Beginning with the Ubume Bird-Chapter 532 - Twenty-Eight: The Octopus King
The description of the "Wingless Emperor," Li Yan was all too familiar with.
In the Northern Darkness, there is a fish, its name is Kun. The Kun is so large, its size unknown but it spans thousands of miles; transformed into a bird, its name is Peng. The back of the Peng, also unknown but it spans thousands of miles.
The Wingless Emperor is essentially the Kun mentioned in Zhuangzi’s "Carefree Wander."
The so-called "Abyssal Mouth" at its bottom, unexpectedly houses a gigantic Kun that has lived for an unknown number of years, even being honored as the "Wingless Emperor" by the world during a certain era.
Just how massive is this Wingless Emperor?
The unidentified black whale that just flew over Li Yan’s head was at least nearly two thousand kilometers long, comparable to Wangfujing Street! Yet such a gigantic black whale, in front of the "Wingless Emperor," seemed like a floating cow hair, with absolutely no chance of resisting. The two black holes sucking in everything in front of Li Yan should be the "Wingless Emperor’s" nostrils, or some other organ.
Such an existence is difficult to measure with human efforts, Five Directions Elder? Four Emperors? Perhaps even higher.
The mad torrents surged, and a golden crown from an unknown era whizzed by Li Yan, who had no time to pay attention. He finally understood how the ancestors of Odonk found their adventure in this trench.
Because of the Wingless Emperor.
The Wingless Emperor’s rapid ascent unintentionally swallows a great amount of river water, along with all sorts of bizarre treasures and creatures, which are also ingested into the belly of the Wingless Emperor. Even if that does not happen, the turbulent currents it stirs up are very likely to bring the trench’s treasures to the surface of the crevice, or even to the bottom of the Mississippi River...
If he still wished to gain anything from the Abyssal Mouth, he must rely on the "Wingless Emperor."
Li Yan clenched his teeth and put away the Summoning Gold Medallion, bracing his body writhing in muscle distortions, allowing the overpowering suction to draw him, along with numerous trench creatures, into the black hole.
Not long after Li Yan sank into the "black hole," the two black holes turned flesh-red then sealed up tightly, and the unstoppable suction in the trench ceased to be.
As the "black hole" closed, the burden on Li Yan’s body suddenly lightened. The pressure of the deep water disappeared all at once.
The Pig Dragon King seized the opportunity, spitting out a golden slate into Li Yan’s arms, and then transformed into a little red snake, tightly coiling around Li Yan’s wrist, trembling with fear.
Li Yan barely managed to stabilize his stature, with darkness all around, no ground beneath his feet, no roof above his head, and no way to distinguish front, back, left, or right. Only countless bizarre corpses of trench creatures fell downwards, a sight exceedingly magnificent.
Seeing Li Yan in a daze, the Pig Dragon King cautiously asked, "My Lord, are we, perhaps, doomed?"
"You will not die."
Li Yan had such confidence not only because of the Summoning Gold Medallion but also because the "Wingless Emperor" was simply too enormous. So enormous that it was quite unlikely to pay special attention to Li Yan. At any moment, a sneeze from the "Wingless Emperor" might blow Li Yan out of this damned place.
"But, my Lord, I feel like it’s not floating upwards but sinking downwards," the Pig Dragon King commented.
Li Yan’s brow furrowed. He did not doubt the Pig Dragon King’s guess, as the depth reading before his eyes given by Earth Endurance continued to refresh.
One thousand meters, one thousand five hundred meters, two thousand meters...
Five thousand meters!
If at this moment the Wingless Emperor expelled Li Yan, no monster’s predation was needed; the water pressure alone would suffice to kill him within seconds.
Li Yan’s heart felt heavy, but his face did not show it.
"There is always a way out when one reaches the mountain."
After speaking, he looked down at the golden slate found by the Pig Dragon King. The slate was forty centimeters square, with only one sentence written on it: "We should attribute all that happens in the natural world to rational thinking, to nature itself, rather than to any single emperor."
[R’lyeh Ancient City’s Scholar’s Handbook]
Category: Oddity
[Words of the Great Scholar]: Whoever holds this item will incur the resentment of the Immortal Spirits, yet will be able to comprehend all texts from the R’lyeh Ancient City.
Note: This world belongs to the Emperors from the Abyssal Mouth! As centuries turn, it has always been so. Yet, in a brief period beyond ancient times, a group of beings self-styled as "Scholars" momentarily broke this iron rule. Using the culture and knowledge of the "Natural Sciences," they established a city-state called "R’lyeh," opposing the Emperors. The scholars began to study the origins of the "Emperors," unraveling the secrets of the "Emperors" and the "Abyssal Mouth" with their unique culture and knowledge. Alas, it was all in vain...
Li Yan pocketed the stone tablet and swam in the direction of the fallen corpses.
————————————————
Who knows how much time had passed, the surroundings were still an endless expanse of water. However, Earth Endurance indicated that the depth of the trench Li Yan was in was at least nearly twenty thousand meters. Using conventional methods, it was obviously impossible to return.
The atmosphere became ever more oppressive, and the silent terror, like termites, always insidiously destroyed one’s psychological defenses. A dead hammerhead shark with bared fangs and hollow eyes passed by Li Yan, fixating on a certain direction, causing the Pig Dragon King’s heart to flutter with unease.
But Li Yan’s eyes lit up.
Beyond the shark’s carcass, there was distinctly an old iron vessel, or more precisely, a submarine!
It was long and cylindrical, over a hundred meters in length and ten meters wide. Both ends were conical, making it resemble a cigar. The bow had a sharp ram, and there were windows on both flanks, with the propeller at the stern draped in seaweed. The hull was dented and bulged, looking battered and worn.
On its sides were faint, twisted symbols that Li Yan did not recognize, but he could understand them.
[King Squid]
Category: Derelict
Remnants of a product of the R’lyeh City-State’s Natural Sciences.
Note: You should know what the natural predator of a squid is, right? Correct, the nautilus!
Whoosh!
Li Yan kicked up white spray, leaping toward the abandoned submarine, circling it twice, marveling that it was still sealed.
He found the hatch and pried it open, causing the submarine’s hull to deform greatly. Li Yan quickly slipped inside and used ice to seal the leaking crack.
The entire submarine was divided into four layers with separate bulkheads, and the shafts were complex. It took Li Yan more than ten minutes to explore from the tail’s engine room, through the central activity platform and watertight shafts, to the steering room at the bow. There was nothing of value, aside from the disarrayed ruins and the faded symbols on the walls.
The only discovery was that Li Yan found many devices on the submarine, similar to the Tri-Orb Device.
It wasn’t until he reached the captain’s quarters that Li Yan found a clothed skeleton prostrate over the control board, a bullet hole in the right side of the skull, as if it had suffered a self-inflicted gunshot.
The golden walls were flickering with fluorescence, those were the texts of R’lyeh.
"It turns out that our understanding of the ’Emperors’ was far too shallow. We once thought that the Emperors were a group of intelligent life forms with mystical abilities, monsters pretending to be gods, who filled the disorderly river of time, reigning supreme for tens of millions of years. And we, we were going to end them, heralding a new era that cherishes nature. But, we were wrong! We are merely slaves to the new emperor, eradicating the rebels of the old era for him. We, we haven’t changed anything."
"The ancient texts often describe the ’Emperors’ as a jellyfish, a fish of unfathomable size, a tree, or even a person. But in reality, the ’Emperors’ are not just that! They could be a ghost, a will, a system, or even something more abstract and unfathomable. As long as it has the power to change an era, it is one of the Emperors. So, what is the great power that is changing our era?"
"It is Natural Sciences itself! Natural Sciences is the new emperor of this era!"
"It’s all a sham!"
