Decaying World Chapter 229

Chapter 229

Jade-green water hamred the hull of the great ship without pause. The sea wind scread. Arranged in a wild goose formation, the Heaven-bestowed fleet drove straight into the depths of the Jade Sea.

By now, the deck had nearly emptied, with only a handful of sailors left standing watch.

His cultivation was deep enough that the conditions gave him no concern. Lin Hui remained at the rail, gazing out at the distant water. He let the shifting environnt wash over him, absorbing the sea's character as he cultivated.

Xia Si and the newly arrived Su Yaping stood beside him, doing the sa. The trio drew the occasional respectful glance from sailors passing by—after all, they had been out here for at least three hours.

"You three—we're about to enter the closed sea region. You'd be wise to take shelter below," the captain said, coming up through the hatch. "My crew will be heading in shortly to seal the exterior doors."

The captain of their ship was a remarkably heavyset man. Whether he was born that dark or simply baked through years on open water was hard to say, but his complexion was barely a shade lighter than charcoal. He looked to be in his early thirties, with a close-cropped buzz cut and thick dark brown hair. Two curved sabers—one long, one short—hung at his waist.

He stood apart from his crew the mont he drew near, carrying a deep, unfamiliar incense about him—a sharp contrast to the fish-stink and sweat clinging to the other sailors.

"Closed sea region? Captain Nong Zhuo, could you explain?" Lin Hui asked. Since he hadn't spoken until now, Su Yaping and Xia Si hadn't bothered to open their mouths either.

"First ti out at sea? Alright—we've still got about half a sichen before we hit it, so I'll walk you through it." The captain exhaled, drawing a black tal pipe from a pouch at the small of his back. A flick of his wrist produced a spark from sowhere unseen; he lit the tobacco, took a long drag, and blew a smoke ring.

"The nearshore stretches of the Jade Sea are relatively manageable. At worst, you'll run into sea beasts. But we carry sea-repelling flags from the Moon Tower—coated in sothing those creatures hate. It keeps the fleet safe while we sail. That part is fine. The real danger of the Jade Sea isn't the beasts. It's the environnt itself."

"What kind of environnt?" Lin Hui's curiosity sharpened. This was his first ti away from land. The Jade Sea stretched vast and open around them, its jade-green surface unlike anything he had seen, and he found himself wanting to understand it fully.

"Let break it down." The captain flicked his ash over the rail and let the sea breeze take it. "Deep in the Jade Sea's closed region, the most common hazard is highly toxic acid rain—that's the zone we're about to enter. In there, the rain falls roughly every half day. The mont it touches flesh—human or animal—the skin begins to ulcerate. You lose the ability to breathe, asphyxiate, and go paralyzed. You won't be able to move again until you've dissolved completely into a pool of pus."

"Can Internal Force resist it?" Lin Hui asked.

"It can't," Su Yaping said. "I've been out here before and tested it. Internal Force is useless against it. Only Void Force offers any protection, and even that doesn't hold for long. The rain seems to carry more than ordinary toxins—there's sothing else mixed into it."

"He's right. If it were otherwise, I wouldn't bother coming up here to warn you." The captain gave a confirming nod. "The acid rain is just the first layer. The second is the temperature."

"Temperature... I've dealt with extre temperatures before," Su Yaping said.

"Sounds like you've been around. But let explain how we asure it first—the Federation uses a unit called 'Rings.' Normal human body temperature falls between 8 and 10 Rings. That's the baseline we work from."

A passing sailor handed the captain a small black device, roughly shaped like a portable radio. Its face bore a circular dial with a pointer moving over a ring of finely engraved red nurical marks representing Rings.

"This is a thermoter. asures from negative 20 to 100 Rings," the captain said. "The danger ahead is this: within a single sichen, the temperature will surge past 90 Rings."

Silence.

Aside from Xia Si, who had no fra of reference, both Lin Hui and Su Yaping went still.

Lin Hui ran the conversion in his head. A surge past roughly 350 degrees within about two hours... He could barely credit it. It was simply too extre.

"I can see from your expressions that you don't believe . That's fine. If you think you can endure it, you're welco to try. But if it gets to be too much, co below," the captain said, and gave up on them with a sigh.

"I'll stay and see for myself," Lin Hui said. His Internal Force was virtually boundless now, and his Body Tempering had pushed his physical resilience to heights he had yet to fully asure. This was a good opportunity to find out where those limits actually lay. A well-rounded expert left no blind spots.

Seeing there was no persuading them, the captain turned and went back inside.

Ti passed. The jade-green sea stretched unchanged in every direction. The water heaved and fell, occasionally crashing hard against the hull and shuddering through the ship.

Whoosh—

Lin Hui's eyes sharpened as he looked out to the right. Skimming rapidly across the water past the fleet was a blue humanoid figure riding atop a large black fish.

The figure wore only a simple blue garnt that left most of her body bare. Her silhouette was clearly feminine, with an athletic build and blue hair streaming in the wind. Where her ears should have been, a pair of seahorse-like fins fanned out on either side of her head. She cut through the Mist and vanished in an instant.

"There are humanoid races living in the Jade Sea?" Lin Hui asked.

"Yes. Sea Clan tribes—though they're strictly nearshore peoples, even they don't venture into the deep sea. So of them maintain extensive trade relations with Federation cities," Su Yaping said, clearly familiar with the subject.

"I see..." Lin Hui murmured, and for a mont, his mind went to a certain Wanhua Sect leader he had once encountered who lived inside a water vat.

In the ti that followed, large sea creatures surfaced occasionally near the fleet. But as the ambient temperature began its gradual climb, they grew scarce. Water vapor started rising off the sea's surface in increasing volu, thickening the air until a dense fog swallowed everything—so dense you couldn't see your hand in front of your face, far heavier than any Mist he had encountered on land.

"Master, there's a strange scent in the air. It's sweet—very sweet," Xia Si said suddenly.

"Which direction?" Lin Hui couldn't detect anything. He glanced at Su Yaping, who gave a slight shake of his head.

"There!" Xia Si pointed toward the distant sky astern.

Lin Hui looked where she indicated. The thick fog blocked everything. He was about to channel the Typhoon Sword Technique to part it when he felt it himself. His pupils contracted.

Whoosh!

As if drawn by so unseen force, the fog behind the ship began to thin. In the far sky above, just barely visible through the haze, was the blurred silhouette of a female figure in a sweeping red gown. Given the distance, her body had to be at least a thousand ters tall.

She moved swiftly across the high heavens. The trailing hem of her red dress unfurled as she passed, spreading into a vast rosy cloud that covered more than half the sky—vast beyond proportion to even her imnse figure, consuming the horizon in every direction.

Had Xia Si not pointed her out, Lin Hui might have missed the figure entirely and registered only the great rosy expanse of cloud spreading overhead.

"The temperature is still climbing," Su Yaping said in a low voice, visibly shaken by the sight.

"The whole sky has gone red... What in the world is that?" Lin Hui stared upward.

Like a curtain being drawn, the massive figure's passage seed to herald what was coming. The crimson sky was soon swallowed by fog again, but the blurry red glow that lingered showed clearly that the heavens had not returned to their previous gray-white.

"I think I'm beginning to understand why the Mist God Sect is so rampant and impossible to root out," Su Yaping said softly.

"...Agreed." Lin Hui nodded.

The sky had been stained red simply by the passing of that figure's hem. The sight would unsettle anyone. It also struck him that even the Mistborn—terrifying as they were—remained confined within their cities. This world plainly harbored things far beyond them.

The three waited on. As ti dragged on, the deck cleared entirely until no one remained but them. People from the Lin Manor and the Clear Wind Dao had co up to check on them earlier, but once it was clear the three had no intention of coming below, the others had little choice but to retreat on their own.

The sky stayed red—though the brilliant crimson had slowly faded to a pale, washed-out hue. The temperature kept climbing until Lin Hui found himself unable to breathe. The air had beco saturated with scalding vapor; there was no longer any oxygen left to draw in.

He simply stopped breathing. He had never had cause to do so before, but so instinct told him he no longer needed oxygen the way he once had—the realization settling over him as naturally as the urge to blink. Things played out exactly as that instinct suggested.

The mont his breathing stopped, his body began drawing a steady current of so sustaining aura—sothing like oxygen but not quite—through the base of his skull.

Wind Disaster Affinity. Lin Hui sensed a note of familiarity in the aura and recognized it at once. It was his newly ford organ linked to the Wind Disaster—his hair—feeding him.

He glanced at Xia Si and Su Yaping. Standing close enough to observe them, he could see they were holding their breath with no such supplentary aura to draw on, relying entirely on their physical reserves to endure.

Then sothing he hadn't anticipated: the clothing on all three of them caught fire.

Lin Hui, at a loss for words, suppressed it with his Internal Force—cutting off the air around his body and smothering the flas. Fire needed its conditions; deny it air, and it died.

The result left all three of them singed and discolored, cutting rather sorry figures.

By now, the world outside had beco an undifferentiated haze of red vapor, with nothing visible in any direction. With nothing to do but wait, Lin Hui closed his eyes and turned to his cultivation. Xia Si and Su Yaping did the sa, and for a long while, none of the three said another word.