An empty Divine Sea was a sight to behold.
There was so much emptiness all around, the ground filled with mere puddles of what was Divine energy. Her sea wasnât completely drained since some Divine energy still remained.
That was just enough for Death to not fall unconscious, but enough for Alex to do what he had wanted to do.
He looked all around the floor, searching for anythingâa sign of a person, or an item, or a beast, or a plant.
Unless someone else had been inhabiting Deathâs corpse, the soul he wanted to search for would look exactly like her.
However, the other part of the soul, the Creation, could be anything. He couldnât ignore anything random, even if it was just a dark rock at the bottom, or some liquid that looked different from the liquid in the Divine Sea.
Alex immediately flew around, searching for Death at great speed.
The water would soon start to fill up again, which he couldnât allow.
He had been searching for just a few seconds when he immediately noticed something. He found the soul.
âSheâs really here,â Alex thought in surprise. He didnât know what he was hoping for, but he was very much happy to see her.
After so many months of following her around, he had finally found Deathâs soul.
Adorned in a simple gray robe, seemingly belonging to a small sect, was Death with her long, flowing black hair. She was sprawled on the ground, her eyes shut completely, not even breathing.
She appeared to be dead, but that wasnât possible.
Alex immediately went down to the ground and picked her up. Or he tried to.
Death was far too heavy for him to carry. He tried to pick her up with all of his power, but he wasnât able to.
He didnât have the mental strength needed in this Divine Sea to move Death.
Alex had wanted to carry her out of the water, but that hadnât worked. Around him, the water slowly began to rise.
"Shit! Why isnât this working?"
Since he couldnât carry her, Alex changed his strategy. He began patting her face to wake her up, weakly at first, but he quickly switched to slapping her.
That didnât work either.
Death simply wouldnât wake up.
Alex tried various different things. He pried her eyes open, jolted her limbs, shook her vigorously, but nothing worked. He shouted at her, used his powers to make her cold and hot, but that didnât work either.
When that didnât work, Alex attempted other methods. He started attacking her.
At first, he threw out simple attacks that would only hurt but not harm, but as the water rose higher and higher, he resorted to all the attacks he could.
Every attack here would be spiritual in nature, so the attacks were all simply mental attacks. And yet, no matter what he did, she did not wake up at all.
As the water slowly began covering her body, Alex tried one last time to fly away with her, but it didnât work.
"Shit!" Alex thought in a panic. He had come in with so much expectation of saving the soul, but he had failed to do that. He tried to think of what else he could do before the water filled the region again.
"What else is there? What can Iâ the Creation!"
There was a chance. He may not be able to save the soul from drowning again, but surely the Creation wouldnât have the same limitation. He hoped it wouldnât.
Alex wasted not a moment further and rushed all around the land, searching for the Creation. If his own Origins were anything to go by, Creations were most likely large in size, beyond what they would be in real life.
As such, the chance that the Creation had been completely swallowed was unlikely.
He searched and searched for a long while, but found nothing. He continued even as the water rose higher and higher, completely able to drown him standing up, he could not find the Creation.
"No, no, no!" Alex grew frustrated as he ran around. "Come on, where are you? Show yourself!"
Given how quickly he had run around, he should have seen the Creationâunless it was invisible by design or something that easily blended with the ground or the water.
The other possibility was that she no longer had a Creation. Or more accurately, it was destroyed.
Alex had heard about situations where Creations were destroyed, that they wounded an individualâs soul permanently. Was this what he was seeing?
He remembered what the old man told him about Death.
When she was lucid for brief moments, she would talk and tell him things. One of those things she had said was that before coming to Hell, she had been lured and trapped by someone. It was a betrayal.
"Did she really lose her Creation?" Alex asked in a frustrated voice. After all of this, if the truth turned out to be that he couldnât help her at allâat least with what was available in Hellâthen he would be extremely angry.
As the water rose higher and higher, Alex watched in anger at it and the sight of his own failure. He could only curse out loud.
"Fuck! Are you kidding me? Why canât I do anything?!"
He regained the same frustration as he had when he was first told he had to become a Celestial to leave Hell.
"Goddamnit!" he shouted, and suddenly the Divine Sea shuddered.
Alex paused, looking around in a confused daze. Had he cursed so loud that it affected the Divine Sea?
The sea shuddered again and again. Then the overcast sky turned dark while the sea beneath him suddenly stilled.
"What theâ"
Before Alex realized it, he was thrown out of the Divine Sea, back into his own body. He opened his eyes in surprise, wondering what had just happened, when he saw shadows around the sand.
He slowly turned his head up and saw a group of nearly a hundred cultivators surrounding him and Death.
"Shit!"
The elders of the Endless Night Sect had somehow found them.