In the valley in the heart of the Holy Land Island, Vanna, who was leading the team to set up camp at the entrance of the tunnel, received the news from the cave. She widened her eyes in astonishment: "Shirley and Agou are missing?"
"Strictly speaking, they were 'transferred' to some place by some kind of space-time mechanism in the cave," Duncan's voice echoed in Vanna's heart. "Have you observed any changes on the surface?"
"No, everything is normal on the surface. Amber just led a team to search the depths of the valley, and found nothing except a few empty huts and some human remains swallowed by the island," Vanna replied immediately, "The island is very peaceful now..."
In the underground cave, Duncan nodded slightly after hearing Vanna's report from the surface, and then his eyes fell on Morris and Alice beside him.
"Everything is normal on the surface. The Holy Land Island has not shown any signs of 'activation'. It seems that the situation Shirley and Agou encountered is different from that of the Annihilation Cultists."
"Where on earth did they go?" Alice looked anxious. "Didn't you say you could still feel their 'marks'? Are they okay now?"
"Alive, but in a place I cannot locate, I suspect..."
Duncan suddenly stopped talking halfway and did not rashly draw any conclusions, but he obviously had some guesses in his mind - after a brief silence, he raised his head and looked thoughtfully into the depths of the cave.
In the dim darkness, there stood a huge object.
Every time he blinked, a huge prism surrounded by numerous cables and pipes would emerge there. The lights on the surface of the prism flickered, as if emitting a silent invitation.
He came there and let the flames dispel the darkness - in the light brought by the spiritual fire, a magnificent gate stood silently, as if it was directly embedded in the rock walls on both sides.
In the open space around the gate, many tools scattered in a hurry could be seen, and some human structures that had melted to the point where details were difficult to discern, as if they had been swallowed by mud and rocks, were embedded in the surrounding ground and walls, looking hideous and terrifying.
There was no doubt that this was the "final chamber" that Shirley had mentioned, the final excavation site deep beneath the island of the Holy Land, where the Annihilation Cultists had finally "awakened" the entire island.
Duncan arrived in front of the gate and quickly observed its structure in the light of the fire. The dark stone door was silently closed, and its surface was rough and uneven, as if there had been dense vines covering the door, but now there were only a mess of potholes and lines on the gate. However, in the potholes and lines that were so chaotic that there was almost no pattern or logic, Duncan vaguely recognized something.
Those were the strange words he had seen in that "hall," the same symbols he had seen in the vision of the New Hope crashing.
He frowned slightly, but before he could read the information hidden in the lines, Alice, who was following him, broke the silence first and whispered, "Navigator One... Intervention Interface?"
Duncan turned his head suddenly and looked at the puppet who was looking up at the door: "Did you understand the message on this door?"
Alice frowned and shook her head slowly: "I didn't see any information on the door... I just suddenly had this idea in my mind..."
Duncan stared into Alice's eyes, his thoughts racing. He withdrew his gaze and turned to the door. After a few seconds of hesitation and thinking, he placed his hand on the door and closed his eyes slightly while concentrating.
A faint green flame spread from his fingertips and then flashed on the door and disappeared.
And in his other vision, in a dark, distant and strange dimension, a little fire seemed to be suddenly blown by the wind, swaying and flickering slightly in the depths of the darkness.
In the faint, flickering firelight, Duncan heard Shirley's voice—a little clearer than before, but still separated by a thick veil.
She was scared, she was cold, she had just lost something very important - she was carefully building a shell to protect herself, and something malicious was gathering around her.
Duncan suddenly opened his eyes.
"Lucy." In his heart, he called out to the "witch" who was on standby on the Brilliant Star.
Lucrecia's voice came immediately: "Do you need me?"
"Bring that 'Saint' here. I have found the 'connection point'. Now I need to open a door and go to the Deep Sea to pick someone up."
"clear."
The voice in his mind faded away, and Duncan slowly raised his right hand. A ball of extremely bright, even dazzling, fire was gradually taking shape in the palm of his hand.
He pressed the flame against the dark stone door, watching it gradually seep into the door and into the strange and dark dimension behind the door. Before the flame completely disappeared, he whispered to it: "... Shirley, don't be afraid."
…
It was dark and cold, and my body felt heavy as if it were filled with lead. A strange tingling sensation spread from my arm, all the way to my shoulder, and then to half of my body. The tingling gradually turned into numbness, as if this body no longer belonged to me, as if my flesh and blood had unknowingly become something that I could not understand or control.
The "quagmire" around her had gradually receded at some point, but a stronger sense of malice and crisis continued to surge up from all around. Shirley hid deep in a "bush" that looked like a chaotic mess of bone fragments, curled up and motionless.
There were chaotic and crazy roars and mutterings coming from afar. An invisible hunter was prowling in the darkness, looking for uninvited guests who had broken into this place. The hunter's breath was slowly approaching here, and it was only a matter of time before the "prey" was discovered.
But this time there was no Deep Hound to protect him.
Shirley hugged her twisted arms even tighter and shrank deeper into the bushes. She had already "smelled" the scent of this place and figured out where she was.
This is the deep sea, Agou’s “hometown”.
It's the devil's lair.
The sound of "thump, thump" beating sounded faintly in her ears, and the pulsation from her chest woke Shirley from her daze. She lowered her head in a daze, looking at the two hearts she was holding in her arms.
"Dad...Mom..."
She murmured quietly, just like when she was little and didn't want to sleep, she would curl up in bed and whisper to "them" -
"I'm a little scared... I want to hug you..."
The two hearts were still beating slowly, and the thumping sound was so real - for the past many years, they had been beating inside the body of a dark demon. Through the thick bones and chaotic smoke, their beating sound had never been so clearly heard by Shirley.
Shirley grasped her arms slightly, but felt something strange coming from them.
She lowered her head and saw a pair of arms covered with thin bone armor. Blade-like structures extended from the elbow joints, slowly expanding like a living thing. She saw her chest again - a horrifying hole, with bones rising from it with black smoke, and a broken dark red organ beating hard between the smoke and bones, getting weaker with every second.
The damaged organ is called the "heart" in the human body.
"… It turns out that my heart was bitten by a dog back then… No wonder it's so cold…"
Shirley whispered, adjusting her posture slightly in the bushes. She saw that her legs were gradually covered with a layer of hideous and strange black bone pieces, and smoke and dust representing deep pollution continued to rise from the bone pieces and dissipate in the air.
She felt increasingly sleepy.
Will he die as a deep demon? Or was he already a deep demon in human form twelve years ago when Agou and he merged into one
This brief thought inexplicably emerged in Shirley's mind, but soon, even this thought dissipated in the increasingly intense sleepiness.
She didn't want to think about it, nor would she think about it.
She didn't understand these, these overly "philosophical" questions... were too difficult for her.
She was more concerned about water, food, fuel for heating, and clothing for the winter.
The roars and mutterings were getting closer. The hunters in the dark were approaching this marginal land. Their expanding and shrinking shapes cast even darker shadows in the darkness, and the cold touch seemed to have touched Shirley's skin one step ahead of time.
But her body had slowly fallen over - the two beating hearts could no longer wake her from her intense sleepiness. In her shattered chest, the heart that had been gnawed by the devil was slowly beating for the last time.
A warm light emerged in the darkness, as if a ray of warm sunshine was shining on her face. Shirley squinted her eyes slightly and breathed out comfortably and relaxedly.
It was a warm winter afternoon.
The sun shines through the window and onto the faded wooden windowsill. The kettle on the stove is hissing happily. Mom is busy in the kitchen. The aroma of baking cookies drifts into the living room. Dad doesn't have to go to work today. He squats beside the dining table to fix the table that always creaks. From the street comes the clear ring of the postman's bell as he rides his bicycle through the intersection, and the sound of a horse-drawn carriage pressing over the cobblestone road.
Shirley dozed on the couch and was about to fall asleep.
Then, Daddy would come over, pick her up and carry her to the bed in the bedroom, and Mom would come out of the kitchen and hit Daddy on the head with a ladle because his dirty hands had soiled his daughter's skirt...
Shirley lay on the sofa, a smile slowly appearing on her face, just like that afternoon many years ago, she gently turned over, her arms fell from the back of the sofa to herself, and then curled up against her chest.
She felt a heart that had stopped beating.
All the warmth collapsed in an instant, and darkness and coldness pierced through the warm afternoon sunshine like an avalanche. She widened her eyes in the darkness, but when fear came howling, she saw the figure squatting beside the dining table, who should have disappeared with the "collapse", slowly stood up and walked towards her.
The figure transformed in the flames, burning everything in the darkness.
"Shirley, don't be afraid."
(End of this chapter)