"The door... is about to open..."
Gela Jiang's drifting voice brutally tightened everyone's nerves.
Morel whipped around and stared at him, fury all but spewing from his eyes. But Gela Jiang was like a broken marionette, merely repeating those words with a vacant, foolish smile on his face.
Amid the despair, night fell completely.
Something eerie happened.
The black fog around them, which had been churning constantly like a living thing, began to grow thin and transparent, no longer as aggressive as before, as though the curtain on some grand ceremony were slowly being drawn aside.
Then, without warning, pinpricks of ghostly blue light appeared on the pitch-black sea.
More and more lights appeared, joining into lines, then spreading into swaths, soon washing the entire sea in a dreamlike hue. The sight was breathtakingly beautiful, yet carried a sinister quality that seeped deep into the bones.
Just as everyone's attention was drawn to this sudden change, singing began.
The sound could not be described as any instrument or human voice. It resembled the ethereal chanting of countless women, mingled with the whispers of waves breaking against reefs. The melody flowed and curled, heartbreakingly beautiful, yet every syllable was an invisible hook, catching precisely at the listeners' souls and dragging them into the abyss.
"Beep-beep-alert!" Milluki's terminal instantly erupted in a piercing noise. "High-intensity mentally contaminating sound waves detected! This frequency acts directly on the brain's limbic system, infinitely amplifying the desires, fears, and obsessions deep within the listener!"
The moment it finished speaking, Bai Zhu felt as though his thoughts had been soaked in syrup, becoming sticky and sluggish.
Images he had long since put behind him flashed uncontrollably before his eyes.
His 160-kilogram self lying on a sofa, the young woman's gaze filled with disdain for him yet unable