"You… what?!" King Jiao Ming said, nearly speechless as Captain Hai Long narrated what had happened to them.
It looked like Jiao Ming had been terribly wrong when it came to his belief that Ma'kat did not exist - because these soldiers, all of whom he trusted, all had the same account when he probed them.
"He appears slightly different than what the murals and artists would have us believe," Captain Hai Long said. "But if anything, the tales do not do enough justice when it comes to describing his speed. He truly is nearly as fast as a lightning bolt!" Well, to take that literally was a bit of an exaggeration, but he moved faster than anything they had ever seen before.
The only reason that Jiao Ming had agreed to send the soldiers in the first place was because he had been rather certain that they would come back empty-handed.
Suddenly, something struck him. "How is Zhi Yun?" Although he had many children, and didn't have the time to care for each of them personally, he had never seriously considered giving her away. It was only the pressure of the crowd that had compelled him to make a token gesture like that.
"Ah, Lord Ma'kat is truly kind and generous indeed," Captain Hai Long said. "He returned your daughter, saying that he was greatly moved by your act of sacrifice, and that as a show of mercy, he would be giving her back to us."
While Jiao Ming was greatly relieved by this, it also planted a seed of doubt in his mind. That was not at all how Ma'kat acted in any of the legends - he was the kind of person to kidnap and marry any young maiden that met his fancy if the tales were to be believed. He was still more merciful than many of the other gods in the sense that at the very least, he didn't eat those he considered beneath him.
He felt a pang of pity for Zhi Yun. Although she was not in the direct line of succession, he did have the faintest bit of paternal feelings towards her as she was his child, though he tried to bury this sentiment in his heart. However, no matter how hard he tried to suppress it, the feelings and various questions that came with them would not stay put and continued to resurface in his mind. How would Zhi Yun react later on when she became old enough to truly understand what he had done? Was an explanation of 'I didn't think it was real' actually sway her heart at that time? He shifted uneasily on his throne as he pondered the same.
His thoughts were interrupted by Captain Hai Long continuing to wax on about how great Lord Ma'kat was. It was clear that he was completely taken by this figure, and as the soldiers would share their stories with the rest of the populace, they too, would be completely enamored with this figure. Hai Long was one of Jiao Ming's most trusted warriors, though Jiao Ming also knew that the captain was quite devout as well. The reason he had chosen him was the fact that he believed that if this 'Ma'kat' truly was an imposter, Hai Long would be able to sniff that lie out immediately.
But this idea had backfired on him.
Whether this figure was Ma'kat or not, by this point, his subjects would treat him as such. And that meant that Jiao Ming could not openly oppose him - if he did so, he would soon find his head on a pike.
"Forget all of that for now, where is Lord Ma'kat?" Jiao Ming asked. He hadn't seen him come in with the guards.
"Ah, Lord Ma'kat is truly merciful and generous," Captain Hai Long said. "When he heard of our plight, he said he would first try to stabilize the ground beneath our feet, and then said he would meet with us. He has gone to investigate the cause of why our city is sinking right now."
"Eh?" Jiao Ming said, dumbfounded. That sounded even less like Ma'kat - no, that didn't sound like any of their gods for that matter!
The gods of the mermen religion rarely did anything nice without demanding some kind of tribute first, oftentimes demanding dozens if not hundreds of sacrifices. On the contrary, they were very quick to anger, killing mortals for the slightest perceived insult.
That was how their religion depicted the gods - and so to hear something like that completely took him for a spin.
"You should have demanded he come into the city regardless," Jiao Ming said, a trace of anger in his voice. "How will the people react when they see that one of the gods themselves has visited us, and we did not extend the slightest bit of courtesy to them?" It didn't matter if Ma'kat was a god or not, even if they were to treat a normal guest in that matter people would spit on their sense of hospitality.
Captain Hai Long shuddered, but composed himself nearly instantly. "I can only apologize for my mistake, but Lord Ma'kat did not agree no matter how many times we begged, and this one did not dare put pressure upon one of the gods."
Jiao Ming sighed. "Well, so be it. Tell the people to start preparing the largest feast seen in our city's history - we will welcome Lord Ma'kat properly when he comes back!"
As Tang Ze looked up towards the surface, he could not help but remember his mother's words.
'You shouldn't lie, because to cover up a single lie, you will need to tell a hundred more lies!'
But, there was little he could do right now.
He knew that one thing he couldn't do at all was to walk into the city, because if he got that close to the mermen, he was sure that his cover would be blown rather soon.
Instead, he tried to focus on the task at hand.
The mermen were wondering why the bedrock upon which they had built their city, which had stood firm for many thousands of years, suddenly seemed to be collapsing.
Tang Ze's plan was to solve this crisis, and then tell the mermen he had to run afterwards.
As it was, this was not too out of place for an episode of Deepcurrent. A foreign tribe of fish were having some kind of trouble, like a sea monster attacking them, or fishermen poaching them, and they would come to Deepcurrent for help. And Deepcurrent, being the hero he was, would help them out.
Only he wasn't sure where to begin when it came to solving this issue. He was not actually Deepcurrent after all, even if he was pretending to be him.
Why was the bedrock collapsing? It wasn't like he had any power that would let him 'talk to the earth' or something along those lines.
He went closer to the city's foundations, and after getting nowhere, did the only thing he could think of.
That was to ask himself, 'What would the actual Deepcurrent do in this kind of situation?'
The answer came to him immediately. He would probably say something like 'One can find the answer to any problem if only one learns to listen the ocean!' That had basically been Deepcurrent's catchphrase, and something that he said nearly once every episode.
Of course, the ocean, being a body of water, could not talk, but this was often interpreted by the Deepcurrent fandom as learning to listen to nature.
Then again, it could also be interpreted as listening to the fish.
Tang Ze let out a wave of ichthyoeidekinesis towards the rock, and to his surprise, he got a response from a large number of fish.
The thing was that the signals seemed to be coming from inside the bedrock somehow? How was that possible? Unless it was hollow from the inside?
That might make sense as to why the foundation was weakening then. Was there a group of underwater moles digging out under the mermen city?
Tang Ze couldn't find a way into the bedrock, and it was here that he once again asked for help from the only source he could rely on - the fish themselves.
How could he get inside?
A mental map began to form in his mind as he dived deeper - deeper than the mermen would normally go, until he found a narrow crevice. It would've normally been hard for someone his size to fit through, but he had Deepcurrent's supernatural underwater strength right now, and chipped away at the rock with his fists whenever it got too narrow.
Once he had traveled some distance, he found himself in a large cavern and saw the fish who he had been sensing.
"Crabs?" Tang Ze muttered, seeing millions of them in the crevice. They had made nests in the rock.
It was clear now what was happening - this huge crab colony was slowly digging away under the foundations of the city!
Well, it wasn't like they were actual moles, but his initial hunch had been correct.
That said, had it been something else like a natural phenomenon, there really wouldn't have been anything that Tang Ze could've done to help them out.
This, however, was something that he believed he could solve with relative ease.
He just had to convince the crabs to leave - however this turned out to be harder than just reaching out to them with his mind and asking them to go away.
While some of the crabs were receptive to this kind of hypnosis, some of them began to fight. A lot of them were bigger than the others, with one of them being as large as a truck - and these resisted his urging of asking them to leave.
Not to mention that even if he did clear out all of them this way, there would be a second problem in where the crabs would all go. That in itself could cause a huge ecological headache.
That said, now that he knew the root cause of the matter, he could just tell the mermen this and have them deal with it. It was their problem in the end, and they likely had a better idea of how to deal with this than Tang Ze did. They also could probably find a solution that wouldn't damage the ecology of their environment that much.
He might've been able to come up with a better solution had he more time, but the thing was that even now, his body paint was beginning to thin. And Yin Tiang did not have much more left, so he needed to get out of here.
He swam out, though he marked the place where he had entered the cavern so that the mermen would be able to find it before going near the city. It was likely there was an even deeper entrance below it, which is how the crabs had gotten in the first place, but Tang Ze had no desire to go any deeper into the lake after what he had found earlier.
It was here that his heart fell as he saw that the mermen had prepared quite the welcoming party for him.