Chapter 331 - 323

Chapter 331: Chapter 323

In the boundless Black Sea, time lost all meaning.

The darkness was like an unbreakable inkstone, pressing down heavily on Shen Yue’s head.

She could only rely on her Vitality Power, which emanated a soft golden glow, to navigate the seabed thick with the stench of death.

She struggled to move between the floating corpses and the human-faced Devouring God Flowers, her fingertips repeatedly brushing against their cold, sticky stems...

She allowed the power of the Devouring God Flowers to merge with her body.

And she allowed the fragmented, tragic memories of death to wash over her Divine Sense like a cold tide, again and again.

At first, she had clung tightly to the conviction of finding Lan Cangyue...

With every stem she touched, she desperately searched for that familiar blue figure, her sharp gaze scouring each memory for the faintest clues.

But as the death scenes mounted, that firm conviction was slowly eroded and submerged in endless pain and despair.

She saw a young Sea Clan boy push his companion aside to protect them, throwing himself at a Devouring God Flower.

In the instant he was enveloped by its petals, his eyes were still filled with a longing for life...

She saw a Whale Beast use its last ounce of strength to push its cub out of the Black Sea’s edge, only to be devoured by the black water itself.

She saw explorers who had arrived together become suspicious and shove one another in their terror of the Devouring God Flowers...

They ended up killing each other, all of them becoming nutrients for the Demon Flowers.

But what made her heart clench the most was the memory of a pair of Sea Clan parents.

They had mistakenly entered the Black Sea while holding their young child, who was wailing in terror...

The parents held him tightly, using their bodies to block the encroaching stems of the Devouring God Flowers, their fishtails beating desperately as they tried to carry their child to safety.

But the power of the black water and the Devouring God Flowers came too quickly. The father’s tail was pierced by a stem, and the mother’s arm was snared by petals...

They used their last shred of strength to push the child toward safety. Even as their own consciousness faded, they were still desperately trying to protect him...

In the darkness, the child’s innocent cries also came to an abrupt end.

The family of three ultimately became three cold, floating corpses, each one sprouting a grotesque flower with a crying face.

The despair, reluctance, and heart-wrenching love from that memory stabbed into Shen Yue’s heart like the sharpest of ice picks.

A chill ran through her, and her fingertips trembled so uncontrollably that she could barely hold her flashlight.

Next, she touched the skeleton of someone clad in tattered royal merfolk armor. The moment the stem lit up, a memory spanning several centuries flooded her mind...

It was from a squad of elite Royal Warriors sent by the Sea Clan Royal Family centuries ago, under orders to investigate the anomalies in the Black Sea.

At first, they all worked together. But the deeper they ventured into the Black Sea, the denser the Devouring God Flowers became. As their comrades died one after another, fear shattered their resolve. To survive, some secretly pushed their comrades into the sea of flowers. Others abandoned the mission and tried to flee alone. In the face of death, these partners who had once fought side-by-side revealed their ugliest sides.

In the end, not a single member of the royal squad survived. The captain died with eyes full of indignation and sorrow, gazing toward the Undersea Palace until his very last breath.

Greed, fear, betrayal, protection, despair, love... All the good and evil of mortal nature unfolded within these memories of death, layer by layer, like an inescapable net entangling Shen Yue’s consciousness.

She was no longer a mere observer. The pain, fear, and despair of every memory were branded onto her Divine Soul, as if she herself were the one who had died, as if all the struggles, cries, and helplessness were her own experiences.

Her obsession with finding Lan Cangyue was gradually buried beneath an overwhelming tide of sorrow.

Her consciousness began to cloud. The darkness before her eyes overlapped with the images from the memories, and her ears filled with the wails of wronged souls, the cries of the dead, and the sound of humanity tearing itself apart. The faint golden Vitality Light Shield flickered, and even the Vitality Power surrounding her grew chaotic as her mind fell into turmoil.

She stood stiffly in the center of the sea of corpses, her fingertips still resting on the stem of a Devouring God Flower. The calm sharpness in her eyes was gone, replaced by nothing but chaos and a profound exhaustion.

The despair of the unknown Sea Clan members, the tug-of-war between good and evil at the brink of death, the fate that not even the Royal Warriors could escape—all of it acted like an undercurrent in the Black Sea, slowly dragging her will into the abyss.

She even forgot why she had come, forgot the person she was looking for, forgot the mission she carried. All that remained was an endless weight and sorrow that nearly suffocated her, as her consciousness sank deeper and deeper into countless painful memories...