Chapter 266

Chapter 266: Spread of Thought

Vanna stood up and walked to the statue of the Goddess in the small prayer room. The statue stood on a high platform, and bright candles burned quietly all around its base.

Bishop Valentine’s voice came from behind her: “We should send this warning to the Storm Grand Cathedral, and, if possible, to the other Churches and city-states as well. But that brings us to the source of the warning. If we want it to be convincing, we must give the Churches of the other Three Gods reasons they can accept. Simply saying ‘a Saint received a revelation in a dream’ is not enough.

“Her Holiness the Pope already knows about your connection with Captain Duncan. She has issued no reprimand, so it looks as if she has tacitly allowed it. But if the other Churches learn the truth… their reactions will be hard to predict, especially on the side of the Church of Death.”

“Because of the Viseran Thirteen Isles…” Vanna muttered softly. “The Church of Death is unusually wary of the Vanished.”

Valentine sighed: “That’s right. The Viseran Thirteen Isles, the sacrifice that was dragged into Subspace by the Vanished. A century ago, they were the largest archipelago city-state under the control of the Church of Death. For the followers of the Death God, those thirteen islands held a place equal to what Pland is today for the Church of the Deep Sea.

“It is troublesome. After a hundred years, it is no longer just about hatred. It is also the natural distrust humans feel toward a runaway state disaster. If they find out where this warning came from, they might instead start by treating the whole matter as some kind of conspiracy.”

Vanna did not speak for a moment. She stayed silent for several seconds before suddenly saying: “The Storm Grand Cathedral will arrive soon. Maybe Her Holiness the Pope will have her own way of handling this.”

“I hope so,” Valentine muttered, not very confident. “In any case, the Four Gods Church is already paying attention to the situation with Vision 001. It just seems we still are not taking it seriously enough. If the Church of the Deep Sea can take the lead and raise its priority, I think that would at least achieve the effect of this ‘warning’.”

Vanna slowly nodded. Then she lifted her gaze and fixed her gaze on the statue of the Storm Goddess Gamona. After a long moment, she whispered a soft benediction: “…May you shelter us.”

…

On the Vanished, at the stern deck, Duncan had just finished his inspection of the whole ship and was ready to return to his room to rest.

The Vanished needed a full inspection from time to time, especially the lower decks. The compartments flooded by the Boundless Sea needed the captain’s intimidation and comfort to stay stable.

During this round of inspection, Duncan had focused again on checking the “door of Subspace” down in the bilge, making sure the door still stayed tightly shut.

That made him feel a bit more at ease.

But alongside this ease, a faint uneasiness still pressed at the bottom of his heart. He still did not understand how he had fallen asleep in his cabin last time and then somehow entered the “other side” of that door.

He had stumbled into Subspace without knowing how, and then spent half a day on another Vanished within Subspace. In the end, he had found a way to return safely, but as long as he could not figure out the mechanism by which he entered Subspace, he could never fully relax.

And the time he entered Subspace had been right after something went wrong with Vision 001.

The Sun had gone wrong, there had been that strange dream, and then he had entered Subspace. The three events followed one after another so closely that it was hard not to suspect some hidden connection behind them.

Duncan stood in front of the captain’s cabin, holding the consecrated lantern in one hand. He took a quiet breath in the cold night wind.

Maybe it was exactly this uneasiness that pushed him to send that warning during his earlier Dream Communion with Vanna. He still was not sure how much his bizarre dream reflected the Mortal Realm, but after dealing with supernatural Visions so many times, he at least had one clear lesson: an ordinary person might be allowed to treat a dream as just a dream, but if “Captain Duncan” had a dream… then he must never treat it as just a dream.

Now he only hoped his warning could make the Four Gods Church focus more attention on the problem of Vision 001.

He knew he was not an expert in the supernatural field. Even if he wanted to study Vision 001, he had no way to start. What he could do… was draw the true experts toward this problem.

A warning coming from “Captain Duncan” was without a doubt enough to make many people take it seriously.

Duncan gathered his thoughts and put his hand on the handle of the captain’s cabin door. But before he opened it, another matter suddenly came to mind.

The Abyssal Trench Project that Tyrian had mentioned to him.

Duncan frowned slightly and thought for a moment. Then he directly pushed open the “door of the Lost Ones”.

Swirling thick mist appeared within the frame.

He stepped into it.

After a brief dizziness and a sense of space and time twisting, Zhou Ming opened his eyes and saw his familiar studio apartment. Everything here was still the same as before.

He steadied himself and, as always, first checked the windowsill, the desk, and other spots. After making sure nothing here had changed, he walked to the far end of the room.

On the plain storage shelf, the delicate “models” of the Vanished and Pland still sat quietly in their original places.

Zhou Ming walked over and picked up the “model” that represented Pland. Holding this “collection”, which felt neither too heavy nor too light in his hands, he went to the desk nearby, sat down, and carefully examined the structure of its “base”.

He had never thought about this before. He had to admit that “what lies beneath the city-state” was not only a blind spot in many people’s thinking in this world, it was also a blind spot in his own.

All he saw was a very smooth bottom.

Below the sea level around the city-state of Pland, the model simply ended. The bottom surface was so smooth it looked as if it had been sliced off with a sharp blade.

Zhou Ming fixed his gaze on the base of the model and fell into deep thought.

If it were just a “model”, then of course such a neat, flat underside would be normal. But he knew this “collection” was no ordinary model. It should be the “reflection” or “projection” of Pland in the Mortal Realm, placed in this room. What it showed… should be the complete form of Pland.

No matter what lay under the city-state, whether it was an endlessly long pillar or a thin base like a flat cake, it should still have some kind of structure, not simply end the moment you went below the sea surface.

Was it because he had not burned the city-state thoroughly enough when he used fire on it back then? Or because…

He had “ignored” that part?

Zhou Ming frowned slightly. His fingers tapped the edge of the desk without thinking. Then he pulled himself together, held his hand over the model, and let his mind slowly spread outward.

In the city-state of Pland, inside the antique shop, Duncan had just said goodnight to Nina and Shirley. He silently returned to his room, walked to the window, and quietly looked out at the night scene of the district, where lamps shone everywhere under the still veil of night.

veil of night lay heavy over the city. Almost all the residents had gone home. The streets and alleys were extremely quiet. Only a few moving points of light could be seen deep in the slightly darker lanes. Those were the patrolling Guardians and the glow from the consecrated lanterns in their hands.

Duncan slowly closed his eyes.

The entire city-state of Pland then appeared in his mind from a clearer, more direct vantage point.

Crowded residential districts. Steam factories that never slept. Quiet commercial streets. Damp coastal roads. The gas lamps along the sidewalks. The pipeline systems that crossed whole neighborhoods…

In one part of the city, a Guardian squad walked out from a narrow alley, heading to check the next gas and steam node.

A young squad member holding a consecrated lantern looked at the still, silent street ahead and muttered with a bit of feeling: “Looks like it’s another peaceful night… Honestly, I’m not used to nights this quiet.”

The squad captain glanced at his subordinate: “Don’t relax. Anything can happen during veil of night. Watch the darkest places.”

“Yes, I understand,” the squad member straightened up quickly, but still could not help saying: “But don’t you think it really has been quiet these last two days? I heard that in the latest patrol records there hasn’t even been a single—”

A faint green shimmer suddenly flashed at the edge of his vision, making the squad member stop without thinking.

It seemed the light from a distant gas lamp changed for an instant. It was so brief and subtle it was almost impossible to catch.

“Did you see something flash just now?” The squad member’s hand went to the Runic Steel Sword at his waist as he spoke in a low, serious voice. “The gas lamp seemed to flicker.”

Another squad member spoke at once: “I saw your consecrated lantern flicker too.”

The squad members all turned their eyes toward the captain.

The captain only frowned, clearly thinking about something. After several seconds, this veteran Guardian shook his head: “Keep patrolling. We’ll report it to the Cathedral when we get back.”

The Guardian squad left that place.

And the same kind of thing was happening all over the city.

Green light passed through flames. Invisible gaze flashed in the dark. Duncan’s thoughts flowed through the entire city-state and then slowly sank deeper.

In that detached yet clear “sense”, Duncan let his consciousness sink bit by bit, exploring the structure of the city-state beneath the surface of the sea.

In the apartment room, Zhou Ming suddenly opened his eyes.

A faint scraping sound reached his ears.

He picked up the “collection” in front of him and stared fixedly at the underside of the Pland city-state.

A rough and complex new structure was “growing” bit by bit on the bottom of the “model”.