Chapter 145: Realms and Dwarves (Third Update)

If it were merely a giant jellyfish, its faint blue glow and tentacles resembling brilliant light strips would actually make it look quite beautiful.

Reality, however, was quite different, because the Purple Moon energy fluctuations emanating from this jellyfish were far too familiar to Ji Yu.

In the pitch-black, lightless deep sea, the first giant jellyfish was soon followed by many others.

As Ji Yu controlled the olm to calmly observe, the final number of giant jellyfish stabilized at fifteen.

These fifteen giant jellyfish stood in the sea like fifteen blue lanterns in the dark abyss, all of them slowly approaching the olm.

Lacking any bones and possessing no swift swimming techniques, they propelled themselves toward the olm merely by pulsing their umbrella-shaped heads. To be honest, their speed was truly lackluster.

From Ji Yu's perspective, these giant jellyfish were all show and no substance, and their numerous long tentacles were no exception.

That jellyfish tentacles are venomous is probably common knowledge for anyone in the modern era, right?

Therefore, Ji Yu showed no courtesy whatsoever toward these oversized, terrifying-looking creatures.

Without even waiting for the jellyfish to attack him, he took the initiative and controlled the olm to charge forward.

Simultaneously, the temperature of the seawater around the olm plummeted rapidly.

A massive water vortex accompanied the olm's body. As it plunged toward the location of the giant jellyfish, this swirling current directly blew away the tentacles that the jellyfish were attempting to wrap around it.

Furthermore, as the olm swept past the surrounding area carrying this vortex, the seawater instantly froze solid.

One must remember that this was five thousand meters down in the deep sea; freezing water at the bottom of the ocean was likely a first in human history.

A powerful cold current swept through, and alongside the freezing of the seawater, the tentacles of the giant jellyfish were instantly coated with a layer of white frost.

As this frost formed on their tentacles, the entire group of giant jellyfish reacted as if infected with a virulent poison, rapidly freezing into solid blocks of ice.

If anyone were to measure the temperature of the seawater at that moment, they would undoubtedly obtain a terrifying reading.

Right here, the temperature of the water had plunged instantaneously to around minus one hundred and twenty degrees Celsius.

In the blink of an eye, the fifteen giant jellyfish transformed into fifteen massive blocks of ice, which were quickly subjected to the immense underwater pressure and began floating rapidly toward the surface.

Seeing this, Ji Yu halted his movements.

Watching the frozen blocks of giant jellyfish float toward the surface, Ji Yu began to form a new question.

That is, if these jellyfish spent all their time in this abyss-like deep sea, how on earth were they contaminated by the Purple Moon?

"Were they contaminated on the surface and then dove down here?"

Ji Yu muttered to himself.

Yet, upon closer reflection, something felt amiss.

If these jellyfish had been contaminated on the surface, why would they gather in this specific trench?

And why were their sizes and the intensity of their contamination so remarkably identical?

At this thought, a possibility instantly flashed through Ji Yu's mind.

That within this bottomless, pitch-black trench, a realm boundary existed.

Once viewed from this perspective, everything suddenly made sense.

If realm boundaries could appear on land, why couldn't they appear on the ocean floor, or even deep underground?

If all of this were true, then Earth's situation was truly dire.

One had to bear in mind that the oceans accounted for nearly seventy percent of Earth's total surface area.

Across such a vast expanse, if realm boundaries genuinely existed...

Well, Ji Yu could already imagine how catastrophic the situation in the oceans must be.

However, upon further thought, if ocean realm boundaries were truly numerous, would human vessels still navigate ocean routes as easily as they did today?

Surely not?

In short, the probability of realm boundaries appearing in the ocean was not low, but perhaps their numbers were not yet overwhelming.

Regardless of which hypothesis was correct, Ji Yu now had to descend into this trench to investigate thoroughly.

Thus, without needing any additional preparations, Ji Yu controlled the olm's body to move rapidly toward the exact spot in the trench where the jellyfish had ascended.

At six thousand meters, everything in the trench remained normal, only darker and deeper.

At eight thousand meters, there was no movement within the trench, resembling a pool of stagnant water.

At ten thousand meters, Ji Yu finally descended to the deepest abyss of the ocean floor.

Yet down here, Ji Yu was greeted by an entirely different scene.

At this moment, although the region remained shrouded in darkness, the seawater was unexpectedly warm, and numerous bubbles surged upward from the seabed.

Simultaneously, Ji Yu spotted a submarine volcano erupting with magma in the distance.

This submarine volcano was not particularly large, but the billowing steam and glowing red magma it spewed forth were striking.

Upon erupting into the deep sea, the magma made contact with the water and rapidly cooled into black rock-like formations.

Faced with this dramatic spectacle, Ji Yu felt a deep sense of awe.

Yet, amidst his admiration, he did not forget the purpose of this expedition.

Regrettably, despite swimming back and forth to observe his surroundings, Ji Yu could not sense even a trace of Purple Moon aura.

Nevertheless, the trench was vast, so Ji Yu did not become discouraged immediately and continued his search across the area.

Bypassing the active volcanic region, Ji Yu entered another stretch of pitch-black, tranquil seabed.

Here, aside from the luminescence emitted by the olm and the disturbance caused by its swimming, there were no other large creatures to be found.

This search was both aimless and rather tedious.

Half an hour later, Ji Yu still had made no discoveries.

An hour later, the surrounding seabed remained devoid of living things, making the entire trench appear truly like a dead zone, save for the jellyfish encountered earlier.

Just as Ji Yu began to suspect he was overthinking and prepared to ascend, however—

Suddenly, the moment he ascended to a certain altitude, Ji Yu sensed an inexplicable fluctuation.

It was difficult for Ji Yu to describe the exact sensation of this fluctuation, but it undeniably existed.

It was not the fluctuation of the Purple Moon, yet in the instant following this ripple, Ji Yu suddenly perceived a familiar energy.

At that very moment, the olm controlled by Ji Yu immediately raised its head and glanced sideways toward a specific direction.

In a flash, a faint gleam of familiar Purple Moon radiance entered Ji Yu's field of vision.

This radiance was exceptionally weak, and as the ocean currents undulated, it shimmered with a wavy texture.

This light existed without any medium, simply casting its glow upon the nearly ten-thousand-meter-deep ocean floor.

The region containing the purple radiance was not large, but at a single glance, Ji Yu recognized that this marine zone was none other than an undiscovered realm boundary.

Within this realm boundary, Ji Yu soon caught sight of several large, bizarre-looking saw-toothed fish.

These fish attempted to cross from the radiant realm into the pitch-black deep sea belonging to Earth, but the moment these saw-toothed fish emerged into the ten-thousand-meter abyss, they were instantly crushed to pieces by the terrifying underwater pressure.

Indeed, they simply burst, much like a balloon being squeezed from all sides until it exploded.

Scattered flesh drifted through the water, startling the other saw-toothed fish that were wandering near the edge of the realm.

These fish were not large; the biggest among them measured less than a meter in length.

Although terrifying in appearance and somewhat resembling piranhas, they still could not withstand the terrifying pressure of the ten-thousand-meter deep sea.

Clearly, the region or river corresponding to the realm boundary on the other side was merely a shallow body of water.

The shallow-water Purple Moon fish from the opposite side could never adapt to the immense pressure of the deep sea, let alone have a chance to ravage Earth.

Observing this, Ji Yu found it rather amusing.

Yet, alongside his amusement, Ji Yu noticed that as the flesh of the creatures crushed by the deep-sea pressure drifted downward, numerous tiny organisms—roughly the size of a human thumb or even smaller—swarmed around to feed.

Looking closer, Ji Yu realized that the surrounding water teemed with micro-jellyfish resembling water fleas.

These jellyfish devoured the exploded flesh of the strange fish and grew rapidly in size.

Within mere dozens of seconds, a dozen palm-sized jellyfish radiating the Purple Moon aura appeared in his view.

Though numbering only a little over a dozen, Ji Yu showed them no mercy.

As he glided past, Ji Yu unleashed a breath of frost upon these tiny jellyfish, followed by a few swipes of his claws to slaughter every last one of them.

Across the realm boundary, when those bizarre-looking fish caught sight of the glowing olm outside, they instantly appeared panicked.

They fled in a flurry, quickly vanishing behind a certain illusory water curtain on the other side of the realm.

Witnessing this, Ji Yu felt both puzzled and intrigued.

"Well now? Compared to the Purple Moon entities the little deer encountered in the ruined city last time, these saw-toothed fish actually know how to gauge the strength of their opponents?"

One had to remember that during the previous encounter in the Purple Moon ruins, when the little deer unleashed its massive life energy aura, the surrounding Purple Moon creatures showed no regard for their own strength and swarmed toward it indiscriminately.

Compared to those mindless Purple Moon entities, the Purple Moon saw-toothed fish Ji Yu had just witnessed were considerably smarter.

Gazing at the realm boundary pulsating with Purple Moon energy before him, Ji Yu hesitated slightly.

The appearance of this realm boundary was exceedingly bizarre, yet it also filled Ji Yu with curiosity.

He was eager to know whether entering this realm boundary would allow him to access the world of the Purple Moon.

This curiosity burned fiercely, prompting Ji Yu to calculate the potential dangers.

Thinking of the school of fish he had just encountered, and then considering the olm's abilities.

Well, although the realm boundary opposite might merely be a lake or a river, and the Purple Moon entities within might not be powerful, Ji Yu feared that this realm boundary might vanish just as abruptly as it had appeared.

If that happened, once he ventured into the Purple Moon world, how would he ever return without this transit station?

Yet, amidst this hesitation, Ji Yu recalled a certain unique characteristic of the olm.

Much like the little deer and the giant oak tree, the olm was an entity originating from outside the Purple Moon world, and any intrusion into that realm would seemingly result in its rules quickly repelling the entity back to Earth.

With this thought, Ji Yu suddenly felt a reckless impulse stirring within him.

Engaging in reckless behavior was not a first for him; the oak tree had done it once, the little deer had done it once, and now doing it a third time with the olm seemed of little consequence.

After all, the olm's unique traits and formidable strength provided Ji Yu with ample confidence.

Ultimately, Ji Yu's gaze hardened, and he plunged headfirst into the realm boundary.

The moment he crossed into the realm, Ji Yu felt enveloped by the oppressive radiation of the Purple Moon energy.

Yet this radiation was negligible to the olm; submerged in water, even a river of the Purple Moon could still provide the olm with the power of water.

In the water, the olm remained unfazed by the Purple Moon radiation, appearing scarcely different from its state on Earth.

Thus, Ji Yu's anxieties subsided immediately.

At the same time, Ji Yu swiftly directed his gaze toward the center of this realm.

There, an illusory water curtain stood, through which the earlier school of fish had fled.

Without hesitation, Ji Yu approached the water curtain and tentatively extended the olm's claw through it.

Nothing happened; the tactile feedback from the other side confirmed it was still just water.

At this point, Ji Yu discarded any remaining hesitation.

The moment he confirmed the water curtain was harmless, Ji Yu controlled the olm to dive straight through it.

The arrival of the olm proved to be akin to a bomb dropping into deep water.

The instant Ji Yu entered this body of water, he was greeted by countless saw-toothed fish and a multitude of other aquatic creatures filling his surroundings.

Giving these creatures no chance to attack the olm or flee—

In a fraction of a second, the entire body of water froze solid.

The sound of crackling ice echoed incessantly.

Aside from the channel leading upward to the surface maintained around Ji Yu, everything else was frozen solid, trapping all aquatic life within a prison of hard ice.

Satisfied, Ji Yu swam upward toward the water's surface without delay.

The olm's massive dragon-like head emerged beneath the illumination of the Purple Moon for the very first time, allowing Ji Yu to finally survey his surroundings clearly.

The region where the olm surfaced was a lake.

The lake was modest in size, appearing to span roughly ten thousand square meters.

High above, a massive Purple Moon cast its brilliant light, while the two banks flanking the lake were dense with withered woods.

These trees grew in twisted, crooked shapes, their foliage pitifully sparse.

Observing this scene, Ji Yu felt as though he had stepped right into the setting of a ghost story.

Furthermore, the atmosphere of this ghost story was crafted quite convincingly, for along the distant shoreline of the lake, a cluster of low-lying dwellings stood clustered together.

Outside these dwellings, gathered near the water's edge, were twenty or thirty humanoid grotesque beings with oversized heads.

Standing less than a meter tall and entirely bald, these creatures wore only scraps of tattered fabric, exposing spindly arms and legs that looked malnourished and starved, as if they had gone without food for a prolonged period.

The olm's colossal eyes stared down at them, while they likewise stared up at the olm's terrifying visage.

Facing one another, both sides froze in astonishment.

In Ji Yu's view, these humanoid creatures possessed large eyes and a semblance of intelligence.

However, these fellows were somewhat cowardly, for Ji Yu noticed that some of them were already trembling uncontrollably upon meeting his gaze, having wet themselves in terror.

Then, whether prompted by some instinctual shriek from one of the humanoids, this wretched group broke into panicked wails and scurried toward the low wooden shacks on the shore.

Among them, a few were evidently frightened out of their wits; trembling so violently they could muster no strength, they collapsed backward onto the ground, shaking like leaves while staring at the monster with looks of utter horror.