Nan Song used her mutated nails to lift up a piece of the skirt and found that the fabric did not exist at all - the so-called skirt was actually woven from countless tiny black tentacles, each with a miniature eyeball at the end, all looking at her at the moment.

"This is not my body..."

Nansong's voice took on a double tone, Atasha's whispers superimposed on each syllable like an echo.

She suddenly realized that the peach blossom patterns on the hem of her skirt were forming words - those were the sentences she had written in her diary on the day Xiaotao disappeared: "If God exists, please let my Xiaotao come home."

The space began to pulsate. The mycelium on the wall suddenly lit up, revealing a giant relief buried beneath the fungal carpet:

Thousands of jellyfish were trapped in the amber solidified waves. In the center, an adult jellyfish with triangular black spots on its tentacles was staring at her with its twelve compound eyes.

The frame of the relief is a melting bronze chain, with mother-of-pearl mucus oozing from the gaps between the chains, gradually gathering into an arrow shape on the ground, pointing to the crack where Song's fog lamp is.

The little jellyfish suddenly trembled violently, and the nebula matter in its body collapsed into a black hole. Nansong felt a sharp pain in the back of his neck, and Atasha's memories penetrated like a high-voltage current:

- On the bronze altar, Atasha cut her wrist with a bone knife and dripped her blood into the holy cup filled with small jellyfish

- Song Wudeng, wearing a bronze mask, uses surgical forceps to remove the mutating jellyfish embryo from the Holy Grail

- Written in blood on a yellowed notebook: "The vessel must establish an emotional connection with the guide"

"Perhaps he cultivated Xiaotao just for this day." Atasha's voice began to tear at Nansong's eardrums. "Si is not dead. We are the experimental subjects."

The eyeballs on the skirt suddenly all turned to the left.

Nan Song followed her line of sight and saw a holographic projection of her childhood bedroom emerge on the mycelium wall: the seven-year-old girl was standing on tiptoe to sprinkle food into the fish tank, and the little peach in the fish tank was spinning happily - and in a corner that she had not noticed in reality, the wardrobe mirror reflected a blurry figure wearing gold-rimmed glasses and with a strange and pale face.

Mother-of-pearl blood suddenly gushed out of Nansong's ear holes and condensed into the shape of a small jellyfish in the air.

It floated towards the crack in the wall and exploded into countless fluorescent spores the moment it touched Song Wudeng's back.

The mycelium ground suddenly collapsed, revealing a bottomless jellyfish cemetery below, with countless neem-colored tentacles climbing upward like seaweed.

"Now!" Atasha's scream shattered three of Nansong's molars. "Jump down or be his specimen forever!"

The little jellyfish used its tentacles to wrap around Nansong's mutated fingers, squeezing them so hard that it almost broke the bones.

At the moment of falling into the cemetery, the last thing Nan Song saw was the hem of her skirt turning completely peach-colored - those lines eventually formed Atasha's face.

＊

Wake up again.

She slowly stood up, and the little jellyfish slid off her shoulder with a "slap".

Nan Song looked down and saw that the jellyfish was about the length of his forearm, and its body was round like a transparent balloon filled with sea water, with a nebula-like fluorescent substance floating inside it.

Twelve tentacles flapped the ground in panic, leaving firefly-like phosphorescent trails on the black mycelium carpet.

When the jellyfish turned over, Nansong's pupils suddenly contracted - at the base of the third tentacle, three sesame-sized black spots were precisely arranged in an equilateral triangle.

This is Xiaotao's birthmark. The roadside shop owner once said that there might be only one such mark among 100,000 moon jellyfish.

The entire space suddenly twisted and deformed.

The darkness was not uniform, but was condensed into countless pits, like a rotten wood that had been hollowed out.

Some of the black holes had rainbow-colored oily sheens on their edges. When Nan Song accidentally looked at one of the larger pits, her stomach suddenly cramped—at the bottom of the hole lay dozens of neem-colored bodies, the same as the small jellyfish, except that they were obviously adults, each with a diameter of more than three meters. Their tentacles were entangled with each other, forming a huge mourning net.

"So you're here..."

My mind is in a state of confusion.

Nan Song stretched out his hand tremblingly.

The tentacles of the little jellyfish immediately wrapped around her wrist, and the suction cups gently adhered to her skin. The familiar cool touch made Nan Song's eyes red in an instant.

Last time in the deep sea, Xiaotao had wrapped her wrist in the same way.

Atasha's memory suddenly flashed back: in a ceremony with smoke curling from a bronze incense burner, she had written a contract to imprison the gods with mother-of-pearl mucus.

Nan Song then discovered that an indigo tattoo identical to the one on Atasha's face had appeared on his palm at some point, and was now emitting a faint blue light.

The small jellyfish suddenly contracted violently, and the nebula inside its body rapidly spun into a vortex.

It bounced up and pointed eagerly in a certain direction with its tentacles.

Nan Song looked in the direction and saw a crack on the mycelium wall that was oozing blood - at the other end of the crack, pearl clouds were winding around.

"He lied to all of us," Atasha's voice shattered one of Nansong's molars, "including Xiaotao."

The small jellyfish screamed like ultrasonic waves, and the remains of the adult jellyfish in all the pits lit up with a cold, funeral light.

Nansong felt something warm running across his cheek—was it blood or tears?

She couldn't tell them apart anymore, but when the little jellyfish's tentacles wrapped around her wrist again, she held on to the cold, soft body without hesitation.

"This time, it's my turn to take you away." Nan Song said softly, and the tattoo on his palm suddenly burned, drawing an indigo line of fire in the darkness.