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Seawater would not suddenly diminish. A suddenly retreating shoreline was a warning sign of a tsunami!
Watching the sky outside turn dark in an instant, Azik widened his eyes. He did not speak, but the spirit creatures attending and lingering inside the room abruptly sounded a shrill alarm:
"Enemy attack!"
"Enemy attack!"
The spirits' piercing cries swiftly drew responses from all the Spirit World Creatures and Beyonders within the palace. Wave after wave of voices converged into a tide, and the aura of death in the palace immediately thickened. The countless large wraiths sealed inside the walls also showed signs of awakening one after another.
After sending out the warning of danger, Azik kept his gaze fixed solely on the shore. The sound of the retreating seawater battered his nerves again and again. The calamity had yet to arrive, but immense panic already weighed heavily on his heart along with the pitch-black sky.
Fortunately, under natural conditions, the tsunami would certainly have begun already. But at this moment, the sea was clearly under the control of a certain being's will. It did not launch its attack swiftly, instead coming to a temporary standstill as though waiting for something.
"What is the God of Thunder doing... threatening us?"
Azik could not quite figure it out. He opened his slightly sweaty hands, and his body immediately turned illusory as he entered the Spirit World.
The next moment, he appeared directly at the bottom of the enormous inverted-pyramid altar built across a sacrificial passage from Balam's imperial palace. Unlike the imperial palace, which served as a political center, this was where the principal higher-ups of the former Numinous Episcopate, now the Church of Death, operated. They included Balam's other "Death Consul," its religious leader, Haiter.
It seemed that today's dusk prayers had