Shrouded Seascape

Jackal looked extremely frail. However, it wasn't that the IMF had mistreated him. His current condition was entirely self-inflicted by his prolonged lack of food and sleep.

His extreme devotion to his god had caused him to neglect his senses toward basic human needs.

"Since you've summoned God before, then what is His name?" Jackal asked Anna as they walked down the hallway.

A hint of disdain flickered across Anna's mind. Displaying such extreme faith and yet you don't even know your god's name?

"Fhtagn," Anna answered. "His name is Fhtagn, but He's now sealed and we need to free Him."

"I see… the Great Fhtagn…" Jackal reiterated the name, etching it into his mind and committing it to memory.

"Where's the item? How much farther?" Anna asked with a trickle of annoyance in her voice.

She glanced up to see the large bats swooping overhead. They had formed a so-called alliance, so these creatures probably wouldn't attack her—for now. However, the more people hanging around, the harder it would be for her to slip away after she got her hands on what she was looking for.

"Not far. We're almost there. But, what do you need that thing for?" Jackal asked, feeling confused.

"Oh, are you curious?" Anna's eyes narrowed slightly. Her guard was up. If Jackal was faking his madness, she would have to get rid of him as soon as possible since he knew of her identity.

Beneath the floor, Anna's fingers were centimeters away from his feet.

"No, I'm not sounding you out," Jackal said all of a sudden. "I'm warning you that something has gone wrong with the Controllable Anomaly 920."

Anna's fingers stopped short.

"What?! Why are you only telling me something so important now?!"

Boom!

A sudden explosion resonated in the building and the floor beneath them started to shake violently. Being thrown off balance, Jackal scrambled to stand up from the ground.

He held himself against a nearby wall and looked at Anna, "I am telling you now."

"Cut the crap and take me there immediately! What exactly happened?"

Under Anna's urging, Gao Zhiming and Jackal pushed forward, barely maintaining their footing against the violent tremors rocking the ground beneath them.

Meanwhile, Jackal continued his explanation.

"My former colleagues tried to use 920 to alter my memories, but instead of rewriting my memories, something unexpected happened to 920."

Jackal then paused as he ducked to avoid a bat that swooped dangerously close overhead.

"Move! Run!" Anna snapped. Her patience was wearing thin as she watched the vampires darting in every direction.

Not only was she worried if 920 was still functional, she was also worried that her vampire allies, who had charged in ahead of them, could have caused a bigger commotion.

When the vampires had stormed inside, the place descended into complete chaos, after all.

After much jostling and running, Anna, Gao Zhiming and Jackal finally arrived at their destination. It was a massive laboratory. The door and windows were supposed to be tightly shut, but now, they were wrecked and shattered.

Gao Zhiming and Jackal had just dashed into the room when their eyes landed on the disc shaped object against the far wall.

The Anomaly was covered with a white cloth and placed into a large glass case.

The vampires had already arrived long ago but they didn't seem the least bit interested in 920. Instead, they appeared rather excited as they sifted through the computer directories and stacks of documents, seemingly in search of something else.

The moment Gao Zhiming stepped into the room, every head in the room snapped toward him, but when they recognized him to be their ally, they lost interest immediately and continued with their own business.

Ignoring the vampires, Gao Zhiming made a beeline for the glass case. He raised a hand and placed it on the glass case. The transparent glass case began to rapidly decay and within a few seconds, crumbled into ash.

The white cloth was yanked away to reveal an intricate, three-meter-tall brass mirror standing before him.

However, Gao Zhiming's reflection was nowhere to be seen. Instead, the mirror only displayed a bleak, grayish void. It was as though the world within the mirror was shrouded in thick, blood-colored fog.

Tiny specks of living beings drifted in that world. At first glance, they resembled a grotesque fusion of white moths, crystals, and demons.

Yet, their forms weren't stable. They changed and shifted unpredictably with every tick of the second needle. Within mere seconds, their moth-like features had given way to writhing insect limbs.

These must be the fairies that Olivia had told me about.

From beneath the ground, Anna pressed a firm hand against the massive mirror to test its weight. As the mirror tilted slightly, the mirror fairies inside wavered along with the mirror's angle, swaying slightly within the crimson mist.

It seemed like the living creatures in the mirror were dead. Of course, it was unclear if they were ever alive in the first place.

"When they dragged me and placed me in front of the mirror, I saw a bloated, rotting tentacle grab the tree before effortlessly pulling it into the depths. After that, everything was drowned in the crimson fog," Jackal explained.

Before Anna could press for more details, a shriek of terror tore through the room.

"AHHHHHH!"

Everyone immediately turned their head toward the source.

Across the lab, a figure was being dragged from beneath a metallic console. She was dressed in a white lab coat and had an ID badge still clipped to his chest—she was one of the IMF staffers.

Seemingly one of their researchers, the woman hadn't had the time to escape and had just found a random spot to hide. Unfortunately, she was caught.

The gathered vampires bared their sharp fangs, their eyes gleaming with bloodthirst as they closed in on the woman.

Trembling, she instinctively backed away into a corner.

Realizing that the situation had nothing to do with her, Anna placed her attention back on the mirror.

"Jackal, since the mirror ended up like this, I assume your former colleagues would have surely tried to fix it. What did they say?"

Now that she had finally gotten her hand on the mirror, she found it too wasteful to just let it go.

Be it the Anomalies on the surface world or the relics of the Subterranean Sea, Anna was fairly knowledgeable about them. A broken relic would just "transform" into a different kind of Anomaly.

And in some cases, it was even possible to reverse the damage by introducing another, similar anomaly to interact with it.

There were multiple precedents in the Subterranean Sea.

The Anomaly capable of altering memories was too important to Anna. It was the key to ensuring Gao Zhiming's entry into the Subterranean Sea in the future.

More importantly, if the mirror was indeed corrupted by what was in Jackal's memories, and the only thing in Jackal's memories was Charles, it could only mean—

"I'm not too sure. After the malfunction, I was immediately sent back to my ward. I don't know what happened after that."

"Alright, take this thing with us," Anna instructed.

However, an awkward scene unfolded.

The brass mirror was heavy; it was way too heavy for a nine-year-old Gao Zhiming and a frail Jackal to carry. Anna's expectations were a bit too unrealistic.

"Hey, the few of you. Help us move this," Anna instructed the few vampires feeding on the IMF staffer in the corner of the room.

Yet, no one responded to her call even after a long while.

At first, she had assumed it was because her allied status wasn't high enough to command them and so they chose to ignore her.

When Gao Zhiming stepped closer, however, they realized that the reason was completely different from what they had assumed.

The vampires were hunched over the corpse beneath them, their hands clutching their own throats as they squirmed like grotesque maggots.

Their necks were swollen and engorged to the point of being larger than their heads.

Finally, one of them couldn't bear the torture any longer. He raised a finger and slashed open his own throat with the sharp finger nail

Anna's eyes widened in surprise. She had expected blood but instead, water burst from the gaping wound.

Another vampire, a woman, staggered back, her lips parting as she heaved.

As she vomited violently, a thick, gushing torrent of crystal-clear liquid was ejected out of her.

Something else came with it—her organs enveloped within the liquid.

Her body had been completely hollowed out.