Chapter Text
To the East of Gusu’s coast, the sea is shallow and as peaceful as the sea can be. For the most part, that is because of the Reefs, a row of small islands stretching across the seabed like a pearl necklace from Dongying in the North to Liuqiu in the South. They keep the larger waves at bay and tame the more turbulent waters of the vast sea Beyond the Reefs.
People don’t go Beyond the Reefs. To the fishing vessels, the sea is too harsh and for cultivators, it’s just simply too far—the sea is untamed, wild, and unfathomable, a dangerous beast best left alone. If one would dare to take a ship there, one would see water as far as the eye could see, sometimes placid blue, sometimes green with white-peaked waves, sometimes raging grey with storms one would be lucky to escape alive.
Travel is easier inside the Reefs, fish is plenty, and the climate is beautiful.
There is no point in going Beyond the Reefs as there’s nothing to gain.
The seabed is dark and calm, silent except for the echoes of singing whales far and away. The sound is hauntingly beautiful, both lonely and filled with the joy of traveling the endless sea with others of a kind. A lonely sea critter slowly crawls through the silt in the dark deep, unhurried and unbothered in the silence between the whale calls. It pauses when a tremor shakes the seabed, loosens up stones the currents have piled up during time, and makes them tumble and land softly on the bottom with a small puff of silt. There’s a moment of silence, then another tremor, and then the ocean floor ripples like it’s as liquid as the sea itself, and something starts to shine in the eternal darkness.
At first, it’s the thinnest sliver of light, as if someone cut through a thick canvas with a sharp dagger. It widens slightly—painfully slowly at first until it rips as if something is forcibly torn open with enough force to make the very earth writhe and convulse in pain. Unbearably bright, blue light spills from the tear like spilled wine into a space that hasn’t seen light in eons, shocking the sea critters into a mad panic and ushering them to hide and take cover wherever possible.
Something dark reaches out from the leaking wound on the seafloor, tentatively feeling around in this environment into where it’s pushing itself. It finds no resistance and pushes forward, solidifies and gains girth, turning from a strand into something more tangible. Silently, the darkness expands, stretches upward and onward until it’s fully through, landing on the seabed in an undignified heap. Behind it, the wound in the bottom of the sea pulses weakly, almost like it’s panting, drained after the birthing pains.
For a moment, nothing happens.
Then the darkness shudders and stretches itself into something with four limbs, a tail, and a head with a pair of piercing black eyes and a wide mouth full of needle-sharp teeth. It opens its jaw and tastes the water, cocks its head almost like it’s listening to something, and takes in its surroundings with its new, improved senses.
It’s not an intelligent creature; it knows its purpose and little else, and after it has fulfilled its mission, it is to crawl back into the glowing tear on the seafloor.
After a moment of stillness, it starts to prowl forward with a slow, sinuous gait. Its claws tear at the sea floor, leaving behind deep gashes and skewered sea creatures that have no way to shield themselves from the sharp, cruel press of the creature’s talons. Gutted and lifeless, the butchered corpses sway gently in the current like a gruesome train or veil, ornaments of destruction so far unseen in the sea.
The creature heads straight forward, feeling the pull of something far ahead. It promises heat and dark energy, exactly the things it’s supposed to find. It picks up speed, ignoring the sharp coral that cuts a deep gash into its flesh. The hurt is insignificant and causes the creature no harm. It continues on, leaving behind drops of blue, glowing substance that sink through the seawater and hiss and boil when they hit a starfish and coral. They eat through the tissue with ease, leaving behind a blackened smear and sickly-looking strands swaying limply from a blackened skeleton as the creature disappears into the darkness like a ghost.
On the seabed, the sluggishly bleeding tear spasms and contracts, drawing back into itself until it looks like a puckered, infected scar on the ocean floor. It quiets down, almost like it’s waiting for the creature to return from wherever it headed off.
That, or new creatures to push through and be born into the depth of the deep, dark ocean.