Stelle nodded, thinking this was a good idea. She raised the camera that originally belonged to March 7th, looking left and right for the right angle.
"Dan Heng, come to think of it, we've photographed many wonders of Amphoreus—the holy city, The Grove, the River of Souls... but we've never actually taken a proper photo of Amphoreus's vast land itself, have we?"
"How about taking a distant view of the land beneath our feet? That way, when we get back, March 7th won't look at the photos and complain that we went to such an amazing world and only took close-ups of our faces and weird local details."
She adjusted the focus, aiming the lens at the boundless land beyond the city walls—land that had borne countless stories.
Click.
With the crisp sound of the shutter, a fresh piece of photo paper slowly emerged from the bottom of the camera.
"Huh?" Stelle picked up the photo, habitually waiting for the image to clear, and then a puzzled expression appeared on her face.
"What... what is that orange-yellow thing moving in the distance? It looks like a tide... Is March's camera lens broken? Or is it some kind of weather phenomenon unique to Amphoreus?"
Stelle looked up in the direction she had photographed, confusion on her face.
But in the next moment, her pupils abruptly constricted, and her breath nearly stopped.
At the edge of her vision, an endless tide of amber crystals, seeming to connect heaven and earth, was surging toward Okhema like a tsunami, with a terrifying momentum that devoured everything in its path!
That sight was far more stunning than any Black Tide creation.
"Stelle!"
A steady, familiar voice sounded from beside her, carrying an urgency that brooked no argument.
It was Welt. He had somehow also ascended the city wall, his expression grave as he gazed at the surging amber tide.
"This is very wrong—this is by no means a natural phenomenon!" His voice was unequivocal. "Come on, let's enter the city immediately and check the situation!"
When Stelle, Dan Heng, and Welt quickly rushed down from the city wall and arrived at the Marmoreal Market—once the most bustling and vibrant place in Okhema—the scene before them made them involuntarily stop in their tracks, their hearts filled with indescribable shock and a chill.
The streets, once crowded with people and filled with endless cries of vendors, had fallen into an eerie dead silence.
Colorful stalls still displayed their goods, but the people who should have been lingering here had been completely sealed inside clusters of translucent amber crystals that emitted a soft yet unsettling glow—like specimens forgotten by time!
Their postures varied; some remained in a running pose, some had faces frozen in terror, while others seemed to be sleeping, their final expressions frozen on their faces.
The entire market, in an instant, seemed to have been paused by some incomprehensible force, transformed into a vast and silent amber tomb.
"They... they haven't all... all died, have they?" Stelle's voice carried a barely perceptible tremor, an inexplicable fear seizing her.
She couldn't imagine so many living lives possibly fading away quietly within this beautiful yet eerie crystal.
Dan Heng frowned deeply, stepping forward to approach an amber crystal that contained a female vendor.
He closed his eyes, and a faint, clear aqueous vapor and a trace of dragon lord energy swirled around him, as if he were sensing something. After a moment, he slowly opened his eyes and replied softly but clearly:
"Not yet." His words brought a glimmer of hope, yet carried deeper concern. "These sealed people still have blood flowing within them; their vital signs haven't completely disappeared."
"I can clearly perceive that the speed of their blood flow, and all their physiological activities, are continuously slowing at a gradual pace. I'm not sure if they'll eventually die... but at least, at this very moment, they are still alive. On this point, there's no dispute." Dan Heng concluded.
"Still alive now? Doesn't that mean if they remain sealed like this any longer, some might not hold on and actually die?" Stelle immediately grasped the key point. Her sense of justice and impatience wouldn't let her stand by and do nothing.
With hardly a moment's hesitation, she immediately raised her trusty baseball bat, aimed at the nearest amber crystal, and was about to swing it down hard, trying to rescue the person inside!
However, just as her bat was about to swing down—
"Little Grayie! No!!!"
A very familiar shout, tinged with panic, came from the other end of the street! It was the other "Tribios" who had stayed behind in the holy city! Their figures quickly appeared from the street corner, faces etched with anxiety and lingering fear.
Hearing this almost shrieking cry of prevention, Stelle instinctively checked her swing, forcibly stopping the motion! The tip of the bat was merely inches from the smooth surface of the amber crystal!
The leading Trissha dashed in a few quick steps to Stelle's side, firmly pressing down on the hand that held the bat, and admonished her sternly: "Little Grayie! No! Whatever you do, don't come into any form of contact with this strange amber!"
She glanced, still shaken, at a few nearby clusters of amber that were noticeably larger and seemed to contain more than one person inside, her voice trembling slightly:
"One of us... has already tried to pull someone out from inside, only to be reverse-devoured by this eerie power and sealed into the amber together.
Any form of contact—that amber crystal will, like a living thing, rapidly spread along the point of contact. It's extremely dangerous!"
Her gaze met Stelle's seriously, and she added emphatically, cutting off any notion of cutting corners: "Using this sturdy bat of yours... won't work either!"
Just then—
BOOM!!!
A muffled deafening roar, as if originating from the very depths of the earth, suddenly rang out, and the ground throughout Okhema shook violently with it! Some unsecured items in the market clattered to the ground and shattered. It was the Crimson Tide!
The amber tide that had been devouring everything outside the city had now truly slammed into Okhema's tall, sturdy city walls!
And as the Crimson Tide drew closer, as if some signal had been amplified, the people in the city realized with horror that the amber crystals, which had only been quietly sealing people, suddenly accelerated their "growth"!
The edges of the crystals, as if injected with new vitality, began to spread outward and thicken at a visible rate, and even the suffocating sensation of being "sealed" in the air grew increasingly pronounced.
The crisis was escalating at an alarming speed!
It was also at this moment that a blurry figure appeared in the sky above Okhema. And in his left hand, the very same Crimson Tide that raged outside Okhema was churning and surging!