Chapter 563

Chapter 563: Another Visit to the Garden.

As always, Alice trusted the captain’s words without question. She did not even get curious about why Duncan suddenly wanted to use that key again, and happily agreed.

But Duncan still explained it carefully to this doll: “I am going to enter that ‘Alice Manor’ again to confirm some guesses about the Old World.”

Alice nodded hard. She did not really understand what the “Old World” in the captain’s mouth was, but she knew it was something very serious.

Because they had already done this once, she quickly found a comfortable, steady place to sit this time. Then she turned around and exposed the Keyhole on her back.

“I actually talked it over with Nina before and asked her to change the back of my clothes to see if she could make a hole around the Keyhole,” the doll said happily as she waited for the captain to wind her up. “But she was worried that sand and dust and other things would get into my Keyhole… I think she worries too much. It is not like I roll around on the ground. How would sand get into my Keyhole?”

“Better keep it covered most of the time,” Duncan said casually. “No one knows if this delicate structure is fragile. If something gets in and jams it, I would have no idea how to fix it.”

“Miss Lucretia might be able to fix it. She was the one who fixed Lunie… But you are right, it is still better to be careful. It took a long time to fix Lunie’s head…”

The silver-haired doll muttered on, talking about these things that would sound far too eerie and strange to other people as if she were chatting about everyday life. Duncan could not help but show a faint smile as he listened. Then he smiled and shook his head, picked up that strange brass key, and, just like last time, carefully inserted it into Alice’s Keyhole.

The familiar click sounded. The key began to turn on its own. Duncan steadied himself a little. In the next second, he felt the light and shadows before his eyes change. His senses quickly shifted and reshaped.

A moment later, he opened his eyes in the dark and let his five senses get used to the change in environment. When the scene before him settled, that strange “garden” under the cartoon sky, lush and green, appeared in front of him once more.

The silver-haired doll who looked exactly like Alice still leaned quietly against the pillar in the center of the garden, sleeping among the vines and thorns. The drawing board in the doll’s hands was also just as before. Its position and shape had not changed at all.

Duncan blinked. He did not rush to move at once. Instead, he carefully checked the surroundings and compared them with the scene in his memory.

Half a minute later, he was sure there was no Anomaly around. Everything stayed the same as when he left. He even had a feeling that while he had been away, time in this “manor” had stopped, and only when he returned did time here start moving again.

…This was likely not an illusion.

Duncan remembered what that strange “headless Butler” had once told him about the special rules of time in Alice Manor, and fell into thought.

After thinking for a moment, he raised his head and looked up at the “sky” above the garden.

The last time he came here, most of his attention had been drawn by the many strange scenes in the manor. His head had been full of questions. His limited focus had been scattered in all directions. So even though the sky over this garden had caught his eye, he had not looked very closely at those eerie cartoon drawings.

This time, he looked very carefully.

Clouds that looked as if they had been drawn with a child’s crayon floated against a pale blue sky. Exaggerated lines of sunlight cut through the clouds. The “Sun” painted in yellow paint was just as he had seen last time, giving off light and warmth and keeping the garden full of life.

It still brimmed with childlike fun, and yet that childlike fun overflowed with weirdness.

Duncan suddenly narrowed his eyes a little.

He studied that yellow Sun closely. This time, he finally noticed a detail he had missed before.

Around that scribbled Sun, there were no rune rings at all!

“No wonder… no wonder I felt something was off last time but could not tell what…”

Duncan muttered, and his expression changed slightly. He finally knew what had made the sky in this strange drawing feel so wrong. It was a normal Sun. The brushstrokes were abstract and simple, but it was without a doubt the Sun he was familiar with.

But it was exactly because he was too used to it that he had failed to notice this obvious Anomaly at a quick glance last time. If natives like Morris or Vanna came here, they would probably feel something was wrong at first sight.

Duncan’s brows slowly drew together. Now that he had confirmed that the sky had a normal Sun, it felt as if one corner of the secrets hidden in this “Alice Manor” was being quietly lifted.

On the Boundless Sea, the Sun was an artificial heavenly body with twin rune rings. This was common knowledge. From the start of the Deep Sea era to now, across ten thousand years, this fact had never changed. No one in the world knew what the real Sun looked like. Even those Suntists who claimed to worship the true Sun god only drew a twisted, terrifying Elder God when they preached.

Then who had left this normal Sun, or rather this original Sun, inside Alice Manor?

This doll called “Alice” had only come into being after Queen Ray Nora of Frostholm fell into the Deep Sea. So why did the depths of Alice Manor, which was linked to her, record the image of the Sun from before the Great Annihilation?

And if he also thought about what the World Aggregation Theory guessed about the Great Annihilation, that the Deep Sea age had been piled up and reshaped from the remains of countless Old Worlds, then this original Sun recorded in Alice Manor… should belong to which Old World?

Did it stand for some star in some Old World? Or was it only an abstract symbol?

For some reason, what came to Duncan’s mind at that moment was that plump dove.

He frowned deeply and shook his head, over and over trying to rearrange the tangled information in his mind. Suddenly another clue rose to the surface of his thoughts.

Alice’s birth.

Her appearance had indeed been copied from Queen Ray Nora of Frostholm. But her original body, the spirit coffin, had also been a flawed replica of the “Alice Guillotine”. Facts had proven that for the maker of Anomaly 099, the source and process of the copy itself did not matter. Whether it was a great human being or a hard block of wood, it was only the first raw material. The one that truly mattered was the maker itself.

It was the faulty replica of the Abyssal Lord that had created Anomaly 099.

Then could he think of it this way: this so-called “Alice Manor” was also a creation of the faulty replica of the Abyssal Lord. And if he took it further, even a faulty replica of the Abyssal Lord should still hold a great amount of information from the original body. Then some things in this Alice Manor might trace their source all the way back to that Elder God who remained in the Abyssal Deep seas.

Duncan lifted his head and once more carefully studied that abstract, simple Sun, along with the clouds and sunlight around it.

…Were these doodle-like images part of the memories the Abyssal Lord had let slip by accident, or some kind of message it was consciously sending out?

The more Duncan thought about it, the more he felt this was very likely. There was one point that was beyond doubt:

The real form of the original Sun had only existed at time nodes before the Great Annihilation. The secrets of this Alice Manor should also go back to before that time. From all he knew so far, only the Four Gods and those strange, mysterious Elder Gods in the deep layers of the world might know something about the world before the Great Annihilation.

Duncan’s heart stirred. He lowered his head and saw the drawing board in the doll’s hands.

After a brief pause, he bent down and carefully moved around the thorns, then slowly drew the drawing board out of the doll’s hands.

On the front of the drawing board, the eerie whirlpool, twisted stars, and ominous dark red light were still painted there. On the back, along the frame, the familiar words were still carved:

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

The chosen clan picked up the lost Ancient Star and forged it into a crown of divine blessing.

Duncan’s gaze stayed on this line for a long time.

It was describing how the ancient Critt clan, under the guidance of the Crawling King, had built Vision 001 and raised it into the sky.

When he had first entered this garden and seen these words, he had not been able to understand what the line meant.

But now he suddenly understood.

He thought of that ten meter wide Moon, a “piece” that had fallen off the rune rings of Vision 001.

The rune rings that bound the Sun could be seen as a shining crown.

And that Moon, twisted and compressed by some unknown force… naturally fit the description of a lost Ancient Star.

Some faint sounds suddenly came from the depths of the garden and startled Duncan out of his thoughts.

He jerked his head up and looked toward the source of the sound.

There were only lush plants over there. Between the thick bushes and the shade of the short trees lay dim shadows.

But Duncan was sure he really had heard something.

This was the deepest part of Alice Manor. According to the headless Butler, even the high-ranking servants of the manor did not have the right to step in here as they pleased. Only Mistress Alice and the one called the “Gardener” could come here, but that Gardener seemed to have stopped appearing a long time ago.

Intruders? Or had that Gardener come back?

Duncan slowly furrowed his brow. He slipped the drawing board back into the doll’s arms and carefully walked toward that patch of thick bushes.

“Rustle… rustle…”

The faint sounds came again from some shadow.

Suddenly, something flickered at the edge of his vision.

A streak of shadow, like a slick and eerie tentacle, was sliding and wriggling through the darkness at the edge of the garden!