Chapter 32

Chapter 32.

As the night faded, the Pale Scar that filled the whole sky also slowly dissolved. Duncan stood on the aft deck, head tilted back, using his gaze on the sky. He did not let any detail of this moment between night and day escape him.

He saw the scar become transparent and unreal bit by bit, like a dream slowly waking. The gray-white mist of light that leaked from it merged with the sky first, then the scar itself. Throughout the whole process, the position of that “scar” never changed.

Duncan blinked as more guesses rose in his mind. Since the mark in the sky did not shift, did that mean it was not some distant astronomical structure? Did it mean it was only a phantom “printed” on the background of the atmosphere, moving in sync with the Boundless Sea?

Or was it because the planet on which the Boundless Sea lay—if this really was a planet—and that scar happened to move in perfect step with each other? Or was the scar actually moving, but his observation time was too short for the naked eye to notice?

All kinds of guesses rose and fell in his mind, but Duncan knew very well that until he had enough evidence and reliable experiments, these were only guesses. A natural phenomenon could have countless possible explanations, but without theory and proof, everything was empty talk.

The Sun rose.

First, a golden glow appeared along the line where sea met sky. Then a huge glowing structure suddenly rose from the sea. Wrapped in magnificent, blazing light, the spherical glowing orb locked in place by double layers of rune structure appeared in Duncan’s sight.

Driven by the slow turning of the rune structures, the Sun rose in solemn majesty. The imposing process seemed to carry a sound with it—a deep, powerful, slow rumble echoed faintly in Duncan’s mind. But when he really focused to listen, the sound suddenly vanished.

He frowned, wondering if he had only imagined it, yet the memory of that sound was so clear that he could not deny it.

Was that… a proclamation the Sun sent to this world as it rose? Or just one of the many illusions brought by the Boundless Sea?

No one could answer Duncan’s doubts. The vast Boundless Sea kept all its secrets as always.

The pigeon AI squatted comfortably on Duncan’s shoulder as usual. Then AI suddenly stood up, flapping its wings hard. It stared at the sea and loudly chattered: “Get some fries! Get some fries!”

Duncan could not help but laugh. He glanced at the strange pigeon and suddenly felt that having this bird around was not so bad. The odd phrases it blurted out from time to time always gave him a bit of “hometown” familiarity.

“Sadly, there are no fries on this ship,” he said, flicking the pigeon’s beak as he turned toward the captain’s cabin. “But you are right about one thing. We need to get something to eat.”

A short while later, the captain of the Vanished had prepared a traditional ghost ship breakfast for himself. In the captain’s cabin, Duncan simply used the chart table as a dining table, setting a few plates on the empty space beside the enchanted sea chart. Today’s breakfast was the same as yesterday’s dinner, yesterday’s lunch, and every meal before that: jerky, cheese, and plain water.

Duncan sat at the chart table and carefully, almost ritualistically, spread a napkin over his lap. Goathead sat quietly opposite him. On his left was the cursed Doll Alice, who had come early to say hello. The strange pigeon squatted on the tabletop to his right.

Duncan suddenly felt that this scene finally fit his ghost ship captain persona. There was the goat wood carving that represented demons, the cursed Doll he could not throw away, the talkative bird that knew knowledge from other worlds, and the ghost ship captain seated at the head of the table. If someone took a picture, it could go on a movie poster without any editing…

But only the people on the Vanished knew what the food situation on board was really like.

Duncan sighed and looked down at the food on his plate. The movie-poster opening scene was over. What came next was the real life of firewood, rice, oil, and salt aboard the Vanished.

He picked up his knife and pressed it hard into the cheese. The scrape of hard things rubbing together gave off a squeaking sound. Then he poked the jerky beside it with his fork, and the jerky hit the plate with a clear, ringing clink.

Alice watched this curiously and finally could not help asking: “Captain, today’s food is the same as yesterday’s, right?”

“Tomorrow’s will be the same too,” Duncan said, looking up at the cursed Doll. “Do you want to try some?”

Alice thought for a moment, then picked up a strip of jerky with her hand. She put it in her mouth and chewed twice, then spat it out with a “ptoo, ptoo”: “It’s not tasty at all!”

“Even if it tasted good, you couldn’t swallow it—do you even have a stomach?” Duncan reached out and took the half strip of jerky from Alice’s hand. “I only meant to let you try it, and you really did.”

As he spoke, he glanced at the food on his plate again, now with some worry.

These were the only food he could find on the ship. The jerky felt like thick salted cardboard. The cheese was like loose firewood mixed with sand, and no matter how he handled it, it kept a strange smell. He had tried boiling the jerky in water, roasting it, even pan-frying it, but after all that effort he still could not improve the taste or texture.

The good news was that at least the food had not rotted and would not poison anyone. The bad news was that the power of time still turned these things, which had not decayed, into something he strongly did not recommend putting in a human throat. Duncan had every reason to believe that this cheese was several times older than he was, and if the animals that became the jerky were still alive, they would have seen at least a century of storms and change.

The captain of the Vanished might not have to worry about scurvy, but Duncan still longed for a healthy diet. At the very least, he hoped the food on his plate could be a little younger than he was.

Being the same age would be fine too.

The “Vanished supply plan” and the “land exploration plan” he had thought through yesterday rose in his mind again.

But none of that could be done in a short time.

Duncan sighed and kept cutting the “firewood” on his plate as if he were taking revenge on it. AI, who had been tilting its head on a nearby table for a long time, finally walked over. The bird first looked at its Master, then at the things on the plate: “Crystal ore reserves insufficient?”

Duncan glanced at the pigeon, pinched up some crumbs of cheese that had fallen off, and tossed them to it. AI pecked twice, then suddenly froze in place like a machine that had just crashed…

The bird stayed stiff like that for a full three or four seconds before it suddenly moved again. It flapped its wings wildly and flew to a nearby shelf, squawking in a furious voice: “I would rather starve today, die outside, and jump off from here than eat that again…”

Duncan felt a little hurt, and Goathead, who had finally been quiet for a while on the other side of the table, could not help starting to make squeaking wood-scraping noises.

Before this thing could drill into itself to make fire, Duncan finally nodded: “If you have something to say, just say it.”

“Yes, Captain,” Goathead finally got his chance to talk and became noisy at once. “I have wanted to ask since yesterday. This one you brought… is called ‘AI’, right? Why can I never understand what it says? I thought about it all night yesterday. What does ‘recharge Q-coins’ even mean?”

Duncan raised his eyebrows at once. He had truly not expected Goathead to hold this question in until now. He had actually underestimated this thing’s self-control.

“You don’t need to worry about it. This bird’s way of thinking is very strange,” Duncan said. He did not stop his woodworking, and the knife and fork in his hands kept making the sound of chisels and axes. He casually gave the excuse he had already prepared. “It seems to use a language only it can fully understand when it talks to people. If you hear it enough, you can roughly guess what it means.”

“Is that so?” Goathead fell into thought. “But I keep feeling that there is some kind of logic hidden in its words… as if there is a complete, self-consistent set of knowledge behind that language. You found AI while you were walking in the Spirit Realm, didn’t you? Then could it be some projection from the depths of the Abyssal Deep? You know, the deeper you go, the more often information from misaligned times appears as projections. Among them are many lost ages we have never known, and even some fragments of the future. Maybe AI is talking about things from another timeline?”

The cutting in Duncan’s hands paused for a moment, so briefly it was almost impossible to see. Then everything went on as usual, and he said in a calm tone: “Then I wish you luck in working out the logic behind AI’s language as soon as possible.”

Goathead’s words might have been random guesses, but the information hidden in them still stirred waves in Duncan’s heart.

While he walked in the Spirit Realm, had his soul drawn near to the deeper layers of this world? In those deeper places, would one see more projections from misaligned times? Could those projections even show scenes from different timelines?

When Duncan walked in the Spirit Realm, he had not seen any “scenery from different timelines”, but Goathead had not been wrong about one thing—AI really did come from another time and space.

Then… was this pigeon brought into this world by an Earth human named “Zhou Ming”, or was it truly, as Goathead said, from the deeper layers of this world?