Chapter 668

Chapter 668: Held in Starlight

Among the many figures reflected in the chaotic single eye of the Pale giant King, one place was left empty—was it a coincidence, or the deliberate work of the ancient Elder Kings?

Duncan only knew that when he walked to the rail and carefully examined that giant eye, he happened to be standing in front of that empty spot. His figure reflected there, and only after he picked out the other unspeakable shapes from the murky sediment and mist on the eye’s surface did he notice this.

It might really have been just a coincidence—he wanted very much to tell himself that. But in Subspace, before the corpse of an Elder God, he did not believe in coincidences like this.

Duncan’s brow tightened. He then carefully, bit by bit, slowly stepped back, as if afraid of waking something that slept here.

The dead Pale giant King, and the figures of the Elder Kings reflected in that eye—Duncan always felt that these beings were silently laying a gaze upon him, watching his every move, like a distant gaze cast from the long river of time.

Moving with cautious, slow steps, he left the space directly before the eye.

Yet in the next second, he saw his own figure appear again, once more quietly reflected in that eye, standing among the Elder Kings.

Duncan’s eyes widened a little at once. He felt as if his heart suddenly skipped half a beat, and right after that, an even more unexpected sight appeared:

The image of himself left in the giant’s eye began to change.

That tall, imposing blur in a captain’s uniform and gloomy tricorn hat started to shake and shift, as if some illusion was fading. The figure quickly turned into another form—a “human” in a white shirt and black trousers, not very strong, with a face so blurred it could not be made out.

That was Zhou Ming.

Zhou Ming stood motionless on the deck, like a statue, staring fixedly at the murky giant eye only a step away from the rail, staring at the “self” reflected in that eye.

After an unknown time, he finally took a step forward and came once more to the front of the eye. Separated only by the layer of muddy mist clotted on the eyeball’s surface, he cast his gaze at his own hazy reflection and slowly reached out his hand.

He knew he was taking a risk. In this strange and dangerous Subspace, he was making a terrifying attempt—yet in the end, his fingertips still touched the surface of the eyeball.

A feeling of “nothingness” came from his fingertips. In just that instant, Zhou Ming understood what Lucretia had meant when she described the “void” she felt when she touched that cylindrical black shadow at the border.

He was sure he had touched something, but he did not feel any warmth. He did not feel any hardness. A broken and twisted “sensation” passed in from his fingers and left him stunned for a brief moment.

In the next instant, Zhou Ming saw the reflection of himself in the eye suddenly change. The “human” in the white shirt collapsed like an unstable phantom. Every bit of color that made up the image faded and broke apart in the blink of an eye, and as the colors vanished, countless pinpoints of light surged out from within!

A field of brilliant starlight replaced that quickly dissolving figure and spread outward into the darkness. For the first second, the stars still held a vague, twisted human outline, yet countless rays seemed to overflow from the edges of that shape. The light of a whole star river almost covered the entire eyeball in the blink of an eye, then kept overflowing, rising up—the starlight finally spilled out of the eyeball, spreading from its surface!

The light flowed like a stream and brushed against Zhou Ming’s fingers. At the instant of “contact,” Zhou Ming heard a thunderous roar inside his head.

It was countless booms piled on top of one another, the “tremor” created when a sea of information was pressed into a single moment. It was a vast set of data enough to explain the rules that governed the whole world, an entrance, a gate, and the advice and thoughts of billions of people. In that brief instant that might have been no longer than a single Planck time, yet felt eternal, Zhou Ming felt as if he were being torn apart. His mind rose and sank in the roar, struggling to catch the voices layered inside it. He felt he was just about to understand what those voices meant, and many broken fragments swarmed into his head, crashing through his reason—

“…We are humans… At this moment we stand at the end of all things.”

In that roar, in those countless fragments, one voice spoke like this.

Zhou Ming’s eyes flew wide.

“…We have almost understood every secret…

“…The laws that rule the stars… time and space, the rise and fall of information…

“Until we found that the end of time is destruction… an event beyond our models of thought… happening outside our universe…

“Moving forward along time’s arrow has become meaningless… Within our finite models… the chance of ending that event is zero… We have decided to send #*#%?@ backward to…

“We… named it… ‘Inverse Singularity’… In our calculations… after that event, the only fragment that can remain whole on any timeline lasts 0.002 seconds…

“You are Zhou Ming. You… from the old-calendar timestamp 2022-07-10-07-10-00-000… ending at 2022-07-10-07-10-00-002…

“It is now 41765-12c-32-15b. All things have ended before our eyes.

“Good luck to you.

“Good luck to them.

“Good luck to us…”

Boom—

Zhou Ming felt as if he suddenly stopped after an endless fall, torn free from some frozen instant. The countless overlapping roars turned into a distant, blurred impression in his mind. The part of him that still belonged to “human” reason came back in a split second, and in that brief, fragile moment of clarity, he stumbled backward.

But at some point, all that brilliant starlight had already faded.

The starlight that had overflowed from the giant’s eye was gone. The reflections on the surface of the eyeball had vanished as well—not only the reflections of “Duncan,” “Zhou Ming,” and the Starlight giant, but also the figures that had once stood in the darkness, those shapes that symbolized the ancient Elder Kings.

The “shadows” that had gathered in this eye for a hundred centuries seemed to have been “washed” away by whatever had erupted in that instant of thunder, leaving only a hazy layer of murk that stood for death, covering the eyeball with no more information left to see.

Clearly, this eyeball was only some kind of “carrier of information,” and now, after one powerful outburst and flush of that information, everything on its surface had been wiped clean.

The surroundings grew quiet. There was no more noise, no more roaring. Subspace seemed to return to its eternal stillness. On the ruined deck of the Vanished, all things fell silent.

Yet the broken “fragments” that had rushed out in that instant of thunder still spun in Zhou Ming’s mind, like a never-ending storm that howled again and again through his reason and thoughts. Only after a long time did this “storm” slowly calm, turning into a deep impression and memory, lodged in his mind forever.

Zhou Ming stepped back a few paces and lifted a hand to press his forehead. He panted, and the wild beating of his heart slowly settled.

His ability to think returned to him.

Zhou Ming stood for a long time in the murky gloom of Subspace, letting its meaningless time flow past. He thought in that eternal silence, thought without stopping, until after an unknown span, his figure finally moved again.

He raised his head and looked into the distance.

The endless Subspace swallowed his gaze.

In that boundless darkness, countless other secrets must still be hidden—but he was already tired.

That single “roar” had almost drained all his strength. He had no energy left to steer this ghost ship deeper into that endless dark.

“…Time to go back.”

Zhou Ming muttered softly. At the same time, he walked to the captain’s door. He still remembered how to return from Subspace to the Mortal Realm. He only had to push open the Lost Ones’ Door here, step into another dark space, then open a door again inside that darkness, and he would return to the Mortal Realm dimension.

When he laid his hand on the handle of the Lost Ones’ Door, he paused. Then he turned his head and gave the boundless chaos behind him one last look.

He knew that sooner or later, he would come back.

Without hesitating again, he quickly and smoothly completed the “two-door” process of return.

When the familiar sound of waves entered his ears once more, and the salty, cool night wind brushed across his face, Duncan felt his heart finally grow calm again—he had returned to the familiar Mortal Realm.

He looked up. The cold glow of the World’s Wound poured down from high above onto the sea. Faint golden sunlight spread from the distant waters and twined with that pale light in the sky, sketching out the strange yet charming night view that belonged only to the region near Lightwind Harbor.

Soft creaks mixed with the nearby waves, with now and then the friction of ropes on the mast as they adjusted themselves.

Everything he had experienced in Subspace now felt like a bizarre dream.

Duncan shook his head. He knew, of course, that it was no dream. It was vital information, even a “truth” that pointed toward his own nature.

But for now he could only set these messy thoughts aside—for too much key information was still missing, and wild guesses would not lead to any real conclusion.

From the other side of the door came a sound from the captain’s cabin, the voice of his familiar First Mate.

“…I’ve finished talking about the customs of the Northern Seas. Now I’ll tell you about the Central Seas. I’m a very experienced seafarer, you know, the city-states of the Central Seas…”

A faint smile rose on Duncan’s face before he knew it. He felt himself relax a little again. Then he took a deep breath and opened the captain’s door.

At the edge of the chart table, Goathead, who had been chattering away at the other head, stopped at once and turned toward the captain standing in the doorway.

“Duncan Abnomar.” Duncan spoke casually before the creature could ask anything.

Goathead froze for a second, then its tone turned cheerful: “Ah! The captain is back!”

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