Chapter 155: The Last Conch

When the sea drifters reached the shore, the sky was still not bright.

Their vessel wasn't a ship but three rafts lashed together from plastic buckets, foam boards, and old sailcloth, bound with fishing nets and ropes. Each raft held seven or eight people; their clothes were soaked through with salt to a gray‑white hue, and their skin was baked like old bark.

But their eyes were bright—not the healthy kind of brightness, but a kind of light approaching burning, the last firelight.

Han Qing led his team to meet them on the shore. Su Yu watched the people disembark, noticing a detail: each drifter bent down as they left the raft and snapped off a small piece from the gunwale—not food, but a seashell. They tucked the shells into their pockets, the motion devout as if collecting relics.

"We didn't come for rescue," said the leader, a tall thin man whose voice was hoarse from the sea wind scraping sand, "We're here to deliver a message. After we do, we'll leave."

Old Zhao stepped forward with a water jug; the man shook his head. "Save the fresh water for yourselves. We're used to drinking distilled seawater—though it makes our bones brittle."

He approached Su Yu, sizing her up, his gaze pausing at the scar on her chest: "You're the Sower. We've 'heard' of you at sea—not with our ears, but with this."

He pulled a small glass bottle from his pocket, half‑filled with murky seawater. Yet tiny gold specks drifted within it—like a miniature version of a plant‑network's veins.

"These are Chen Mo's consciousness fragments scattered in the sea," the man said. "We rely on them to purify seawater and to guide our way. But now… they are fading."

The drifters were taken to the mining community's makeshift cafeteria. They didn't eat; they just sat there, staring at the old calendar on the wall—a pre‑disaster print showing a golden beach in sunlight.

A young drifter, looking under twenty, suddenly pointed at the calendar and said, "Blue… I didn't realize the sea beyond the beach was blue."

Everyone froze.

The man explained: "We've been drifting at sea for four years. A year ago, 'color' began to disappear. First the distant horizon turned gray‑white, then the sky, then the sails' color, and finally the color in our memories."

He produced a waterproof sheet of paper—a hand‑drawn sea chart—but oddly, all the markings were in black and white.

"It's not the pigment fading," the young drifter whispered. "When I drew it, my brain could no longer recall what blue looked like. I only remember the word 'blue,' but the word and the color… have come apart."

Dr. Aili stepped forward and shone a flashlight in the young drifter's eyes: "Pupillary response to light is normal; the cone cells should be fine. This is a cognitive detachment."

"Exactly," the man nodded, "just as you've encountered the 'Void' that devours memories, the 'Color Devourer' consumes perception. It turns the world into a black‑and‑white silent film, and then… you gradually forget what color feels like. Eventually even the concept of 'forgetting' fades away."

Su Yu felt a chill: "Where is it?"

"The deep sea. But we don't know its exact location," the man said. "Because it has no physical form, it's a 'region.' Sail into it and color begins to vanish. When we escaped, the ship's red flag had turned gray, yet the word 'red flag' remained in our minds—that feeling is worse than death."

He paused, looking at all the listeners: "We've come to tell you two things. First, the Color Devourer is moving toward land. At its current speed it will reach the nearest coastline in three months. Second…"

He produced from his inner pocket something wrapped in layers of oilcloth.

He opened it to reveal a palm‑sized piece of coral—not dead, but alive—faintly pulsing like a small heart. The coral's surface was covered with fine gold filigree; deep within the pattern something flickered on and off.

"This is Chen Mo's Deep Sea Fragment," the man said, handing the coral to Su Yu. "We found it near a sunken oil‑drilling platform. What's stored in this fragment isn't memory but a kind of… 'perception template.' Perhaps he foresaw this day and deliberately left it behind."

The instant Su Yu took the coral, the scar on her chest flared with sudden heat.

It wasn't pain; it was a connection—she "saw": seven years ago, Chen Mo stood on the shore holding this coral. He spoke to it: "If one day color begins to fade, give this to whoever can still see light."

Then he bit his finger, letting a drop of blood fall onto the coral. The blood didn't soak in; it was "eaten" by the coral and transformed into those gold lines.

"Why don't you stay?" Li Xiaofeng suddenly asked. "Land is safer than the sea."

The man gave a bitter smile: "Because part of us has already been 'eaten.'"

He opened his shirt. Everyone sucked in a breath of cold air—from his chest down, his skin had turned a lifeless gray‑white, not the pallor of a corpse but the faded gray of an old photograph, and the gray‑white was slowly creeping upward.

"We set out with twenty‑one people; now only nineteen remain," the young drifter said. "Two of them… after turning completely gray‑white, just 'stopped.' It wasn't death—they forgot how to breathe, how to beat their hearts. In the end they resembled plaster statues, crumbling on the deck."

The man retied his shirt: "So we must go back. While we can still move and still remember what color is, we will lure the Color Devourer out to the deep sea and hold it off as long as we can. This is… the last thing we can do for the land."

Han Qing sprang to his feet: "This isn't fair! We could work together on a solution—"

"There isn't enough time," the man interrupted softly. "Chen Mo has only thirty‑six hours left; you need to persuade that Selan, save the children, find the Fifth Community—there's plenty to do on land. The ocean… leave it to us, the 'half‑faded' ones."

Su Yu clung to the warm coral, saying nothing for a long time.

Then she walked up to the man, took off the simple necklace from her neck—a leather cord threaded with a metal gear, a part salvaged from Chen Mo's old motorcycle that she had worn for seven years.

"This is for you," she said, fastening the necklace around his neck. "Chen Mo said the meaning of a gear isn't to turn itself, but to 'let other gears turn as well.' What you're doing now… is exactly that."

The man lowered his gaze to the gear, his gray‑white fingers lightly stroking it. Suddenly his eyes rimmed red—the first time anyone had seen color on his face, two faint streaks of the red that belongs to human emotion.

"Thank you," he said, his voice catching for a moment before steadying. "We should go. The tide is ebbing."

The drifters clambered back onto their rafts. Before boarding, the young drifter suddenly ran back, pulled a small object from his pocket, and pressed it into Xiao Yu's hand—a perfect seashell whose inner surface shone with a rainbow‑like pearlescence.

"Here," he said. "This is the last colored thing left. Help me… remember color."

As the rafts pulled away from shore, the sun had just risen.

But oddly, the sunlight striking the sea produced no gold or orange glint—just a harsh white, as if the world's saturation had been turned down.

Su Yu returned to the mining community's control room, placed the coral on the workbench, and Kaiwen immediately began scanning. When the data flashed up, his hand froze halfway to adjusting his glasses: "This… is perception encoding. Chen Mo stored within it the 'definition of color'—not the physical spectrum, but humanity's emotional experience of color."

He pulled up a data stream: "For example, 'blue' is linked to 'tranquility, depth, freedom, sorrow'; 'red' to 'passion, danger, love, blood.' Every color is bound to an emotional memory—this could be the key to fighting the Color Devourer."

Jihe's voice came through the communicator, but the signal was poor and intermittent: "Su Yu… researcher… strengthened the signal blockade… I can't maintain a connection for long…"

"And Chen Mo?" Su Yu asked.

"The clarity has…" Jihe's voice was suddenly drowned by interference, then after a few seconds returned: "…lips. But he… is smiling. Through the lingering emotional signal in the fragment… he is smiling."

Su Yu clenched the coral; the gold tracings warmed faintly in her palm.

Just then Xiao Yu burst in, holding up the seashell, eyes wide: "Sister Su Yu! There's writing inside the shell—Selan script!"

Everyone gathered around.

Inside the pearlescent shell, an ultra‑fine needle had etched a line of Selan text. Kaiwen translated it quickly, his face turning pallid:

"The Fifth Community is not on land. It is the survivors of an offshore drilling platform—they 'faded' three years ago and are now helping the researcher gather 'emotion‑less samples.'"

"And they… are heading toward the Pure Land."

Outside the window, three black dots appeared on the gray‑white sea horizon.

They were not the drifters' rafts.

They were a larger, faster vessel.