Dark red blood and viscous tissue fluid continuously seeped from the bottom of the nets, gathering into sticky puddles on the sloping deck and slowly flowing towards the scuppers.
Inside several nets, the dying Merfolk were still undergoing extremely weak spasms, their mouths full of sharp teeth opening and closing futilely, emitting hissing, deflating sounds. Their compound eyes held only hollow despair and the confused of impending death.
One net tore, and a Merfolk, with only its upper body remaining, dragged its intestines and shredded flesh, crawling less than half a meter through the blood with a single claw before becoming completely stiff and motionless. It was cold, silent, and tragic.
Chen Feng appeared silently at the entrance of the dock cabin.
“Report: All mobile target signals exceeding standard life characteristic values in the target sea area have disappeared. The last comprehensive scan confirmed no signs of live escape,” the technical officer’s report echoed in the silent dock cabin, like a pronouncement of judgment.
Chen Feng’s cold face showed no fluctuations.
He raised his left wrist. The evolution origin point, embedded in the center of his tactical watch and seemingly flowing with fragments of the Universe’s stars, glowed with a faint, deep, ethereal blue light.
A powerful, heart-palpitating spatial fluctuation instantly permeated the dock cabin.
Buzz—!!!
The air instantly became thick and heavy, and light, as if drawn by an invisible vortex, began to twist and stretch.
The entire internal spatial structure of the dock cabin groaned under the strain, and even the metal cabin walls showed ripple-like undulations.
Intense energy radiation caused the hair on Chen Feng’s forehead to flutter slightly.
The light at the core of the evolution origin point suddenly became like a miniature sun!
Blinding blue-white light instantly swallowed the mountain of nets, the dying Merfolk, the viscous foul blood, and even the entire massive dock cabin space!
The moment the light erupted, time seemed to be frozen.
The next second, the strong light rapidly contracted and extinguished like a receding tide.
The bottom of the dock cabin was empty and spotless.
There were no piled-up corpses.
No sticky, flowing bloodstains.
No pungent stench.
The smooth alloy deck reflected the cold white light, so clean as if no invaders had ever been there, not even a speck of dust from the seabed had fallen.
Only a faint, almost ethereal burnt smell of decaying spatial energy lingered in the air.
A complete physical annihilation-level clearance.
Almost at the same second, Yuan Mei’s mental transmission arrived: “Director Chen, the sample group has been fully received and injected into the liquid nitrogen cryo-freezing module. Initial scans show that the captured individuals include suspected strong energy radiation mutants. The biological activity sample library richness has increased by 27.8%. Antarctic Research Station One expresses its gratitude.”
Yuan Mei’s tone was steady, but his mental fluctuations conveyed a strong, satisfied feeling belonging to a research fanatic.
Chen Feng remained silent.
He turned, his boots echoing crisply on the cold, mirror-like deck as he walked along the corridor towards the bridge.
His voice, calm and unquestionable, was broadcast through the ship’s internal communication system:
“Exercise concluded. All participating units are to return to base according to the predetermined plan. All participants are hereby notified: Exercise objectives achieved, the exercise sea area has been restored to A-level safety status.”
Almost simultaneously with the order, in the deepest, coldest edge region of the Mariana Trench in the East Sea.
3,000 twelve-tier He Bo Insects silently descended like sculptures to their preset coordinates, a region filled with massive basalt columns and muddy plains.
The extreme water pressure felt like a gentle caress on their thick, dark blue carapaces, which were covered with energy-enhanced patterns.
Their massive scythe-like forelimbs retracted, resembling silent gravestones, their hideous mouthparts closed, and all energy reactions were reduced to a minimum.
Only a nearly invisible, faint reddish starlight at the core of their compound eye sensor array occasionally flickered very slowly, like an unquenchable ember deep within a dormant volcano.
They merged themselves into the dark rock walls of the seabed, covered themselves with seabed sediment, and even disguised themselves as enormous black coral growths.
The freezing, lightless, high-pressure environment was their best sanctuary.
They were the deep-sea tomb keepers deployed here by the Dominator—the Sea-Taming Yaksha.
Their sensory network, like an invisible spider web, covered every flow of seawater in this vast expanse.
Any creature that entered this Domain without permission, whose life intensity exceeded the alert threshold, would trigger their ruthless hunting protocol.
Scythes would silently fall, mouthparts would instantly open, and then the abyss would return to its initial silence.
This was an inviolable death patrol zone, built by absolute power and absolute obedience.
On the sea surface, the setting sun, like a gigantic, molten golden iron ball, sank heavily below the ink-stained horizon.
The massive joint fleet sounded its long whistles, the sharp, prolonged sound piercing the night, proclaiming the triumph of victory and peaceful power.
The engine sounds of the returning ships were like an impassioned background score amidst the cheers on shore.
News spread everywhere, praising regional stability and the power of cooperation.
The panic of the sea monkeys quickly became another urban legend discussed with laughter amidst the reality of iron and fire and the flood of information.
*
*
Absolute silence was the sole ruler of the Mariana Trench’s edge.
Three thousand twelve-tier He Bo Insects were not taken away but remained in the vast ocean of this Blue Star.
They had transformed into Sea-Taming Yaksha—like three thousand poisoned deep-blue steel nails, deeply wedged into this eternal night purgatory where even light was swallowed.
They patrolled, like the Yaksha of myths and legends, cold and efficient, in the dark, inaccessible depths beyond human detectors.
They formed into hundred-man squads, heading in all directions.
Among them, Squad 13, a He Bo Insect hundred-leader, hovered at the front of the team like a moving deep-sea fortress.
It had been born longer, and after a series of high-energy substance consumption and training space enhancements, its life intensity had far exceeded its initial 34 points, reaching 46 points.
Its deep blue bio-alloy carapace was as thick as the side of a battleship, and the dark gold energy circuits flowing along its edges were like dormant molten vipers in the absolute darkness, occasionally flashing with a contained glow.
Three pairs of high-speed vibrating super-hard alloy mandibles were charged and ready within its mouthparts, emitting a subtle “humming” that was almost imperceptible through water but could be sensed by its kin through bone resonance.
Its two scythe-like forelimbs were retracted like closed razors, their edges gleaming with a cold, hard light in the gloom.
The massive body of the Shattered Reef underwent a precise, millisecond-level, almost imperceptible pause in the water.
This was not due to water flow disturbance, but because this hundred-leader, relying on the insectoid’s high-energy perception, had captured a ripple of anomaly in the spatial structure—like a calm lake surface struck by an invisible stone, the ripple, though subtle, carried a heart-palpitating sense of substance.
Within its compound eye array, hundreds of molten red lights instantly focused, their brightness increasing tenfold.
Target locked: Approximately three thousand meters deep below, in the steepest, most shadowed depression of the trench cliff.