'Abyssal Saint,' " he said, bringing the topic back to the main point. "This place is full of countless floating islands, and the scale of the entire space far exceeds initial expectations—Agou, can you determine where exactly we are?"

The dog's head emerged from the shadows again. Agou looked around very seriously, and nodded slightly to the captain: "This should be the upper layer of the Barren Ring—the area closest to the 'starry sky.' If my judgment is correct, we need to go 'down'."

Duncan looked curious: "Down?"

Agou nodded, then communicated with Shirley, and came to the edge of the broken wasteland, peering down into the boundless chaotic darkness below.

In the vast void below the floating islands, the chaotic and dim starlight was even weaker. It could vaguely be seen that more floating islands were drifting chaotically in that darkness, but at the very bottom of all the darkness, something could be vaguely seen...flickering with faint light.

At first, Duncan thought it was another "starry sky" hanging upside down at the bottom of the Abyssal Deep Sea, but he soon realized that those faint light spots were the faintly flickering...lights on the surface of some incredibly large structure.

Those faint light spots, almost shrouded in darkness, were arranged in the distance, vaguely outlining winding branches and a "trunk" located in the center of all the branches. The lights on the trunk were denser and appeared to be slowly moving like a living thing.

Duncan stood on the edge of the broken land, quietly watching the dim and dense light spots. He couldn't judge how far it was from here to the bottom, nor could he judge the scale of the "body" behind the light spots, but just from this rough observation, he could imagine what a behemoth it was.

"That is the Abyssal Saint—the 'mother' of all demons, and also the final resting place after the demons die," Agou said in the shadows, its voice with a hint of inexplicable emotion. "At the very bottom of all the broken islands, its limbs extend to the end of the entire Abyssal Deep Sea. Its visible physical part alone is equivalent to dozens or hundreds of city-states, and the invisible part—the ends of those tentacles, they pierce through the 'bottom' of the Abyssal Deep Sea and extend into the subspace, which cannot be calculated and judged by any mathematically logical language.

"Every minute and every second, countless demon substrates are born in that dark abyss—they are like light smoke, riding on irregular, invisible winds away from the 'bottom,' and are sent to the floating islands above through a series of discontinuous spatial discontinuities. They devour each other and turn into various entities in the process, and then fight endlessly. The dead demons turn into smoke and slurry again, and after a short or long wandering, they return to the abyss below, are absorbed by the Saint, and the cycle repeats endlessly.

"I have broken away from this cycle...but this has a negligible impact on the entire Abyssal Deep Sea. The cycle of devouring between demons will not stop, and the 'operation' of the 'Saint' will never end."

Duncan listened quietly to Agou's narration, without interrupting, until the other party finished speaking, he nodded lightly: "So we just need to go down?"

"That's the problem. 'Going down' is not an easy thing here," Agou raised its head from the shadows and looked into Duncan's eyes. "Do you remember a very strange and troublesome 'characteristic' in the Abyssal Deep Sea?"

"...Are you talking about spatial discontinuity?" Duncan said thoughtfully. "I remember we discussed this before. In the Abyssal Deep Sea, 'arriving' at another location from one location is a very uncertain thing. Direction and distance are completely random here—but we haven't felt this problem along the way."

"That's because we are on the islands. Within the scope of a single floating island, space still follows the continuous structure we are familiar with, but if we leave these islands..."

As Agou spoke, it came out of the shadows. It picked up a piece of gravel nearby, and after picking it up, threw it far away into the vast darkness outside the scope of the floating island.

The gravel disappeared in the blink of an eye—as soon as it left the floating island by two or three meters, it disappeared out of thin air.

Alice stared wide-eyed at the direction where the stone disappeared, and couldn't help but open her mouth after a few seconds: "Where did the stone go?"

"I don't know, anyway, there's only a small chance that it 'fell down'," Agou shook its head. "Up, down, left, right, front, back, any direction, any distance, any landing point, is possible. It may be falling downwards from interstellar space, or it may have smashed on the head of some unlucky demon. Of course—it may also have landed directly on the Abyssal Saint. When entities move in the 'void' area between floating islands, it is completely random like this."

Duncan frowned: "...So the 'cycles' you mentioned earlier, the 'cycles' of demons between the floating islands and the Saint, are also so random?"

"Yes," Agou nodded. "Everything is based on uncertainty—a demon born from the Saint may have to wait hundreds of years before it gains an entity on a certain floating island, and the remains of a demon killed by its own kind and thrown into the void may have to 'fall' in the darkness for a thousand years before it reaches the deepest part of the abyss. This 'fall' may be in any direction..."

As it spoke, it raised its head and looked at the dim starry sky above.

"And given the scale of the Abyssal Deep Sea and the endless number of demons, we can even suspect that some of the demon substrates that were initially separated from the Abyssal Saint are still floating in the darkness, never having gained an entity, and among the demons that died in the early days due to fighting, there are also some who are still in that darkness, carrying out a 'descent' that has lasted for ten thousand years, and have not yet fallen to the bottom—these are all very possible things."

Uncertain, discontinuous, a "chaotic cycle" system based on massive random events...

How bizarre!

Duncan frowned tightly, while outlining a completely counter-intuitive world "order" in his mind based on Agou's description, and thoughtfully opened his mouth: "...But the Vanishing Sail once smashed straight through the Abyssal Deep Sea."

"Yes, so this is the most terrifying thing," the ghostly green fire in Agou's eye sockets shrank slightly. "In fact, compared to 'being smashed to death by a fire falling from the sky,' the fact that 'something can fall from above, and it will definitely land at the bottom' impacted the demons in the Abyssal Deep Sea even more—demons have no minds, but at least they can rely on instinct to live in this chaotic land, and the appearance of the Vanishing Sail completely violated the 'rules' here. This incomprehensible, unreasonable, law-breaking 'phenomenon' is what caused many demons to go crazy on the spot."

Agou paused, its tone particularly serious: "Do you understand what I mean? For the Abyssal Deep Sea, 'something can fall from above to below, and this falling process is always true,' this matter, which is taken for granted in the real world, is 'unspeakable' here—the fall of the Vanishing Sail here is not just about destroying a few islands and killing tens of thousands of demons, it 'pierced' the order of the Abyssal Deep Sea itself."

Duncan thought for a while: "...In other words, for the mental and physical health of the demons here, I'd better not do any more 'falling' here?"

"It's not for the mental and physical health of the demons—anyway, their way of life is not very healthy in the first place," Agou shook its head. "It's for the 'health' of the Abyssal Deep Sea. This place is already not very stable. If you smash it again, it might really leak."

Duncan stroked his chin, and didn't speak for a while.

Just as he was trying hard to think about how to solve the problem of spatial discontinuity outside the floating island, thinking about how to reach the "bottom" where the Abyssal Saint was located, he suddenly felt someone tugging at his arm beside him.

He turned his head and saw Alice's beautiful big eyes.

The doll raised her hand and handed a dark thing to him: "Captain! Stone!"

Duncan was stunned, his expression a little subtle: "Um, Alice, now is not the time..."

He suddenly stopped.

The stone in Alice's hand...was the one Agou threw out just now!

(End of this chapter)