Chapter 73: Divine Strings

“Pressure test seven, all valves open.”

“Circuit test five, full switch load preparation.”

“Safety lock tensile test six, activate elemental barrier!”

Only ten minutes remained until the scheduled dive, and the Balor’s hold teemed with a dense crowd of technicians. Their urgent shouts echoed alongside Aether’s somewhat detached responses. Cables, lights, and testing gear crammed every inch of the deck below, where ancient elemental weapons—forged from silver-copper alloys and cinnabar—gleamed in harmony with cutting-edge technology.

The bulkhead separating the hold was, in fact, the entrance to the Balor’s power plant. Scorching heat seeped through the concrete and steel plating. The cabin’s temperature might not have been much cooler than the training room floor where Yinghuo had been unleashed, yet not a single soul betrayed impatience or frustration.

Everyone was utterly absorbed in their tasks. The creature lurking in the depths still survived in some unknowable form, and a single steel cable or screw could spell the difference between life and death for everyone aboard.

Shi Zui was not down in the hold. Yi Fengyan couldn’t attend in person, so for now, the fate of the entire ship rested in her hands. She stood at the vessel’s highest point, gazing out. In the distance, Bangkok towered along the seaside, its blinding neon lights sweeping across the world without restraint. The air even carried faint echoes of youthful laughter and revelry.

Yet all around the Balor stretched the abyss-like sea—silent, oppressively so, an endless hush that pressed down like a weight. Dive time loomed. It was time to depart.

But Shi Zui didn’t hit the activation key right away. In the final moment, she turned back. Her gaze drifted lightly over the shoreline where the vehicles were parked. The Balor had already set sail, carrying her far from the spot where Ye Jingqiu had last appeared.

Shi Zui lowered her eyes, lost in thought. Her once-deep black gaze now mirrored the sea’s dead-calm surface. She hesitated no longer and pressed the key.

“Engage Balor.”

In an instant, the sea hidden beneath the cloak of night erupted in flames! At the horizon where sky met water, it was as if a sunken city in the deep-sea ruins had suddenly flickered to life.

The colossal Balor, whale-like in its enormity, unleashed the full-throated roar of its engines. Its four boilers and 453-type steam turbines spun to maximum output, unleashing the pinnacle of its seventy-thousand-horsepower limit. From bow to stern, from the pitch-black sky to the abyssal shore, searchlights and illumination lamps blazed to life. A protective barrier, woven from the four foundational elements, slowly materialized around it.

Balor was the Indian god of sky and rain. In all the world’s mythologies, only Indian legends depicted their true deities with such extravagant detail and fervor. The ship had been hastily renamed before setting out—like Thais beseeching Buddha for a token of safe passage.

“First Equipment Group.”

Gripping the Will Ring, Shi Zui descended slowly along the suspension ladder. No sooner had the words left her lips than rows of massive lamps ignited farther out at sea. The vessels bearing modern weaponry stood ready. When the beast tide surged, the lowest-tier exotic beasts could be pulverized into fragments by ordinary bullets.

“First Action Group.”

Faint white lights flickered to life along the coastal perimeter. From this moment, the entire sea zone was under total Lock-On. The action group’s nimble speedboats would sever any prying eyes. Fishing vessels had all received identical orders to return to port, with warnings of an approaching storm.

“……”

With every command issued, the Chao Phraya River Estuary blazed like midday. Shi Zui had reached the deck, her eyes fixed on the water. Each light gleamed precisely where the plan dictated, transforming the estuary into a lion baring its fangs, poised to strike at any exotic beast that dared surface.

A battle concealed within the annals of time drew its iron curtain in silence. Shi Zui cast one final glance at the eerily quiet shore, then sealed the hatch leading belowdecks.

“Time until scheduled dive: five minutes.”

Aether’s gentle chime reverberated through the cavernous cabin, vast as five or six football fields. Xie Pingzhi, usually so carefree and irreverent, wore no smile. She secured her liquid elemental suit, clipping one end of an extraordinarily long high-polymer tether to her back while the other coiled in thick loops around the winch.

Should Zhou and Shi fail to stabilize the vacuum state, the suit would shield her from water pressure capable of crushing an elephant flat, while the tether strained to preserve her life.

“Nervous?” Shi Zui asked suddenly, her gaze locking onto her teammate’s sea-blue eyes.

Xie Pingzhi betrayed a rare flicker of hesitation. She fell silent for a moment, then gave a slight nod.

Shi Zui noted how her right hand clenched the Whistling Blade that Zhong Qing had gifted her. But the blade today was different, shimmering faintly with a dusting of pale gold.

“Constance isn’t here either?” Xie Pingzhi murmured.

“She’s with Second Weapons Group, handling the high-level exotic beasts,” Shi Zui replied, studying her teammate. “Plans have changed. Our job is just to lure this exotic beast up from five thousand meters. No engaging it on the seabed.”

Xie Pingzhi nodded. “I know. Director Yi still hasn’t identified this S-rank exotic beast?”

“……We might need to wait a little longer.”

In truth, there was no need to wait. Among the ten dossiers in total, Shi Zui had known the instant the dive was advanced: the identity of the beast slumbering in these Return Ruins.

Chimei Wangliang, which often roamed the world in human guise. Legends spoke of it as a single body housing three souls. Each soul, wandering alone, held little power—but when all three converged, the dream-realm of myth would devour the entire world.

That was why Shi Zui hadn’t told Xie Pingzhi the truth. They were at the very river mouth where Xie Pingzhi had awakened her instinct five years prior. The perpetrator of that tragedy might be this dormant beast itself—or, more likely, one stray wisp of its soul was the wife Xie Pingzhi still cherished in her memory.

“Beep—”

All systems calibrated, the hold’s iron doors boomed open. Surging waves crashed against the hull like a tidal onslaught, yet the Balor stood firm as a mountain. Shi Zui and Zhou Xianhui flanked the doors on either side, while the technicians withdrew of their own accord.

With a soft click, the clock hand aligned with its mark. Two utterly distinct elemental auras erupted forth.

Instinct: Whistling Listener, activated.

Instinct: Gonggong, activated.

Pale orange and deep blue auras intertwined, and in an instant, a shrill cry like a volcano erupting rang out. In everyone’s line of sight, layers of seawater overlapped and flowed backward in reverse directions. Farther below, at crushing depths, the vast cyan seafloor churned like a colossal dragon drawing breath, its skeletal frame heaving!

Gonggong, the Water Instinct that stood shoulder to shoulder with Yinghuo. Yet Shi Zui had scarcely ever called upon it, for whether in terms of consumption or sheer destructive power, it paled far in comparison to Yinghuo. Gonggong itself lacked any potent offensive capabilities; its sole purpose was to part the seas.

But it was a perfect match for the scene unfolding now.

Legend told of Moses leading his people from Egypt, only to find their path blocked by the Red Sea. In that dire moment of life and death, a fierce east wind arose. The roiling sea beasts bowed their heads in reverence, and the mighty waters cleaved in two, carving a clear path for Moses.

Perhaps Moses himself had wielded an instinct rivaling Gonggong, but none of that mattered anymore. Beneath the grinding iron gates that parted and closed, a wall of waves churned silently. The tide was shoved aside by an inconceivable force, farther and farther out. A vacuum channel bored downward at the speed of a falling meteor.

The waters parted slowly, like a miracle unfolding, to reveal a bottomless black abyss.

Sweat beaded at the temples of Zhou Xianhui and Shi Zui alike. The immense elemental burden wrung their bodies dry. There was no time left to waste. Xie Pingzhi glanced at her two teammates, then swept her final gaze over the cabin floor, where eyes gleamed like a starry host. Without a moment’s hesitation, she activated Shame Grace in its full state and plunged into the black void that symbolized the unknown!

A sonic boom ripped through the air. A pale cyan gale whipped up as the winch cables spun furiously, vanishing in the blink of an eye.

There was no pause. Xie Pingzhi plummeted six thousand meters into the deep sea at breakneck speed. This was a dive without hindrance, a vast world devoid of light opening its arms wide to her.

The winch cables halted abruptly.

Everyone in the lower cabin let out a collective breath of relief.

It meant Xie Pingzhi had reached the bottom safely.

The elementally forged channel had stabilized. Shi Zui closed her eyes for a moment, her left hand clenched tight around the inhibitor in her pocket, ready to twist it open and down the dose at any second.

“Depth approximately six thousand four hundred meters. Black Point’s descent speed has slowed markedly.”

“Safety line intact. No change in suspended weight.”

“Operator’s vitals stable.”

The tension in the lower cabin eased unconsciously. No news was the best news.

“Are we gonna have to haul A-Xie out later like a baby chick?”

“You wanna say that to her face?”

“Nah, forget it. But where’s Teacher Zhong? I figured she’d be here for sure at a time like this.”

Ning Wan craned her neck, peering around curiously. Sure enough, Zhong Qing was nowhere in sight. But it wasn’t necessary anyway—Zhong Qing’s job was installing the elemental gear, and there were no subtasks for her right now.

Easy murmurs began to ripple through the cabin, lightening the mood a touch. But everyone knew it was just forced banter to paper over the nerves.

The gear team’s weapons were primed and ready. Nuclear-tipped torpedoes and elemental weapons laced with lightning arrays and fire rounds hung from both sides of the hull. All eyes waited for the beast tide, for its arrival would mean the S-rank Exotic Beast had taken notice of them. The real fight was about to ignite, and the Source Weapons along with the nukes would serve as its welcome party.

“D-rank Exotic Beast Chi Ju detected.”

“C-rank Exotic Beast Cyclone Turtle detected.”

“…Black Point has stopped moving!”

A stunned hush gave way to a roar of commotion! The beast tide had come at last. Xie Pingzhi had already grappled with that Exotic Beast on the six-thousand-meter seabed!

Alarms wailed. If anyone stood at Balor’s highest point right now, they would gape in astonishment at the ocean’s total transformation into gray. No depth of seawater could produce this ironcast hue, so there was only one explanation.

The beast tide’s scales breaking the surface.

The dense gray surge rolled onward, leaving nothing but roiling blood and bleached bones in its wake. Come morning, the Chao Phraya River’s fishing grounds might lie in ruins—the beast tide had devoured them clean.

The ancient horrors lurking in abyssal depths thousands of meters down had awakened at last. Chi Ju shrieked as they barreled toward human shores, drawn inexorably by the promise of abundant blood and flesh. One Chi Ju burst from the waves in a frenzy of leaps, broadcasting its thrill.

It unfurled its soft paired fins in midair, the wing-membranes carving a flawless arc. Just as it dove eagerly back toward the ocean’s embrace, a stray round punched through its body. A massive blood mist erupted across the sky.

Modern firepower led the charge! Blinding muzzle flares lit the night as one, the chatter of breaching chambers thundering like a barrage of a thousand rockets. Acrid gunsmoke clawed at the throat. The weapons’ searing heat clashed with the chill seawater, as if already licking the skin. The sea ran thicker with gore, limbs and chunks flying.

A bulwark of bullets blotted the sky; this bay alone deserved the name “hail of lead.” The pitiful, mingled cries sent chills racing through every soul.

The gray tide stalled short of the first defensive line. Constance hunched over the nimble speedboat, ripples of water dancing in her palm. Without a second thought, she thrust her hand into the sea roiling with corpses and spent casings, hauling out a few floating bodies.

As expected, her face darkened. Amid the churning gray tide, beyond the purebred Human-Faced Fish Beasts Chi Ju and the bird-headed, turtle-shelled Cyclone Turtles, lurked a second breed of creature.

Ordinary fish, warped and twisted by elemental lures.

This was the nightmare the Base dreaded most. High-rank Exotic Beasts could bestow instincts at will upon any mundane animal. At that scale, humanity could turn mortal foe to every creature on Earth—even its own kind.

Shi Zui and Ye Jingqiu’s dragon-slaying rampage in the Golden Hall had been a stroke of perfect genius. Had that ancient wyrm breached the Heterodimensional Space and descended upon the world, every beast in Beijing would have warped in an instant into ravenous killers.

A single S-rank Exotic Beast was horror enough. Far worse was the beast tide it commanded—and its power to corrupt.

The helicopter observing the horde of Exotic Beasts skimmed low over the sea surface, while urgent honks from snarled traffic in the distant city grew ever more frantic. Police officers, having received sudden orders, strung up yellow caution tape along the seaside boulevard. Countless tourists enjoying the ocean breeze were herded back to their hotel rooms with furrowed brows, while puzzled beach managers loyally carried out the command to shut down the scenic area…

The city’s twinkling lights winked out layer by layer. Thailand’s most prosperous metropolis plunged into a newborn silence at an astonishing speed.

Black Point halted its descent, its depth steadily rising as the safety cable began reeling in! Shi Zui stared fixedly at the screen displaying the readings. She and Zhou Xianhui were already at their limits. If Xie Pingzhi didn’t surface soon, she would be sealed forever in the ocean’s abyss.

Six thousand four hundred meters… six thousand two hundred meters… five thousand eight hundred meters… The safety cable whipped back with alarming speed—but in that instant—

“Safety cable severed. Current terminal suspended weight… zero.”

Aether stated calmly, “Unable to continue operative recovery. Repeat: unable to continue operative recovery.”

Shi Zui’s pupils contracted sharply. But before she could trigger the backup plan, a terrifying aura erupted from the six-thousand-meter depths with a roar!

Powerful—this was true power. The instant Exotic Beasts and Awakeners brushed against that aura, they abandoned all resistance. An Aether Domain formed of Aether Elements expanded outward at the speed of sound, a hazy new gray tide engulfing the entire city in a heartbeat.

The world fell utterly silent.

Exotic Beasts ceased their surge. Guns jammed and fell quiet. Awakeners manning machine guns froze in place. Helicopters spiraled down into the sea. Traffic cops toppled over mid-gesture, pedestrians halted dead at crosswalks—but she needn’t fear collision, for drivers idling at red lights abruptly shut their eyes.

Dreams invaded every mind without a whisper. The city seemed paused, as if time itself had stopped.

Instinct: Divine String Melody, activated.