Chapter 1270 — Shadows Beneath the Deep

Before her words had faded, a shadow of extreme swiftness suddenly flashed through the blue streams deep in the Boundless Sea—a shadow that made the two sentries on duty snap their eyes wide.

Though they had chattered without pause while on watch, they had never once let their attention stray from what they were monitoring; that fleeting shadow had not escaped the eyes of the two siren soldiers.

"Did you see that?" Coroline at once pulled her trident free of the tail coil, and while anxiously watching whether there was any further disturbance in the seabed streams, she spoke rapidly: "I couldn't make out what it was, but something definitely went past just now..."

"I saw it... It was fast, too fast to see clearly, but the monitoring room might have caught a relatively distinct image!" The blue-haired siren was already in motion; swiftly summoning the other sentries on standby in the barracks to come relieve them, she said hurriedly to Coroline: "This definitely meets the Queen's 'reporting criteria'—I'll go to the monitoring room and pull the footage, you go to the communications station and contact the Antavian! We split up!"

"Right!"

The two sirens darted swiftly toward two sections of the post, their knotted tails snapping taut with a "twang"—but they were, after all, well-trained soldiers, and a trifling embarrassment could not in the least hinder them from carrying out their duties. Both sirens raised their tridents at the same moment and, without hesitation, cut away the tails that could not be untangled anytime soon—then, howling with pain and shouting "If I'd known you'd cut yours too, I wouldn't have cut mine!", they ran swiftly off toward the monitoring room and the communications station.

...

In New Agondor, within the council headquarters rebuilt and converted from abandoned facilities, An Qian—standing beside a projection dais in the guise of an aged elder—was frowning deeply. This ancient dragon, who had lived through nearly two million years of dragonkind's history, through the descent of the ancient Pathfinders and the modern "Rite of Adulthood," who had witnessed the planet's seas turn to fields and fields to seas, now wore an air of tension as though facing a great enemy; his complexion was worse than it had ever been: "A rift... a rift running through the entire Tower of the Reversed Tide, a rift whose scale might even extend all the way to the western coast... And there's no telling how many years that thing has been sitting there?!"

Above the projection dais carved with numerous draconic runes, the figure of Heragor appeared clearly before An Qian. The expression on the face of this leader of dragonkind was no better than An Qian's—if anything, it looked even gloomier: "No theory can explain any of this. That rift escaped everyone's eyes—yours and mine, and even... the gods'. According to the clues Gaoyang Cecil found on site, there appears to have been a 'curtain' at work there. It was miracle-tier power, and even after the power sustaining it was lost it kept producing its effect, until the shadow-dust encroached upon it and it disintegrated of its own accord.

"As for the rift outside the tower, it was discovered by those two whelps tainted by the Deep Blue magical power... I suspect that all whelps tainted by Deep Blue power can see or sense those rifts..."

An Qian nodded with a terrible expression, his tone low: "That rift has probably been affecting our dragon eggs for many years now, but all along, Tarond had the gods' protection, so the influence was kept at bay—until now, with the gods departed, the marks of the whelps' affliction have only just surfaced. The Deep Blue Network's problem is not recent; it has been abnormal for many, many years..."

"None of that matters now, old friend, these are secondary—" Heragor cut An Qian off, his expression exceptionally grave. "What matters most right now is the 'Reversed Tide' inside that tower... According to the clues Gaoyang Cecil has found so far, if things have truly developed in the worst possible direction, then the Reversed Tide... has likely long since broken free—perhaps even centuries ago.

"An Qian, all our vigilance and monitoring of that tower over all these years has been a joke. Tarond is in serious trouble."

"It's not Tarond that's in serious trouble—it's the whole world," An Qian said softly, drawing a breath. "An 'unraveled god of disorder' wandering beyond the sight of mortal civilization—the mess we made a million years ago has finally become a fire raging out of control."

The two leaders in the room suddenly fell silent at the same time. In that unbearable silence, a new screen of light rose abruptly above the projection dais, and after a moment's interference, Gaosong's figure appeared beside Heragor's holographic projection.

"I don't mean to interrupt, but I felt it necessary to contact you directly," Gaoyang said, the background behind him a vast white interior space. "Two leaders of Tarond, you should already know the situation on my end."

"Yes, we received the report Noretta forwarded," Heragor said at once, composing his expression and speaking calmly and steadily. "The situation is extremely grave... I have nothing to hide from you—this has surpassed the worst judgment An Qian and I had made."

Indeed it had surpassed the worst judgment—for before this, the direst speculation he and An Qian had made about the Tower of the Reversed Tide was that it was on the verge of total loss of control. Who could have imagined that the tower would hand everyone such a colossal surprise—it had been leaking for six hundred years...

Heragor spoke again at once: "Are you still inside that tower?"

"Yes, I'm still here—we've confirmed there is not the slightest residue of divine contamination left within. A most ironic situation: this tower that has put everyone on high alert is perfectly safe at this moment, nothing more than a lump of ancient ruins that cannot move," Gaoyang said with a bitter smile. "I'm organizing people to expand the scope of our survey here. I don't think it will lead us to the whereabouts of that 'thing which broke free,' but at least it will give us a somewhat better understanding of these ruins."

At this he sighed, his face full of helplessness: "To think that the team brought along to deal with a crisis would end up being used for this—but at least the trip wasn't wasted."

Heragor kept his face taut, and only after a long while let out a sigh: "...Tarond should bear the responsibility for all of this."

"A mess of bad accounts spanning more than a million years—assigning blame won't be simple," Gaoyang cut off the dragon leader. "Right now we have something more important to face—regarding the 'God of the Reversed Tide' that has already escaped. I'd like to hear your views."

The God of the Reversed Tide, already escaped... Where might He be at this very moment?

Hragor's face was heavy as water—this question was difficult to answer, yet it seemed that in his heart he was not entirely without an answer.

(Book recommendation time—it's *The Otherworld Conquest Manual*, which I recommended last time. After I gave it my blessing, it's still going strong and growing well, and it's about to be published soon, so I think I can recommend it again. Those who like otherworld exploration themes can take a look.)