Chapter 309

【Breathing】

A lakebed that breathes—listening to it was beyond strange.

Aside from such a term, no other word could describe the appearance of the entire base supporting the lake water as it rose.

The frail body breathed rapidly and deeply, like a live fish thrown onto shore, attempting to filter more oxygen through high-frequency oscillations of its gas-exchange organs, only to ultimately realize it was futile.

The air’s components sustaining life were diminishing, diluted by gases rising to the surface, encased in countless bubbles.

It seemed faint, yet its irritation surpassed anything else, blazing fiercely on the mucous membranes of mouth and nose and on the meninges. It was the terrible flavor of a scream sealed inside constricted bronchi, over-fermented—rotten, suffocating, extreme.

The light painted the pallid face with the grotesque pallor of a court jester, while the lips turned a deep, purplish black.

The mist glowed, allowing the light to bypass obstructions and propagate without angular limitation—over the gunwales, into the hull, crawling into the constricted, trembling pupils.

Arriving with the smell and light were a thousand million voices, roaring or whispering, expressing the same meaning in different tones and languages, seeking minds capable of understanding them.

The surface swelled like an abscess, then collapsed into turbid waves taller than their heads, sweeping toward them.

Behind the murky water curtain rose tiered prismatic walls, their fissures packed with hissing biomass. Those once dwelling in the lake-island structures had now been reshaped into their most efficient form, using force beyond material limits to lift these colossal pillars, forged from celestial debris, from the lakebed.

Merely this slow motion caused the unbearable biomass to continuously crumble, peeling from the adhered stone pillars, only to be captured and seamlessly reabsorbed by floating filter structures.

Fresh air was drawn into a cavity longer and more complex than an organ pipe, emitting a long, whale-like resonance.

The resonance arrived before the sound, passing unimpeded through the body, tugging organs to vibrate in sync, nearly tearing them free from their membrane bindings to join in.

Those with keener perception might sense a hidden sorrow, akin to glancing back at distant homeland during a journey, a wave of aversion toward the unfamiliar rising in the heart—but it was instantly drowned by violent physiological distress.

In that brief contact, the spiritual senses touched something within the “lakebed” resembling their own nature.

Its immense scale and near-deep pallor made it easily and distinctly perceptible.

But unlike the nascent states of fungal spirits and sample consciousnesses, “it”—or rather, “they”—were in an extremely mature state, indistinguishable from humans being pulled into the depths, yet their forms were chaotic, like clay sculptures crumpled together yet unable to fully merge, piled into grotesque clay hills.

Pure, suppressed agony flowed within, mobilizing its vast mass and weight, activating the instincts embedded in the celestial-debris pillars, drawing them toward their source.

The world perceived by spiritual senses darkened like rapidly decaying plaster; “colors” faded, converging toward an environment nearly uniform yet monotonously impoverished, two dissimilar layers pressed together and unevenly blended.

But it was not enough—mass was both advantage and burden; with this alone, it could never breach the final threshold, never fully shatter the barrier between layers.

Thus it remained trapped here, enduring endless agony and futile struggle, its instinctual yearning to return to the depths entwined with pain into a near-substantial concept, boiling within this colossal spiritual entity, transmitted to the lunar remains that formed its core.

Ultimately, the permission to traverse between depths manifested in a twisted, sharp form.

Visible, elongated fissures radiated outward, like transparent tendrils lashing space, surging water bursting forth, mixed with severed fluorescent tissues.

One could see countless luminous creatures swimming on the other side of the fissures, actively colliding with this line of death; most were severed and disintegrated, a few, through the wider gaps, sacrificed most of their bodies to be swept into the manifest world—but even they could not escape becoming new components of the lakebed.

The trivial biomass replenishment could not alleviate its agony; it still boiled, searching for an outlet.

The moment its existence was recognized, reverse attention was simultaneously established.

Conceptual agony surged along the connection, projecting into every consciousness that perceived it, transmitting into new media.

The deeper and more complete the understanding, the more stable and broad the connection, the more efficient the transmission.

A higher-order method of information exchange.

Grim expressions seized every facial muscle of each person—the inescapable cognition of pain.

Kraft rapidly contracted his spiritual senses and closed his eyes, as if touching a burning coal; the heat instantly conducted through contact, searing an indelible mark.

A unique agony was etched into the spiritual body.

After an eternity of seconds, the waves stirred by the activity finally arrived.

The boat was hurled high, spun and tossed away. It was luck—they no longer had to endure the inescapable, extreme negative sensations, and were far from the space being severed.

The wooden barrels lashed to the boat played a crucial role, barely maintaining buoyancy, allowing the waterlogged vessel to barely stay afloat, carrying its passengers into the unknown.

In the chaos, they remembered only to grab the nearest rope, breathe, then hold their breath, each wave slamming them back under water.

In the muddy, silt-choked water, eyes could not open—but they felt themselves drifting away from light and sound, pushed back into darkness by the expanding waves.

After an unknown length of time, when the wind and waves slightly calmed, they could no longer discern direction; even Kraft could not gain any positional sense amid the spinning chaos.

The massive silhouettes seemed to have turned to another side; at first glance, their outlines seemed familiar, but upon closer comparison with memory, their positions and forms were utterly different—no suitable reference points remained.

Looking around, the lighthouse they had hoped for at departure had not worked its miracle. Perhaps they had been swept into the lake’s deeper regions, far beyond the reach of guidance.

Everything on the boat was soaked; their waists and below were submerged. Unfixed supplies and equipment had been lost to the lake; what remained had been soaked for hours—no one could expect a single sheet of parchment to serve as a sealed bag.

The most nerve-wracking was the crossbow. When the impact came, the fingers, deprived of conscious control, pulled the trigger; the bolt pierced two stacked bundles and drove into the boat’s hull, half its length embedded.

More than half the fuel was lost; one of the oil-can nets had been shaken loose, colliding with the hull and now shattered beyond recognition.

The torch bundle—or now, merely a pile of wet sticks—had questionable utility. The oil lamps still had spares, but the problem was how to relight them.

They were lost in this dark water, supplies exhausted, spirit and body tormented.

Worse still, the team’s long-standing “prophet” appeared to be in worse condition than anyone else.

The pain had not weakened with time or distance; instead, his condition resembled being buried alive in air, desperately trying to grasp something from the environment to sustain life—but finding nothing.