Chapter 181

The darkness from the bottle poured over, flowing through lips and teeth into the throat, sliding deep into the digestive tract.

There was no time to savor its taste—it was flavorless, or perhaps the concentrated essence of every substance in the world, yet still less than a sip of clear water: immensely complex yet profoundly bland, impossible to describe, yet resembling everything that had ever passed through the mouth.

Before the last trace of chill was absorbed and erased by body heat, the thought rising from within told the drinker: to understand, one must first make contact. The certainty rivaled reading ink still wet on paper one had copied by hand—unthinking, unquestioning.

The bottle's mouth still rested against her lips, waiting for the last drops to fall, when an impossible change had already begun.

She felt the stone-built structure grow fragile as thin paper, illusory as the fading mirage of a half-awake dream, unable to bear her light weight.

This made no sense. Logically, the potion should have acted upon her body; she had braced for stomach pain or worse. But in truth, everything except herself was changing.

Before she could comprehend it, the brittleened world could no longer support her weight—the supports shattered with a crash, and her body plummeted straight downward.

It felt like falling from one floor to the next, yet the scenery remained frozen, the floor unbroken.

Patches of color appeared everywhere within her sight—fungi expanding at speeds too fast to track, forming bizarre shapes of unprecedented scale, swallowing and enveloping walls and furniture.

She seemed to touch the "floor," yet the fall did not stop—the flimsy "floor" shattered the instant contact was made, and her body plunged deeper still. Simultaneously, a flood of utterly disordered information surged through her senses.

The chaotic hues of the mushroom caps exploded in her ears; the dim, dull light seeping through window cracks filled her nose with its odor. These sensations fused with the rapid descent into a mental nausea so intense she wanted to vomit her innards and hollow out her abdomen.

Between the fall from the first to the second level, a soft white light and numerous gazes turned toward her, but quickly receded with her descent, passing beyond observable range.

The fungi reached their peak, filling every inch of space; the earlier indistinct gazes now slithered through them, and the gelatinous nodules embedded within—the same texture as the pendant—glowed red as they arrived.

The fall continued; she lost count of how many "floors" she had shattered through. The incomprehensible contents, like the flourishing fungi, filled her consciousness, crowding out any room for independent thought.

The surrounding environment underwent changes as violent as her fall: the fungi, having reached their zenith, withered and rotted; the eternal stone walls crumbled and collapsed, as if countless years had passed in an instant—or perhaps time reversed, everything spiraling into chaos and decay, returning to a state of extreme simplicity.

The immature consciousness formed by merely a dozen years of memory was less than a single brick in this castle. When it ended, she stood alone on a desolate ridge amid broken rocks, unable to recall where she had come from or why she was here. Like grains of sand slipping through fingers on a beach, only one or two remained.

【I want…】

Yin Feng stood frozen, still holding the posture of having swallowed the liquid. Instinct drove her to breathe, yet no familiar, thin but substantial sensation flooded her lungs—her body could not detect the substances necessary for survival.

She guessed she might be suffocating. The last remnants of strength were being siphoned away, bit by bit. She now understood one more thing: slow suffocation felt like this.

She should have felt fear or regret now—fear of death, regret for ignoring her parents' warnings—according to what she knew, that was how it should be. But "her parents' warnings" were thinner in memory than the air she now inhaled, and her fear of death…

【Human beings are inherently in a state of chronic death】

Those paralyzed in bed die helplessly; most people cannot resist anything around them, futilely struggling like a drowning man flailing his arms on an endless sea to delay the inevitable.

She remembered why she had come: the stubborn thought nurtured by her brief dozen years of life. She refused to accept the fate of "chronic suffocation." She needed a power beyond reason—like a paralyzed man growing new limbs, or a drowning man sprouting gills.

This thought propelled her to move. She looked upward, searching for the place she had fallen from.

Above her, there were no stacked floors—only a vast, dark celestial body, hanging high over the desolate, barren land, its surface covered in dense, unforgettable fissures.

The sensation of falling returned, but in the opposite direction. As she passed between "floors," the white light and the fungal gazes descended upon her once more.

This time, they surged urgently, eager to cling to this ride, ascending to a higher "level."

The remnants of her consciousness, craving the irrational, gladly accepted, welcoming them onto the journey.

…

…

"I've figured it out!" Kraft shoved aside Kup's support, his steps unsteady as he returned to the church, ordered the squad to seal the second-floor corridor, and had Martin carried down from above, his limbs limp.

Edward's "spell" itself posed no inherent flaw—even if someone resisted its pull and failed to connect with the deep entities, they would simply die cleanly, without needing anyone to bury them.

But when actually used, two problems emerged.

First: what happens after multiple uses—or even dozens? Had Edward considered this? Kraft didn't know; the manuscript had no further progress. But this devotee, blinded by the discovery of another world and the "angels," certainly hadn't thought of it—not once during "sending souls to the Father's realm."

Having consumed dozens of crawlers, the entity had grown monstrously large, its proliferation exceeding the original bodies' volume—whether this constituted uncontrolled growth was now unknowable.

Second: are deep entities truly only one kind of being? The answer was clearly no. The Deep was a complex, geographically diverse ecosystem; crawler organisms interacted with other things the Father himself didn't understand.

This was likely the primary cause of the loss of control, if not one of them. The fungal spirits—those suspected spiritual entities—later took control of the crawlers, using them as conduits to enter the mortal world, massively accelerating fungal growth and indiscriminately infecting plants and animals in search of hosts.

Fortunately, perhaps because crawlers shared a similar origin with human tissue, they chose human bodies. Had a parasitized brown bear emerged here, events would have unfolded very differently.

But most fungal species are inherently unsuited to infecting humans. Aside from slowly altering the environment and relying on high-concentration spore inhalation, only those with weakened immunity—such as those with HIV or… tuberculosis—might develop persistent fungal infections.

Kraft had likely guessed what the Duke's two lung percussion movements had detected.

It was an exceptionally fortunate individual: during the old Duke's tour of his lands and his visit here for rest, he encountered a living host long carrying fungi, enjoying the rare coexistence of host and fungus, and was carried everywhere with them.

Now, Kraft would go to meet the culprit seated behind the desk once more.

Sensing someone enter the study, he tried to feign stillness and repeat his old trick, but the person lingering at the doorway made him lift his head again.

Though his eye sockets held no globes, his movements clearly revealed autonomous awareness—and recognition of the visitor. The reappearance of a victim caused him confusion; then his chest swelled, preparing to unleash that breath once more.

"Breathing requires a sealed thoracic cavity to generate negative pressure." Kraft raised his hand, leveled a cocked crossbow at the sorcerer—whose spell required no incantation but still demanded lung capacity—and released the trigger.

"You can see how the external intercostal muscles lift to expand the thoracic cavity. We'll discuss this in detail later—but chances to observe it directly are rare."

The slender arrow, as thick as a pen, pierced the un-inflated target, interrupting its inflation process; a small cloud of spores spewed from the hollow shaft's rear. He struggled to continue—then a second arrow struck his right lung, extinguishing the attempt entirely.

"Times haven't changed, 'Sorcerer.' Spells cannot defeat flying bolts. If your Master gave you any other tricks, feel free to try them."

This flippant attitude toward the Father provoked clear rage. He struggled to rise from his chair, emitting unintelligible growls, his voice weakened by lung leakage.

Sensing further precaution was needed, Kraft nodded to Kup, who raised a winch-crossbow and fired a heavy bolt that pinned him to the chairback.

Seeing resistance was hopeless, the coral-horned, ornate fungal crown—majestic as a high priest's vestment—reached toward his chest, attempting to trace a circle in the air, like legendary saints who died still practicing their doctrine.

A faint, almost nasal breath of sensation swept through the room, passing unimpeded through all objects, reminding Kraft of his own spiritual organ—though far smaller, weaker, nearly imperceptible.

As if struck by immense shock, the tracing motion halted. The remaining surface of the scaled fungal face twisted into an unmistakable expression of "surprise."

"…"

An even fainter sound—but this time different from before. The tone remained strange, yet discernible as developing Norse speech.

"What?" Unexpected joy startled him. Kraft did not approach, but strained his ears to catch the words—even curses might prove useful.

"…Tell them… do not fear… I bring you… good tidings…" The words came in fragments, exhaled from the diseased throat, yet forced into precise, deliberate pronunciation—as if rehearsed countless times—"which are for all people."

Not a curse, but a passage from scripture. He could not finish. His body collapsed, his head striking the desk, the fungi shattering.

Kraft and Kup locked eyes.

"So what the hell did that mean?"