Chapter 694

Chapter 694: The Urging Bell

“Captain! You have to believe me! You know how I am—let alone stealing wine from your collection, my legs start cramping the moment I even walk up to your cabin door… I really don’t know how this thing ended up in my hands!”

Anomaly 077 rasped at Lawrence at the top of his lungs. He was so loud that half the deck could hear him. The seafarers passing by all turned to look, curious what trouble the most unusual “member” of the White Oak had stirred up this time.

Lawrence, his hair already gray, only frowned. He ignored the way the mummified corpse howled like a ghost right in front of him and instead stared thoughtfully at the two bottles of beer sitting on the deck beside him.

Of course he believed what the Sailor said. Although this mummified corpse often did many unreliable things, there was one point on which he had always been very reliable: when he saw the captain, his legs really did cramp.

This “anomaly,” who feared the spirit flame like a natural enemy, could not possibly have taken the initiative to sneak into the captain’s cabin to steal anything. Even if these two bottles of beer were lying right there on the table, he would not dare touch them.

After thinking for a moment, Lawrence suddenly raised his head and said: “…Mr. Ted Riel just left? He was with you the whole time before he left?”

The Sailor froze for a second. He did not know why the captain suddenly turned the topic in this direction, but he still hurried to nod: “Yeah, he just left. Before he went, he was chatting with me the whole time.”

Lawrence fixed his gaze on Anomaly 077’s eyes: “What were you talking about?”

“…Poetry and songs?” Anomaly 077 answered without thinking, then quickly waved his hands before the old captain’s face could change. “Of course not… It was something like worldviews or something? I don’t really remember clearly. We seemed to talk about a lot. I just felt that Mr. Ted, that Truth Keeper, was weighed down with worries, and he talked to me about the world, the future, life, things like that…”

He trailed off, hesitated, then muttered, a little uncertain: “I think I even offered him a drink, but he didn’t take it… Weird, did I actually offer or not…”

Lawrence’s brow furrowed slightly. He watched the mummified corpse’s expression and movements with a grave look. After the other had mumbled for a long time, he finally asked: “Then do you still remember how you answered him? Do you remember what you said?”

The Sailor stopped muttering at once. After a moment of trying to recall, his face slowly turned confused and uneasy.

“I… kind of don’t remember? I should have told him a lot, but I can only recall a few lines… Most of the time it felt like I was just babbling nonsense…” Anomaly 077 muttered, looking nervously at the captain. “Wait, I remember now… I didn’t mean to start talking, but back then there was always another voice talking along with me, pushing me to speak… Captain, that feels kind of wrong, doesn’t it?”

“It is wrong… of course it’s wrong,” Lawrence said softly. As he spoke, a faint layer of eerie green flame quietly rose at his side and flowed out across the deck. At the same time, a vast dark silhouette silently surfaced on the sea beside the White Oak—the Black Oak appeared like a reflection rising from the deep. Its hull was wrapped in black mist, lights flickering, its outline shifting and unsteady.

Anomaly 077 jumped in fright at the sudden movement. He hopped back, dodging the spirit flame spreading over the deck, and shouted: “Hey, Captain, what are you doing…”

“An uninvited guest came aboard—though he may already have left,” Lawrence said casually after giving Anomaly 077 a glance. “Martha told me she saw a figure in the White Oak’s reflection that does not belong to any of us. At one point that figure was standing right next to you.”

The Sailor went blank for a second. His expression slowly twisted into horror: “…Holy crap!”

…

“Your judgment was correct. There really was an uninvited guest on the White Oak then—he was right near Anomaly 077,” Duncan nodded to Ted Riel. “You felt you ‘heard’ two voices. One of them should have come from that uninvited guest.”

Ted Riel had noticed the change in Duncan’s expression a moment ago and now spoke, guessing: “…Did the White Oak send you a message? Did that old captain catch him?”

“No,” Duncan shook his head. “The other side was very alert. By the time Lawrence and Martha noticed something, he had already left the ship.”

“Left?” Ted Riel looked a little puzzled. “Out on the boundless sea, where could he possibly…”

He suddenly fell silent. As a Truth Keeper, he had already found the most likely answer from his own experience.

Duncan noticed the change in his expression and gently nodded: “Do you still remember what you and that ‘Sailor’ talked about back then?”

“I remember,” Ted Riel answered at once. He quickly went through it in his head, then repeated everything he had discussed with the “Sailor” without leaving anything out.

As he listened, Duncan’s face grew more and more serious. In the end he nodded: “As I thought… There is no way that Sailor could have said those things on his own.”

Ted Riel looked puzzled: “How can you be so sure?”

“He isn’t that well educated.”

Ted Riel: “…”

“Looks like we can basically confirm the uninvited guest’s identity,” Duncan let out a slow breath. “That set of theories sounds a bit like the Doomsday rhetoric of a Ender, but it’s more like a milder, more logical version. The one talking to you should have been a Ender in a rational state. He hid on the White Oak and spoke to you through the Sailor’s mouth.”

He paused, then added: “Based on what Lawrence reported, the whole thing looked like a kind of mental ‘overwriting’ and ‘mental guidance.’ The Sailor still remembers talking with you, but he can’t recall the details of the conversation. He also did some things that don’t fit his usual personality. That should also be the effect of this influence.”

Ted Riel frowned. His expression turned a bit strange: “…I’ve never heard of Enders having this kind of ability or working this way…”

“That’s normal. Not long ago we didn’t even believe there were rational Enders in this world,” Duncan shrugged. “This group of ‘Subspace worshipers’ who live in the cracks of time have always been the most mysterious of all. Sometimes they act like monsters twisted by Subspace. Sometimes they look like polite scholars. They live in a non-linear time stream, so strictly speaking… maybe no one in the whole world has ever met a ‘complete’ Ender. Everything we know about them so far is only the temporary state they show in one specific ‘time slice.’”

“…An interesting theory,” Ted Riel raised an eyebrow, then smoothed his expression and spoke in a more serious tone. “A Ender could show up right under my nose, get away safe and sound in the end, and not even alert that old captain under your command… It seems their strangeness really is beyond imagination. But after that ‘uninvited guest’ did all this, it was only to borrow the Sailor’s mouth to preach some spooky Doomsday theory to me… What do you think of what he said?”

Duncan did not answer at once. He fell silent and thought over the words Ted Riel had heard from the “Sailor.” After a long time, he suddenly looked up: “What about you? Do you think patching this world up has any meaning?”

“It’s not about whether it has meaning. It’s that there isn’t any other way,” Ted Riel shook his head lightly. “The world is a great ship sailing on the sea. Maybe it really is like the Ender said: this ship is leaking, it is sinking, and it has already reached the point of no cure. But what else can we, who live on the ship, do? The only thing we can do is patch it and patch it again. That is still better than sitting and waiting to die, isn’t it?”

Duncan did not agree or disagree. He only sank into a long silence, and no one knew what he was thinking about at that moment.

Just then, a faint, unreal bell suddenly rang in Ted Riel’s ears, cutting off his talk with Duncan.

The Truth Keeper froze on the spot for a second. After he picked out the bell’s rhythm and interval, he slowly frowned in confusion: “The Swift Bell…?”

“The Swift Bell?” Duncan’s voice came from beside him. “You mean this sudden bell that just rang?”

“Yes. It’s the summons for the Saints to go to…” Ted Riel answered without thinking, but stopped halfway. He turned to Duncan with a shocked look. “Wait, you heard that bell too?!”

“Yeah, I heard it. What is it?” Duncan looked puzzled. “Should I not have heard it? It was pretty obvious…”

“Of course you shouldn’t have!” Ted Riel almost jumped out of his chair. “That’s the summoning bell from the Nameless King’s Tomb. Many years ago, the Four Gods Church built seals and mental guidance around this bell. In theory, only the Saints of the Four Gods should be able to hear the summons…”

“The Nameless King’s Tomb?” Duncan began to react. “Ah, Vanna did mention something like this to me before. So that’s what she meant by the ‘Swift Bell’…”

As he spoke, he stood up and looked around, then said offhandedly: “The bell is ringing again—it seems it’s urging the Saints to gather. Are you supposed to take part in the assembly?”

“In theory, yes…” Ted Riel said, but then suddenly hesitated. “But this shouldn’t be happening… We are still in the Deep Sea Church’s duty period. Technically, even I shouldn’t be able to hear the bell…”

He raised his head and stared at Duncan. Duncan stared back.

The bell rang yet again, carrying a solemn air, carrying a note of urgency, as if it was preparing to make a grand proclamation to the world.