Chapter 522

Chapter 522: Morris’s Hypothesis

In a certain laboratory deep inside the Radiant Star, Lucretia finished a rough examination of Taran Ael.

With the help of Truth Academy, moving this Grand Scholar onto the ship was not hard. But finding out what had happened to him was clearly not so simple. Even Lucretia, the “Sea Witch” who was well?traveled and famous in occult studies and the field of the curse, was seeing a case like this for the first time.

Taran Ael was clearly trapped deep inside some kind of dream. But his condition showed no reaction from the curse at all, and there was no sign of mental corruption.

Lucretia lit three candelabra in the corner of the lab and sprinkled her own herbal powder into the Censer in front of them. Then she went to Taran Ael’s side and set crystals, bone shards, and other items around him.

The clockwork doll Lunie, with a ceramic shell, and the stuffed rabbit doll Rabby were helping in the lab. When Lunie noticed the serious look on her Mistress’s face, Lunie could not hold back and asked: “Is it very bad? Is this elf in danger?”

“Situation unclear—that is worse than just bad,” Lucretia said seriously. “Taran Ael fell asleep after he tried to observe the Sun. If these two things are linked, it means this kind of sleep may not be a one?time case. While the Sun was out, how many people looked up? How closely did someone have to ‘observe’ for this sleep to start? How many people did something as bold as this elf scholar?”

She slowly shook her head.

“Taran Ael acted very boldly, but on the vast Boundless Sea, there is more than one scholar with courage like his.”

“Do you need us to do anything else?” The stuffed rabbit doll Rabby hopped over, raised her head, and asked in a soft voice.

“Next, I will try to link into Taran Ael’s dream and help him open a path back to the Mortal Realm from the other side,” Lucretia said. “But this dream may be very complicated. I need you two to guard the candelabra in this room. If I am still not awake after three hours, you must snuff out all the candles from the tallest to the shortest. That will forcefully wake me up.”

“Yes,” Lunie lowered her head. “Three hours, snuff them out from tall to short. I remember.”

“Rabby can dream with Mistress!” The stuffed rabbit hopped over, hugged Lucretia’s leg, and said with some excitement: “Rabby is a rabbit that can dream!”

“One nightmare is enough,” Lucretia refused the stuffed rabbit doll without hesitation. “I don’t want a Grand Scholar like this dropping dead on my ship.”

“Fine, fine, Rabby knows~” The stuffed rabbit doll lowered her head and let out a sad sound. She muttered to herself as she walked to the corner of the room, then sat down on the floor with a soft “plop.”

Lucretia glanced at the doll once and did not answer. After she checked that all the ritual elements were ready, she sat in a high?backed chair facing Taran Ael and snapped her fingers.

The three quietly burning candelabra in the corner were at once veiled in a gauzy, unreal curtain. Every object in the lab seemed covered by a hazy glow. The Sea Witch slowly lowered her head, and in the next second she entered Dreamwalking.

…

On the Vanished, in the captain’s cabin, Morris and Duncan sat beside the chart table. Not far behind them, on the wall, the old Oval Scrying Mirror showed Agatha’s blurry, ghostly figure.

“Ai already flew over and confirmed it. The big island ahead really is Lightwind Harbor,” Duncan said. “Right now the Vanished is hiding deep in the Spirit Realm. Before we land, we will contact Lucretia and confirm the current situation inside the city?state. As for now… the problem in front of us is still how the Vanished moved for no clear reason.”

“To be honest, I have no idea,” Morris said around his pipe, his brows furrowed like several cracks in a cliff. “I have heard of many ‘teleportation’ events. Some come from certain Visions. Some are curse anomalies like ‘Sailor’ at work. But what happened to the Vanished is clearly different from all of that… For now, ‘the Sun going out’ is the most likely cause of the Vanished’s jump. Yet none of us on the ship ever noticed how it happened, or when it happened…”

“So I keep thinking that the one with a problem is not the Vanished, but the ‘whole world’ outside the Vanished,” Duncan said in a low voice. “The news from Captain Lawrence points to the same thing—after the Sun went out, the sea changed in ways no one can understand, in places beyond our ‘line of sight’. Tyrian’s reports say the same.”

“Has there been any new news from Mr. Tyrian?” Agatha’s voice suddenly came from the mirror. “Did Cold Harbor reply?”

“…Yes. Things are developing in the strangest possible way,” Duncan nodded. “Tyrian has already checked again with the city?states that lost contact before. From their replies… the other city?states, including Cold Harbor, not only don’t know that the Sun went out, they don’t even know that their communication with Frostholm was ever cut off.”

Agatha’s expression changed slightly.

She opened her mouth and said: “So that means…”

“It means they never went through the twelve hours when the Sun was out,” Duncan said slowly. “In their eyes, the world kept running as normal. Frostholm, Pland, and Lightwind Harbor were all fine. Then, all of a sudden, Frostholm sent them a pile of strange, anxious messages about ‘the Sun going out’ and ‘communication interruptions’. Now the tension is spreading among those city?states. In Tyrian’s words, ‘they urgently need to figure out which side is actually abnormal’.”

Morris listened and thought. Then he slowly lowered his pipe. “Then we can also understand it like this. After the Sun went out, time for the whole world stopped for twelve hours. The Vanished and those three city?states were actually ‘wrongly staying normal’ during those twelve hours. It was as if, in a nightmare that everyone slept through, we… accidentally opened our eyes and saw the truth stuck in the cracks of time.”

Duncan looked thoughtful.

He had to admit that a Grand Scholar was still a Grand Scholar. Morris could not explain the rules behind all this, but he had still put forward a very enlightening guess.

Could this guess be pushed even further? In that world after the Sun went out, were there even more strange changes that no one had ever noticed? If he pushed the idea to an even more extreme point…

Was this really the first time the Sun had gone out?

These guesses floated in all their hearts, and the captain’s cabin fell silent. Just then, Duncan seemed to sense something. He frowned in mild confusion: “Hm?”

“Captain?” Agatha asked at once. “Did you think of something?”

“…No, it’s something else.” Duncan kept his sensing posture, his state for the Listening Rite, and waved his hand. His eyes did not seem to focus. It was as if he was looking at something that was not in the room. “There is a presence…”

He suddenly looked up and stared at Morris across from him.

“What is Heidi doing right now?”

“Heidi?” Morris froze, not knowing why the captain brought this up so suddenly. “Heidi stayed in Pland. Right now they should still be in chaos over the Sun going out. City Hall will probably call her in… Is something wrong with Heidi?!”

The Grand Scholar finally reacted, and his face suddenly grew tense.

“She should not be in great danger, but the charm amulet I left her is acting a bit strange,” Duncan said, frowning. Then he waved his hand at the air. A ghostly green flame flared up, and Ai’s figure appeared in the air beside him. “I need a path into the dream.”

…

“So what you’re saying is that you were actually ‘treating’ someone else, and then, somehow, you ended up in my dream. Then you thought I was one of the intruders and stabbed my neck with that awl?”

The elf scholar who called himself “Taran Ael” looked very serious as he spoke slowly, watching the “golden awl” in Heidi’s hand.

“Why do I feel like there are many things wrong with that story?”

“Actually…” Heidi looked very embarrassed. If anything was worse than accidentally hurting a patient with the golden awl and being caught on the spot, it was not being caught right away, only for the patient to suddenly piece it together after a while and then analyze the whole thing so seriously. This elf scholar’s reaction was far from normal. Heidi had seen many strange patients over the years, but this type was a first. “I also think it sounds wrong… but everything I said is true.”

“Everything you said is true, hmm,” Taran Ael nodded. Then he asked: “Then what about that ‘other patient’ you mentioned?”

Heidi turned at once and pointed back the way she had come. “That building is her drea…m…”

Her words trailed off, and her face went stiff.

In the direction she pointed, between the tall, lush trees and vines, the huge medical facility that had been there before… was gone without a trace.

“It’s gone…” Heidi whispered, slowly turning her head back. “But it really was there before, a very large…”

“Miss Psychiatrist,” Taran Ael cut off Heidi’s muttering. The elf scholar spread his hands, his face helpless. “You are making it very hard for me to believe you.”

—