Chapter 688

The blue-green stone-paved street was damp and covered in moss.

The doors and windows of the surrounding houses were tightly shut. Snails and sea snails that favored damp environments clung to the shadowed walls.

The scattered vendors on either side were mostly young girls and children. After casting a few curious glances at the outsiders on the street, they lowered their heads and maintained a strange silence.

This group of people basically sold only one kind of food: sea fish. Though vegetables and fruit occasionally appeared on the shelves, they showed severe signs of dehydration.

A layer of white saline-alkali crust had formed over the leaves, peels, and skins of the produce, like a heavy shell. It looked utterly revolting.

The Gothic church originally built by the Church of Healing had already been torn down and replaced with a strange building full of asymmetrical features.

A gilded relief protruded from the wall beside the main entrance, depicting rippling water and humanoid monsters.

These fish-headed, human-bodied creatures stood amid the waves, their upper bodies exposed, steel tridents in hand as though they were heading toward a village by the sea.

The more closely one looked, the easier it became to lose oneself in it. It was as if the water ripples were quietly flowing, and the longer one watched, the closer those fish-headed humanoid monsters seemed to draw to the shore.

A warm, soft touch came from her hand. Maria suddenly woke from her daze, and her unfocused eyes immediately returned to normal.

Yet without realizing it, she had already drawn extremely close to the strange church.

Maria's expression tightened. When she looked up again, the fishman reliefs before her seemed even clearer.

She could even vaguely see those monsters coming ashore, baring their sharp teeth and silently roaring at her.