Chapter 723

Chapter 723: Under the Dim Starry Sky

A streak of dim green flame fell like a meteor from that frozen dome of the Starry Sky, tracing a bright line before crashing down onto the barren plain full of strange rocks.

Then the flame burst apart and blossomed in midair. In the falling sparks, Duncan and Alice stepped out of it and finally set foot in this unknown world.

Before the light faded, Duncan noticed those twisted, terrifying shapes in the distance. More than a dozen Abyssal demons were gathered around the edge of the landing point, looking strangely dazed for some reason.

He and those demons stared at each other. For a moment, the air felt oddly frozen.

Only when the slow-to-react Alice finally yelled out did that frozen air break: “Captain! We’re surrounded!”

“…I see that.” Duncan answered lightly, and at the same time he was already ready to “deal with” those demons.

The dozen or so monsters in the distance were clearly different from the Abyssal demons he had seen in the Mortal Realm, the ones summoned by Annihilators. Their limbs were far more twisted. Some bodies even showed strange dislocations and cracks. The skull demon floating in midair had a horrifying hole at the top of its head. It did not look easy to handle at all.

In Duncan’s understanding, with twisted things like Abyssal demons, the more twisted and wrong they looked, the stronger they were. The demons in front of him were twisted almost to the point of breaking. They had to be top fighters in the Abyssal Deep Sea, very different from those small fry in the Mortal Realm who ran as soon as they saw him…

But what he did not expect was this: just as he finished getting ready to “say hello” to the local natives with his fists, that group of monsters in the distance suddenly seemed to come to their senses. They burst out in a mess of roars and hoarse cries, then scattered in all directions. In the blink of an eye, half of them were already gone.

The other half were not staying because they did not want to run, but because they simply could not. They were limping and stumbling. That skull demon that looked so terrifying could fly, but when it flew it was like an old diesel engine with a broken cylinder. It wobbled as it floated a little way, black smoke puffing from the big hole in its head with every two sways, then it fell to the ground. After a few struggles it floated up again, puffed out two more bursts of black smoke, and fell down again…

Even with an optimistic guess, it could fly at most six meters in half a minute. Most of the time it just sat there puffing smoke.

Duncan and Alice: “…?”

After the two of them stood there stunned for a while, Duncan finally noticed the messy marks on the ground around the landing point. Many remains that were almost beyond recognition lay scattered among pits and gullies, pouring out thick smoke as they sank into the ground. Deep craters and gouges marked the earth everywhere, as if some crushing force had scraped off a whole layer of the land. It was a terrifying sight.

At first, Duncan had thought these marks were just “natural scenery” in the Abyssal Deep Sea. After all, he had been told from the start that this place was a “broken wasteland”. But now he finally realized… this was a battlefield left after a fierce fight.

Something had arrived here ahead of them and had almost killed all the Abyssal demons in the center of the wasteland. The dozen or so demons in the distance were just a group of lucky survivors—

So it turned out their twisted shapes had really been twisted by someone.

Alice also came back to her senses at this time. She stared around with wide eyes and noticed the black bones scattered in a nearby hollow. At once she grabbed Duncan’s arm: “Captain! This place is covered in demon remains!”

Duncan glanced at the wobbling skull demon that was trying its best to fly in the distance, and at a few Death-Omen Birds hopping on one leg on the ground. He spoke with some thought: “…So the fight already happened…”

“Who did all this?” Alice looked quite uneasy. The scene around them made her nervous. “Are the Abyssal demons’ usual fights this intense?”

For a moment Duncan did not answer. He only bent down to examine a piece of bone that had been burned almost to charcoal, then opened his hand above that fragment.

A tiny spark of dim green flame, almost invisible to the naked eye, drifted out from the charred bone and floated down into his palm.

That weak spark still carried the “memories” left on this battlefield not long ago.

“It was Shirley and Dog.” After a moment, Duncan looked up toward the far end of the vast wasteland. “They both came here before us… In theory, these marks were left by them.”

Alice listened, her face going blank for a second as she failed to process it: “…Shirley and Dog are that strong?”

“It seems something has happened to them, some great… change.” Duncan frowned, his face turning serious. “Especially Shirley. The feeling she gives me now is not quite right.”

As he spoke, he turned his gaze, following the direction in his senses where the aura of the Marks on Shirley and Dog came from.

Boundless chaos filled this endless dimension. The frozen ancient Starry Sky hung high above, covering the dome of the Abyssal Deep Sea. The dim starlight shone on broken floating islands in this chaotic space. Within his sight, he could see many large and small shadows drifting in the dull starlight. All of them were pieces of land floating in midair, and the “wasteland” where he and Alice were standing now also seemed to be only one part of those many broken islands.

The whole Abyssal Deep Sea, was formed from these countless broken floating islands. They drifted in a chaotic space covered by the frozen ancient Starry Sky, and the whole space was filled with a bleak, deathly air.

Duncan withdrew his gaze and looked at the doll at his side: “Do you feel anything special right now? Can you see or hear any unusual information?”

Alice listened carefully inside herself, then shook her head: “Nothing for now.”

“Mm.” Duncan nodded lightly, then raised his hand and pointed into the distance: “The Marks on Shirley and Dog are in that direction and still moving. We’ll go after them.”

“Okay!” Alice nodded at once. As she followed Duncan’s steps, she muttered under her breath: “Shirley must be terrified… She’s actually very timid… Dog isn’t very brave either…”

Those two figures, who gave off a terrifying aura, finally walked off into the distance—they did not seem to have any wish to cause trouble here.

The skull demon floating crookedly in midair trembled a little, the red light in its eye sockets flickering. It watched the two uninvited guests leave, and for the first time, the idea of “relief” appeared in its dull, simple mind.

A Death-Omen Bird with only one leg and half a wing hopped through the nearby rubble. Two almost flattened Fear Demons crawled slowly through cracks in the ground. A few Abyssal Hounds, nearly torn into quarters, were struggling to drag themselves farther away.

What a wonderful day.

A long limb covered in bone spurs stabbed down from the sky like a sword, pinning a strange demon that had just opened its mouth to roar and gather its breath to the ground. Then this limb stepped forward again, striding toward the end of the wilds.

On the twelve symmetrical limbs, countless strange and fearsome demon creatures of all sizes were skewered. Some of these twisted, ugly things were still struggling and roaring, but most no longer moved. They gave off thick smoke and slowly turned into mud.

But the master of those limbs no longer cared about them. After trekking for who knew how long, she finally reached the end of this piece of land.

The land floating in the chaotic darkness was an isolated island, and beyond its edge there was only endless nothingness. At the rim of this wild plain, rock and soil simply stopped. A faint mist drifted from the broken edge of the land, circling the island like a low, flowing layer of clouds.

Shirley carefully stopped at the end of the land. She used her barbed limbs to hook into cracks in the rock and cautiously leaned forward at the edge of the floating island to glance down, then quickly pulled back her gaze.

There was no road ahead.

What should she do next?

She thought about it, standing still at the end of the plain like a statue, for a time as if dead.

But the demons that circled and hesitated around her knew that this strong and terrifying “outsider” was still alive—for in her ribcage made of bones, two dark red hearts and a small flame still beat slowly, unending.

After who knew how long, Shirley finally woke from her thoughts. She controlled her limbs and stepped back two paces, trying to lower her height—she was tired and wanted to sit down and rest for a few minutes.

After a few tries, she finally sat down in a clumsy and slow way and carefully folded the bone structures on her back, which were like huge wings of bone.

She sat on a large rock like that and lifted her head, staring blankly at the frozen, ancient Starry Sky above.

That Starry Sky was very cold, wrapped in a dead and desolate air. It was like a huge, grand but lifeless corpse, looking down on all things with billions of cold eyes.

It was truly beautiful, but also truly frightening. She felt as if she were about to fall into that crowded field of stars and become their avatar, a part of them. At the same time she felt as if they were pressing down on her, pinning her to this broken and barren land.

What words should she use to describe such a sight and such a feeling?

Shirley thought hard and seriously. She suddenly felt a bit sorry that she had not listened to the captain before and read more books. Then she would have known many words, instead of thinking for so long and only managing to squeeze out one sentence—

“…It’s so damn pretty…”

Then footsteps suddenly sounded nearby, cutting off Shirley’s sigh and finally making the demons that had been hiding in the dark, ready to move yet still timid and afraid, retreat at last.

Shirley slowly turned her head and saw a Abyssal Hound taller than all the others, its whole body made of broken bones floating in black smoke, walking out of the shadows.

It came closer with care, dim green fire burning in its hollow eye sockets. It seemed to be hesitating. It looked nervous and unsure. It paced back and forth more than ten meters away for a long time before slowly stepping nearer and putting down the lump it was holding in its mouth.

“…Shirley, I found food…”

That line sounded very familiar.