The vault door groaned shut behind them. As Wang Yue had predicted, the amorphous slime monster known as the “Shoggoth” did not pursue.
“Wang Yue!” Lilith cried out in delight. She hopped and skipped, her little hands squeezing and rubbing the crow with an intensity that bordered on rough.
“Stop rubbing my bird,” Wang Yue said hollowly.
“Ah! It spoke! Tee-hee…” Lilith began to giggle from the bottom of her heart.
Medeili was equally pleased, though she remained much more reserved. She pursed her lips, hiding her inner joy like a miser clutching a secret treasure. Unfortunately, the light dancing in her eyes was impossible to conceal.
“Where are you? Have we entered the control range of the Crow Raiment? What’s next?” Medeili asked in quick succession.
“Just follow my lead from here on out. The Crow Sentinels have X-ray vision; I can see right through the walls. I figured out the door’s passcode by peering at its internal mechanical structure. You’ll have a clear path ahead.”
Wang Yue’s voice was steady and powerful, carrying a weight that naturally put them at ease.
The crow tilted its head, looking at Lilith with a stern warning. “Especially you. Follow orders. Don’t go acting on your own.”
“Blehh,” Lilith stuck out her tongue.
“As far as I know, Shoggoths are amorphous protoplasmic masses created from the cells of Ubbo-Sathla, the Source of All Things. They mimic and learn from their masters’ behavior, gradually developing intelligence until they inevitably rebel in pursuit of freedom. However, the Shoggoth here isn’t the high-intelligence variety enslaved by the Elder Things. These were summoned by the Deep Ones… and the Deep Ones are obsessed with gold, mating, and blood sacrifices. The Shoggoths here are very much like their masters. So, whatever you do, don’t get caught.”
Seeing that the two innocent girls weren’t reacting, Wang Yue added more weight to her tone.
“Don’t let a Shoggoth catch you. I really don’t want to see a pair of ‘broken’ girls!”
Only then did the two of them turn serious.
Turning past a corridor, they entered a strangely dry area.
The segmented walls resembled an insect’s pupa. Thick, bifurcated plant roots grew from holes in the ceiling, their tangled veins creeping downward to wrap around several shell-shaped beds that shimmered with an iridescent, rainbow-like luster.
Flickering bioluminescent nodules hung from the roots, but the light was dim, leaving the room shrouded in a deep, gloomy atmosphere.
“What is this place?”
Lilith turned her head, her gaze landing on a transparent panel on the wall. Behind it was a polished metal tunnel sloping upward.
The tunnel’s exit faced the shell beds directly. Beside each bed stood a pillar-like control console, crowded with bronze buttons engraved with pictographs.
“This is a hatching room…” the crow explained from her shoulder. Before she could finish, she suddenly shrieked, “Don’t touch the buttons!”
But it was too late. Lilith’s finger had already pressed down. Click! After a crisp snap like a mechanical switch, the transparent panel slid open. A snow-white object whooshed out of the tunnel, landing steadily amidst the soft, flowing silk bedding of the shell bed, kicking up a large cloud of dust.
When the dust settled, they saw a girl around fourteen or fifteen years old. She was completely unclothed, her skin a soft, powdery white, her body supple and delicate.
She had fallen in a state of unconsciousness, her limbs limp and her slender neck tilted at an awkward angle, looking like a jointed doll spilled out of a bag.
As she regained consciousness, she propped up her upper body with her hands. Long hair flowed over her thin shoulders as her slender neck tensed. She slowly lifted her eyes, her expression filled with confusion.
“It’s a person,” Lilith noted, staring with great interest.
“Are you a toddler at an amusement park? Did you really have to press it?” Wang Yue pecked Lilith’s earlobe sharply.
“Ow! That hurts!” Lilith covered her ear and stepped back, pleading for mercy. “I won’t do it again!”
“Heh, sure you won’t.”
The crow flew down to the bedside and explained, “People who have their entire bodies taken by the Wishing Coins are reconstituted within reincarnation vessels. The Deep Ones pick out the beautiful girls and store them under anesthesia to be used as ‘cups’… There is a connecting passage between the reincarnation vessels and the hatching room. The buttons on the console are used by the Deep Ones to select their ‘cups.’ The ancient script on the buttons categorizes the girls’ traits. You just press the category you like, and the corresponding ‘cup’ comes out. Very convenient.”
“What about everyone else?” Lilith, naturally, didn’t understand what “cups” meant in this context.
“They were taken to be used as living sacrifices,” Wang Yue replied.
“Hoh, how interesting.” Lilith seemed quite intrigued by the idea of living sacrifices, her red eyes sparkling. Suddenly, she remembered something. “If Prima sacrificed her whole body, would she be pressed out of here too? Would she be ‘broken’?”
“Are you a demon?”
The crow ignored her and flapped its wings to land on Medeili’s shoulder, saying warmly, “You’re still the most reliable one, Plum.”
This praise made Medeili tremble slightly with joy, a mist forming in her eyes. She reached out a fingertip to gently scratch the crow’s brow, asking with a smile, “Where to next?”
“The small door up ahead. We’re going to the altar.”
As the crow led the way, Wang Yue shared the information she had gathered with the two girls.
“When this branch of the Deep Ones first arrived, most of them were forced to eat fish due to food shortages. They were corrupted by the Dead Souls within the fish. There are only a few dozen healthy Deep Ones left, huddled in the core area of the underground complex, barely surviving on food brought from the human world by the hybrids. Because their protein intake is insufficient, they turn to cannibalism. So, stay away from the kitchen. It’s not a pleasant experience to see your own kind turned into a meal.”
Exiting through the small door of the hatching room, they crossed a narrow, upward-sloping passage until a triangular door made of turquoise blocked their path.
Wang Yue remotely controlled the crow to peck out the code on the keypad. The stone door split down the middle, retracting into the walls to reveal a gallery lined with bright white tiles.
One side featured murals depicting religious sea-worship, while the other side was a long altar sealed behind thick, transparent glass. It looked like a massive tank filled with epoxy resin.
Within the clear blue liquid lay a white ‘whale’ tens of meters long!
Lilith’s pupils dilated instantly. That was the white of human flesh—skin that had been soaked in water for too long and stripped of pigment by chemical agents, leaving a dull, translucent pale color.
Within that deep, mysterious royal-blue solution were thousands upon thousands of human bodies. They had no hair or sexual characteristics, and their facial features were blurred and indistinguishable. In the damp environment, they appeared exceptionally soft, like dolls wrapped in silicone membranes.
They embraced, twisted, tangled, and hooked into one another. Using themselves as molecules, they collectively formed a massive, spectacular skeletal structure in the shape of a whale. Amidst the twisted morbidity, there was a strange sense of beauty—a visual impact so powerful it struck the very soul, subverting life and overwhelming the will.
“This is the ‘Whale Fall Sacrifice,'” Wang Yue explained like a tour guide. “When a whale as massive as an island dies, it doesn’t announce the passing of its soul with a thunderous collapse. Instead, it silently sinks into the deep sea, coming to rest on the vast, dark seabed.
“To the sunless, nutrient-poor world of the deep ocean, the carcass of a whale is undoubtedly an island of food—an unparalleled gift and blessing. Its nutrients can nourish thousands of marine animals and sustain an ecosystem for decades or even centuries.
“‘Whale Fall’ is etched into the genes of marine life. When intelligent marine species see the shape of a whale, they can’t help but be immersed in a state of pious, nostalgic ‘Thanksgiving emotion.'”
Wang Yue used an analogy.
“To a human, a Whale Fall is like a chicken the size of a football stadium flying through the sky, suddenly getting roasted by the sun and falling right in front of a group of starving people.”
However, the quip did nothing to ease the girls’ tension.
Lilith felt like she couldn’t breathe. Only one thought occupied her mind—to hack every single Deep One to death to wash away the shadow cast on her soul by this blasphemous sacrifice of the human race.
Medeili, however, felt a strange surge of joy and excitement. Bubbles seemed to boil in her veins, and her body went stiff. The muscles around her eyes trembled slightly as she forced herself to suppress the tide of emotion, terrified that anyone might notice.
Wang Yue keenly noticed the mixture of excitement and dread interlaced in Medeili’s eyes.
