Chapter 1228 — The Deep Blue Netway Surveillance Plan

"Not long ago I received word from Tarronde," Gao Che said. "After detecting signs that abnormal magical surges might exist within the Deep Blue Netway, the dragon race strengthened their monitoring of the netway's various branches, and during that monitoring they discovered certain signs... some netway branches running through the elemental world are undergoing 'drift'—the magnitude is small, but it has been continuous. Combined with clues they found earlier—certain elemental creatures that emerged from elemental rifts bear traces of contamination by Deep Blue magic—we now suspect that the abnormal fluctuations in the Deep Blue Netway may already be affecting the balance of the elemental world..."

"The elemental world... oh, I understand," Tier said, naturally having grasped Gao Song's intent by this point. "You want us sirens to help check whether the Deep Blue branches in the water elemental domain have problems?"

"The Deep Blue Netway lies buried in the 'lower layers' of our world, its main channels located in the crevices between the material world and the immaterial world—for creatures like us, who can only live in the main material world, it is not easy to directly 'see' the Deep Blue Netway. It requires complex technological assistance, and monitoring points are subject to all sorts of limitations. If there truly is an enemy who understands the Deep Blue Netway and commands some special technique, using those energy flows running through the planet to stir up trouble, then he should easily be able to evade our monitoring in the material world—after all, our surveillance is full of blind spots," Gao Xi slowly laid out his thoughts, and his words made Tier's expression turn serious as well. "This matter has troubled me all along, until not long ago, when the dragon race's discovery gave me a hint.

"The 'rules' of the elemental world differ from those of the material world. There, all things exist in an extremely 'pure' state, and the traces left by any flow of energy are very hard to conceal. The concealment techniques that work in the material world are likewise hard to make work in the elemental world... Unfortunately, the dragon race are ultimately still creatures of the material world. Even if they can brute-force their way into the elemental domain, they will not be able to sense the various changes in the elemental domain as accurately as elemental creatures can. But if we had some true eyes belonging to elemental creatures..."

"I understand your thinking. Sirens are indeed elemental creatures by nature, and recently we've also acquired the ability to sense magic, so we could serve as those 'eyes,'" Tier said with a nod, then gave Gao Cen a somewhat puzzled look. "But from what you're saying, you seem quite convinced that there's 'someone' deliberately manipulating the anomalies in the Deep Blue Netway? I remember Lady Enya said this might be a natural phenomenon..."

"The netway fluctuations two million years ago may indeed have been a natural phenomenon, but nowadays it's hard to say..." Gao Qi shook his head with furrowed brows. "I have no direct evidence, but just around dusk today, Virodai told me of some findings of hers... She found that all the 'branches' in the Gondo Wasteland connected to the Well of Deep Blue are in an extremely normal state, which instead made her suspicious. You know the dragon race has already found solid evidence of abnormal fluctuations in the Deep Blue Netway—the dragon egg Meitzen brought has even hatched a wyrmling contaminated by Deep Blue magic. With the influence that great, how could the data Virodai collected be normal everywhere?

"So I suspect that 'someone' is deliberately covering up the traces. Their technical methods are highly sophisticated—they can even deceive the monitoring systems left behind by the ancient Gondo Empire. But they clearly haven't realized what the world outside the Great Wall looks like now—the mortal nations have already formed an alliance, and even the distant dragon kingdom is exchanging intelligence with the various nations of the Loren Continent. The alliance's information-gathering range spans half the planet, and under such large-scale intelligence sharing, their sophisticated camouflage techniques are instead exposing their hand..."

As he spoke, Gao Cen shook his head with a sigh of emotion—he had not stated it outright, but the identity of those stirring trouble behind the scenes was already on the verge of being named.

How to put it—truly worthy of the Society of Scapegoats for All Things... even dead, they could still take the blame.

"No wonder you're so tense about this matter... That does sound quite serious," Tier's tail tip curled and twisted in midair, a thoughtful expression on her face. "Hmm... I don't mind helping you out, it's just that this matter..."

Gao Shao asked at once: "Is there a difficulty?"

Tier thought it over, then waved her hand: "Well, it's really only a small problem—we may be water elementals, but the truth is we don't get along with the local water elementals all that well. Still, that's nothing major. I'm sure the queen can handle it. I'll report this matter as soon as I get back. By my estimate, there's more than a ninety percent chance the queen will agree."

Gao Yang's expression did not change much, but inwardly he breathed a sudden sigh of relief, and at the same time felt profoundly fortunate—the elemental domain is a strange and indifferent country to humans living in the material world. Few can find stable, reliable allies among those eccentric, cold, exclusionary high elemental creatures. Precisely for that reason, the Cecil Empire's ability to establish a connection with the sirens seemed especially fortunate. These allies from the deep sea, though they possessed some rather bizarre quirks of style... were truly reliable.

He even felt that the water bucket Pea had tossed into the well back then could almost be written into the history books.

Amid these reflections, Gao Yang could not help but feel somewhat uncertain about the sirens' frank and fervent attitude, and could not resist saying: "Please convey my most sincere thanks to your queen—you sirens have truly helped us a great deal, and I will not forget this friendship..."

"Hey, hey, don't say that. You suddenly saying all this with such a serious face makes me feel weird..." Before Gao Yang could finish, Tier had already hunched her neck and waved her hand. "We sirens don't have all those messy customs and rules you humans do. Our judgments about things are simple—you're a group of decent friends, interesting and trustworthy, so we're willing to have more dealings with you. That's all there is to it.

"Over the past million years, more than one race has appeared in this world wanting to deal with the sirens. Some were as interesting as you, but others didn't interest us. To the interesting ones, the sirens have always been warm; and the ones who didn't interest us... until they went extinct, we never had dealings with them at all.

"Don't be surprised. That's just how our race is—I suppose that counts as a characteristic of elemental creatures?"

Tier said this with a faint smile, then her tone suddenly turned serious: "And strictly speaking, this matter isn't unrelated to us either... The Deep Blue Netway—if that thing really is a vast system running through the entire planet, then if something goes wrong with it, no race living on this planet can escape—our airship still isn't repaired yet."

(End of this chapter)