Chapter 388

Chapter 388: Border of the Phantom Image

After leaving the captain’s cabin, Duncan did not go anywhere else. He simply turned around, took hold of the handle of the door of The Lost Ones again, and pushed it inward.

Zhou Ming returned to his room.

He looked around. The familiar scene entered his eyes. Everything in the room was exactly the same as when he had last left it, yet it felt as if he had not come back here for a very long time.

He slowly crossed the entryway. His feet stepped on the worn, scuffed floorboards. As usual, Zhou Ming went first to the tightly shut window. He checked the marks on the windowsill and then checked the state of the window lock. He knew in his heart that doing this was pointless, yet he still finished every part of the inspection with great care. Then he solemnly picked up the diary hanging beside the window and wrote today’s inspection result in a blank space:

No change at any door or window. During my absence, this room was never opened.

After leaving this new record, he let out a small breath and then slowly walked to the desk.

On the desk, tiny green sparks jumped and crackled. The slowly spreading flame was tracing out the outline of some object bit by bit. The whole tracing process was already close to its end.

It was a ship. A steam-powered mechanical ship with a beautiful white hull and tall smokestacks that looked quite advanced.

Zhou Ming watched this quietly. His face stayed calm, with no hint of surprise.

The model of the White Oak had appeared in this room. But… why? Why had it suddenly appeared here? What had happened to that ship?

Zhou Ming raised his head and looked at the nearby shelf. The models of the Vanished and Pland still lay quietly in their cubby holes.

Objects that had been completely burned by the fire of the spirit form, and thus completely brought under his control, would appear on the desk of this little studio apartment as precise scale models. This rule was already confirmed. The Vanished and Pland were both like this. But the White Oak…

Zhou Ming recalled the first time he had encountered that ship.

The White Oak had indeed been burned once by his spirit form fire. The entire ship had even been “swallowed” by the Vanished. But maybe back then his control over the spirit form fire had not been skilled enough. After that “burning,” the White Oak had not turned into a “collectible” on his desk. It had only left behind a mark. That state had lasted all the way until now.

Zhou Ming sat down in front of the desk. He quietly watched the ghostly petals of green flame jumping on the desktop as they traced the very last bit of the White Oak’s outline, his expression thoughtful.

He could be sure that during this recent period he had not paid any attention to the movements of the White Oak. He had definitely never taken the initiative to “trigger” the fire mark on that ship. So this change had not started from his side. It was the White Oak. That ship had clearly run into something, which had activated the mark on it, and even “animated” it so much that the whole ship had now become one of the “collectibles” here.

Zhou Ming narrowed his eyes a little and tried again to locate the position of the White Oak and sense its current state.

A moment later, he opened his eyes. There was a faint heaviness in his expression.

Even here, inside this room, he still could not precisely confirm where the White Oak was. His vague sense only pointed roughly toward the city-state of Frostholm in the world on the other side of the door. And when he tried to confirm the White Oak’s current state, he got a rather strange kind of feedback.

He actually felt that the entire ship was wrapped in seawater.

On the desk, the petals of green flame stopped jumping. The precise model of the White Oak lay quietly in front of Zhou Ming, every tiny detail lifelike.

After hesitating for a moment, Zhou Ming reached out, picked up the model of the White Oak in both hands, and held it up close to study it.

He did not see anything out of place.

After fiddling with it for a while, Zhou Ming shook his head. He realized that he still could not confirm the state of that ship from here. He would still have to go to Frostholm and check the situation there.

He rose from the desk, holding the White Oak in his hands. He planned to put this new “collectible” on the shelf first. But after only a few steps, he suddenly stopped beside a mirror.

He looked at the mirror. In the mirror, what he was holding in his hands was not the White Oak, but a strange warship shrouded in thick black fog and wide swaths of Shadows!

The outline of that ship faintly resembled the White Oak. It looked like a ship of the same design, yet the whole thing had an unreal, phantom-like texture. All over the hull he could see signs of damage and abandonment, as if it had been sleeping on the seafloor for many years. Zhou Ming stared at the ship in the mirror for a moment, then lowered his head. In his own hands, he saw that he was indeed only holding the model of the White Oak.

After a brief spell of shock and thought, Zhou Ming suddenly set the model of the White Oak aside. He quickly walked to the shelf, picked up the models of the Vanished and the city-state of Pland, and tested them one by one in front of the mirror.

There was no change at all in their reflections.

Only the White Oak showed a strange “other form” in the mirror.

Zhou Ming again picked up the model of the White Oak and brought it to the mirror. He watched the dark ship-shadow in the glass, lost in thought.

It looked like the “reflection” of the White Oak in another dimension.

Thinking, he slowly reached out toward the phantom in the mirror.

His fingers only touched the cold, hard surface of the glass.

…

Alone at the oars of the small boat, Lawrence watched as the towering hull of the Black Oak grew larger and larger in his field of vision. The thick fog filled with Shadows slowly closed in around him. The consecrated lantern hanging at the bow struggled to push back the surrounding gloom. It could only sketch out a hazy route ahead for him.

He turned his head and saw that the White Oak had already turned into a blurry phantom in the mist. When he had looked from the bridge of the White Oak, the two ships had seemed so close. But now he felt there was a great gulf between them. That gulf was not a gap of physical distance, but some kind of barrier suspended between the real and the unreal.

And he was now slowly crossing that barrier.

His heart had calmed down. The more eerie it became around him and the darker the surroundings grew, the calmer he felt. It was as if all paths had become clear and fate had shown him every choice. He was going to board the Black Oak, no matter what was waiting for him there.

But it seemed that only he had calmed down. There was another passenger in the boat, and that one did not look calm at all.

“Just let me go back! Put a rope on me, hang me from the mast, anything!” Anomaly 077 chattered. This ugly mummified corpse had been rambling on and on since just now. “As long as you let me go back to sleep, I’ll do whatever you say… Even if you tell me to convert to the Storm Goddess… or the God of Death! I don’t want to keep my eyes open anymore!”

Lawrence finally turned his head. For the first time since they had set out, he answered the mummified corpse: “You can still devote yourself to a deity?”

The mummified corpse froze for a second, then nodded at once: “As long as you let me go back to sleep, I can devote myself to any god you want, even in my dreams!”

Lawrence thought for a moment. A joke that was popular among sailors came to mind, and a smile appeared on his face: “Then you can try devoting yourself to the God of Wisdom.”

Anomaly 077’s whole body went stiff. A long time passed before he moved even a little. His shriveled throat squeezed out a few words: “I could start with plane geometry first…”

“You even dare to try the God of Wisdom. Looks like you’re really desperate,” Lawrence said, shaking his head. He could not help feeling a little curious. “But why are you so afraid? The records I read say you are the kind of anomaly that tends toward a runaway state. But now you’re trying everything you can to get back to sleep?”

Anomaly 077 did not answer. He only tried his best to curl up in a corner of the boat and stared nervously at the green flames that were quietly burning on Lawrence’s body.

Lawrence lowered his head and looked at his body, which still had not returned to normal. Then he raised his head again: “Is it because of this flame? Or because of the power that this flame stands for?”

Anomaly 077 muttered in a dull voice: “Don’t you already know the answer?”

“I didn’t expect even an anomaly like you to know the name of the Vanished,” Lawrence said, a little moved. “In the records I saw, it said that after you entered a runaway state, you kept your mind and could talk to people. But I didn’t think your mind would be this clear… If you weren’t a mummified corpse, I would almost think you were a human.”

Anomaly 077 lowered his head. He seemed to have accepted his fate and did not say another word.

Lawrence did not pay much attention to this “sailor’s” reaction. Right now he had countless riddles to think about. Compared to those riddles, a strange runaway state anomaly whose behavior did not match the records was nothing.

So many unknowns. So many secrets.

How many years had it been since he had last felt this way?

It was as if Adventurer Lawrence had vanished from the world the day he parted from the Black Oak. The unknown and the distant had turned into words from memory, until now.

The moment he saw the Black Oak again, Adventurer Lawrence had woken up once more from deep inside the old captain’s heart.

He raised his head and saw that the towering hull of the Black Oak was now less than a few meters away from the boat. He steered the small boat closer. When he reached the familiar spot from his memories, he stopped and grabbed an oar to bang on the hull.

A rope ladder dropped down from above and landed on the bow of the little boat.

Lawrence turned his head and looked at Anomaly 077, who was huddled in the corner.

“Get aboard, sailor.”

Anomaly 077 got up very unwillingly, head lowered: “Yes, Captain.”