MASG chapter 88

 

The entire sea lit up.

The daylight, not yet fully revealed, blended with the blue, merging the sea and sky.

Xia Yu could barely hold onto the railing. His gaze fell toward where his kin had gathered. Others could not hear it, but to him, every sound rang clearly in his ears. His kin varied in size—some were smaller than a palm, while others had diameters exceeding two meters—and they were clustered tightly together, leaning on one another.

“How can there be so many jellyfish?” Talos could not estimate the scale of the jellyfish, but he was certain of one thing: Meng Qingqing and the others could not come to the surface. These creatures were like ghosts—if they didn’t emit light, you wouldn’t notice them even if you brushed past them.

They were the ghosts of the sea. When they weren’t present, there was no trace to follow. Once they appeared, escape was impossible. By the time the prey realized it, there was no way to retreat. Once trapped, there was only one path: death.

Silver Fang activated the living organism scanning imager in one eye. Everything before him was beyond his understanding and could not be detected by machinery. Had his scanning equipment discovered such a massive number earlier, it would have definitely triggered an alert. Yet, they had reached right under their noses before being discovered.

The reason they were discovered was simple: the Blue Jellyfish had exposed themselves.

They pressed against each other, seemingly transparent yet actually emitting a distinct blue glow. Inside their transparent heads, blue light strips twisted into the shape of a three-leaf clover were hidden, containing the mystery of their lives. The crowding temporarily distorted their bodies, but when the next wave came, they returned to their round form. In reality, nothing could ever harm what lay at their core.

“Everyone, stay on the ship. I’ll go down and haul Mo An up!” Talos was shocked yet already taking action. “Luckily, Mo An injected an antidote earlier. I don’t know if it’s still effective, but I hope so…”

“No, I’ll go down.” Xia Yu was even more resolute.

“What are you going down for?” Silver Fang reached out to grab him.

But he was still half a beat too slow. He failed to predict Xia Yu’s next move. He flipped over the railing of Talos’s ship, leaped forward, and threw himself into the ocean’s embrace. He had returned to his own tribe.

It was like going home—brave, firm, and natural.

After falling into the sea, Xia Yu expelled the sense of rejection from his body. He landed among his kin like falling into a fluffy tree canopy of soft feathers. They accepted him, loved him, and supported him. There was no barrier between humans and jellyfish—no “you” or “me,” only the lightness of life. Spiritually, Xia Yu also became a transparent jellyfish umbrella, floating up and down with them, growing larger and smaller. From the edge of the umbrella-shaped body, long, slender tentacles extended; the shortest were still one or two meters long.

The longest reached thirty meters and became Xia Yu’s cradle. Seawater was expelled from the jellyfish’s bodies and became the power of their movement. That light entered Xia Yu’s eyes.

For the first time, his water-colored pupils took on the original color of his life: deep blue. In this deep blue world, Xia Yu saw Mo An, who had already fallen unconscious.

A blue light shone on Mo An’s tall body. His handsome face appeared as though he were sleeping, and his black scales reflected an even more brilliant light, resembling the stars in the sky. At the same time, however, his terrible condition was made even clearer to Xia Yu: blue blood kept bubbling out, and his wounds were fully exposed.

“Mo An!” Xia Yu released two bubbles.

This time, Mo An did not respond. His head drooped and his arms hung straight down as he drifted with the current, seemingly unconscious. His fishtail could no longer propel him forward. The only part of his body that was still moving were his gills. A mermaid’s gill slits seemed to be an entirely different system—as long as they were in water, they would survive, unstoppable by anyone.

It was Leviathan! Leviathan had injured him! Xia Yu pushed aside the giant jellyfish in front of him and swam desperately toward Mo An, passing through thirty meters of tentacles.

Mo An still did not respond, as if he were asleep in the water. He had never been this quiet. Even his symmetrical ventral fins could not keep him balanced. More striking than his wounds was his tail fin, which would forever remain asymmetrical. Every time Xia Yu looked at it, he felt pain in his chest, reminding him of the agony Mo An endured when he tore the egg membrane apart while still alive.

More and more blue jellyfish gathered around Mo An, some of their tentacles touching his shoulders.

Don’t touch him! Don’t touch him! He’s mine! Xia Yu finally swam in a panic to Mo An’s front and brushed away his kin’s whisker-like tentacles one by one. Some tentacle tips had already pierced his gills and required force to remove. Relying on his ability to hold his breath, Xia Yu pulled them out one by one. However, just after dealing with the gill slits, blood started flowing from the wounds again.

They were completely surrounded by jellyfish, blotting out the sky and sun.

Suddenly, a powerful current surged in, nearly sweeping the two pitiful figures away. Xia Yu grabbed Mo An’s wrist, but Mo An didn’t react. Under different circumstances, he would have mischievously pinched Xia Yu’s palm. The current continued to strengthen as if determined to tear them apart. Xia Yu was equally determined not to let go.

He couldn’t let go. He couldn’t let Mo An die in the sea!

Without realizing it, the jellyfish gathered around them once more. Suddenly, a spark lit up in Xia Yu’s heart. Could it be that…

They didn’t come because of the Leviathan or the mermaid.

They had sensed his existence and found this place somewhere in the deep sea, coming specifically for him! They regarded him as family!

Through countless layers of transparent, soft membranes, Xia Yu slowly made out a face. Fear seized most of his senses. There was only one person who could appear at a time like this. Saying he wasn’t afraid would be a lie, but courage sprouted within his fear. He truly couldn’t lose anyone else.

“Very good, very good.” Leviathan stared at them through countless blue jellyfish, half real and half unreal. “I didn’t expect there to be a tough one among you. Now I understand why Nuwa insisted on wiping you out completely.”

As he spoke, the direction of the current reversed again, and cracking, freezing sounds came from the surface of the sea. It was obvious—Leviathan was preparing to freeze them beneath the sea.

“How many minutes can you survive underwater? You cute little jellyfish still don’t know how powerful your ability is, and you’re about to die here.” Leviathan was more than happy to add another target to his slaughter. Moreover, they appeared to be closely bonded. No matter which one died, the pain and despair would double—and so would his enjoyment. “If I freeze the sea surface, will you finally understand how terrifying the sea is?”

Although Xia Yu could not speak in seawater, he could hear Leviathan’s voice clearly. Talos’s ship appeared to be frozen into the ice layer on the sea’s surface; its outline was no longer visible. The ice was thick and opaque, resembling a layer of white snow pressing down on the sea and forming an additional barrier.

“Come, let me witness your deaths.” Leviathan extended his hand forward and controlled the seawater, surging it ahead. “Don’t think the Gargoyle can save you again. Last time was on land. Land is his domain, so I had to give him some face. But in the sea, you are just lowly filth.”

“Don’t…don’t touch him.” Xia Yu shouted in his heart.

Something strange happened. Those jellyfish could read his thoughts completely. When he glared at Leviathan, the Blue Jellyfish began to attack the Leviathan. They were slow, but that did not mean they were harmless. The ocean had its own laws of survival, and no one could escape them.

Leviathan was retreating.

“That’s it? You want to poison me like this?” Leviathan grabbed a tiny jellyfish and effortlessly crushed its transparent body, grinding it into fragments. “You really think too highly of yourself.”

Xia Yu watched his own kin die, and it felt as if Leviathan had crushed his own heart; the pain was piercing.

Yet this time, Leviathan only spoke that way and never attacked Xia Yu again. Along with the fearless gathering of the jellyfish, the blue light gradually illuminated the dark shadow behind Leviathan. The jellyfish tribe did not come to kill anyone specifically, but in the deep sea, they were dazzling beings that illuminated everything.

Each time the darkness lit up a little, Leviathan retreated a little more.

His true body is in the darkness! Xia Yu immediately understood. But even if he understood, he still could not contend with Leviathan. Right after that, he heard whispers coming from the darkness. The sound was unlike any language in the world. It was closer to a low chant. Yet, when he heard it, he understood it instinctively.

Could this be Leviathan’s voice? Was it the sound that was said to “drive people mad the moment they hear it” at sea? Then why hadn’t he gone mad?

Another unexplainable question. Xia Yu had never realized how many mysteries were hidden within himself. The darkness retreated step by step. Suddenly, he saw a gigantic hand appear within the abyss-like shadow.

A single fingernail was as big as Talos’s ship! It was actually a human hand!

The giant hand vanished in an instant. Xia Yu blinked. He was just about to take Mo An and swim upward when the scar-covered eyeball charged in front of him. It seemed as if the Leviathan was being directed by the giant hand. It broke through the protection of the Blue Jellyfish and made its way to Xia Yu’s side, killing everything in its path. But immediately after that, he released Xia Yu—clearly, his target was the mermaid.

He hugged Mo An from behind. “Get ready to say goodbye to him! Little jellyfish!”

“Let go of him!” Xia Yu truly shouted this time, but his voice turned into indistinct noise in the seawater. Leviathan didn’t answer. The next moment, his eyes widened in fury as he stared at Mo An in disbelief.

Mo An’s eyelids trembled as he struggled to open them. There were no sparks of electricity in his palm; however, strands of black blood drifted out and were filtered by his gills.

Leviathan’s entire body was split vertically by a slash. Sharp dorsal fins pierced his upper body as if he had thrown himself onto the mermaid’s spine.

“Cough…” He coughed up another mouthful of black blood. “You actually…”

Time was up. Who would have thought that Mo An would mature at such a critical moment? He grew strong, powerful black dorsal fins that protruded along the ridges of his curved spine like lethal weapons. Each fishbone was clearly defined and extremely sharp—easily capable of slicing open seabed creatures or the hulls of mechanical ships. Xia Yu bought him the final moments. He witnessed a mermaid grow from juvenile to mature with his own eyes. From the moment his dorsal fins grew out, the siren before him officially became a hunter, beginning a bloodthirsty life.

The black tail flicked twice, and Mo An opened his eyes.

Leviathan had no choice but to let go.

“Tsk, tsk, tsk. How boring.” Leviathan was full of regret. Seriously injured, he lacked the strength to fight the siren. More importantly, it was the Snake Woman’s curse once again—he could not kill an adult mermaids. Otherwise, the wounds on the adult mermaid would also appear on his body.

Once matured, Mo An held no value for Leviathan.

“You’re really… lucky.” Leviathan quickly faded back into the darkness. “I didn’t expect your little jellyfish to like you this much, throwing everything aside just to buy you a little more time. Just a few seconds more, and I could have killed you, but it doesn’t matter. There are plenty of things in the deep sea that can take your life. Mo An, you might not survive.”

His voice grew more and more distant until it completely disappeared into the darkness. Suddenly, the darkness contracted violently and began absorbing seawater. Then, it burst it all out at once, forming an unstoppable current.

The unfathomable darkness disappeared, and so did Xia Yu and Mo An, their hands forced apart.

Mo An woke up hazily, but the last thing he saw were countless blue lights around him. Suddenly, he remembered the prophecy—he had seen it before entering the tall tower in Lake Cry City. Xia Yu thought the blue lights were insects in the tower, but they weren’t insects. They were jellyfish.

The prophecy he had seen was of himself being surrounded by blue jellyfish.

A powerful suction came from behind, as if dragging him into a bottomless abyss. Mo An reached out to Xia Yu, wanting to grasp the most important person in his life. Ultimately, he only caught the necklace around Xia Yu’s neck with his fingertips. The silver chain and sea-blue crystal sphere fell into his hand. Mo An lost consciousness again and was sucked into the unpredictable depths of the sea.

Mo An, Mo An, where are you going… Xia Yu also had no strength left to grab him. He was about to be knocked unconscious by the powerful current. At the last moment, he saw a transparent thruster device approaching him. Nuwa’s voice sounded from the bracelet.

Nuwa: [Xia Yu, in view of the Second Clause and the Third Clause, I indeed have no way to actively harm you. I don’t want to harm you either. I won’t kill you, but I can make you disappear from the real world and join me. Welcome to my world, little jellyfish. From now on, you will remember nothing.]

Hearing this, Xia Yu weakly struggled once, then passed out. After he fainted, the thruster device captured him and smoothly locked him into a transparent chamber. Then, it quietly left the area, leaving only the ship on the ice layer. The people on the ship would never know where Xia Yu had gone. They would only think he was dead. There would be no more Xia Yu in this world.

The pitch-black sea was always so quiet.

Several pure black mermaids with bright red horns on their heads swam swiftly through it. They gathered in the depths of the trench and watched curiously as a fish sank down, not knowing what to do.

If you called him a siren, he was a male.
If you called him a Black Siren, his skin was pale.

“What exactly is he?” Finally, a Black Siren spoke up. “He’s been down here for three days and still hasn’t woken up.”

“He’s holding a gemstone in his hand. I have no idea where it came from,” another Black Siren replied with red eyes, as if they were about to drip blood.

As soon as the words were spoken, the unconscious mermaid twitched his tail as if having a difficult dream. The Black Sirens surrounded him, their pitch-black skin blending perfectly with the seawater. They waited for the mermaid to open his eyes.

The mermaid finally opened his eyes, but he looked as if he had gone dumb.

“You…who are you exactly?” Why did you go down into the trench? This is the territory of the Black Sirens. Did you come looking for relatives and sisters?” A female Black Siren swam over boldly and slapped the unfamiliar mermaid’s cheek twice with her tail. “What’s your name?”

The unfamiliar mermaid looked at the aquamarine gemstone in his hand and struggled to open his mouth. “I…I don’t remember who I am. I don’t remember.”

“Ah…” The female Black Siren tilted her head. That’s it—this fish had lost his memory.

 

 

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Acargoreng: The next few chapters will be Mo’an’s journey as he searches for Haisiruola to restore his memory 💫