Chapter 1123: The Sea Abyss and the Underworld
Chapter 1123: The Sea Abyss and the Underworld
"You guys came from here, right?"
After swimming out of the golden clam in Leon's hand and curiously looking at the sea eye in the distance, the mermaid statue shrank to the size of a fist, swam back to the edge of the clam and sat down. Then, while swinging its small tail, it shook its head at Leon's slightly nervous expression and said:
"No need to look again. The only people who have passed through this sea eye recently are the four of you. There is no such thing as the crab director or the bug director as you said."
They are not Director Crab and Director Bug, but Director Cancer and Director Scorpio... Forget it, call them whatever you want...
After instinctively correcting himself in his mind, Leon "invited" the mermaid statue from the ruins to the sea eye, and asked unwillingly:
"Are you sure your feelings aren't wrong? Is it possible that there are some special circumstances? For example, they fell down after being frozen and have no direct contact with this world, or they used some abnormal objects to conceal their own aura, so you can't sense them?"
"Hey! Are you looking down on me a little too much?"
After carefully avoiding the miniature trident stuck in the chest, the pocket-sized mermaid statue crossed its small white arms in front of its chest, raised its thumb-sized head, looked at Leon with dissatisfaction, and said:
"Although I failed in the battle for the origin, I am still a great being who once controlled the origin of the entire material world. If measured by your standards, my immersion value at my peak would be estimated to be over 85 points.
The four pillar gods who beat you humans to flee in fear in the past are estimated to have less than 80 points of infection value. If I were still alive, if they dared to come to my world to cause trouble, even if they were tied together, I wouldn't be able to beat them with one hand!"
After boasting proudly about his past strength, the mermaid statue with a tiny "toothpick" stuck in his chest raised his head and snorted with a slightly unhappy look:
“For someone as powerful as me, even if I am the last remnant left after my death, I am still not comparable to an ordinary Pillar God… Although I may be a little weaker in terms of power, in this world that once belonged to me, as long as I have enough Root Color, I am almost omniscient and omnipotent!
The two directors of your Cleanup Bureau are at most at the level of ordinary Pillar Gods with 70 points. If you add some Star Palace secrets, they can barely be considered weak Pillar Gods. How could they possibly hide it from my eyes?"
Ok……
Seeing the confident look on the mermaid statue's face, Leon could only believe his words for the time being, and then asked with a frown:
"If they didn't come here, where could they have been? Do you know where they went?"
"This one……"
After hearing what Leon said, the nine-centimeter mermaid statue, which was nine meters tall, couldn't help but be slightly discouraged, and said with a vague look in his eyes:
"I was indeed very strong in the past, but now I am dead after all. You can't expect too much from a dead strong man...right?"
"..."
"Of course, I'm not completely clueless."
Seeing two points of disdain, three points of contempt, and five points of disappointment in Leon's glance, the mermaid statue, who was a little embarrassed, quickly opened her mouth to make amends:
"If you are really sure that they fell into the sea eye and were not deceived by some illusion, then I think it is possible that it is not them who are lost, but you."
"us?"
"Yes, I think you are the ones who went to the wrong sea eye."
After carefully observing the almost stagnant sea eye in the distance with its black eyes wide open, the mermaid statue said confidently:
"According to what you said, the reason why your world is frozen is probably because there is something wrong with the Sea Eye. It is not connected to the Cold Spring World, but to my Abyssal World. After the source of my Abyssal World was... taken away, the rules of the entire world began to disappear."
"Rules lost?"
"It means that various originally constant 'properties' begin to become chaotic, or even disappear completely."
When it came to this, the mermaid statue's expression dimmed slightly, and then it pursed its lips and said:
"For example... the water in your world evaporates when it's hot and condenses when it's cold. Fish won't suffocate when swimming in it, and crops can grow when water is poured on seeds. These are unchanging properties, and they are also rules that apply in most material worlds.
The water in my Abyss has completely lost the ability to freeze after losing its source as an anchor. Even if the surrounding temperature is low enough to freeze steel, all the water in the entire Abyss will still remain in liquid form.
As for other properties that allow marine life to breathe and plants to grow, although they have not yet disappeared, they have also experienced varying degrees of loss and confusion. In the future, they will probably disappear completely over time, just like the 'properties' of ice... But it doesn't matter."
Sitting on the edge of the golden clam shell, the mermaid statue looked around at the extremely silent world and said in a somewhat lonely voice:
"Before the sea lost its properties and plants could no longer grow, my people had almost starved to death."
starve?
Leon was slightly startled when he heard this, then he carefully held the golden clam shell in his hand and asked in confusion:
"After the root was taken away, didn't the world immediately perish?"
"of course not."
The mermaid statue swung its tail and responded in a calm voice:
"The root is the root, and the world is the world. A world that has its root taken away will not be destroyed instantly, but will only slowly collapse from order to disorder. What my people are facing is not a spectacular destruction, but a continuous withering bit by bit."
That's it...
Leon was silent for a while after hearing this, and then did not immediately urge her to answer questions such as the whereabouts of the two directors, but asked in a low voice:
"Then your Ocean Abyss Realm..."
"I guess he froze to death."
Knowing what Leon wanted to ask, the mermaid statue sat on the edge of the small clam shell, staring at the dark blue water across the sea eye and said quietly:
"Before the seawater's 'freezing' property was lost, its 'heat-retaining' property had already disappeared. In the first hundred years after I was killed, more than 70% of all marine life in the entire Abyss Realm had been frozen to death, leaving only a very small number of cold-resistant species.
The rest of my people, and the other races that once believed in me and followed me, built the ruins you saw at the place where I was killed. They prayed to my corpse and obtained the little bit of the root color left in me to ensure the normal operation of the world rules again. "
"Then they..."
"Dead."
The mermaid statue shrugged.
"Although I was powerful in the past, I was already a corpse by then. How much Root Color could I have left? The limit is that I can only protect a few people!"
"..."
“At the beginning, when there was still a lot of Root Color left, they maintained the warmth of an entire sea area. Later, when there was not much Root Color left in my body, they could only start to shrink their range.
Then they tried every possible way to cultivate cold-resistant algae to make up for the lack of food sources caused by the mass death of animals and plants. Finally, they took the initiative to migrate ashore from the sea and built many buildings that could provide heating.
But even if they did everything they could, they could only last a little more than four hundred years. "Raising his hand to call the ocean current, the mermaid statue dragged himself and Leon to the surface of the sea, and said indifferently:
"Not long after the fourth century began, the rule that 'eating' brought 'nutrition' began to slowly dissipate, and the root color on my body was completely drained away. After that, only I was left. After that, all the remaining mermaids also died one after another within a dozen years.
Five hundred years after my death, the last living person in the entire Abyss came to this "holy land" wrapped in a robe, offered sacrifices to my statue, built those shell houses and lived there, and began to carve monuments for me, our race, and the entire Abyss."
"Carve a monument?"
Hearing this, Leon, who had been listening quietly, couldn’t help but ask:
"The monument you mentioned..."
"It's the one you saw on the edge of the island."
The mermaid statue swam out of the clam shell, sat on the edge of Leon's palm, stared at the ruins in the distance and said softly:
"I have forgotten what the person who carved the stele looked like. I just remember that she was dying. It took her more than two years to carve the stele. After dragging it to the edge of the island and setting it up, she was dying within a few months. She struggled to crawl back to say her last prayer, but she collapsed on the road and never got up again...
Oh, by the way, among the buried corpses that you blew away when you came ashore, the one closest to the ruins was hers, and this was only possible because the rule of 'rot' had already completely disappeared long before she died, otherwise there would probably be nothing left."
"..."
When the song sinks into the island rocks and the scales turn into bone sand, I will become the last monument of this world together with the sea breeze...
Recalling the only sentence on the stone tablet that the old mermaid could understand, Leon was silent for a while and then spoke:
"Then who... um... who was the person who stole the root of the Abyss Realm? Do you know its name or the number between its roots?"
"how?"
After looking up at Leon, the mermaid statue suddenly smiled.
"Can't bear to see what happened to us, and want to avenge us?"
"Not quite."
Then he looked towards the island ruins and vaguely caught a glimpse of the outline of the huge stone tablet. Leon took a deep breath and said:
"If he can come and steal the source of your world, then sooner or later he will come and steal the source of my world. So I hope to know who the enemy is, so that I won't be clueless when the disaster strikes... By the way, I'll also help you and those who have worked hard to survive, and get something from him."
"..."
After looking up at Leon's expression, the mermaid statue suddenly sighed.
"Alas...I am such a sinful woman."
"?"
"My beauty is the greatest sin in the whole world."
The mermaid statue said helplessly:
"I never thought that even though I've been dead for who knows how many years, I could still charm the little man who came to dig my grave and make him rush to help me get revenge."
"???"
"Don't be shy~ I'm so nice, it's normal to be fascinated by me~"
After blinking at Leon who looked speechless, the mermaid statue with sea-blue eyes looked him up and down for a while, then said with a smile:
"I am still quite interested in you. Not only are you a nice person and your looks meet my aesthetic standards, but you are also one of my people... What a pity! If only you had come here when I was still alive, maybe we could have done something, like have a child together to continue the tribe~"
"..."
You... you're so abstract even after you die!
Leon had never expected that the mermaid statue would bring up this topic, and his face suddenly darkened.
However, just as he was about to complain, the mermaid statue's expression suddenly became serious, and it looked at him and said:
"Wait a minute! I think I know why you came to the Abyss Realm!"
"what?"
"It's time! The time on you is wrong...or rather, the time on my side is wrong."
As Leon looked surprised, the mermaid statue began to explain:
"The location of the Abyss Realm is in the Old Land. The time and space of the Old Land are not continuous, so the time here and the time in your world are actually staggered."
The sea-blue light in the mermaid statue’s eyes gradually grew stronger. After staring at Leon for a while with a gaze that seemed to penetrate him, it continued:
"The Abyss Realm is now connected to the Cold Spring Realm, but the rules of the Abyss Realm are constantly being lost. According to the rules of the Cold Spring Realm, when the ocean of the Abyss Realm loses its value of existence, the Sea Eye representing [Cold Spring-Abyss] will move to other vibrant new planes on its own!"
what? !
When he heard this, Leon vaguely understood her assumption, and said with shock in his eyes:
"You mean... the eye of the sea that represents the [Cold Spring-Present World] is actually the eye of the [Cold Spring-Ocean] that automatically moved to a new plane after the Cold Spring World was destroyed to a certain extent? We are actually... equivalent to coming back from your future?"
"pretty close."
Looking at the time that was slightly "dislocated" on Leon's body, the mermaid statue nodded slightly with a complicated expression and said:
"Only this can explain why you are here. The reason why I have never heard of your situation is not because I have been asleep for too long, but because your affairs belong to the future for me...
Although this situation is uncommon, it is not impossible for Old Earth... Our world is in a different time, but in Old Earth, meeting people from the past or the future is actually a fairly common thing, and you will get used to it sooner or later."
Habit… Where the hell did this stick come from? How can I get used to it?
Just as Leon took a breath and began to try to accept this explosive and outrageous situation, the mermaid statue couldn't help but look at him, revealing a hint of hesitation.
Although time dislocation is common in the old land, the general span is mostly a few years or months, and some even have only a few seconds of error. It is extremely rare to be able to span thousands or thousands of years in one go.
Moreover, even if there is the same sea eye as an "anchor point" that can send him from the future to the abyss, it is not something that an ordinary pillar god can do. Considering the "Evangeline" he mentioned... Did he really go to that present world in the future?
(End of this chapter)