Chapter Text
The cove that Shen Yuan chooses to activate the amulet in is a secluded one. He remembers coming to the shore on a trip once several years ago and stumbling along the rocks at the beach, picking his way through undergrowth until he’d come to a rocky overhang that was just step-like enough to clamber down. It led to a small, rocky beach at an inlet, sheltered on three sides by relatively high walls of rock, the fourth side a narrow opening out to the ocean. It was possible that the cove was patronized during the height of the summer—it wasn’t that far off the trail along the coast, after all—but there had been no one there when he’d visited, or any of the times afterwards. The solitary peacefulness made it come to mind as his very first choice when he’d first been given the amulet.
Most places in the world, he would have had to take a boat out hundreds of kilometers over the ocean before the amulet could be used effectively for his goals. If he’s unlucky, he might still not be able to take advantage of the shore as a launching point. But he has a waterproof bag slung over his shoulder full of dried meat that would be serviceable even if it was soggy, and he’d made sure to arrive at the coast early in the morning. As it is, he shivers in the morning breeze and yawns; he rarely wakes up this early of his own volition, and here he is signing up to do it repeatedly over the span of the next several weeks or months!
The fact of the matter was that although the abyssal zone of the ocean was usually located hundreds of kilometers off the coast, right here in this one spot, a seismic event hundreds of years ago had cut right into the crust of the continental plate, causing a deep divide and rift that plunged into abyssal depths and further just a few kilometers from shore.
To call it a seismic event is a bit of a misnomer; in truth, various cultivation-based research groups identified the rift as an anomaly caused by an extreme amount of demonic energy in the area. The physical rift occurred as a result of a metaphysical one—the fabric of the universe splitting apart to allow an influx of demonic energy and creatures from the Demon Realm, strong enough to tear apart the continental plate that the rift happened on. The result was a hotbed of demonic activity, one that caused several cultivation sects to center outposts and research centers around over the next few hundreds of years. Their goals were to monitor the activity, to take care of anything that made their way out of the depths of the water to attack the hapless civilians in the area. Cang Qiong sect is one of those cultivation sects; it is among the strongest of those established along the coast, with the largest active presence at least in terms of aquatic demonic research in the form of multiple research facilities, all engrossed in different forms of investigation on the rift and its various effects.
Shen Yuan had joined the Qing Jing research group immediately upon obtaining his graduate degree based off his preliminary research with symbiotic demonic entities that he’d performed as a research associate before graduation. The secured position was definitely due in no part to nepotism on behalf of his brother’s position as chairman of the facility combined with his relationship with the president and sect leader, but Shen Yuan would take what he could get. He especially wouldn’t complain about the mission he’d been permitted to take on behalf of the facility into the abyssal zone, along with the incredibly rare amulet that they’d procured from An Ding in order to facilitate his mission.
The amulet in question was one of transformation; only a few of its kind exist, and with a small application of qi would allow the wearer a transformation into a kind of half-spiritual beast that thrives in the depths of the ocean, allowing Shen Yuan to travel into the crushing pressures and blinding darkness of the deeper zones without having to resort to measures that non-cultivators would have to use. Namely with the use of multi-million dollar deep-sea submersibles and ocean dives that require hundreds of hours of training and still can’t physically reach down to the extent that Shen Yuan needs to. Shen Yuan was still required to go to extensive training on the use of the amulet in a deep-dive tank located on Qing Jing grounds, and he also wore a bracelet that constantly related his spiritual fluctuations and medical information to Qian Cao, which would liaise with Qing Jing in the event of any major emergencies in order to rescue and retrieve him.
Unfortunately, Cang Qiong was only in possession of the single amulet, so Shen Yuan would be performing the dives alone. He preferred it that way; he didn’t want anyone else getting in the way of his interests, trying to steer him towards the nominal real reason that he was permitted to study deep ocean natural and demonic fauna.
Over the years after the initial seismic event that had split the continental crust and formed the abyss, demonic activity had steadily declined as spiritual qi circulated through the currents and natural balance was mostly restored. However, some twenty-odd years ago, a second tremor had occurred, picked up on all of Cang Qiong’s monitoring equipment as a massive wave of demonic energy that emanated from the site of the original rift. At the time, it had apparently caused absolute chaos; Bai Zhan cultivators had been on high alert for months after the event, if not years.
But nothing had emerged, and levels of demonic energy had fallen again and afterwards remained constant. They remained constantly higher than they had been before, however, leading most researchers in the area to conclude that there must be some powerful entity down in the crevasse. It was lurking, biding its time, and if it existed could emerge at any moment to wreak havoc among the civilians who lived along the coast.
Until Cang Qiong had obtained the amulet for use in deep-sea exploration, they’d been restricted to deep-ocean long range scans and whatever information they could collect via remote-controlled submersibles, which ultimately wasn’t much. It was a complete coincidence that Shen Yuan’s arrival and research focus made him the prime candidate to also do a physical survey of the abyssal rift in search of any signs of said powerful demonic entity, something that had made his brother throw multiple fits and Shen Yuan only more determined to pull off the mission.
Shen Yuan isn’t a strong cultivator, all things told. He is a researcher first and foremost, with only enough cultivation prowess to infuse some objects with his qi and defend himself in an emergency, as well as some minor knowledge of array and talisman creation. He hadn’t even managed to cultivate far enough to cure his vision—even for this mission he wears reinforced glasses, though they are secured by a band around the back of his head under his hair and a chain that loops over his neck with a small weight to keep it down, which would hopefully be sufficient not to lose them. His spiritual abilities were enough to activate the amulet, however, which was sufficient to qualify him for the position.
Before Shen Yuan steps in the water, he shucks off his swim trunks. On the other hand, he keeps on the skintight long-sleeved shirt that he is already wearing. It was developed by Qing Jing to assist cultivators in cold water dives, and should help him retain heat to some degree, powered by his own circulating qi. If the transformation amulet didn’t take care of that for him, he wouldn’t get to the abyssal depths even with the shirt, but he’d rather wear it than have nothing on at all. It is horribly awkward to stand around with no pants on; even worse to be wearing nothing but a supply bag over his shoulders! From the bag, he digs out a pair of waterproof white gloves to pull up to his elbows, just in case he gets down to optimal depths on his first dive and feels the need to retrieve anything. It wouldn’t do to get human oils or fingerprints on anything he touched, after all.
Then, not wanting to stand around in the cold morning with his dick out for any longer than he has to, Shen Yuan steps out into the water.
As expected, it is absolutely fucking freezing. The season has started shifting to autumn, no longer the height of summer, and the water temperatures absolutely reflect that. He knows better than to hesitate from his training sessions with the transformation—it would be better once he was in his aquatic form—so he just wades out as fast as he can, cursing to himself as he struggles against the water’s drag.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” he mutters, hugging himself like that will do anything about the fact that his balls are trying to draw up into his body. The round stones at the bottom of the inlet dig into his feet as he steps on them, making him stumble forward like a freezing drunkard. “This fucking sucks.”
Finally he makes it to waist deep, far enough that he won’t fall flat on his face into the rocks once he no longer has legs. He takes a deep breath, preparing for the feeling of the change, and channels qi into the transformation amulet.
Surrendering to the change is just as strange this time as it has been every time before it, and on this occasion Shen Yuan doesn’t have the helpful presence of coaches reminding him to breathe and not panic as his bones shift, grinding together, flesh fusing and growing to unimaginable lengths. It is a physical transformation that defies the laws of physics, capable only with a mythical amulet that draws on his qi and the energy suffusing the surrounding waters, shifting his form and his very biological processes, turning him into something far from human.
Shen Yuan’s legs fuse and elongate, sending him plunging into the freezing water, but he isn’t paying attention to the temperature anymore, overwhelmed by the fact that he is in over his head, that he can’t stand and he can’t breathe, that his very flesh is being reshaped and changed. And then, lightheaded, thrashing and unable to take it any longer, he finally gives in and takes that first breath in, brain panicking at the thought of filling his lungs with seawater.
He doesn’t have lungs anymore. Instead, the water filters out through gills that had split open in his sides, and Shen Yuan’s fading consciousness returns to him, along with awareness of the completion of the transformation. He frowns at his hands—the claws that he’d grown with the shift have punctured the gloves, which none of the prep team had remembered to take into account and he would have to be careful of if he decides to handle anything. Still, other than that, everything else seems to be in order. He can feel the fins at the sides of his head, his gills opening and closing at his sides, and—most notably—the long, ribbon-like tail that uncoils behind him from the waist-down.
It is undeniably some kind of eel tail, long and sinuous, several times the length of his body in human form. The tail quickly tapers from his waist into a slim ribbon-like shape. It had taken him an embarrassing amount of time to get ahold of the winding movement necessary to gain any forward momentum with the form in his test transformations, though once he practiced he could easily reach speeds far quicker than his fastest sprint. The amulet clearly boosted his muscles and abilities along with the given form, because he never would’ve been able to upkeep so much exertion without supernatural assistance.
His tail is a soft, pale green in color, almost blue in certain lights and at the edges of his fins, which are thin enough to almost be translucent while he is still near the surface. He takes a moment to verify that his tracking talisman is still active—he’d left one in his pants on the shore, to ensure that he wouldn’t swim out for miles and then turn back up on the shore hours away from where he started—and then turns out to the mouth of the inlet.
Shen Yuan takes a deep breath, which is weird with gills and not particularly pleasant, and starts the long swim out along the ocean floor to the rift, his tail undulating behind him to propel him forward.
Honestly, it is set to be a long and boring trip. The rift itself, while not hundreds of kilometers off the coast, was still far enough that even at his top swimming speed it would take him at least a few hours to reach. And that was only if he doesn’t get distracted on the way. He can at least be sure that he can’t get lost on the way out—his watch has a compass that he consults often, and the break into the abyssal zone is wide enough that he is bound to stumble upon it even if he goes a little bit off course.
The bigger concern is the pressure as he swims down, as well as the impending darkness.
The theory was that the amulet was meant to cause a transformation that would allow its user to survive in whatever aquatic environment that it was activated in, and therefore would enable Shen Yuan to dive down to thousands of meters under the surface without getting crushed like a tin can. They’d gone so far as to have him transform in both freshwater and saltwater, both of which had given him slightly altered chemical makeups and constitutions that had allowed him to thrive—and a much more classic-merman form in freshwater, though Shen Yuan secretly thought the eel tail was far cooler—and simulated high-pressure water environments that Shen Yuan had scarcely noticed in his spiritually-enhanced body.
Unfortunately, they couldn’t just simulate the weight of billions of tons of water that he’d be experiencing at the depths he was actually trying to reach, so his true tolerance was somewhat a mystery. Today’s goal was just to check how far down he could actually go; if his bracelet indicated that he was in danger at any point, he’d be contacted by a messenger talisman that would signal him to return to the surface, and they’d be back at square one.
Shen Yuan really fucking hopes that the magical water amulet doesn’t let them down on this one.
He does his best not to get distracted. In the shallow, well-lit (relatively) warm waters next to the surface, life is teeming. He can see reefs jutting out from rock outcroppings, schools of fish that he couldn’t hope to identify—not his area—and plant life teeming from nearly every square centimeter of the ocean floor. Light dapples the ocean floor, filtering through the pattern of the surface and all of the water in-between. Overall, it is a lovely effect. All of the visual input is backed by various stimulation that he is just becoming conscious of: the tugging of the slightest changes in water currents, a realization of an incredibly fine-tuned internal sense of direction, the slow drop of temperature as he travels downwards, and the steadily increasing pressure.
These last two points are more of a conceptual knowledge than a physical realization; he realizes that it is getting colder, it simply doesn’t bother him. The pressure isn’t bothering him at all either, though he hasn’t yet travelled far enough for that to really indicate anything past some level of superhuman tolerance to water pressure.
Shen Yuan pushes forward and downward, the light quickly beginning to dim. The bright colors that he has been seeing fade, and the schools of fish are disappearing as well. He is entering the twilight zone of the ocean, where visibility begins to decrease. They’d tested this in their practice sessions as well—while they weren’t sure about his ability to see distances, they knew he’d at least be alright in his immediate vicinity. Which wouldn’t be very helpful in a search to find a demonic creature that likely doesn’t want to be found, but whatever.
Provided we’re right and you aren’t frozen or crushed, we know you’ll be okay at least until here, Shang Qinghua, the representative from An Ding that had shown up at Qing Jing to monitor the usage of the amulet, had said. The mesopelagic zone still has light. Just avoid getting eaten by a shark or whatever and you should be fine. The real problem is after that, when you get into the midnight zone before the abyssal one.
Shen Yuan had waved the whole thing off as a nonissue. What was the point of a magical amulet unless it could solve all of those worries? If he ended up completely blind down there, he’d have to return for them to figure out a secondary solution (like a really annoying heavy-duty flashlight), but for now he was going to push forward as he was.
Now, it’s gotten dark enough that Shen Yuan can barely see the ocean floor as he swims; the plant life and algae have all disappeared, leaving nothing but rocky outcroppings and ground sediment likely composed of dead matter and pulverized bones.
And then, far more suddenly than he would have expected, he can’t see at all.
It is as if someone had turned off the lights. One moment he could still make out things on the sea floor, and the next he’s completely blind. If not for his internal sense of direction, he could be going in circles and have no idea. Shen Yuan takes a steadying breath—still weird with gills—and prepares to traverse the bathyal zone. The midnight zone, with no light, will be the longest leg of his trip. He shivers despite himself, telling himself it’s just because temperatures are approaching near-freezing levels and not that he’s a little bit freaked out.
Thankfully, he won’t be doing it completely blind.
With a thought, the fins along his tail begin to glow. Shen Yuan grins despite himself, because no matter how many times he lights himself up it is still too cool.
I’m like a glowstick, Shen Yuan had gleefully commented to the Qian Cao and Qing Jing disciples running his preliminary tests. Neither of them had been that amused by the joke.
It isn’t enough to see great distances, but his glow throws the ocean floor into a hazy kind of relief, casting a green haze onto the ground that he can still see by. It’s enough to direct him, and he forces himself to set out again.
It’s a long swim, and he spends it surrounded by an almost complete sense of nothingness. Every now and then, he thinks he catches a little blink of another bioluminescent creature in the distance, but he can never see well enough to confirm it, leaving them potential dots of light that his brain is conjuring up simply because he is looking so hard. The unending emptiness is broken exactly once, the ground splitting open in front of him into a hydrothermal vent, tube worms and some kind of bacteria clinging to the rock and tiny things fleeing from his approach and into the depths. He does his best to swim far around it, trying to avoid the black plumes of superheated bubbles that billow from the rocks. He still feels like his fins get singed from the heat despite the distance he puts between himself and the vent. Other than that one small detour, Shen Yuan finds himself swimming through a vast black void that presses in on him from all sides, an oppressive darkness that threatens to press the breath from his lungs and crush his body in one merciless crunch.
Shen Yuan fingers the amulet nervously as he swims, acutely aware of what would happen if he were to be separated from it. At the same time, he looks out in every direction, his brain desperately searching for stimulation that he isn’t going to find in the infinite darkness of the deep ocean. It is one thing to know how huge the ocean is; it is another to experience it so viscerally, the realization of how small he is in such a massive and terrifying void.
Furthermore, the deeper he dives, the stronger the sense of demonic energy becomes. At first, Shen Yuan thinks he is imagining it, but with the passage of time it strengthens into a much stronger presence, a tangible itch to his skin. It will be far worse at the edge of the actual abyss, where the demonic presence is supposed to reside.
Then again, that is also where the highest incidence of demonic activity and interaction with natural flora and fauna will occur. In fact, demonic activity would likely attract aquatic life along its boundary; it seems to act as a kind of lure, tempting creatures closer despite the associated danger. The border along the abyssal zone would be the best spot for Shen Yuan to find anything to support his research. Until he arrives there, he isn’t likely to see much more than his own eerie green cast over the floor and the black blanket of the ocean surrounding him.
Just as he thinks that, Shen Yuan catches movement out of the corner of his eye.
His whole body locks up as he cranes his neck to look at the source of the movement. In the dim green glow, he can’t see anything other than the sediment of the ocean floor and a few larger boulders, a tiny bit of some deep-sea worm emerging from between them in a scraggly attempt at life. Everything is still and quiet, though Shen Yuan’s skin still prickles.
He could’ve—he could’ve sworn—
Suddenly, a tiny black fish darts into the range of his glow, and the worm shoots out in length, wrapping spindly tendrils around the little fish and drawing it down into itself, retreating back into the crack between the boulders. Shen Yuan’s shoulders loosen as he realizes that the movement he’d seen must have just been the thing unfurling in the first place. A closer look and a bit of reaching out with his spiritual senses informs Shen Yuan that the worm must have been demonic in nature, and Shen Yuan realizes that he’s just gotten his first glimpse of demonic activity spilling out of the abyssal zone.
Creepy. But cool, too.
He swims on, the chill dipping to a degree that even he can feel the presence of it, though it doesn’t bother him the same way a cold room might bother him on the surface. It’s more of an awareness than anything, a realization that he shouldn’t be able to stand temperatures this cold, and that he’s creeping closer to something he would be better off avoiding.
Several more times, he thinks he sees movement creeping along the ocean floor. He pauses every time, hoping to catch a glimpse of another creature in this expanse of nothingness, but doesn’t ever see anything but rock and shadow. It becomes more unsettling as the demonic energy grows in intensity. He can’t shake the feeling of being followed by something, of being stalked.
Surely that’s not happening, right?
Anything big enough to follow him like that would be easy to spot in such an empty backdrop, Shen Yuan’s bioluminescence is surely strong enough to illuminate anything following him.
Right?
Shen Yuan’s pace slows as he approaches what must be the boundary of the abyssal zone. Most of the previous boundaries have been fairly invisible; the temperature drop from the surface waters into the twilight zone has been notable enough, and the complete lack of light in this one was obvious, but there was nothing really marking the transition. Nothing that made it obvious to the naked eye.
The abyssal zone is different. Here, a chasm extends out before him, radiating a chilling menace that has Shen Yuan curling his tail around himself, coming to a complete stop. The demonic energy pulsates out in waves, a warning to all not to come any closer. The rocky ledge extends out to both his right and left as far as his weak glow lights, and Shen Yuan knows that it extends for kilometers more in either direction. The rift is huge, a magnificent seismic event that has no business existing in this part of the ocean.
It is exactly what he’s been looking for.
The source of the demonic energy that Qing Jing monitors so closely; the place that will be perfect for his research. The place that might be home to a demonic creature powerful enough to level cities if it decides to come to shore.
Shen Yuan approaches the edge slowly.
Remember, don’t actually go into the abyssal zone on this trip, Shang Qinghua’s reminder rings in his head. Your first trip is supposed to be nothing but recon. Get there, get home, don’t die in the process. Are you even listening, bro?
To Shang Qinghua’s credit, Shen Yuan had been listening, and he’d been on the same page. He might be eager, but he doesn’t want to throw himself into an evil chasm the very first time he ventures thousands of meters below sea level.
Still…just a peek would be alright, wouldn't it?
Shen Yuan inches closer, curling his gloved hands over the edge of the chasm before he pokes his head out over it.
He immediately experiences a moment of real and intense vertigo, his stomach flipping inside out. His own glow doesn’t light more than a few feet down, a rocky wall that simply drops out from under him. Ahead, he can see nothing but the inky blackness that he’d previously only experienced above and to his sides. Despite knowing, intuitively, what lies before him, his brain struggles to make sense of it. He hasn’t shifted; meanwhile, his sense of the ground and where he is going has been violently upended, and he grips tightly at the edge of the chasm like he could fall over the edge if he accidentally lets go. The other side of the rift is miles away and might as well be unreachable. There is something about the comfort of the ocean floor simply falling away that makes Shen Yuan’s insides swoop and his head feel light; up until now, he has been able to follow the gradual and steep inclines. This…this is pure nothingness. A black, endless void radiating a creeping, sinister beckoning.
Come here, it seems to whisper to him. Just throw yourself in.
And then, again. Movement.
His head snaps to the side, trying to make out anything in the dark haze of the ocean. All he can see is the ocean floor extending out behind him and the cliffs—can he call them that?—dropping away below where he peeks his head out. He sees nothing.
Shen Yuan shakes his head, feeling stupid. He’s imagining things, like in those studies of sensory deprivation causing hallucination. It’s just his mind playing tricks on him, or small fish darting away into the depths, or something like that. It’s definitely not something watching him. To prove it to himself, he stares for a bit longer in the direction of the bit of movement that he’d seen, about a meter to his left and two down the cliff wall. His glow doesn’t really reach that far, the rock a hazy outline that he can barely make out.
And then he sees it. A pair of glowing pinpricks of red blinking open from that unintelligible shadow. Eyes.
For a moment, Shen Yuan still thinks that he’s hallucinating. And then the rocks surrounding the red dots seem to shudder and distort, and the movement around them becomes undeniable as something uncoils from the cliff walls. It’s a writhing mass of tentacles, their color shifting from the same pitch black as the walls to something lighter that he can’t make out with the filter of his green glow over everything, its eyes locked on him, and Shen Yuan suddenly realizes that he needs to get the fuck out of here.
Before it fully detaches from the wall, Shen Yuan is pushing away from the cliff in a rush, almost getting tangled in his own tail before he’s shooting back towards shallower waters, his heart in his throat. He hears a scraping sound behind him, then a sort of womph that accompanies the act of quick water displacement, and he risks glancing back to see that he’s being chased by something big, and something fast.
With his tail, he can reach speeds far faster than he could as a human. He winds through the water as if it’s nothing, his slim body cutting through the depths quick enough that he could probably keep pace with boats on the surface. The silty ground rushes by beneath him, turning into a green-grey blur.
The deep, thrumming sound keeps getting closer, getting louder. Shen Yuan doesn’t look back, the back of his neck prickling and his heart pounding in his chest.
Fuck, he thinks. I’m going to get eaten on my first real excursion. How lame is that?
Shen Yuan tries to get away. He really does. But even with his amulet-strengthened muscles, his attempts aren’t enough.
Shen Yuan cries out as sharp claws sink into the flesh of his tail, ripping downwards before they hook into him properly. He writhes and thrashes as the attacker crawls its way up his body, trying desperately to free himself. He digs his fingers into the rocks on the seabed, trying to pull himself away, but only succeeds in ripping his gloves and breaking three of his own claws off at the quick, leaving ragged nails behind. He looks back as the claws in his flesh climb their way up to his hips and he starts to feel something else—a longer, thicker restraint—wrapping around his tail while another coils around his wrist. He sees bright red eyes and a mass of faintly glowing, pulsating red tentacles just before the creature—demon—lowers his head and sinks fangs into Shen Yuan’s hip just below his gills, a cloud of dark hair billowing around him.
Shen Yuan’s limbs almost immediately stop responding to him. The bite must have been venomous, Shen Yuan realizes, far too late as the demonic creature starts to wrap him up further, tentacles curling around his arms and torso and pulling him aggressively backwards.
So much for recon and nothing else, is the last thought Shen Yuan has before his head slams against the rocky ocean floor and he loses consciousness, paralysis spreading through his limbs as the venom pumps through his veins. At least I found our demonic entity.