Hearing this name, the Lord of Ether understood. Deep Blue had always been filled with remorse over the mass extinctions, believing they were caused by her excessive indulgence in materializing herself. Thus, she loathed her own selfishness and split that self-interest into a separate soul fragment.
Yet, at the same time, her selfishness brought her boundless passion: curiosity for the unknown, a yearning for each new day, an excessive partiality toward individuals, and a persistent love for learning new things... Therefore, Sui’s hair was a fiery red, symbolizing that heat.
In the years that followed, Sui’s growth validated the Lord of Ether’s suspicions.
Her learning ability was formidable; before she was even a year old, she had learned to swim and speak the Sea Language, possessing the wisdom of a twenty-year-old. Whenever a newborn animal passed by her home, she would always be the first to wag her little tail and follow it fearlessly to observe. Even as a small child, she would chatter away with a mountain of her own "observation reports." Moreover, as she grew day by day, her future beauty became increasingly predictable.
However, the Lord of Ether only saw more and more of Deep Blue’s shadow within her.
To him, it was like reliving an old dream that had lasted for hundreds of millions of years.
During this hundred-million-year span, great changes occurred in the ocean:
In the first five hundred years, millipedes appeared on an island in the Starry Sea. In just forty million years, they evolved from a lake-dwelling communal system to a jungle survival system.
Over ten million years later, a behemoth second only to the *Cameroceras* in length appeared in the ocean. Weighing up to four tons, it preyed on various deep-sea hunters, becoming the new overlord of the ocean for tens of millions of years; even *Orthoceras* and sharks were its prey. Its name was *Dunkleosteus*.
Fifty million years later, ancient insects appeared on land, all of the *Apterygota* subclass.
Sixty million years later, during the Late Devonian, a global volcanic eruption occurred on Earth, incinerating countless marine organisms. Decaying plant matter from the land entered the seawater, consuming massive amounts of oxygen. Another mass extinction claimed the lives of countless creatures, causing fierce predators like *Dunkleosteus* and *Cladoselache* to vanish completely from the stage of history. Simultaneously, the lifespans of the sea races carrying the genes of creatures like *Dunkleosteus* and *Cladoselache* ended with that generation.
Sixty-five million years later, fish evolved lungs, and some, like the millipedes, walked onto the land.
One hundred million years later, the sea races established the Eternal Plaza in Saint Yegana to welcome the birth of the new Sect Gods.
From the perspective of protecting the sea race civilization, Deep Blue had made an absolutely correct choice. The seven Sect Gods split from her were entirely different from ordinary Sea Gods. After a "development" period of one hundred million years, the seven of them already possessed the ability to control and exert the arcane divine power of the entire ocean, utilizing it even more effectively than Deep Blue had when she used it as a single entity. They guarded the seven sea regions, providing a massive umbrella of protection for the entire sea race world.
Furthermore, in the subsequent three hundred million years, three more mass extinction events erupted on Earth. The first occurred in the Permian: land areas expanded, and solar radiation and climate were drastically affected, leading to the extinction of 96% of species—the most brutal mass extinction in the history of life on Earth. The second occurred in the Triassic: crustal movements caused sea levels to rise, and while land creatures reached the peak of their proliferation, marine life faced its doom. The third occurred in the Cretaceous, with the extinction of the dinosaurs.
However, these heavy blows from nature and the universe did not affect the proliferation of the sea races or the flourishing of the Light Sea culture. The Sect Gods and their descendants helped the entire sea race evade all mass extinction crises, tens of thousands of attacks from the Abyssals, and internal conflicts within the Light Sea.
Moreover, the seven Sect Gods inherited Deep Blue’s ability to fuse arcane arts with marine life. With the birth of new species in the ocean, they continuously created the latest Sea Tribes and Hunter Tribes, allowing the entire Light Sea to enter a perfect cycle of endless life.
In the final thirty million years, the three-hundred-million-year physical lifespans of the seven Sect Gods ended, and they gradually transitioned into consciousness-based forms, leaving behind their respective descendants—the Sea God scions within the major clans of later generations. The birth of these descendants made the world unfair; many of them lacked Deep Blue’s compassion and forgot the divine mission to protect the weak. Instead, they grew accustomed to nature’s cruel law of the jungle, willfully bullying the middle and lower-class sea races. Nevertheless, because of the sacrifice of the Lord of the Endless Ocean, the history of the sea races lasted for 450 million years. In Earth's history, aside from a very few creatures like sharks, cockroaches, and horseshoe crabs, few could survive more than four mass extinctions.
Though "injustice" was imperfect, it was almost negligible in the face of "survival."
Over four hundred million years of change passed. The scenery on Earth remained vibrant and beautiful; sunlight and moonlight took turns, lightning shattered the night sky, wind and snow merged with primeval forests, stars twinkled on the despairing face of the night, all things recovered from the ice and snow, and the aurora borealis streaked down through the blue sky... Yet living things strictly followed the law of survival of the fittest, coexisting and complementing each other, rising and falling in turn. If Deep Blue were still here, she would surely cherish everything she protected, personally feeling every small change in the world each day.
But the Lord of Ether did not give himself the chance to appreciate what she appreciated.
From the moment he saw Sui, he was certain of one thing: Deep Blue’s life as the Lord of the Endless Ocean had indeed ended. To the Lord of Ether, a world without Deep Blue seemed to have no meaning. When Sui was barely a year old, he did not stay to observe her growth but instead entered an indefinite slumber.
Afterward, the seven Sect Gods sealed Sui together, with the longest seal lasting one hundred thousand years. The task of Miserere and her descendants was to renew the power suppressing Sui every time she woke up, burying her in the ocean and sealing her for another hundred thousand years.
Finally, countless hundred-thousand-year cycles passed. In the year 24480 of the Burning Era, after the three-day "Burning Sea" ended, Sui Fanli was revived once more. Even the Miserere Clan could not suppress her arcane power; all the sealing arcane arts they cast upon her were absorbed into her body.
In the year 1426 of the Radiant Era, another earthquake that shook the entire city occurred in the Emerald Mountains of Saint Yegana.
The twilight bestowed a city full of brocade upon Saint Yegana. A red light scanned over the "Goddess Deep Blue," causing her hair of coral and algae and her eyelashes of seagrass to tremble. Wherever the red light touched, life and currents appeared, as if massive clouds had fallen from the firmament into the ocean.
Illusory currents swept through the Genesis Gate of the Holy Capital, caressing the sorrowful eyes of the Deep Blue statue. Like a fairy tale of the apocalypse, it lit up the eyes of the sea race citizens, numbed by disaster, leading them to look toward the Emerald Mountains.
When she woke up in the Emerald Mountains, Fanli never expected she would have the chance to recover her consciousness as Sui Fanli, nor the chance to witness the world of the future.
She had no identification or communicator on her, so she immediately swam to the foot of the mountain to ask a passerby about the current year. Learning that a thousand years had passed since she took Deep Blue with her to their "mutual destruction," she was both surprised and curious.
To Fanli, a thousand years was a long time, but now that she possessed all of Deep Blue’s memories, it seemed like nothing at all.
She then inquired about news of Sushiye.
"Sushiye?" The woman covered her face in terror, as if she had heard the most horrifying ghost story, but quickly regained control of her expression. "My Lord of the Endless Ocean... Miss, why did you suddenly think to mention His Majesty Sushiye? He... he’s probably either supervising the 'Dream Agate' project or suppressing the rebels in the Stormy Sea, isn't he?"
Fanli was completely bewildered by what she heard. "Who is usually by his side?"
"People by his side? Usually, the most common are those four: Prince Fanxing, Archprelate Flame, Chancellor Huange, and Minister Oda. I don't know, I really haven't cared about Imperial affairs for a long time..."
Hearing this, Fanli felt something was wrong. She glanced around, wanting to confirm if this was Saint Yegana. Consequently, she saw the military flag of the Crimson Moon Empire on a government building and spotted Gloomshadows wearing respirators on the street.
Saint Yegana had been occupied by the Crimson Moon Empire?!
—She almost shouted the question aloud.
Then, after thanking the person, Fanli inquired and gathered information everywhere. Piecing it together, she learned: after Deep Blue’s brief revival, Sushiye returned to the Dark Sea and vanished from sight. Fifty-one years later, the Abyss Empire launched an all-out war against the Light Sea Federation—bringing with them the Thirty-Six Demon Gods of the Soul-Devouring Valley released by Sushiye. Over two hundred years later, Sushiye occupied Saint Yegana and formally declared that the Light Sea Federation would be renamed the "Ocean Empire," merging with the Abyss Empire, both becoming the territorial waters of the Crimson Moon Emperor.
With Sushiye’s forceful military suppression, the governments and clans of the Light Sea surrendered one after another. However, many Light Sea races who loathed the Abyssals refused to give up, organizing rebel armies to resolutely fight the Empire to the end. Toward these rebels, Sushiye used methods of extreme brutality, more severe than in any of his previous periods. Thus, even in Saint Yegana, the reaction of the sea race citizens upon hearing Sushiye’s name was stronger than ever before.
In these years, Sushiye spent most of his time active in the Light Sea. Crimson Moon Princess Sui Liri was responsible for guarding the Abyss Empire, while Crimson Moon Prince Sui Fanxing followed him to battle in all directions and handled diplomacy across the seas.
Fanli saw recent photos of her daughter and son in the newspaper: Liri had shed her childishness and looked more and more like a gender-swapped version of Sushiye, her gaze cold and sharp. Even when she smiled, she was beautiful yet distant, like the first melting ice of late winter. Fanxing was a gender-swapped version of Fanli; beneath a mess of white curls, his features were upright and elegant. Although he was nearly a thousand years old, he still maintained the aura of a "big boy," and his smile was sweet and adorable.
And the place where Sushiye was currently located was not anywhere in the ocean, but on a land island above Saint Yegana.
He had built a Dream Palace there for the Abyssals with particularly strong malefic energy to reside in, avoiding the harm caused by arcane arts in the Light Sea. He had also established an airtight military defense base around it, killing any humans who approached.
Fanli immediately swam to the coast near the island, went ashore, and followed the path to find the Dream Palace.
The moist sea breeze blew open the flowers in the forest, and the rough waves scattered disorganized pearls upon the shore. In the darkness, lamp-bearers and Abyssal soldiers wandered the paths and stood before the palace gates. Fanli approached and shouted loudly, "I am Sui Fanli, and I wish to see His Majesty Sushiye!" only then avoiding being run
Enjoying the story? Rate this novel:
Her 4.3 Billion Years | Chapter 123 | The Weight of Eternity | Novela.app | Novela.app
