Chapter 698

Chapter 698: The Figure on the throne.

The figure with short black hair and a white robe brushed past him. That brief sideways glance as they crossed paths felt almost like an illusion born in Duncan’s own mind. He saw the figure walk toward the depths of Vision 004 and, after passing through a wall, silently vanish from his sight.

Doomsday Observer… Doomsday Survey Team…

Those names, which naturally led to all kinds of associations, finally stirred a curiosity Duncan could no longer hold back. He turned to the tall guide beside him and asked: “What is their mission?”

“Enter the Time-Stream. Within the knowable range of time, confirm whether the Sanctuary World is running according to the Creator’s original Blueprint, and determine the timestamp of the system’s collapse.”

The Tomb Guardian spoke calmly as he stepped forward again, leading Duncan deeper into the tomb of the Nameless King.

But the Gravekeeper’s answer had already stirred up waves in Duncan’s heart.

Observers who traveled through the Time-Stream, survey teams that tracked Doomsday… was it really them?!

Duncan suddenly raised his head. His gaze swept over the old-fashioned walls and pillars lining the corridor around him, and another thought quickly came to him: “What exactly is this place?”

As soon as he asked, he felt something strange. It sounded like a question he already knew the answer to, yet for some reason he felt that the Gravekeeper before him would understand what he really meant.

The Gravekeeper’s steps paused for a barely noticeable moment.

“This is the first Critt observation post—and it will also be the last,” the deep, calm voice reached Duncan’s ears. “A very, very long time ago, there were one thousand two hundred such Doomsday observation posts, and we directly controlled ten of them.”

Duncan froze for a moment. All at once, he remembered a passage he had read before—

“…To avoid repeating the failure of the King of Dreams and the pale king of giants, He divided the Blueprint, so that there would no longer be many nations in the mortal world, and the nations would become one thousand two hundred cities. He gave the first ten cities to that clan to rule, and granted them the name ‘Critt’…”

The stylistic features of Vision 004 now had an explanation—it really was a relic left by the ancient kingdom of Critt. This relic had been running for ten thousand years, and even after becoming a “Vision”, it still kept operating!

At the same time, what had been recorded in that Blasphemous Tome was once again confirmed. The “one thousand two hundred cities” written in the book really existed, but they did not refer to one thousand two hundred city-states. They meant one thousand two hundred Doomsday observation posts!

The people called the Doomsday Survey Team set out from here and entered the Time-Stream to monitor the operation of the Sanctuary World and to determine the “Time Boundary” when the Sanctuary World reached its limit…

A broad scene suddenly appeared at the edge of his vision. Duncan snapped out of his thoughts at once, lifted his head, and looked forward in surprise.

He did not know when, but under the Gravekeeper’s lead he had already walked out of that corridor that seemed to have no end. After they passed through a tall gate, the view before his eyes suddenly opened up—not just open, it hardly even felt like the inside of a “building” anymore!

He saw a plaza, a plaza under a dim yellow sky that looked big enough to hold tens of thousands of people gathered together.

The gate of the corridor where Duncan stood was high above the ground. A sloping stone ramp led down from it to the edge of the plaza. The plaza itself was covered with huge, flat slabs of gray-white stone, and a wide walkway cut straight across it. He also saw solemn pillars with a faint metallic sheen standing on both sides of the road. There seemed to have been more complex structures on top of those pillars, but they had weathered and fallen apart over the long corruption of the years. All around the plaza he could see all kinds of collapsed, leaning ruins, as if they had once been many gates and pillars. The only thing in sight that remained whole was the huge throne in the center of the plaza.

That pitch-black throne stood in the center of the plaza. Its back rose high, as if it were looking down on everything around it. A hazy, dim light, like the sky at dusk, hung over the plaza. Under that yellowish glow, the ruins before his eyes seemed wrapped in a near?eternal… loneliness.

For some reason, a desolate feeling rose in Duncan’s heart. It seemed that these collapsed, dust-covered ruins brought with them a heavy air that he could not help but feel.

The white-robed Tomb Guardian had already passed Duncan. He stepped onto the sloping ramp and walked in silence toward the plaza that had turned into ruins.

Duncan hesitated for a moment, then followed in silence.

They walked down the slope and reached the wide walkway that cut through the entire plaza. They moved forward slowly between two rows of tall, solemn stone pillars. Duncan’s gaze swept around from time to time, taking in the once splendid and grand structures that were now broken walls and shattered ruins.

From time to time, visions of the past appeared before his eyes. He saw people in long white robes or short gray robes appear beyond the pillars. They hurried across the plaza, some walking toward the abandoned gates at the edges, others gathering in places to talk, as if they were discussing something.

He could almost imagine how busy and important this place had once been. In the years of the Genesis Protocol, when the Crawling King was still adjusting the Blueprint of the New World, and when the ancient kingdom of Critt still acted as the Creator’s “assistant” in shaping this world, they had gathered here. They had worked and rushed about for the founding of the Sanctuary World and made plans for the growth of civilization over the next ten thousand years.

At that time, the Great Annihilation had just ended. The long chain of ruins left by the Great Collision still floated over the mortal world, and the order of all things rose and fell from dawn to dusk.

At that time, the meetings of the Elder Kings were held again and again. Two Long Nights had already failed, but the third Long Night was beginning to show a hint of dawn.

At that time, the troops known as the Doomsday Survey Team passed through the Veil of time as a vanguard force to check the boundaries of the Sanctuary World—the boundaries along the axis of time.

At that time, the Boundless Sea had perhaps only just taken shape, the city-states had not yet been built, and “the Sun” had not yet risen. The first Humans still slept in the Crawling King’s database. In the endless Long Night, only the lights of the ancient kingdom of Critt briefly lit up this chaotic world…

Back then, this place had not yet become Vision 004. There were still one thousand one hundred and ninety-nine other observation posts like it scattered among the ashes of the Great Annihilation, all waiting for the moment when the New World would be opened.

Now, all of that had already blown away with the wind.

Only this desolate, crumbling ruin remained, drifting in a gap outside the Mortal Realm, stirring Duncan’s thoughts and endless guesses deep in his heart.

The tall Tomb Guardian walked slowly ahead of Duncan, as if strolling through a corridor of time. When another team of the Doomsday Survey Team passed between the pillars, he suddenly broke the silence and said: “They have not sent any news back for a very long time.”

“…They went mad,” Duncan said softly.

“Oh.”

The Tomb Guardian nodded and kept walking slowly forward.

After a while, he spoke again, as if talking to himself: “At the beginning, they sent back a lot of information. Within the first Communication Cycle after they set out, they sent back news of the Age of City-States. After that came the rise and fall of the Far Sea Alliance in the darkness.

“They mentioned the disappearance of the kingdom of Critt and happily mentioned the appearance of ‘the Sun’. In the reports they sent back, there were many unbelievable things that did not seem to fit the Blueprint’s design, yet in the Creator’s later calculations, the appearance of those things all seemed inevitable…”

The Gravekeeper stopped. He lifted his head to look at the huge, dark throne in the center of the plaza. After a long silence, he shook his head slightly.

“After that, their messages grew fewer and fewer. Sometimes… there were even things we could not understand. It seemed they had dived very deep into the Time-Stream, or gone very far along it. That had already gone beyond our original plan…

“Many times, the messages they sent back contradicted each other, or came in a scrambled order. This happened more and more often later on. The Creator’s calculations judged this to be normal, because the Sanctuary World is a finite model. It takes this place as its center, like a lamp lighting up a wilderness, and time is the distance that light can reach. The farther away it is, the more the undefined darkness controls everything. At the boundary of time, if they could not find another lamp, that simply meant there was nothing worth reporting…”

The Gravekeeper fell silent again. After an unknown length of quiet, he spoke softly once more, as if to himself: “They have not sent any news back for a very long time…”

Duncan said nothing.

He had already reached the black throne that looked as if it had been made for giants. He slowly lifted his eyes and looked at the figure on the throne.

A headless body sat quietly on the throne. Countless thick cables and pipes wound around it like veins and nerves stretching out from its flesh. They connected every part of the body and linked it to the countless ports and slots on the throne. Some of those ports still blinked with faint lights, and a kind of flowing glow that seemed almost alive moved through some of the pipes, constantly pouring into the body and then flowing back out again.

The moment he saw the headless body on the throne, Duncan’s eyes changed slightly. He suddenly remembered the scene Ted Riel had once described to him, something Ted had seen in Subspace. But more than that memory, what shocked him and even left him a little lost was a certain… familiarity coming from that body.

Stunned, he lifted his head and fixed his gaze on the body on the throne. After almost a full minute, he could not hold back and said: “In Subspace, there is a headless body sitting on a pitch-black throne…”

“That is his shadow,” the Tomb Guardian said softly. “The Creator took away his body, but could only take a part of it. He was torn into pieces, and it was not only his body that split apart. His memories, soul, shadow, thoughts, his past and his future… all were shattered in the second Long Night. The Creator brought this body here, and the shadow stayed in the place where he first died.”

Duncan suddenly turned his head and looked into the Tomb Guardian’s eyes. The sense of familiarity he felt from the body on the throne grew stronger and stronger, until he finally could not help but ask: “Who exactly is the one on the throne?”

“Saslokar. The Creator used him as the template to create the first ‘Critt’ (from ‘create’).”