Chapter 671 — At the Edge of the Vortex

Sampling of the remains of the false god's body was complete. Valuable experimental samples had been sent in batches back to Xuanyao City over the past few days, and the remaining flesh and bone had been thoroughly cut apart. The skull would be transported to Saint Sunil and presented to the emperor; the rest of the skeletal remains would be sent to the Southern Reach and divided among several research facilities or secret vaults for long-term study.

When he had first learned the truth behind those remains, the mine director, himself of slave-labor origins, had felt a chill down his spine, and after returning to the mine he had lain awake all night. Yet once he saw the cut flesh and bone, his fear vanished like mist, leaving only wonder.

The power of a god stolen by humans, copied by humans, and in the end destroyed by humans. This world... truly was about to be turned upside down.

And as a man who had never been religious to begin with, Holm now had to deal with the site left behind after the false god's body was hauled away.

An assistant in a short black jacket came over and asked, "Sir, has the higher-up said how to deal with that huge pit?"

After the false god's body was removed, a gigantic sinkhole had appeared between the mine and the river. The pit was so vast that it had become a headache of a problem: filling it was unrealistic, yet when it came to putting it to use, the mining company's assistants could not think of any purpose for the moment.

"First we survey the soil and terrain around the pit. Tomorrow Mr. Bruce will bring the engineering team over," Holm said with a nod. "The civil affairs office already has a plan to divert the waters of the Whitewater River into that pit and make an artificial lake. It will make drawing water for the mine easier, and residential sites can be built around the lake. The Eastern Reach is ours now; we need not worry about the development agreement we signed with the Loren family back then. It is time... to expand this mining district."

The assistant's eyes widened in surprise. "An artificial lake?"

"Yes. We have even picked the name—White Sand Lake," Holm glanced toward the excavation area and shrugged. "I had thought we would have to blast away here for another three to five years before we could make a lake. I never expected our friends from the deep sea to help us gnaw out a pit ahead of schedule..."

……

Gentle waves lapped at the beach and against the massive alloy ramparts that stood at its edge. Bright sunlight shone down on the white sand, on the starship, the rocks, the outpost, and on the friends from the deep sea sprawled here and there among them all.

The friends from the deep sea lay strewn across the sand in a great lazy heap, as languid as the afternoon sunlight itself.

Tens of thousands of merfolk lay basking on the beach, a spectacle magnificent to behold.

Into that languid, idle atmosphere came the voice of one of the sirens from the speakers set up all along the beach: "Thirty minutes are up. All of you, turn over!"

A small handful of sirens lifted their heads to look; a scant few responders gave a great stretch, then with a wet slap of their tails upon the sand, flipped themselves over where they lay. But most did not so much as raise their heads, merely going on basking tail and body in that sunlight so soporific to man and fish alike, too lazy even to turn over.

The siren directing the broadcast said nothing further, seemingly too lazy to give a second reminder.

On the starship's rear engine platform, which extended over the land, the Siren Queen Pythia glanced at the scene upon the beach, her long serpentine tail swaying gently. "Dividing the sisters into three groups to feed in turns was the right call... The impurities mixed into that food require greater effort to filter and purify, and they magnify the 'inertia effect' that follows our feeding."

For the sirens, basking in the sun after a full meal was no idle habit but a part of normal physiological activity. To transform those unfamiliar energies and substances, they had to rely on the magical radiation of the giant sun, for they themselves lacked the capacity to process such energies.

Indeed, even this method of transforming energy and matter by basking in the sun was the fruit of their hard-won adaptation and evolution after arriving in this world. Before they came here, the sirens had possessed no concept of "basking" at all.

The world they had originally inhabited offered no sunlight to bask in, only an endless ocean and winds and thunderstorms and lightning that raged almost without cease.

"The new food does indeed carry no small amount of impurities, yet it has brought us precious energy replenishment, and a wholly new sample of primal energy," said a siren beside her, her long hair blue and the scales upon her cheeks rather pronounced. "Through practical testing, after ingesting the new energy sample and undergoing adaptive modification, all the sisters have gained varying degrees of enhanced adaptability to this world. And with the pure arcane energy that Prismlight technology provides us as a supplement, many of the sisters can already faintly perceive that which is called 'mana.'"

"Mana..." Pythia said softly, lowering her head and rubbing her fingers together.

A small cluster of arcane sparks burst from her slender fingertips, brief and bright.

"This is a world ill-suited to sirens, but at last... we can slowly begin to think of it as home."

"As you say."

"Hathaway, when next we make contact, inform Tyr to raise the human faction 'Cecil' to second-tier contact standards," Pythia said. "We will be glad to share the knowledge of the ocean with our friends on land—if they should one day find the courage to challenge the sea."

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