After completing Natalie’s commission, the rest of the sester went smoothly for Everly, with no further incidents.
The sa was true for Mikano City in Dwight State, far away.
A major underground monster outbreak had occurred at the end of last year, causing heavy casualties. The city was now in a post-disaster recovery phase, and even the overall cri rate had dropped significantly.
In addition, Everly learned from a phone call from Old John that the lithium mine she had been deeply worried about had also been shut down under military intervention.
At present, McMurkin Company had withdrawn from the lithium mine. The entire site was now surrounded by the U.S. military with thick barbed wire. Guard posts and checkpoints had been set up outside the fence, and military vehicles occasionally ca and went. No one knew exactly what they were doing.
With the mine gone, McMurkin Mining Company’s branch in Mikano had also closed. Only the amusent park remained—since entertainnt options were scarce in rural areas, it was still extrely popular, becoming the only landmark left by McMurkin in the area.
“Silence is the best news,” Everly was very satisfied with the current situation.
It had already been more than half a year since she last returned ho, and both she and Misha were eager to go back. As soon as the final exams ended, they refused all the endless invitations for trips and reckless adventures, quickly packed their luggage, and boarded the flight ho.
This ti, they still took the “Concord–Gegha–Sunken” route.
The last disaster in Gegha City—the “Ten Plagues of the Bible”—had occurred two years ago. By now, the city was nearing the end of its recovery period, and there was a chance new incidents could happen at any ti, which made Everly uneasy.
However, after Radyard was destroyed, there were now only two available flight routes from Concord to Sunken. If they didn’t choose Gegha as a transfer point, the only other option was Gilosha City in Yanifly State.
Everly had confird intelligence that the city of Gilosha was recently being drawn into an incident.
The source of the information was an Indigenous girl nad Quilla, who lived in Tunumo Village. She knew that Everly’s school and return route might include Gilosha. Since Tunumo Village was only about 65 kiloters from Gilosha, the Indigenous people there were far more aware of what was happening in that bustling city than Everly was.
“About three days ago, several beaches in Gilosha were covered in dead fish. They were packed densely together, like white foam washed ashore. Their eyes were pale, their bodies already rotting. When the sea breeze blew in, the strong stench of decay was so overwhelming it made people feel sick…”
As sumr approached, Gilosha’s beaches were about to welco a large influx of tourists, and the appearance of these dead fish severely affected their appearance. As a result, the state governnt imdiately organized personnel to clean them up.
But it clearly didn’t help much.
The beach stayed clean for only a single day. By the next day, as the tide ca in, massive numbers of dead fish were once again washed ashore.
Along with them ca a huge, pale creature.
The monster was as long as a bus, without scales, its skin smooth and covered in a thick layer of mucus.
Quilla, who had reported the information to Everly, sent her a photo. It was secretly taken by an Indigenous villager working as a lifeguard on the beach.
The angle of the photo was perfect. Through it, Everly could see white dead fish stretching from the far edge of the horizon all the way to the shore, and the creature surrounded by piles of fish carcasses.
The monster had a head clearly belonging to a deep-sea fish. Its skull was flat and wide, its eyes occupying nearly a third of its head. Its teeth were sharp and jagged, and its lower jaw protruded outward, forming a severe underbite that gave it an extrely powerful bite. When its mouth was pried open with a boat oar by curious people at the pier, the gaping maw was large enough for a jeep to drive through freely.
Behind the monster’s massive head was a long, tube-like body. It had no pectoral fins or pelvic fins, and its tail was not the usual forked, fan-shaped, or rounded type either. Instead, it was a thin, elongated line like a sea snake.
But none of this was as strange as its abdon.
There, in a place that should have been smooth and featureless, countless crab-like legs had abruptly sprouted.
Or rather—were those really crab legs?
One curved appendage after another, all tinged with a muddy blue-green color and covered in dense blackish bristles, protruded from the creature’s underside. They varied greatly in size: the largest was as thick as a human body, bent and planted on the ground like scaffolding at a construction site. The smaller ones were only the size of a human palm, dangling from its body and not even reaching the ground.
The monster had already been dead for so ti. Its eyes had turned white, the lenses clouded. The surface of its body had been torn open by deep-sea predators, forming nurous black holes—at a glance, it looked as if it were covered in countless eyes.
“I heard the monster’s corpse was quickly taken away by a local research institute in Gilosha. After that, the state governnt hired workers cleaned up the dead fish on the beach as usual and transported them to a landfill.”
“However, that night, cleaning staff began to develop symptoms one after another—nausea, headaches, diarrhea, skin rashes, persistent nosebleeds—and were sent to hospitals. By the next day, even those who had stayed on the beach for long periods just to watch the monster had fallen ill…”
There were too many patients. Gilosha’s dical resources were nowhere near sufficient. Large numbers of people crowded into hospitals and private clinics, and after long waits, many began vomiting blood and collapsing on the spot.
At so point, even citizens who had never been to the beach began showing symptoms—fever, vomiting, and continuous nosebleeds.
“Qultan—that lifeguard on the beach—also started showing symptoms. Knowing he definitely wouldn’t get a hospital appointnt, he called several other villagers doing odd jobs in Gilosha. Together, they left the city by car and rushed back to the village.”
After a long and bumpy journey, by the ti the group returned to the village, Qultan had already fallen into a deep coma. So of the others in the sa vehicle were showing similar symptoms, though they still retained a faint level of consciousness.
At that ti, the reservation had just finished a live-action escape room event. The Sacred Tree had just been well fed and was at the peak of its strength.
The priest and the other villagers avoided the tourists and hurriedly carried Qultan and the others onto the altar. The true form of the Sacred Tree was summoned and quickly appeared. It lay above the villagers, extending countless fine tree roots from its body, which pierced deep into their flesh and drew out all the “filth” that had contaminated them.
When those roots withdrew from Qultan and the others, their breathing had already stabilized, and their pale complexions had returned to a healthy color.
As for the Sacred Tree itself, it rarely showed signs of withering. About one-fifth of its dense canopy had turned black, with leaves dying and branches snapped, as if it had been severely injured.
“The priest asked the Sacred Tree, and it told us that this was a kind of contamination—sowhat similar to radiation caused by uranium deposits, but not exactly the sa. Within the physical radiation, there was sothing even more sinister, more ancient, and more terrifying mixed in… Before the situation is resolved, the Sacred Tree told us not to approach Gilosha again. If Everly wants to go ho, it’s best not to pass through there either.”
At that ti, Everly still hadn’t bought her plane ticket. After hearing Quilla’s warning, she made a decisive choice to transfer through Gegha City instead.
Unlike Gilosha, which was in turmoil, Gegha City still seed to be in a period of relative peace.
After landing, they would need to wait 24 hours before they could board the next flight to Sunken City.
The plane arrived at night. After getting off, Everly and Misha went straight to a hotel near the airport to stay overnight. When they woke up the next day, they checked the ti and found it was still early, and the city seed calm enough—so they decided to go out and take a walk nearby.
“Everly, look. This says that the famous painter Shelly Minas is holding a solo exhibition at the Gegha Art Museum… Is this Shelly your father?”
“Let see.”
Everly took the phone and glanced at it. It really was him.
On the screen was a promotional poster for the exhibition. The background image used for the poster was a sowhat familiar oil painting—an ocean of deep, eerie blue; a cold, lonely moonlight; an island suspended in the sea; and a serpentine female demon statue bathed in moonlight.
The female figure in the painting was looking up at the sky, her arms stretched backward. She seed to be resisting a predetermined fate, or perhaps throwing everything away to protect sothing. Pale moonlight slanted down like a veil, draping over the statue and giving it a soft, glowing sheen.
The striking contrast and masterful use of color created a breathtaking effect. For so reason, although the statue’s face was terrifyingly feral, when one looked closely, what erged was an indescribable sense of holiness and maternal presence.
[I don’t know why, but ever since I saw this painting, I can’t stop crying… Yes, it reminded of my mother.]
[How strange. Not a single elent explicitly depicts maternal love, yet that sense of motherhood seeps into our hearts like moonlight.]
[This is undoubtedly a masterpiece destined to be recorded in history!]
These were the comnts of well-known art critics about the painting “The Sea Demon Under the Moon.”
It was the turning point that transford Shelly from an unknown, impoverished painter into a rising star in the art world, and it remained the most famous and highest-valued work he had ever created. It was currently owned by a wealthy businessman in Gegha City.
After “Under the Moon,” Shelly went on to create many more paintings based on the sea demon legends of Pukati Town. However, none of them surpassed this one. Even over the next twenty years, as his fa continued to grow and countless masterpieces inspired by Western mythology erged like stars in the sky, none of them ever matched “Under the Moon.”
Over ti, a saying even spread in the art world that each person has a fixed amount of “spirit” they can imbue into their works. When Shelly created “Under the Moon,” he poured too much of that “spirit” into it, and as a result, the painting beca an insurmountable peak.
Once this painting was completed, Shelly’s fate was essentially sealed. For the rest of his life, all he could do was linger in the shadow of “Under the Moon,” surviving under the lingering aura of the young artist who had once created it, never again able to achieve a true breakthrough.
It sounded mystical, but in essence it simply ant one thing: “Under the Moon” was the most famous of all Shelly’s works.
The current solo exhibition was being held in Gegha City, and the wealthy businessman who owned “Under the Moon” also lived in Gegha. After hearing about the exhibition, he specially opened his private collection and temporarily loaned the painting.
Because of this, anyone who wished to witness the brilliance of “Under the Moon” should not miss this exhibition.
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