# 1123
Chapter 1123: Mysterious Ashes
On the dead, silent sea, two dull thunderclaps suddenly erupted.
Shen Qingzhu, who had been sitting inside the exploration ship drifting with the ocean currents, opened his eyes. Through the porthole, he looked toward the distant sea surface, where a white and a golden figure tore open a gap from nothingness, rapidly flying up into the clouds and streaking across the sky before vanishing.
"Michael?" Shen Qingzhu sensed the aura of that golden light, his eyes narrowing slightly.
Why had Michael emerged? Who was He hunting? What had happened in Heaven?
A series of questions flashed through his mind. He ran to the deck and looked around, but except for the endless black mist, there was nothing else in sight. In this visibility that could be described as blindness, Shen Qingzhu didn't even know where this ship had drifted to.
The hull began to accelerate forward with the gradually intensifying currents, and the surrounding temperature also dropped. In less than a dozen seconds, it felt as if one had fallen into an ice cave.
"Something's wrong..."
Shen Qingzhu frowned, snapped his fingers toward the sky.
Snap—!
A ball of scorching flames suddenly appeared above the exploration ship, dispelling the surrounding darkness. With this fire's light, Shen Qingzhu could barely make out the situation within a dozen meters around the ship.
His peripheral vision caught sight of what was beneath the ship, and his pupils slightly contracted.
At some point, the black seawater had turned blood-red. The originally wide sea surface now looked as if it had sailed into some kind of canyon, with towering rock walls on both sides. Cold air continuously seeped out from the mountains on both sides, and bizarre corpses floated on the blood-colored river, emanating a nauseating stench.
This was definitely not a normal sea area!
Shen Qingzhu猛地地回过头看向船尾，朦胧的迷雾中，根本看不清来时的道路。他手掌用力一挥，悬浮在头顶的炽热火球瞬间沿着山峡飞出，照亮了来时迷雾的一角。
只见一座巨大的空间缺口，正静静地悬在山峡之间，缺口之外是迷雾笼罩的正常海域，越过缺口，便是这座流淌着血色海水与浮尸的冰冷世界。
Shen Qingzhu的脸色顿时难看起来。
这座缺口，应该是刚刚两位主神撞破某处空间留下的，缺口出现后周围海域的洋流流向发生改变，竟然带着探索船一路漂了进来……若非Shen Qingzhu察觉到了温度的变化，在那片伸手不见五指的迷雾中，恐怕再过十分钟都未必能发现。
Shen Qingzhu站在船尾，目光扫过这狭窄的山峡，大脑飞速转动起来。
山峡两侧山体间的距离太短，就算他现在操控探索船，也不可能在这种地形下调转船头，重新驶回正常海域。
他可以选择弃船，用能力暂时飞过缺口回去，但失去了船只这个海上落脚点，等他精神力消耗殆尽之后，只能被动的掉入海水等死……
现在唯一的方法是，等探索船驶出这座山峡后，能进入一片宽阔的水域调头，然后马力全开逆流而上，穿过空间缺口回去。
Shen Qingzhu看向船头，这片未知空间内应该没有迷雾的存在，外界的迷雾通过缺口涌进来，正在慢慢地变稀薄，周围的能见度逐渐回归，他已经能隐约看清船前方的情况。
灰白色的雪花随着冷风，飘零至探索船上空，Shen Qingzhu伸手接住一片，打量片刻，才发现这是一片燃烧过后的灰烬，眉头微皱：
"这是什么东西……"
咚——！
一道沉闷巨响从船体下方的血色海水中传来，紧接着，这座重达数吨的探索船，像是被什么东西顶撞，硬生生的从海面掀飞！
Shen Qingzhu的瞳孔骤然收缩！
……
"It's been almost an hour now."
Jiang Er's form drifted through the sky above Heaven for a moment, then descended back to the edge of the shattered palace. Just as she was about to speak, she noticed that both Lin Qiye and An Qingyu had furrowed brows.
"What's wrong with you two?"
"Jiang Er... do you feel like the sky is darkening?"
An Qingyu stretched out her hand, pointing toward the distant setting sun. A patch of darkness rose from the horizon's edge, from that entrance to hell churning with molten lava, as if twilight had passed and nightfall arrived. Under the three's watchful gazes, the light of this Heaven was disappearing at a visible rate.
"How could this happen?" Jiang Er's brow furrowed as well. "Didn't the Seraph say there was no night here?"
"We could have left but we failed; darkness shouldn't exist here, yet it's appeared." Lin Qiye narrowed his eyes, his expression somewhat grave. "It seems something has changed in Heaven, and it's definitely not good..."
"Could it be related to that Supreme God hidden in hell?"
"Possible."
Just as the three were speaking, the dusky sunlight had completely vanished. Endless darkness shrouded the heavens above Heaven, emanating a suffocating pressure.
Above the sky, pieces of gray-white snowflakes drifted down onto the land of Heaven. Lin Qiye caught one, his brow tightly knit:
"Ashes? Where are these coming from?"
An Qingyu placed a piece of ash before her eyes; a gray gleam flickered across her pupils. Her eyes narrowed, and she quickly flicked the ash out of her palm, pinching the bridge of her nose with two fingers, as if somewhat exhausted:
"Don't touch it... This is something from the Cthulhu Faction gods."
"What?"
Lin Qiye's eyes contracted. He waved his hand, and the gust he summoned immediately scattered all the ash falling above the three of them.
"How could something from the Cthulhu gods appear here?"
"I don't know... but I heard their Yiyu in it. Though it's much weaker than at the fishing village, this kind of thing could only come from them." An Qingyu shook her head.
Lin Qiye stood in place, light flickering in his eyes, as if deep in thought.
"Could it be Odin..." he murmured to himself.
On the Pamir Plateau, Lin Qiye had heard the Queen Mother of the West speak the truth about Odin. Now that both a Supreme God and Cthulhu elements had appeared simultaneously, the only thing he could think of was Odin.
"What should we do now?" Jiang Er asked.
"We can't stay here any longer." Lin Qiye spoke resolutely. "We don't know when the Seraph will return. Since things from the Cthulhu gods have appeared, if we continue staying here, who knows what complications will arise... We can only take a risk."
Lin Qiye's gaze passed through the increasingly dense ash snowflakes, landing on that gap at the horizon's edge—the passage leading to hell.