Chapter 233: Chapter 231: The Moonlight Never Seen Before
Jeff slowly squatted down, touching the mysterious runes.
Those were the same "clock" symbols Mo Ling had seen earlier.
Jeff’s fingers slowly traced the engraved marks, as if he were trying to move the pendulum of a clock.
But he couldn’t budge the rigid carvings in the slightest. The clock was frozen at that one moment.
The Little Fish, of course, did not start to swim. It just lay there, motionless.
Weariness and despair etched Jeff’s face. His gaze seemed to pierce through the clock, seeing the hopeless future of the Fishman Race.
Just then, a faint beam of moonlight shone on the center of the clock, illuminating the lifelike Little Fish.
Jeff’s hand, which was resting on the Little Fish, froze.
The moonlight also fell upon his hand, filtering through the gaps between his fingers and onto the clock.
Specks of light seeped into the deep carvings, and a faint, white-dotted mist slowly drifted out from within.
Jeff had likely never seen such a light before. He stared wide-eyed at the back of his hand, dumbfounded.
"Is this... moonlight?"
Jeff was stunned.
He stiffly turned his head to look up at the sky, then froze once more.
The other Fake Fishmen also noticed the moonlight and looked up.
"The Sea Moon is rising?"
Although Mo Ling couldn’t see the sky, the sudden appearance of moonlight made him instantly understand what was happening.
’Isn’t it supposed to be five days from now?’ Mo Ling was confused.
’Could the Sea Moon rise early?’
Mo Ling didn’t know the details of the Sea Moon Ceremony, much less the cycle of the Sea Moon.
He could only guess that perhaps the Sea Moon didn’t rise in five days, but would rise earlier, and the ceremony was simply held when it was at its brightest.
Just like the Mid-Autumn Festival.
Li Luo, like everyone else, looked up at the sky.
However, her expression was strange, as if she had seen something bizarre.
’What’s going on? Is there something wrong with the moon?’
While Mo Ling was still wondering, Li Luo had already taken out her recording device and aimed it at the moon in the sky.
Seeing what was displayed on the digital screen, Mo Ling finally understood why Li Luo had such an expression.
It wasn’t a moon.
It was just a... rock that emitted moonlight?
Although the moon is technically just a rock, the moon on the screen was completely different from a normal one.
Its color was stark white, and the light it gave off was an unsettlingly pure white. It hung high in the sky, but it wasn’t nearly as far away as the real moon.
’It doesn’t seem to be very far from Fishman Island,’ Mo Ling concluded after observing it for a moment.
This wasn’t the moon. It was just a large, searchlight-like object hanging in the sky above Fishman Island.
As Li Luo zoomed in, Mo Ling finally got a clear look at what the fake moon hanging in the sky really was.
It was a Moon Altar!
Another Moon Altar, identical to the one beneath their feet.
The runic lines were laid bare by the recording device’s high-definition camera, showing no difference from the ones they were currently standing on.
Except, the runic lines wrapped around the Moon Altar in the sky were all glowing. The fake moon’s light was produced by these very runes.
The circular Moon Altar floated in the air like that, aimed at the ground. From a distance, it didn’t look much different from the moon.
The Fake Fishmen present also quickly noticed that something was wrong.
"Is that the moon? Why does it feel a little strange?"
"Is it because of the fog? Why does it look different from the moon I remember?"
"Have I been on Fishman Island for so long that I don’t even recognize the moon anymore?"
The Fake Fishmen whispered among themselves. They were also uncertain, as the fog was thick, and looking at this moon from a distance only gave them a faint sense that something was off, without revealing any clear details.
Li Luo was also stunned when she saw the Moon Altar floating in the sky. After snapping out of it, she quickly handed the digital screen to Jeff.
"Is your moon here... like this?"
Jeff looked at the digital screen, completely baffled.
"I’ve never seen the moon. Does it look exactly like a Moon Altar?"
"..."
It seemed they wouldn’t get any answers from Jeff.
Li Luo quickly took the screen to show the other Fake Fishmen. Since they had experience leaving Fishman Island, they should be able to spot the anomaly easily.
"That’s not the moon!" The Fake Fishmen stared at the clear image of the fake moon on the screen, all with shocked expressions.
Anyone who had seen the real moon would not mistake this for it.
Only Jeff remained confused.
"That’s not the moon?"
Seeing how puzzled he was, a nearby Fake Fishman quickly pulled him aside to explain.
Jeff listened, nodding along as if he only partially understood.
Describing the moon to someone who had never seen it was indeed a very difficult task.
After a lengthy explanation, it finally dawned on Jeff.
"So you’re saying the moon and the Moon Altar don’t look the same? The moon is something else entirely?"
"Of course! That thing up there is not the moon!" a Fake Fishman beside him explained anxiously. "What exactly are we worshiping in the Sea Moon Ceremony? Did the Great Clan Leader ever tell you?"
Jeff shook his head.
"Why would our Moon Altar fly into the sky? Then what’s this one under our feet?" Jeff was still very confused.
"It might be a projection, or maybe it’s another Moon Altar. Did the village only build one?"
"Of course, we only built one..."
As he said this, Jeff suddenly realized something. He asked with a hint of suspicion, "Two hundred years ago, did we build a Moon Altar then too?"
At his words, everyone present froze.
"Where did the Moon Altar from that time go?"
The Fake Fishmen all looked toward the sky in unison. It seemed they had their answer.
After a long time, someone finally broke the silence.
"It seems no one has ever known where the previous Moon Altars went."
"Given the scale of a Moon Altar’s construction, it’s impossible for it to vanish without a trace in just two hundred years. But we’ve never seen any ruins of a previous altar on the island, have we?"
"Fishman Island isn’t that big to begin with. Such a magnificent structure wouldn’t just vanish into thin air for no reason."
As they spoke, everyone suddenly realized that no Fishman had ever questioned this strange fact.
For this Sea Moon Ceremony, the race had followed the methods recorded in the ancient Fishman texts step-by-step, and no one had ever suggested using a previous Moon Altar.
This kind of large-scale ritual site should have been reusable.
Although the fog on Fishman Island was highly corrosive to buildings, a stone structure like this wouldn’t be easily damaged, let alone vanish without a trace, as long as it was regularly maintained.
But the Fishman Race had never mentioned previous Moon Altars, as if the Sea Moon Ceremony absolutely required building a new altar from scratch every single time.
Not a single Fishman had ever doubted this.
"Was this Moon Altar built from scratch? Not on the ruins of a previous one?" a Fake Fishman asked Jeff for confirmation.
"Yes." Jeff nodded seriously. "The Great Clan Leader personally selected the location according to the ancient Fishman texts. I even helped lay the foundation. The village really did build it from the ground up."
His words were met with another stretch of silence.
"The one in the sky must be the previous Moon Altar. Does that mean after this Sea Moon Ceremony, the one we’re standing on will also fly up into the sky?" a Fake Fishman asked, his face a mask of disbelief.
"How does something so heavy fly into the sky?"
It was a question no one present could answer.
Before long, someone else raised another question:
"So, how many years old do you think that Moon Altar in the sky is?"
"Two hundred? Four hundred? Or eight hundred..."
"If that’s the case, there should be more than one up there, right?"
"Where did the even older Moon Altars go?"
