Demon God's Sea

Biodata

Geography and Cosmology

Ocean and Worlds

• Scale: The sea is vast enough that distant civilizations may never encounter one another. A journey taking a fast Aerospace Plane one month could require five or six years by ordinary ship 405 444.
• Worlds within the sea: Many living populations shelter inside individual worlds. These worlds can possess sanctuary capabilities that conceal them from outside observers 280 405.
• World Clusters and World Rings: Civilizations describe regions using these terms. A calamity can destroy a World Cluster, while a Demon God Calamity can threaten several World Rings 327.
• World displacement: Entire worlds can move by consuming Source of the World. Zhang Ming guides the Black Tortoise World through repeated Space-Time Leaps, covering fourteen million kilometers over five months 327 459.
• Weather: Fog and drizzle are common. The boundary Zhang Ming approaches between the Black Tortoise World and the true sea is marked by torrential rain and immense waves 115 348.
• Atmosphere: Above the ordinary atmospheric layers lie additional rainbow-like Astral Wind Layers. The Pillar of Heaven's attack pierces all of them 178.

Other Domains and the Dimensional Rift

• Dimensional arrivals: Worlds can fall into the Demon God's Sea from purely physical universes. Human Civilization entered through such a dimensional fall more than two hundred years before the account in the Burial Realm 526.
• Cross-domain routes: Certain space-time nodes connect domains, but they are rare and may form dangerous forbidden zones such as the Abyss 282.
• Burial Realm connection: An existing tunnel links Great Mother City to the Wanhai Civilization's headquarters. It permits travel but is extremely expensive to use 527 560.
• Wider universe: Explorers report that materialist rules become stronger farther outward. Idealist universes appear concentrated around the Mythological Origin, while the surrounding Dimensional Rift remains overwhelmingly vast even to advanced civilizations 526.
• Unconfirmed model: Zhang Ming proposes that an “idealist gravity” draws worlds into the sea and that celestial bodies revolve around it. He explicitly recognizes this as speculation without evidence 179.

Information Universe

• The Demon God's Sea possesses consciousness. The Wanhai Meditation Method visualizes the entire sea and allows a practitioner to enter its Information Universe as a thought representing the self 442.
• Only Spirit Limit Users are qualified to practice the method; weaker minds risk being overwhelmed by the sea's consciousness 442.
• Zhang Ming encounters fragmented records and traces of dead creatures there. On his 201st day of exploration, he reaches a Black Hole Information Origin Point and uses it for Thought Anchoring 442.

Origins and Ancient History

Ancient murals depict a period when the region appeared to be an ordinary sea rather than the present Demon God's Sea. They portray Divine Beast corpses becoming continents and blood becoming the ocean, but archaeologist Gu Shunjing disputes this as a sufficient explanation: the depicted beasts lacked the power to create an entire world 445.

Other murals describe Divine Men sacrificing themselves to soothe the ocean's hostility. In that early, unstable world, the actions of living beings could alter idealist rules, and continued warfare threatened to intensify its hostility. Later accounts identify Divine Man Wa and her intelligent Demon God companion, the Sky-Mending Stone, as central to the sea's transformation 445 446 546.

Successive generations of mythological creatures crossed into the realm and reshaped its rules. Population growth and reduced warfare gradually stabilized it, allowing most species to survive and reproduce. Idealism and materialism eventually reached a balance, drastic rule changes became less frequent, and the lifespans of powerful beings increased again 446 447.

Divine Beast bloodlines also spread widely during this history. Although most surviving bloodlines are heavily diluted, they still strengthen their descendants and help them survive the sea's conditions 446.

Natural Rules and Hazards

Restrictions on Powerful Beings

• Suppression of Eternals: The present sea deliberately targets Eternals and does not permit excessively powerful life-forms to appear freely. An existing Eternal may outwardly display only Immortal-level combat strength 513.
• Limit on new advancement: According to information given to Zhang Ming, the sea's changed rules can no longer produce beings at the Eternal level 529.
• Black Tortoise's backlash: Stone Mama recounts that Black Tortoise suffered resistance from the sea when attempting to advance and forcibly merge with a World Will. Monsters converged to tear it apart 308 442.

Homeless Afflictions

• Homeless afflictions occur throughout the sea and are treated as a commonly recognized natural rule. Zhang Ming experiences a hallucination that drains 330 mental-value points immediately after entering 116 308.
• Severe cases can include hysteria and unreality disorder. Zhang Ming's strength, mental lightning, and strong resistance do not prevent him from developing a serious affliction 308.
• Stone Mama theorizes that lingering malice from the remains of powerful beings causes these conditions. It does not establish this explanation as certain 308.
• Stone Mama distinguishes beings born inside worlds, who can develop the hysteria affecting Zhang Ming, from beings such as itself and Bai Ze 308.

Calamity of Heaven

• The Ancient Oath Civilization attributes this procedural rule to Divine Man Wa's merger with the sea. Its purpose is to reduce slaughter between civilizations 513.
• Indiscriminate killing can cause a civilization to be deliberately targeted, weakened, and eventually driven to extinction 513.
• The rule does not exempt anti-Demon God operations. Killing every creature anchored by a Demon God may remove its means of spreading power, but still risks triggering the Calamity of Heaven 513.

Major Threats

Ecology and Resources

Living Creatures

• Friendly species: The sea contains creatures with goodwill toward humans, not only hostile monsters. Zhang Ming befriends a pod of orcas through performances, food, and play 142 163.
• Territorial limits: The orcas guide his sailboat more than two thousand kilometers over roughly twenty days, but refuse to continue into waters too dangerous for their pod 144.
• Intelligent marine life: A Giant Dolphin communicates a psychic vision to investigators and understands a request to right their overturned boat 405.
• Transcendent species: Once-rare Transcendent life-forms become increasingly common as regional conditions change. Reports also describe beings far beyond the ordinary Transcendent level 460.
• Demon Gods: They are comparatively few across the whole sea. Their rarity is one reason ordinary species retain opportunities to survive and develop 146.

Valuable Resources

• Seabed minerals: Mining is a major source of wealth. Earth's relative scarcity of resources encourages mercenary organizations, civilian extraction, and private investment in the sea 324 327.
• Mutant creatures: Breeding mutant organisms is another established means of accumulating wealth 327.
• Agriculture: New era type III rice has much greater productive potential in the sea than on Earth. Researchers propose germinating its seeds there before returning them to Earth for cultivation 215.
• Food: Greater access to fresh ingredients substantially improves Zhang Ming's attribute gains after he enters the sea 141.
• Demon God remains: A dead Demon God's unique rules can persist in its corpse, providing civilizations with means to strengthen themselves or overcome spiritual limits 163.

Civilizations and Diplomacy

The sea supports civilizations founded by animals, plants, aquatic species, and many other forms of intelligent life. Their development varies enormously: some were already interstellar civilizations while humanity was still building its ancient monuments 513 540.

Diplomatic Practices

• Proof of previous contact: A host is expected to display tokens from earlier meetings with other civilizations. Communicators, recognizable specialties, or special seals demonstrate an established history of exchange 228.
• Danger of appearing isolated: Humanity's failure to display such tokens leads Snake People officials to identify it as a newly encountered civilization and consider conquest for its potential resources 228.
• Trade: Unique technologies are especially valuable exports and are regarded as a mutually beneficial way to accumulate wealth 327.
• Weak collective enforcement: Joint conferences frequently produce nonbinding agreements that gradually collapse because no mechanism enforces them 525.
• World Hunters: These actors exterminate weak civilizations, describing their actions as freeing ecological niches occupied by societies unable to develop further 560.

Humanity's Exploration

Human researchers rename the Mysterious Zone after recognizing beings capable of destroying entire worlds as Demon Gods. Fear that widespread activity might attract their attention leads humanity to ban most exploration, allowing only basic scientific expeditions 96.

Zhang Ming crosses into the true sea after leaving the Black Tortoise World. He later warns Earth's leaders that humanity should spend decades strengthening itself before attempting extensive exploration, noting that supernatural interference can defeat ordinary investigative technology 115 116 185.

Humanity eventually deploys aircraft carriers and submarines, establishes contact with the Snake People, and signs a first-stage cooperation agreement. Its provisions include joint seabed mining, mutual noninterference, peaceful coexistence, and sharing information about dangers. Diplomatic relations with the Honggang Civilization follow 219 247 260.

Despite the United Government's reluctance to develop frontier islands aggressively, corporations and private armed forces pour into the resource-rich region. Cloudsea City becomes an international metropolis within twenty years. Human and Snake People reconnaissance forces later monitor the surrounding waters using hot-air balloons and trained animals 324 348.

Recent Changes and Major Events

Environmental Disturbances

• Over twenty years, investigators record persistent eastward fish migration, more frequent appearances of super life-forms, and an increase of more than twenty percent in wave intensity 405.
• A Giant Dolphin's psychic vision shows a spacetime storm disgorging floating lands and fleeing creatures. The Polaris Team concludes that civilizations from a neighboring World Cluster may already have arrived 405.
• Later reports confirm increased Transcendent activity and describe a plateau rising from the seabed amid earthquakes and enormous tsunamis 460.

Burial Realm Crisis

• The Burial Realm acts as a barrier and potential springboard for Demon Gods seeking access to the sea. Its existing balance depends partly on rival Demon Gods restraining one another 522.
• Zhang Ming proposes new Space Tunnels using the Space-Time Worm's rules. Dedicated routes could improve trade and travel, with widened tunnels potentially transporting continents or planets 540.
• As the tunnel nears completion, Demon Gods gain an incentive to enter the Burial Realm in their true bodies and use it to reach the sea 560.
• Twenty-six civilizations send five thousand personnel, including forty-six Immortals, to assist the defense. Transport through the old tunnel consumes six million units of Source of the World—the sea's largest contribution of support in nearly a thousand years 560.
• Ancient Eternals also mobilize, emerging from different regions of the sea as the Demon God War begins 562.

Cooperation with Demon Gods

• Cooperation is not unprecedented, but civilizations approach it cautiously because a Demon God's goals may ultimately require mass destruction 546.
• Representatives agree to attempt cooperation with [Hope], treating mutually profitable exchange as an alternative to predation. She states that attaining the Ultimate requires overcoming her other side, not destroying civilizations in the sea 546.
• After becoming an Ultimate Demon God, [Hope] writes a small portion of her rules into the world's foundations. These changes barely affect daily life, but chance developments lead some civilizations to discover unusual mind-over-matter techniques, including the Belief Art 569.