Chapter 1455: Pulling Off a Big Move

After the Reverse Tide contamination leaked, the first place affected might not have been the Sentinels at all, but rather the Celestial Space Station in synchronous orbit. This was a sudden, bold hypothesis that Gawain had just formed—but it wasn’t baseless.

In fact, it addressed a question that had long puzzled him: The Reverse Tide’s main body was trapped in the mortal realm. Judging from the “connections” among the facilities left behind by the Pilgrims, if the Reverse Tide wanted to break free and spread outward, the most “convenient” escape route should have been the Celestial Station—also located in the mortal realm and unmonitored at the time. So why did its power ultimately flow toward the Sentinels, who were stationed in the realm of the gods?

Keep in mind, the entire Sentinel system was located deep beneath the ocean floor in the “Deep Realm,” separated from the mortal world by multiple dimensional barriers, including the Shadow Realm and the Umbral Realm. Moreover, the Sentinels were bound by eternal accords left by the Pilgrims, unable to abandon their posts. For the Reverse Tide to penetrate these layers of barriers and corrupt the Sentinel system was, by all accounts, a highly inefficient and difficult path. So why choose it?

The Reverse Tide was indeed a mad ancient god, utterly lacking rational logic. But even so, it had basic instincts—something supported by multiple pieces of evidence. If it acted on instinct, then it should have chosen the easiest escape route: spreading to the Celestial Station.

Now, the answer to this most illogical mystery finally emerged—the Reverse Tide had initially tried to spread to the Celestial Station but was blocked. Forced to change course, it redirected its power toward another system left by the Pilgrims: the Sentinels.

The Reverse Tide was stopped by a mysterious hall within the Celestial Station, a hall suffused with shadowy power. This hall seemed connected to an entity called the “Star Chart Keeper.” But what exactly was this “Star Chart Keeper”?

A flood of questions surged through Gawain’s mind. With this new puzzle, his attention returned to the massive “pillar” at the center of the hall. Regardless of what the “Star Chart Keeper” was, everything in this hall was clearly designed around this mysterious special authority. The pillar, wrapped in layers of purple-black crystalline thorns, was obviously the hall’s core.

The Pilgrims wouldn’t have placed meaningless structures in such a critical facility as the Celestial Station.

Gawain switched his surveillance views, applying multiple filters to observe more details on the pillar. The thorny clusters obstructed his vision somewhat, but through the gaps, he caught glimpses of something intriguing. At the same time, Bellranta’s voice echoed in his mind: “The Reverse Tide… that mad ancient god should be dead by now, right?”

“Yes,” Gawain replied casually. “The High Council’s senior advisors have confirmed it. There should be no doubt—though gods rarely die, their deaths cause unmistakable anomalies. The Council found evidence of divine power fading and dissipating in the Reverse Tide’s remains.”

“But we only have half of the god’s corpse, right?” Bellranta’s voice carried a hint of worry. “We don’t know where the other half is. Gods have immense vitality; maybe that half is still alive…”

“Divine power is a unified whole,” Gawain explained calmly. “Even if the corpse is split, its ‘essence’ remains unified on a higher dimensional level. That’s what ‘Lady Egg’ told me. By examining fragments, the advisors can determine the god’s overall state with confidence.”

“I see… then I can relax a bit,” Bellranta exhaled softly, though her expression turned strange. “Maybe I’m just overly sensitive about this…”

“I understand your anxiety,” Gawain said reassuringly. “The Reverse Tide left a deep shadow over dragonkind. Even if it’s dead, seeing traces it left years ago would unsettle any dragon. But on the other hand, even if the Reverse Tide is gone, these traces deserve our caution. There could be incredible historical secrets buried in this space station far from the surface… hmm?”

Gawain’s voice suddenly trailed off with a note of puzzlement, prompting Nicholas to ask instinctively, “Did you find something?”

“I just noticed some strange decorative patterns on the surface of the thorn-covered pillar,” Gawain said, puzzled. “They don’t seem like mere decoration… They cover the entire pillar, and their style…”

He activated all the monitors in the hall and switched to a special scanning mode. The black-and-white image revealed the thorn clusters becoming semi-transparent, and the previously hidden patterns beneath them gradually came into view—

Complex, winding designs covered the massive pillar from its base all the way up near the ceiling. Most importantly… these patterns were neither Pilgrim script nor any known decoration from Pilgrim ruins!

Gawain strained to decipher the patterns and record them, but the shadowy thorns still obscured his view. In some key spots, all he could see was a murky shadow.

“Can we remove these thorns?” Gawain suddenly asked. “There’s something on the pillar’s surface, but the thorns are blocking it.”

“They don’t seem indestructible,” Alice RS-6 replied. “But we don’t know what might happen if we destroy them, so we haven’t tried yet.”

“Test it,” Gawain said after a moment’s silence. “Prepare safety measures.”

Alice RS-6 looked at Nicholas, who immediately shifted his stance. “Understood. Initiating standard safety protocol for unknown substances—non-essential personnel evacuate the area.”

With the order given, the advance team began executing the standard procedures they had practiced many times over the past weeks. All non-essential personnel, including dragons and iron soldiers, quickly left the hall and retreated to the connecting corridor outside. Deep-sea witch Cassandra led several sea nymphs to stay near the thorny area, each ready with cutting and sampling equipment.

The joint engineering team’s standard safety protocol: when encountering suspicious objects or potentially dangerous unknown areas, send a few sea nymphs as “sacrifices,” then watch from a safe distance to see if they survive…

Honestly, this procedure initially caused some psychological stress for the team’s more normal-minded members. After all, it was hard to immediately accept the sea nymphs’ strange “racial nature” upon first contact. But after working together for so long, attitudes had changed. Even the most conservative now calmly accepted the sea nymphs’ generous self-sacrifice—sometimes watching the same sea nymph “die” multiple times in a single day.

As for the sea nymphs? They were quite pleased, apparently interpreting this as a sign that the alien team members had finally become “friends.” They were very happy about it.

Bellranta couldn’t understand the sea nymphs’ strange psychology but had to admit their presence greatly eased operations in this “silent space battle.” Standing in the corridor, she watched Cassandra and her team near the thorns and sighed to Asralena beside her, “Without them, who knows what price we’d have paid to get this far in such a dangerous station…”

“If not for them, we’d never have just charged headfirst into disabled sections or unknown devices, or sent a teammate to test their power,” Asralena rolled her eyes. “I think these ‘deep-sea friends’ have seriously warped all our worldviews. When we get back, everyone’s going to need psychological readjustment to work normally with ‘regular’ people again…”

“…I don’t think that includes Miss Alice and her iron soldiers,” Bellranta shrugged. “They were the first to adapt to the sea nymphs’ weird style.”

While Asralena and Bellranta whispered in the corridor, Cassandra and her team had already reached the thorny structure inside the shadowy hall. The high-frequency cutter in the form of a short blade emitted a faint glow in the darkness. The deep-sea witch steadied herself, swaying her serpent tail as she slowly approached the thorns. “I’m starting now…”

Behind her, the sea nymphs raised their recording devices, chattering excitedly, “Go ahead, go ahead!” “Hurry up, sister!” “Stop dawdling, we’re waiting!”

Hearing the commotion, Cassandra gritted her teeth, took a deep breath, and swung the high-frequency blade at the nearest intact section of purple-black thorns.

Sparks flew, and a stronger-than-expected recoil hit her. These intact thorns were clearly not the “inferior” ones corrupted by the Reverse Tide that shattered on contact. Their toughness surprised Cassandra. But the next moment, a faint cracking sound reached her ears—the molecular blade’s high-frequency vibrations had finally fractured the stubborn thorns!

Just as Alice RS-6 had predicted—they weren’t indestructible after all.

At that very moment, in a study room carpeted with blue velvet, a pair of amber ears suddenly twitched sharply. The occupant, comfortably slouched in a chair, munching sunflower seeds and sipping tea, jerked his arm as if electrocuted. “Ouch!”

A shell flew out instantly.

“What’s going on… a cramp this bad?” The elf looked at his arm in confusion. The electric shock sensation seemed like a hallucination, but a phantom pain lingered clearly in his memory. He checked his unharmed arm, then bent down to inspect the small round table holding his seeds, as if searching for a hidden trap. “Nothing here…”

After a moment, the half-elf muttered as she straightened up, “Old Zongzi wouldn’t poison sunflower seeds, would he…”

She glanced instinctively toward Gawain’s direction, her expression suddenly stiffening.

There sat Gawain behind the desk, eyes closed in deep thought, his hair and collar littered with sunflower seed shells…

Amber finally gasped, “Oh no! If he wakes up, he might pull out the Pioneer’s Sword! We have to clean up the evidence before he wakes…”

Cassandra stared wide-eyed at the thorns sliced through by the high-frequency short blades. After a brief moment of stunned silence, a smile broke across her face. “Hey, looks like it works! These things can be cut after all—not much tougher than a giant squid!”

Behind her, the other sisters let out a chorus of somewhat disappointed murmurs. “Yeah, yeah…”“Not very sturdy at all. I thought the uncontaminated parts would be way harder.” “What a letdown.”

“Quit whining,” Cassandra said, glancing back at the sirens who were muttering to themselves while packing up their recording gear. “Come on, everyone, let’s pitch in. We’ve got to clear out this whole patch! At least we need to carve out the outline of the lower half of the pillar.”

A few siren team members gathered around. One of them craned her neck, eyeing the sprawling thicket of thorns climbing upward in the darkness, with the massive pillar structure faintly visible through the tangle. She muttered, “There’s no way a few small cutting blades can handle something this big… We’re gonna need to go big.”

“Go big!” “Go big!”

Her words instantly fired up the group. Amid cheers of “Go big!”, these powerful creatures from the deep unleashed their strength—elements swirling through the air, invisible limbs materializing from the shadows, the line between solid and ethereal blurring with the faint sound of waves. The elegant serpentine tails vanished, replaced by massive, terrifying bodies, tough and slick tentacles, shimmering scales, and runes glowing like rolling tides. Attached to these enormous sea demon forms were striking, voluptuous female torsos.

This was the power of mimicry, inspired by the giant squid—a form perfectly suited for “going big.”

Several sirens transformed into their sea demon forms and approached the thorns. Their huge bodies now reached nearly a third of the pillar’s height. In the darkness, Cassandra unfurled her own tentacles, and with a flick of their tips, she produced a dozen high-frequency cutting blades from within her body…

In the next moment, she lunged at the thicket of thorns growing like giant trees in the shadowy hall. The blades flashed up and down, sparks flying in the dark, accompanied by crisp, continuous snapping sounds.

“Be careful, everyone! Don’t damage the pillar inside!” “Throw the cut thorns far away—there’s a huge pile already.” “Hey, who’s tangled up with me? You want me to cut your side or mine?”

The sirens’ worksite was noisy but efficient. Thanks to the relentless efforts of the sea demon sirens, the massive thicket was quickly stripped away from the pillar. As large chunks of thorns fell, the faint glow from magical orbs hanging in midair illuminated the intricate, exquisite patterns on the surface of the “central pillar,” finally revealing them clearly before Cassandra’s eyes…

(End of chapter)