Chapter 528

Chapter 528: .

“The pendant?”

When she heard the words of the Subspace shadow in front of her, Heidi was stunned at first. Then she lowered her head and looked at the “amethyst” pendant on her chest, the one that had come from some glass workshop. In the next second, everything about that pendant rose up in her mind—

The strange antique shopkeeper.

The pendant her father had brought back from the antique shop.

The impossible protection it gave during the Black Sun incident.

The second pendant.

Vanna’s unfinished investigation of that antique shop.

And now… the appearance and words of Duncan Abnomar…

Miss Psychiatrist slowly widened her eyes. Her wild guesses slowly turned into solid fact. She suddenly felt… that she might need some psychological help herself.

“Relax a little, and also control where you look. Don’t stare at things you shouldn’t,” Duncan said to Heidi with a slow smile. “Your father asked me to remind you of that.”

Heidi felt her head buzzing. She could not tell if it was noise from mild mental corruption, or just hallucinations born from nervous tension. She held her forehead and finally forced her reason and impulses under control, but her thoughts still felt slow and broken: “My father… where is he now…”

“He is serving as an adviser on the Vanished. He was afraid you would worry, so he never told you. None of us thought you would get dragged into this mess so muddle-headedly.”

“Is he all right?! He is on your ship…” Heidi blurted out. But when she looked at the stern-faced “captain” in front of her, her voice suddenly faltered. No matter how she asked, it all felt rude and reckless right now.

Duncan did not mind at all. He answered casually: “He is fine. He keeps the healthiest schedule on the crew, and he plays a huge role on the ship. Anything else you want to know?”

Heidi opened her mouth. Words shuffled in her mind for a long time before another matter suddenly came to her. It had happened almost at the same time her father walked out of the house, and now it seemed full of holes. Her guess felt insane, but she still could not hold back from asking: “Then… is Vanna also on your…”

Duncan did not answer directly, but he confirmed her guess from the side: “Do you want to see them?”

Heidi froze for a moment and suddenly did not know how to answer this simple question. Only after two or three seconds did she jolt back to herself. Her first reaction was to put away that whole crowd of terrifying Personality Splits, then she spoke in a panic: “Is that allowed? You really permit it? Ah, sorry, I don’t mean anything else, but I heard a lot about you… I should…”

Her flustered words suddenly stopped.

Because, along with a rotating doorway of ghostly green flame, two very familiar figures had already appeared in front of her—

Morris wore a smile, while Vanna’s face looked a bit awkward.

“So, uh… long time no see,” Vanna walked up to Heidi, rubbed the tip of her nose, and greeted her. “Sorry I kept it from you for so long. The new post is kind of sensitive, and there are secrecy rules. I only got to come this time because the captain said yes… Are you mad?”

Heidi did not answer. She only stared wide-eyed at this friend of many years, then stared wide-eyed at Morris beside her. She held it in for a long time before finally blurting out: “Can one of you please explain in detail what on earth is going on?!”

“I’ll let you talk,” Duncan saw that they had started to talk and sensibly waved his hand, then turned and left. “I’ll go talk with Lucy.”

He left the two crew members and Heidi standing there, staring at each other with wide eyes, the awkwardness almost spilling over.

Duncan paid no attention to the faintly resentful air that flashed between Vanna and Morris behind him. He walked straight over to Lucretia, only to see the “Sea Witch” avoiding his eyes, looking rather embarrassed.

Lucretia had been thinking hard for a long time. Ever since Father suddenly entered this dream, she had been in a state of confusion and helplessness. While Father went to talk with that “psychiatrist” just now, she had been trying to decide how to talk to this “relative” she had not seen in so many years, how to adjust her mindset like Tyrian had, and…

How to explain that swing of her scythe just now.

Yet when Father really walked over, she realized she had not prepared anything at all. The “Witch” who made so many people fear her on the Boundless Sea was actually not good at dealing with sudden emotional scenes like this. Because of all the wild thoughts she had just had, she felt even more at a loss now.

Lucretia opened her mouth: “I…”

“No rush,” Duncan suddenly waved his hand, cutting off whatever Lucretia was about to say. Then he turned to look at Heidi and the other two not far away. “Let’s watch for a while.”

Lucretia: “…?”

She was a bit lost for a moment. She did not know what Father meant by “watch for a while”. She even started to think of words like “plan” and “scheme”, which were not what he meant at all. But the next second, she saw that the familiar yet long-absent figure beside her was simply looking into the distance with a very human, watching-the-show kind of expression.

The Sea Witch hesitated, then also looked that way. A strange feeling rose in her heart. She did not know how to describe this odd and awkward turn of events—this was nothing like the scene she had imagined for many years about meeting Father again.

She had imagined that one day in the future, her undying self might, like Tyrian, also meet the Vanished returning from Subspace. She had imagined a brutal clash between the shining stars and the Vanished, that evil spirit from Subspace destroying all the traitors, just like he had once destroyed the Viseran Thirteen Isles on the border…

And in some gentler dreams, in fantasies that had nothing to do with reason, she had also imagined another scene—

Father would really come back. It might be on a quiet afternoon, or in the last light before dusk. They might stand on a sea cliff, like that place they had gone to in her childhood. She no longer remembered which city-state it was, only the mild sea breeze and white flowers everywhere. She and her family would stand on the highest rock. Father would tell her about the things that had happened in distant places, and she would proudly show off her Radiant Star, all her laboratories, and all her books…

But those broken dreams had all melted away in the sunlight, like sighs fading into the wind.

She had never thought that when the day of reunion really came, it would look like this—she and Father standing in this dream that seemed endless, together…

Watching other people’s drama.

But little by little, Lucretia seemed to understand Father’s intent.

She also looked that way, at Miss Psychiatrist with her family and friend. Over there was another daughter full of worries, a father trying to explain everything through his embarrassment, and even a friend who did not know what to do.

Maybe this was what Father meant by letting her “watch for a while”.

Lucretia felt that she understood.

Then she heard Duncan break the silence beside her: “Actually, I tried to talk Morris into telling Heidi earlier, but we never found the right chance. Still, this works too. If he had explained everything before, I wouldn’t have anything to watch now.”

Lucretia felt she had understood too early.

In her brief confusion, she suddenly remembered something Tyrian had said in one of their earlier talks—

Father had found his humanity again.

But it seemed he had found a bit too much.

Back then she could not understand what her brother meant. Now she vaguely got it. The being that had returned from Subspace might be her father, but he was no longer only that.

“Lucy, what do you think?”

Duncan’s voice suddenly came from beside her, cutting off Lucretia’s wild thoughts. She jolted awake and looked at Father, who was now giving her a questioning look.

The messy thoughts in her mind quickly calmed down. The clash between old memories and what she saw now was thrown aside. The Sea Witch suddenly felt that all those tangled questions were not really problems. The person in front of her… was fine just like this.

After all, life was not academic research. Not every question had to have an answer.

“Miss Heidi will handle everything. I haven’t worked with her much, but I know she is rational. And there is even less need to worry about Mr. Morris. He is an adviser you trust…”

“Oh, I didn’t mean them. I meant this ‘place’,” Duncan waved his hand and pointed at the forest around them, which had fallen into dusk yet showed no sign of breaking apart. “This should be a dream, right? But it looks strange. It’s not like any dream I’ve seen…”

Lucretia felt a little off for a moment. Father’s thoughts now seemed to jump around, very different from the man in her memory. But she quickly adjusted, hurriedly sorting out her thoughts and pulling her attention away from the distant drama. She spoke while she thought: “The ‘entrance’ to this dream is Scholar Taran Ael, the mind entity over there that’s still frozen. His ‘self’ has not woken up yet. The story began like this…”

Lucretia laid out all the information she had as briefly as she could. Duncan listened carefully, then showed a thoughtful look.

“So, this forest is only a barrier that covers the ‘surface’ of the dream. The dream’s real form is hidden much deeper. And the one behind all this isn’t that elf named Taran Ael, but the ‘third Dreamer’.”

“The third, but there could also be a fourth or a fifth,” Lucretia said seriously. “Heidi’s experience shows that this dream is ‘connected’ to somewhere else. That means it could be connected to even more Dreamers. But all of that has been hidden. This forest’s ability to ‘heal itself’ and to ‘hide’… is far beyond what we imagined.”

Duncan said nothing. He frowned and sank into thought.

Just then, out of the corner of his eye, he saw the “Grand Scholar Taran Ael” not far away suddenly blink.