Chapter 65 "Talk to Me, I'm Scared..."

"Hey? Talk to me, please. It's too dark here, I'm scared..." Jiang Xiao muttered, his voice a fragile thread in the nothingness.

He felt as though only his consciousness existed now, completely detached from his physical body, at the mercy of the deep-sea whale carrying him onward.

"Whale bro? Let's talk this over. Can you let me go?"

"Whale bro, even if you won't tell me where we're going, at least let me see where we are?"

Jiang Xiao was talking to himself, but his body echoed the words of his consciousness. And since Jiang Xiao was speaking Chinese, Juliet was having a hard time understanding anything.

Inside the massive bubble, Sophia steered its course, her eyes fixed on the deep-sea whale's tail ahead, lost in thought.

"Sophia." Prince Bino floated over, speaking from within his own bubble. "This isn't working. I don't sense any hostility from this huge creature. Maybe I should go see, try to communicate with it."

Sophia said coolly, "You'd be dead before you knew it."

Bino's face darkened as he looked at Jiang Xiao, who sat blankly in his bubble, staring ahead with empty eyes, saying, "But Jiang Xiao's ass..."

Sophia: "Let's follow for a while longer, see what it's trying to do. We'll increase the distance between us, and be ready to leave at any moment."

Prince Bino considered, but said nothing more. The trio, with Jiang Xiao in tow, hung back, trailing far behind the deep-sea whale.

The journey was surprisingly calm and safe.

The great beast passed, and all living things fled!

As if the creatures of the deep could sense the threat emanating from the whale, none dared approach.

These creatures, living in the deep sea year-round, had a sense of danger a hundred times stronger than Sophia and her companions.

After a dozen minutes, Prince Bino suddenly stopped.

Sophia steered the bubble to a halt as well. "What is it?"

Prince Bino's expression shifted. "Its form is gradually disappearing. It must be entering a dimensional space gate!"

"Good heavens..." At the same time, Jiang Xiao, sitting on the ground with a dazed look, spoke.

"Can you guys hear me? Oh right, wait, English..."

"The whale is singing again, and I can see the outline of my surroundings again."

"I don't know where this is. It looks like... a city?"

"Such a large city, such large houses."

"Giants must live here, right? This palace, it feels like the temples in the Xia Country, so many huge stone pillars... Hey? This giant city seems to be abandoned."

The trio exchanged glances, silently floating in place, listening to Jiang Xiao's constant narration.

War Correspondent Jiang Xiaopi! Back online!

"I see people! They really are underwater giants," Jiang Xiao said from inside the bubble, his voice tinged with wonder. Then, he seemed puzzled. "These giants aren't moving. Hmm... are they statues?"

"They're lined up in two rows, standing in the seabed, with a wide road between them, leading to a temple in the distance! But the whale isn't taking me there."

Jiang Xiao's voice grew excited. "It's taking me through a huge palace, it's very old, but also magnificent!"

Bino was captivated by Jiang Xiao's description. He turned to Sophia. "Let's go take a look!"

"Hmm..." Sophia hesitated for a moment, unable to resist her curiosity, and nodded slightly.

At the same time, inside the bubble, Jiang Xiao was making sounds of awe and wonder: "Wow..."

And in that mysterious dimensional space, a solitary voice echoed through the abandoned underwater city, its ethereal tones traveling far, far away.

"Om..."

In Jiang Xiao's perception, it was as if a new world had been opened!

The slightly blurred outlines around him suddenly became clear, and it felt as though a map was slowly unfolding before him.

A vast and desolate underwater city appeared within Jiang Xiao's range of perception.

More accurately, within the deep-sea whale's range of perception.

A massive palace with broken pillars, an underwater shrine with jagged rocks, the slightly blurred walls and stone carvings, one motionless underwater statue after another... Was that a coliseum?

In the topographical map that the whale was scanning like radar, Jiang Xiao's heart was trembling violently.

If earlier, Jiang Xiao was worried about being kidnapped,

Now, Jiang Xiao couldn't care less. Even if this giant city was abandoned, it was still incomparably majestic!

Passing through the crisscrossing streets, swimming through the once-bustling marketplaces, gazing at the giant castle on the seabed cliffs in the distance...

But, if there were signs of civilization, where were the intelligent beings?

Jiang Xiao already knew that the neat rows of humanoid figures he had seen earlier must be statues, so... where were the living creatures?

Where did this dimensional space originate? What was its name? What kind of dimensional creatures existed here?

"Om..."

Another ethereal chant, and Jiang Xiao felt his (the whale's) body pass through a huge archway, circling around a dilapidated stone pillar.

Circling?

In Jiang Xiao's perception, he (the whale) was no longer exploring the distance, but instead wandering among the pillars of this vast plaza, weaving left and right, playing, rolling, and spinning...

Jiang Xiao seemed to realize something.

This deep-sea whale seemed to be treating this place as its own personal playground.

After all, there weren't many "amusement facilities" that matched its size on the seabed.

Ever since entering these underwater ruins, Jiang Xiao's world had been open, even clear. The deep-sea whale's songs illuminated Jiang Xiao's entire world, and captured every corner of this underwater city.

It seemed as though the deep-sea whale was leading Jiang Xiao on a playdate?

Or perhaps showing Jiang Xiao its playground?

At the same time, the quartet also entered this unknown underwater realm.

"This... this..." Prince Bino's face was shocked. He guided the trio in the bubble to the lower right, and sure enough, they sensed two rows of neatly arranged giant statues, and within their line of sight, they saw two massive sculptures.

These must be the "humanoid figures" Jiang Xiao had mentioned.

Sophia couldn't help but emerge from the bubble, standing before a giant statue.

It was a giant, a male sculpture wearing armor. Sophia's height of around 1.8 meters was just the length of the male statue's head.

Sophia turned to look, and as the sea spirit lamp illuminated the scene, one majestic warrior after another appeared before her eyes.

Between the two rows of stone statues was a dilapidated stone-paved road, leading into the darkness, and in the siblings' perception, it led to a gigantic palace.

"Om..." The once-lonely chant carried a hint of joy, its tone noticeably higher.

They subconsciously looked in the direction of the sound, but neither in sight nor in perception could they find its source.

The perceptual range of the two teams was clearly unequal.

The trio, carrying Jiang Xiao's body, couldn't detect the other team, but within Jiang Xiao's (the whale's) perceptual range, the outlines of those tiny humans had already been scanned.

"This way, this way, we're over here by the coliseum, it wants to take me to play in the castle on the cliff... uh, no, it's going up, it's..." Inside the bubble, Jiang Xiao's words abruptly stopped.

And in Jiang Xiao's world, the deep-sea whale was going straight up, vertically upward, at an incredibly fast speed...

"Om..." Another song.

Jiang Xiao's heart leaped in alarm. In his scanning, he saw a barrier!

Was that... the boundary of the dimensional space?

An air wall?

"Stop, stop!" Jiang Xiao's physical body said from far away, causing the trio beside him to look puzzled.

The next moment, a muffled sound reverberated through the dimensional space!

The magnitude of the sound was truly earth-shattering!

Jiang Xiao watched helplessly as he (the whale) crashed into the air wall. At that moment, Jiang Xiao actually felt a sharp pain.

"Hiss..." The physical Jiang Xiao couldn't help but gasp in pain.

And with that intense feeling of pain, Jiang Xiao perceived other sensations!

The temperature of the seawater!

The surging of the sea currents!

Even the images in his mind were no longer just the whale's scanned outlines, but also the underwater world seen through the whale's eyes.

This massive impact seemed to have shattered the barrier between human and whale senses.

As the pain surged through his body, all the senses flooded in...

Jiang Xiao's body was in excruciating pain, and his heart was filled with surprise and shock!

And the whale's body slowly fell, only to suddenly rush upward again.

Thud!

Another heavy muffled sound, every drop of water in the area seemed to be vibrating, trembling.

"Don't, don't crash... that's the boundary." Jiang Xiao thought to himself, enduring the pain, trying to persuade the deep-sea whale.

Thud!

Thud!

Thud!

Impact after impact, fall after fall...

Lonely and stubborn.

"Don't, don't crash anymore..." Jiang Xiao finally understood why it was so persistent, because the whale's memories had surfaced in his mind.

After trying again and again, sharing emotions with Jiang Xiao, the whale circled unwillingly below the air wall, swimming back and forth, still unwilling to leave.

Jiang Xiao didn't know what to say.

Slowly, the whale stopped struggling, even stopped swimming, letting its huge and heavy body fall slowly downward...

The behemoth, over thirty meters long and over two hundred tons, crushed the broken buildings into rubble even as it slowly fell through the water, stirring up clouds of stone chips and dust on the seabed...

...

I received a bunch of private messages on Weibo, thanking me for the support, so let's do three chapters today. I wanted to rest for a couple of days, but oh well... Recent transcoding has been severe, motivating us to update faster, so please move your little hands and exit reading mode. Thank you.