Chapter 744

Chapter 744.

The second glowing geometric body that fell onto the Boundless Sea still had a Lost Star at its core, but its situation was different from the first fragment. This Lost Star was a compressed gas planet.

According to the scholars’ initial measurements, the gas planet that served as the core still had a diameter of ten meters, exactly the same as the Moon inside the first fallen glowing orb.

Duncan cared more about something else: he did not recognize this planet.

At the very least, he was sure it was not a gas giant like Saturn or Jupiter that had once belonged to the Sun’s system. The silver, gray, and bluish metallic tones on its surface, and the few very distinctive storm vortices, were all completely unfamiliar to him.

Duncan stood beside the compressed gas giant and studied the cloud bands and vortex patterns on its surface. Thoughts rose and fell in his mind.

The core of the first glowing geometric body had been the Moon from his home. So when this second fallen relic appeared, he had instinctively thought he would see another familiar body from the Sun’s system. But now it seemed that the “raw material” used for the rune ring belt around the Sun was not limited to the Sun’s system of his homeworld. The Lost Stars that formed that ring all came from far deeper space, and might even have come from different universes.

Celestial bodies from different worlds were compressed and twisted, then transformed into the halo around the Sun to keep the Observer Effect stabilization anchor running. The Sun itself, as the core of it all, was in essence an eyeball sealed inside a crystalline shell. The eyeball stood for the eye of the observer. This whole device ensured that, after the Great Annihilation, incompatible World Wreckage could still collapse into a single Mortal Realm.

It seemed that this was the principle behind Vision 001.

After pondering for a long time, Duncan gently shook his head.

He knew that thinking about the workings of Vision 001 now was not very useful. This stabilization device, which had been running far past its service life, had already reached the end of its lifespan. Its collapse and extinction were fated. Even if he accepted Navigator One’s “continuation plan”, he could only use his own flame to replace Vision 001 and let this world enter an Age of Flame after the era of the Deep Sea. No matter what, the disintegration of the Observer Effect stabilization anchor itself was an irreversible process.

Even so, the way Vision 001 took effect still gave him some inspiration. After turning down Navigator One’s plan, he had to find another way to carry the civilization of the Deep Sea era forward. He vaguely had an idea, and the principles behind Vision 001 would be very useful for refining that idea.

Tyrian and Aiden stood on the beach, a little tense and confused as they watched Duncan in the distance. They did not know what Father, the old captain, was doing, and they did not dare walk up and disturb him. But it was clear they had noticed how Duncan’s expression shifted between deep thought and sudden insight.

Aiden looked around. After he made sure all unrelated people had already backed away, he moved closer to Tyrian, lowered his voice, and said: “What do you think the old captain is studying?”

“How would I know?” Tyrian lowered his voice as well. “I usually cannot understand what Lucy studies, let alone Father’s way of thinking. Maybe he is talking with that thing.”

Aiden thought for a moment, then nodded: “I think you are right.”

Duncan actually heard the quiet muttering from not far away, but he paid it no mind. After thinking for a moment, he suddenly spoke in his heart: “Alice.”

The doll’s voice answered almost at once: “Eh? Captain?”

“Come over for a bit. There is something I want you to see. Ai has already gone to pick you up.”

Alice paused for a second and then said: “Ah, then wait a bit for me. The potato cakes here are almost done. Do you want some? I can send a portion to your captain’s cabin.”

Duncan said: “No need. I am not hungry over here. Just come over as soon as you are done.”

Then he stood where he was and waited patiently. Several more minutes passed before a surge of ghostly green flame suddenly rose beside him. The flame turned into a spinning doorway. The Skeletal Roc flew out of the gate, and right after that Alice stepped through.

The doll held a steaming paper bag in her arms. The moment she saw Duncan, she lit up with joy and pushed the bag toward him: “Captain! Potato cakes! I brought them over for you!”

Duncan turned his head and quietly looked at the simple-minded doll in front of him. The bandages hid whatever expression he might have had, but his eyes were full of helplessness.

Alice thought for a moment, then caught on smoothly this time: “Ah, I forgot that this body of yours over here doesn’t normally need to eat.”

“I can drink tea once in a while, but I really do not need food,” Duncan said calmly, yet he still took the paper bag from Alice’s hands. “But thank you all the same.”

Alice broke into a happy grin at once. Only then did she notice Tyrian and Aiden standing not far away, watching them. She quickly waved at them: “You are here too!”

Tyrian hesitated for a moment before he led Aiden over. His expression turned a little strange as he looked at the doll who looked exactly like the Queen of Frostholm. No matter how many times he had seen this face, that hard-to-describe sense of wrongness always crept up on him again, especially when the doll opened her mouth to speak.

Alice seemed not to notice Tyrian and Aiden’s subtle expressions at all. She was just happy to see familiar faces. She raised her hand and pointed at the paper bag in Duncan’s hand: “Do you want some potato cakes? They were just made. I even poured on Lightwind Harbor’s special mixed spice!”

Before Tyrian could say anything, Duncan suddenly reacted to the doll’s words: “Wait. Did you say Lightwind Harbor’s special spice?”

Alice held her head and nodded again and again: “Yeah, yeah. Lunie bought it outside back when we were in the city-state. She said it could really open the eyes of people from the north. The taste is a bit weird, but the texture is pretty fun.”

Duncan finally understood where the strange smell drifting out of the paper bag came from.

He silently lifted his head and glanced at Tyrian: “Try one.”

Tyrian had no idea what was about to happen. He did not care much about food, and he knew very little about the tales of Lightwind Harbor’s cuisine. Faced with Father’s invitation, he did not overthink it and even felt a little pleased. He reached into the bag, took out a potato cake, and popped it into his mouth.

Then he just stood there, completely still.

“Looks like your spice is the real thing. It will probably take him a while to snap out of it,” Duncan said as he drew his gaze back and nodded to Alice. Then he turned and pointed at the “compressed planet” floating above the beach. “Let us look at this first.”

“Oh.” Alice answered at once. She was a bit curious why Tyrian had suddenly started to shed tears, but she still focused her attention on the Lost Star, which had a gorgeous surface and let out a faint humming sound.

Of course she knew what it was. Before they set out, she had already known that the captain was investigating the northern fallen relic No. 2, and this strange yet beautiful sphere in front of her was clearly the core of fallen relic No. 2.

“What is it ‘saying’?” Duncan asked curiously at the side.

He could share Alice’s sight. Through her eyes he could see the “lines” or the information that came from Vision 001. But he could not instinctively understand those things the way Alice did. That was a gift unique to Navigator Three.

Right now, he was very curious what information this doll could pull from fallen relic No. 2.

Alice frowned slightly. After a while, she slowly said: “There is a lot of information. All kinds of error reports. Mainframe communication failure, protocol conflict, reconstruction of runtime environment failed. It is a mess, much more chaotic than the error messages I saw last time.”

Duncan asked: “Anything else? Anything like a system reboot countdown?”

“No,” Alice said, shaking her head. “It is all kinds of malfunctions, and some jumbled bits of data. There are parts I cannot even understand.”

After listening to Alice’s report, Duncan only let out a quiet sigh and nodded slightly.

The situation was very bad, but he had more or less expected it.

Aiden stood by and stared, stunned, at the scene. Only now did he suddenly react. He bumped Tyrian’s arm at once and said: “Whatever else you say, Miss Alice really can talk with that thing!”

Tyrian finally jolted back to himself, as if waking from a nightmare that had struck him out of nowhere. His whole body gave a clear shiver. Then he bent over and started coughing and retching hard.

This gave Aiden quite a scare. The bald, burly man grabbed Tyrian’s arm at once. He patted Tyrian’s back while he asked in a rush: “What is wrong?”

Tyrian finally recovered from the impact of that extreme spiciness mixed with a sharp, sour stench. He still could not understand how a single potato cake could leave him with such a “terrifying thrill”. When he lifted his head, it still seemed as if layers of ghostly afterimages floated around his vision. In those afterimages, he even saw Father’s gentle, smiling face.

He blinked and realized that Father really was here.

“This is a bit too intense. Ugh,” Tyrian finally caught his breath. He stared at the half potato cake left in his hand with a strange expression. “How in the world did you make this?”

“The key lies in Lightwind Harbor’s special spice. It is enough to awaken a person’s reverence for food,” Duncan said calmly. “We have been in the south this whole time, and Lightwind Harbor’s food is the thing that left the deepest impression on me there.”

Tyrian stared blankly at the paper bag in Father’s hand and, from the bottom of his heart, understood what “reverence for food” meant.

He was very reverent, almost to the point of fear.

Just then, a howling gust of wind suddenly came from not far away and cut off their conversation.

Duncan looked toward the sound without thinking. In the faint golden light that filled the whole Harbor, he saw a current of wind wrapped in gray-white dust sweep quickly across the sky. The Ashen Wind circled above the beach for a few seconds, then came straight toward him.

The Ashen Wind gathered together, and Agatha, cool in manner and dressed in a black Goddess clergy gown, stepped out of the wind.