Chapter 309: Transmission

【Breathing】

A breathing lakebed sounds as strange as it gets.

Apart from such a term, it is hard to find a second description that can depict the appearance when the entire base supporting the lake water lifts up.

The weak body breathes short and deep, like a live fish thrown onto the shore, trying to filter more oxygen through high-frequency movement of its gas-exchange organs, only to finally discover it is of no use.

The components in the air capable of sustaining life are decreasing, diluted by gas floating to the surface wrapped in a multitude of bubbles.

It seems faint, but its irritancy is no less than anything else, burning fiercely on the mucous membranes of the mouth and nose and on the meninges. It is that terrible flavor of a shrill scream sealed within obstructed bronchi after over-fermenting—rotten, suffocating, extreme.

The light smears the bloodless face with a comical, pale white like a court jester, while the lips are so deep they turn purple.

The mist is glowing, allowing the light to bypass obstacles, propagating within it without angular restrictions, flipping over the gunwales, drilling into the hull, and crawling into the constricting, trembling pupils.

Arriving with the scent and the light are eleven thousand voices, roaring or whispering, expressing the same meaning in different vocal lines and different languages, seeking minds capable of understanding them.

The water surface swells like an abscess, falls, and bursts into turbid waves higher than the head, sweeping over.

Behind the gray-yellow water curtain are prismatic high walls rising section by section, with gaps filled by hissing biomass. Those things that once lived in the lake-island structures have now been shaped into their most efficient forms, using strength exceeding material limits to lift these giant pillars built from celestial remains from the lake bottom.

Just this slow movement causes the unbearable biomass to continuously collapse, peeling off the attached Shi Zhu, only to be captured by floating filter-feeding structures and seamlessly reintegrated into them.

Fresh air is inhaled into cavities longer and more complex than a pipe organ, emitting a long sound wave resembling a whale song.

The sound wave arrives after being generated but precedes others, passing unobstructed through the body, pulling the organs to vibrate with its frequency, almost ready to break free from the control of their membranous ligaments and join in.

Those with more sensitive perception might detect a trace of hidden sorrow, akin to looking back at the homeland receding behind during a long journey, where rejection of the strange environment surges in the heart, but it is immediately drowned by intense physical discomfort.

And in that brief contact, the mental senses touched something within the "lakebed" similar in nature to themselves.

Its extremely massive volume and the bleak tone approaching the deep layer make it easily and truly detectable.

But unlike the initial, embryonic state of the Fungus Spirits and the sample mental entities, the state of "it," or rather "them," is extremely mature, no different from humans being pulled into the deep layer, yet their forms are chaotic, like clay sculptures kneaded together but unable to fully fuse, piled up into grotesque clay hills.

Pure, suppressed pain flows within it, mobilizing its massive volume and mass, activating the instinct carried within the pillars built from celestial remains, drawing them closer to their source.

The world perceived by the mental senses grows dim like rapidly aging wall plaster; "color" is draining away, approaching an environment that is almost uniform but with a monotonous and scarce base tone, where two differently colored layers are pinched together and fused and mixed together rather unevenly.

But it is not enough; volume is both an advantage and a burden, and with these, it can never break through the final threshold or completely smash the barriers between layers.

So it remains trapped here, continuing an endless struggle and attempt of pain; the instinctual desire to return to the deep layer and the pain have twisted into a concept almost substantial, boiling within this immensely vast mental entity and transmitting to the Moon Remains that serve as the structural subject.

Ultimately, the permission to shuttle between different depths manifests in a distorted, sharp form.

Visible, slender cracks radiate outward, whipping space like transparent long whiskers, with surging water shooting out from them, mixed with severed fluorescent tissue.

One can see a multitude of glowing creatures swimming on the other side of the cracks, actively crashing toward this line of death; most are split and dissociated, while a very few, sacrificing most of their bodies at the wider parts of the cracks, enter the present world with the water flow, but they too cannot escape the fate of becoming new components of the lakebed.

The biomass replenishment, negligible to the whole, cannot alleviate its pain; it is still boiling, seeking an outlet.

When its existence is realized, reverse attention is simultaneously established.

Conceptual pain surges along the established connection, projecting into every consciousness that perceives it, transmitting into a new medium.

The deeper and more fully one understands, the more stable and broad the connection becomes, and the more efficient the transmission.

A higher form of information exchange.

A ferocious expression occupies every facial muscle of everyone; it is an inescapable cognitive pain.

Kraft rapidly contracts his mental senses and closes his eyes, as if touching burning coals; the high temperature instantly conducts from the contact surface, branding an indelible mark.

A special pain is engraved within the mental entity.

After a few seconds that feel as long as an eternity, the giant waves raised by the movement finally arrive.

The boat is thrown high up, spinning and jolting as it is pushed away. This is a stroke of luck; they no longer have to bathe in the unavoidable extreme negative sensations, and they are far from the space being cut apart.

The wooden barrels fixed to the boat played an important role, barely maintaining buoyancy, allowing the water-filled boat to barely hold on, carrying the passengers into the unknown.

In the chaos, they only remember grabbing the nearest fixed rope, breathing, then holding their breath, being pressed back into the water by wave after wave.

In the water body mixed with mud and sand, eyes cannot be opened at all, but they can feel they are moving away from the light source and sound source, being sent back into darkness by the outwardly spreading waves.

No one knows how long passed; by the time the wind and waves calmed slightly, they were completely unable to discern direction, and even Kraft could not gain any positional information amidst the spinning world.

Those huge outlines seem to have turned to the other side; at first glance the lines seem familiar, but upon careful comparison with memory, one realizes the position and form are completely different, with no suitable reference points to be found.

Looking around, the lighthouse they pinned their hopes on before departure failed to create a miracle. Perhaps they were swept to a deeper part of the lake, far beyond the reach of guidance.

Everything on the boat is soaked through, with the lower half of the waist immersed in water. Supplies and equipment not fully fixed were left to the lake water, and the rest have mostly been soaking for quite some time; in this situation, one cannot expect a layer of paper skin to act as a sealable bag.

What makes the most sweat appear on foreheads is that crossbow. When the impact came, fingers lost to consciousness control pulled the trigger; the arrow shot straight through two stacked layers of wrapping, pinning into the boat bottom, with half its length embedded within.

More than half the fuel is lost; one of the net bags holding the oil cans was shaken out, colliding with the boat hull, and now the contents inside are shattered beyond recognition.

The bundle of torches, or now one should call them a pile of wet sticks, is of questionable utility. There are spare oil lamps, but the problem lies in how to rekindle the fire.

They are lost in this dark water, supplies running critically low, and both spirit and body are suffering torment.

Worse still, the "Prophet" role in the team, who has always been present, appears to be in a worse state than anyone else.

The pain does not seem to weaken on him as time and distance stretch; on the contrary, his condition is like being buried alive by air, trying to seize something from the environment to sustain life, but finding nothing.