The deeper they went, the heavier the seawater became, and their consumption of divine power kept increasing.
Loa and his two companions descended through the darkness. Ten thousand meters, a hundred thousand, two hundred thousand-their surroundings remained the same suffocatingly murky dark purple. Their divine senses were compressed into an ever-narrower range, until Wangcai and Talos simply withdrew their perceptions and relied entirely on Loa's divine sense to scout ahead.
No one spoke. The silence of this deep sea carried an indescribable pressure that instinctively made them reluctant to open their mouths.
They kept descending until they reached a depth of ten million meters.
The darkness ahead suddenly began to recede-not gradually brightening, but as though a heavy curtain had been drawn aside. An unbelievably distinct boundary separated the murk from the clear water.
The instant the three crossed that boundary, the world before them opened up.
The seawater was no longer murky, but an almost transparent pale blue, so clear it seemed to have been filtered countless times.
That dense darkness still loomed overhead like an enormous lid pressing down on the sky, yet the world beneath it was almost unreal in its brightness.
The light did not shine down from above. It came from the seabed itself.
After descending another million meters, they finally saw the seabed. It was an endless Gemstone Plains. Rubies, sapphires, emeralds, and elemental gemstones Loa could not name densely covered the entire ocean floor, each emitting a soft elemental glow.
The red ones resembled fire, the blue ones ice, the green ones leaves-trillions of gemstones shone at once, turning this undersea world into a dreamscape of shimmering colors.
Gemstone veins wound and intersected across the ground like the earth's blood vessels. Some were hundreds of meters thick, their radiance so intense it was