Chapter 261

Chapter 261: The Mysterious Symbol.

Nina was just about to run upstairs to call him when Duncan appeared on the stairs.

He had heard the noise from downstairs.

“Mr. Duncan,” Morris came to the foot of the stairs and looked up at the “captain” who was gazing down. “I found that symbol you showed me in a document on the ancient kingdom of Critt… or at least something very close to it.”

Duncan noticed the faint bloodshot in Morris’s eyes and his slightly swollen eyelids. Clearly, the old scholar had put in a great deal of effort to find these materials. Yet there was also a trace of excited light in Morris’s eyes, and his spirit seemed abnormally bright. It was the look one only had when deep in research and finally gaining results.

Duncan glanced at Nina, Alice, and the others downstairs and gave a small nod: “You look after the shop.”

Then he looked at Morris: “Come upstairs and tell me.”

The old gentleman, still clutching the big book, stepped onto the stairs. The old wooden steps creaked under his feet. He followed Duncan to the master bedroom on the second floor – this was his first time in this place.

By the standards of a dwelling for a Subspace shadow, this bedroom seemed a bit plain. But considering Mr. Duncan’s special “hobby” of playing the mortal, this simple room actually looked quite normal.

Morris carefully controlled his movements, satisfying his curiosity without making any extra probing. Duncan pulled over two chairs from the side and motioned for the old gentleman to put the big book on the desk by the window.

“Tell me what you found,” Duncan said after he sat down. “What does that symbol actually stand for?”

“As for its meaning… I still have no clue for now. I only found what is most likely its source,” Morris steadied himself, opened the valuable-looking volume, and turned to a page marked with a bookmark. “Do you see this spot? It appears here.”

Duncan frowned slightly. On that page was a picture, a finely drawn hand illustration showing part of a large building that looked like the main gate of a palace. The symbol with the hexagonal frame and the shattered cross structure appeared in the relief above the gate, at the very center of the whole image.

As for the content of the relief itself… it seemed to be just patterns whose meaning could not be seen.

Just as Morris had said downstairs, the symbol was in a very inconspicuous place. It was only a small decorative detail in the illustration, taking up less than a tenth of the whole picture, and it had not been specially marked.

It was really impressive that Morris could find this book among piles of documents and then find this tiny corner inside it.

“I had a vague impression of it, like something I glimpsed a very long time ago. Thanks to the divine blessing of the God of Wisdom, that ‘impression’ could still work today and let me find this ‘little thing’,” Morris explained. “This illustration is a copy. Its original first appeared in a study on architectural ruins of the ancient kingdom of Critt. That document is not in Pland at the moment, but I believe some of my friends in the academic circles can help a bit…”

“Of course, even without the original, the material recorded in this book is still very useful. It says that this hand illustration shows a lost ruin that once stood in the border seas. The ruin was on a nameless barren island, and that island mysteriously vanished into a thick fog around New City-State Calendar year 223. Before it vanished completely, several expeditions managed to land there and examined the form and age of the ruins. They confirmed it was a product of the ancient kingdom era of Critt. Judging from the surface patterns and reliefs on the buildings, the whole facility should have been some large complex with both academic and religious meaning…”

As Morris spoke, he pointed to the written description on the page next to the illustration. On the slightly yellowed pages, Duncan could see notes the old scholar had written years ago.

“Reliefs with hard, deep lines and the large number of diamond shapes in the patterns are features of the architecture of the ancient kingdom of Critt. They favored heavy lines and a style that felt powerful. The main bodies of their palaces and buildings were mostly various rectangular prisms or pyramid shapes. This structure fits those features perfectly…”

As he listened to Morris’s explanation, Duncan slowly let his gaze move over the pictures and the lines of text. His attention returned to the hexagonal pattern at the center of the relief above the main gate, and his brows furrowed slightly: “There is no specific explanation about this symbol.”

“…Sadly, this document is only a general introduction. It does not go into detailed analysis of every detail in the ruin,” Morris shook his head. “But that is only to be expected. The ancient kingdom of Critt is ten thousand years in the past. The ruins it left are few and mostly badly damaged. Add to that the loss or ‘corruption’ of all kinds of materials, and the knowledge left for later generations to study is already fragmented. It would be very hard to find an article written just to study some pattern on a single gate from that ancient kingdom…”

“An academic or religious facility, a badge at the entrance…” Duncan rubbed his chin in thought. “Why would a group of ‘ascetics’ living ten thousand years later carry a charm amulet from the ancient kingdom era of Critt?”

He turned his head and looked at Morris. “Do you think it is possible that there are ‘Critt descendants’ who have passed down a bloodline for ten thousand years?”

“…Someone once said that a careful scholar should not blindly deny any possibility, no matter how small the chance. But from my own point of view, I really think this is impossible.”

Morris spoke cautiously while thinking.

“A group like those ascetics, likely very few in number and acting in extreme secrecy, would have had to survive the great chaos after the fall of the ancient kingdom, live through the Age of Strife and the old city-state wars, and pass their line down for a full ten thousand years without ever breaking and without being discovered… If that possibility is true, then I would rather believe they are a secret cult founded only in recent times. They may have happened to discover some ancient documents or similar ruins and then took some symbol from the Critt period as their own mark. That possibility is still higher.”

Duncan listened to the old gentleman’s thoughts and only gave a noncommittal grunt, then let his eyes move over the lines of text again.

In the material, some passages were clearly quotations from the original document. They recorded the scattered words left by the explorers who had gone there more than a thousand years ago:

“…It stands in the center of the island. The main building and its surrounding annexes almost fill the whole island. It feels as if the island exists only for this structure…”

“…The main material of the structure looks like stone, but it is tougher than stone, with a pale color. A soldier tried to chip off one of the wall bricks with an ice axe and only succeeded after using great force… When the axe struck the brick it gave off exaggerated sparks, and the broken surface of the brick had a silver-gray sheen.

“There are several small islands near the main one, all very desolate. The plants are sparse, and even insects are rarely seen… There are no remains of any buildings. Perhaps there were some once, but they were too small and have been eaten by time…

“…On the evening of the third day, while the launch circled the island, we found that a collapsed section which had been above the water was somehow already submerged, yet there was no sign of a rising tide… Fog began to gather over the nearby sea. The priest had a bad feeling. After offering benediction to the God of Death Bartok and seeking revelation, he advised that we leave the island at once.”

Duncan looked straight at the end of this quotation and saw that the author of the document had recorded this:

“On the seventh day after this expedition withdrew, the thick fog cleared. Another team reached that sea area, but could no longer find the nameless island.”

Duncan could not help feeling a little regret.

“So it was swallowed by the fog just like that…” he sighed softly. “It sounds like the result of a border collapse.”

“It does look that way – but back then, the Holy beacon technology had not yet matured, and there were no precise means of observation. Several Anomaly phenomena, including border collapse and the ‘fog-eating’ phenomenon, were very easy to mix up.”

“The Fog-Eating Phenomenon…” Duncan searched his memory for a moment and found the relevant knowledge. He had been cramming this kind of common sense from books recently. “If it really was the Fog-Eating Phenomenon, then this island might briefly show itself again in similar thick fog later. But it seems no records of that sort were ever passed down.”

“That’s true. But it’s also possible the related records were simply lost.”

Duncan made a sound in response and, almost without thinking, let his fingers brush over the illustration, over the tiny shattered cross mark on it.

“In this drawing… there shouldn’t be any chance that the copyist ‘added things as he liked’, right?” he asked suddenly, uneasy.

“I don’t think so,” Morris answered at once. “This is very rigorous academic material. The artist who drew the illustration and the scholar who compiled the original document were both respected authorities known for their care. When they left these records, they would rather leave unclear parts as they were for later generations than make ‘extra touches’ without evidence. Or, to put it another way, even if they did make adjustments, they would certainly explain the situation in the notes.”

“So it can be trusted as real…”

Duncan murmured this softly, lost in thought.