Chapter 614

Chapter 614: Beneath the Fault

Duncan felt his thoughts spreading through the ship. His senses fanned out like a spiderweb, and every part of the vessel seemed to become part of his own body. It went more smoothly than last time, clearer than last time. This ghost ship sailing along the edge of the dream was laying all its secrets bare to him.

His mind began to sink down layer by layer. It went from the tall aft deck, to the cabins below, to the intermediate decks that stored powder and shot, then to the locker that held the anchor chains and the water tanks. It slid along every wall and every pillar, every rope and every consecrated lantern.

The whole ship slowly turned into a fine, detailed “projection” and floated in his mind.

Duncan compared the structure in his mind with his memories, hoping to find something that did not fit. Maybe it would be a beam that was not in the design. Maybe it would be a cabin that had never appeared in the Mortal Realm. Maybe it would be a hidden compartment no one had ever found. That would be where the Vanished and Goathead were misaligned in their fused consciousness.

At first this was only a sudden thought. Duncan had only realized that this ship was not Goathead’s own dream, and that the Vanished’s own “memories” might also be at work in it. So he wanted to look for proof that the latter existed. But as his perception kept spreading across the ship, that “let’s try it” thought grew firm. It was as if an invisible voice was giving him mental guidance and telling him—

There really was something hidden deep inside this ship. The Vanished really wanted to tell him some secrets. In some place that could not be seen from the Mortal Realm, the Vanished still “remembered” things that had once happened in Subspace.

And that hidden memory pointed to one of the core secrets in this tangled dream—

the origin of Goathead, and the link between this dream ship and Atlantis.

Was it his own intuition? Or was the Vanished really whispering to him without stop?

A vague idea rose in Duncan’s heart, but he did not get stuck on the question. He focused on his work and searched for any clues that might exist.

It was not easy. Even with the ship he knew best, Duncan did not dare claim he could clearly remember where every single item lay on the Vanished. He could only hope his “intuition” would work in this process and help him find some place that felt wrong.

But he had not expected that he would not need any help from intuition at all. The wrongness was even more obvious and jarring than he had imagined.

Under the third deck, he sensed a large… “perception fault”.

Duncan frowned at once. He gripped the wheel in his hands and looked down toward the place he “saw” in his perception. It was right below him.

The bottom of the ship?

Something suddenly came to Duncan’s mind. He hesitated, then let go of the wheel.

His link with the “helm” broke.

But the perceptions the whole ship sent to him did not stop. He could still feel that this ship was linked to him. The ship still sailed fast through endless darkness and mist, and in the dark space beyond the rails, those vast structures like plant roots and branches still existed and kept flashing past on all sides.

The “flowing light” of Atlantis was there as well, still circling nonstop around the bridge.

Looking at this scene, Duncan had a faint realization. It seemed that once the link was formed, it would not break until this dream ended.

Because he had entered by Dreamwalking through his reflection, he was now also a part of this dream. The actions he took here would no longer be treated as “outside invasions”, and the dream’s own power to repair itself would not easily drive him out or erase him.

After he confirmed this, Duncan let out a breath of relief and quickly left the bridge. But before he went deeper into the ship, he turned back on the aft deck and returned to the captain’s cabin.

Near the door of the captain’s cabin, he saw the old-fashioned consecrated lantern hanging quietly on the wall.

To go down into the lower structure of the Vanished, he needed to carry a consecrated lantern. Even though he did not know if this rule still had to be followed on this “dream ship”, he still chose to act with care.

Agatha’s figure appeared in a nearby mirror. She looked at Duncan with some curiosity and said: “Captain, what are you going to do?”

“I am going to the bilge,” Duncan said quickly. He glanced back toward the chart table. Goathead still crouched there in silence and showed no reaction. “There is something at the bottom of the ship.”

Agatha froze for a moment when she heard this. Her expression turned serious at once.

“We will talk as we walk,” Duncan added at once. “Do not discuss it here.”

As he spoke, he had already taken the old brass consecrated lantern, opened the door, and stepped out of the room.

He strode across the empty deck, which was filled with thin mist. The Fire Seed had already lit the consecrated lantern, and the flame in it gave off a ghostly green light. The drifting fog around him drew back a little in the lamplight, then closed in again behind him. In the light and shadow cast by the lantern, an extra shadow moved quickly at his side, almost overlapping his own.

Agatha’s voice came from that shadow: “The bilge you are talking about… is it the area you usually do not let me go near?”

“Yes,” Duncan nodded. He opened the door that led to the lower deck and went down the stairs quickly with the consecrated lantern in hand. “In the Mortal Realm, the bilge of the Vanished connects to Subspace. Down there is a broken region. Beyond every crack is a scene mirrored from Subspace. If I am not with them, it is dangerous for anyone to go near.”

“…It already sounds dangerous from how you describe it,” Agatha’s shadow seemed to shiver. He could not see her expression, but the shadow clearly grew a bit lighter, as if she was a little nervous. “From how you are acting, it seems that on this ‘dream ship’, the state of the bilge has changed?”

“A structure I have never seen before has appeared there,” Duncan said quickly. He went down the stairs beneath the deck and passed through the empty, dim storage rooms, going deeper layer by layer. “It is not far ahead. The broken region is at the bottom of the last set of stairs…”

After they moved as fast as they could through those dimly lit corridors and stairways, where the atmosphere was eerie and even the light and shadow sometimes showed Inversion, Duncan and Agatha’s shadow suddenly stopped.

They had reached the end of the last stairway. The door that led to the shattered region in the bilge stood quietly before Duncan’s eyes.

Agatha’s shadow “crawled” along the steps to Duncan’s side, then slowly rose up the wall. Judging from the outline, she seemed to be watching the door ahead with both care and tension.

“I cannot feel anything on the other side of the door,” she said in a low voice. “Even at this distance, I cannot feel it… it is as if the other side of the door is pure ‘emptiness’.”

Duncan glanced at Agatha, then lowered his eyes to the consecrated lantern in his hand.

The glow from the consecrated lantern lit the area around them in a soft way, but when it fell on the door ahead, it seemed to be absorbed by something. Only about half the brightness remained.

He drew a slow breath, stepped forward, and pushed the door open.

In the Mortal Realm, the space behind this door was the shattered bottommost cabin of the Vanished. It was the structure that floated in Subspace.

But here, what rushed into Duncan’s eyes at first was a boundless darkness.

He almost thought he was about to lose his footing and fall into that darkness.

Duncan felt his nerves tighten without thinking. The vast darkness was too strong a contrast with the scenes in the cabins before, and it caught him off guard. But soon, he saw that there were other things inside the darkness.

His eyes slowly adapted, and he saw the huge things that loomed in the dark:

First there was an enormous continuous structure, wide like a road floating in the void. Its two ends rose up slightly. Then he saw clearly many “branches” joined to both sides of that continuous structure. They lined up neatly in the dark and stretched all the way to the edge of his sight, like… ribs.

Duncan stood in the middle of this vast continuous structure. He saw that apart from the “main trunk” under his feet and the smaller branches around it that looked like ribs, there was no sign of any hull wall here at all, not even shattered pieces. Between those “ribs” there was only dark emptiness. Wisps of fog rolled in the darkness and wound through this wide space.

Duncan knew what it was.

At the same time, Agatha’s shadow also “crawled” out through the door and fell beside Duncan’s shadow. She stared in shock at the unbelievable scene in front of them and only reacted after a moment: “Wait, this thing is…”

“The keel of the Vanished,” Duncan said in a low voice, nodding slightly.

“The keel… right, the Vanished is a sailing warship built a century ago. Of course it has a keel…” Agatha spoke in a hesitant way, and her tone sounded a bit strange. “But it looks…”

Duncan did not answer Agatha. Almost all his attention had been drawn to that amazing structure that curved and stretched away in the dark.

This was the first time he had seen the keel of the Vanished. According to this world’s shipbuilding rules, a finished sailing warship would never expose its keel in any visible part of the interior. The “bottom compartment” of the Vanished where the keel could once be seen had already shattered and floated in Subspace, and the keel’s structure could no longer be told apart there.

He had never thought about what the keel of this ship would look like.

Now he knew.

He stepped onto that “road” floating in the dark, walked along it, and stopped in front of the first “segment”.

The light from the consecrated lantern lit the huge bulging joint in front of him. Farther away lay the next “segment”, and more segments after that.

This kind of segmented “jointed structure” clearly did not meet the building rules for a sailing ship’s keel. For an ordinary Old Era sailing ship, the keel had to be a single, whole piece of wood. Only then could it endure the waves on the sea.

But Duncan believed that this keel at the bottom of the Vanished, with its many “jointed segments”, was surely stronger than any other keel in the world.

Because it was the spine of an Elder God.