Chapter 492

Chapter 492: Doll’s Drawing Board.

When Duncan saw the quietly sleeping figure in the garden, he instinctively called out that familiar name.

But he stopped at once and remembered the scene from not long ago, when he had seen Queen Ray Nora in that lavish bedchamber—he could not have mistaken someone again, could he?

A strange feeling rose in Duncan’s heart. He walked carefully to the sleeping figure, bent down, and examined her closely.

He noticed the ball joints at her hands and feet, and the clear lack of any blood color. Her “skin” was pure white, with a texture like porcelain.

It really was Alice.

Duncan finally confirmed that the one sleeping here was indeed the Brother Doll he knew so well. He let out a long breath of relief. Then his attention shifted to the black brambles wrapped around her body.

Thorny vines stretched out from the flowerbeds and spread across the open ground around the Doll, like the train of a gorgeous yet eerie dress. The thorns had wrapped around the Doll’s hands, feet, and torso, binding her among the flowering vines.

Alice slept in the middle of this “bed” woven from flowers and thorns. She did not respond at all to Duncan’s approach and calls.

Duncan carefully avoided the thorny vines and the crisscrossing brambles. He reached out and lightly touched the Doll’s cheek, calling her name again: “Alice, can you hear me?”

A faint coolness came from the skin under his fingertips, but Alice still gave no response. She simply slept in silence, like… a real, lifeless doll.

Duncan frowned slightly, and then he noticed something else.

The sleeping “Alice” was holding something in her arms. It looked like a drawing board. Brambles wrapped around her arm, but the drawing board seemed as if it could be pulled out through a gap.

Duncan hesitated for a moment. Then he reached out, grabbed the edge of the drawing board, and carefully pulled it, inch by inch, from her arms.

During the whole process, he kept watching Alice, checking what effect taking the drawing board away would have on her—the Doll went on sleeping.

Duncan let out a small sigh of relief and looked down at the drawing board he had pulled free.

A “painting” of bright colors and messy lines came into view. Like the strange “sky” above the garden, the childish strokes on the drawing board formed an abstract picture.

There was a vortex, a swirl made of many colors patched together. It took up almost two-thirds of the whole board. Around the vortex were many tiny dots of light. The “artist” had drawn many crossed lines to show that these dots were shining stars.

At the center of the colorful vortex, he could see a deep patch of red light. Even though the doodle was simple, Duncan still felt a strong… danger coming from that red patch.

He frowned. For some reason, the red glow in the vortex felt familiar.

He searched his mind for a long time before he found the source of that familiarity. It was on the second-floor platform of “Alice Mansion”, on the wall near the spiral staircase. There hung an oil painting that showed a burning giant ship falling from the sky. In the sky behind the huge ship, the same dark red glow spread, filling the scene with unease.

Duncan’s expression grew more and more serious.

This was already the second time… In this strange “Alice Mansion”, that dark red light full of bad omens had appeared again. What did this dark red glow actually represent?

Was it a sign of some disaster that kept chasing them, drawing closer and closer? Or was it a true picture of some phenomenon that would appear when Doomsday came?

The headless Butler had warned him many times not to open the mansion’s front door… What was outside that door? Was it the true body of this “dark red glow”?

Dangerous thoughts rose in his heart for a moment, but Duncan pushed them down at once.

He was indeed very curious about what lay beyond the front door of Alice Mansion. But curiosity was not the same as recklessness. Before he had more clues and had confirmed Alice’s safety, he would try his best not to disturb the “order” inside this “mansion”.

His thoughts slowly calmed. Duncan let out a breath, looked up at the doodle-like sky above the garden, then lowered his head to the doodle-like drawing board in his hands.

The Doll still slept quietly among the flowers beside him, as if she were holding all the secrets and keeping all the answers sealed.

Who had “created” the sky here and the doodles on the drawing board? Was it this sleeping Doll? Was it Alice?

Duncan recalled the information he had heard from Ray Nora and suddenly felt that Alice was not like the Frostholm Queen imagined, not just a mistaken replica mixed from “Ray Nora” and the “Guillotine”.

Or rather… the body of Miss Doll might indeed have come from such a process, but inside, she clearly hid secrets far greater than that outer shell.

This grand, eerie “Alice Mansion”, and the Doll sleeping quietly in this garden, were her “inner self”. And these secrets clearly went far beyond what Ray Nora knew.

It was a simple truth: if a copied file carried more information than the original, then there was only one possibility—during the “copy” process, someone had written something else into that “file”.

Thoughts flowed through Duncan’s mind. After he had sat in silence for a long time, he sighed and prepared to put the drawing board back into the Doll’s hands.

Putting things back where they belonged and avoiding changes—that was necessary caution.

But just as he turned the drawing board around to push it back, some uneven marks on the back suddenly caught his eye.

Duncan’s gaze tightened. He quickly lifted the drawing board up again and studied the back, which he had ignored at first.

The uneven marks were a line of words carved deep into the frame on the back of the drawing board—

“…The Messenger brought news from afar, and the chosen clan picked up the lost Ancient Star and forged it into the crown of divine blessing—the Third Long Night came to an end.”

Duncan’s eyes stayed on that ancient, graceful line of text for a long time. His expression did not change for a while.

He did not know how long had passed before he gently let out a breath, bent down, avoided the thorns and vines, and slowly put the drawing board back into the Doll’s hands.

Yet in his mind, the sentence on the back of the drawing board kept circling, replaying again and again.

The chosen clan… the Ancient Star… the end of the Third Long Night…

Duncan stood up, his face thoughtful. In his mind, the pieces of known information began to rearrange and link together.

The “Third Long Night” was the most important clue. In that copy of *The Blasphemous Tome* held by the Annihilators, which very likely hid the true history, it was written that the age of the Deep Sea began only after the Third Long Night was safely passed. The whole world had survived from that time until now.

And the only “chosen clan” that could match the “Third Long Night” was the group who founded the ancient kingdom of Critt, those mysterious ancient Sages.

Picking up the lost Ancient Star…

Could these words be describing the historical event of the ancient kingdom of Critt forging Vision 001 – the Sun?

Sadly… there was too little information. Just one unclear “message” could not do more than spark a few vague guesses. It was useless beyond that.

Duncan shook his head and pushed this regret aside for now. Then he carefully searched the garden again, a place full of life yet thick with a strange mood.

He did not find anything else worth noting. In this large garden, besides the sleeping Doll, there were only lush plants and neat, well-kept paths.

At last, he returned to the side of the “sleeping Doll”.

After he walked a full circle around this dormant “Alice”, he suddenly stopped behind her.

A Keyhole.

It was not on her back under her clothes, but at the exposed nape of her neck. On the back of the sleeping Doll’s neck, a familiar Keyhole caught Duncan’s eye.

He moved closer without thinking and studied the small Keyhole.

So the Doll in the garden also had a Keyhole… But why was it in a different place from Alice’s? Did this difference in location have some symbolic meaning?

After seeing so many strange and uncanny things in this world, Duncan now often thought first of “symbolic meaning” and such. But he quickly put away these questions that clearly had no answer for now and hesitated as he took out the brass key he carried.

Ever since he had entered Alice Mansion, this key had appeared in his hand for no clear reason… Was it meant to be used here?

This thought flashed through Duncan’s mind. Then he made up his mind and slowly brought the key to the Keyhole at the back of the sleeping Doll’s neck. He carefully slid it in.

With a light click, the key bit into something inside. At once, it began to turn on its own, just as it had before.

That familiar feeling rushed at him from all directions. Light and shadow swapped places. His senses reshaped themselves. After a moment of weightlessness came the feeling of solid ground under his feet.

In almost the blink of an eye, the world around Duncan turned back into the captain’s cabin on the Vanished that he knew so well.

A smooth, white back appeared before his eyes. Alice still sat obediently on the round stool, waiting for her captain to wind her up.

Duncan stared, stunned. He looked at the scene in front of him in a daze for several seconds before his thoughts caught up. Then a strange idea popped into his head—

“Such a nice back… It would be a shame not to put a few cupping jars on it…”

Alice heard the quiet muttering behind her. She clutched her clothes and carefully turned her head. “Eh? Captain, what did you say?”

“Nothing,” Duncan snapped back to himself at once. He hurriedly cleared his throat twice to cover that flash of embarrassment, then pulled the key out of the Keyhole. “It’s done. You don’t feel uncomfortable, do you?”

“Huh?” Alice clearly froze for a second. She reached for the zipper on her back, then looked over at him in surprise. “Didn’t we just start?”

Duncan’s hand paused as he put the key away.

He had stayed in “Alice Mansion” for so long… but in the Mortal Realm, only an instant had passed?