Chapter 91

Chapter 91: Distorted History

The so-called “public schools” of the Pland city-state were completely different from the true universities in the Upper City. These schools, funded and supported by City Hall, were not institutions for training real scholars. Their main purpose was to train skilled workers for the factories in the Lower City and for the Church’s steam engines, and to give the general public basic literacy education in the process.

Under that premise, it was easy to imagine the level of resources at the public school in the Crossroad District.

This was Duncan’s first time meeting Morris in person, but even from a first impression he could tell the old gentleman’s academic skill was extraordinary. This was a man who could pick out a genuine relic from a pile of junk at a glance and state its year and historical background with accuracy. An expert like that would have been more than qualified to teach in a university in the Upper City.

Frankly, leaving such a deep reservoir of knowledge in a public school in the Crossroad District was a waste. Nina had already said that almost none of her classmates cared about what the old gentleman-professor taught. If they managed to stay awake through a whole class, it already counted as “respecting the teacher”.

And on top of that, Mr. Morris had just taken out a large amount of money to buy a dagger from a century ago. People who carried a bank checkbook around were rarely ordinary citizens.

Duncan thought it over. Asking bluntly, “So why are you so rich?” would be too abrupt. But with a bit of verbal polish, the question could sound quite natural:

“Actually, I’m a little curious. For a scholar like you, why stay on as a teacher at a public school in the Crossroad District?”

“…You’re not the first to ask me that,” Morris said with a small smile, as if he was already used to such questions. He carefully put his things away as he spoke. “But there isn’t much to it. I’m old, and I grew tired of the intense academic atmosphere at those universities in the Upper City. Rather than fighting with youngsters for the little funding that exists, I would rather find a quiet place to finish my research. And if, in my later years, I can pass my knowledge on to more young people, isn’t that a good thing?”

The old man did not seem to be telling the whole truth. But Duncan saw that he did not wish to dwell on it, so he did not push. He only added casually: “But Nina told me her classmates don’t really treasure what you teach them. In the harsh life of the Lower City, isn’t chasing after the glory of the ancient kingdom of Critt a bit too distant?”

“Even in the darkest, filthiest alleyway, as long as a mind with spiritual insight is still thinking, ‘history’ will always have value,” Morris said, shaking his head. “It is precisely because of the thousands of years of history behind us that we have managed to come this far.

“Mortal life is very brief. It is our inheritance of history, and our respect for it, that lets civilization live far beyond the limits of any single person. That is also the key difference between us and those strange, blind things in the Deep Sea. They may be ancient, but they do not know how to record civilization, and so they can never truly wipe us out.

“Of course, Mr. Duncan, you’re not wrong either. In the Lower City, very few people are willing to listen to my long lectures. But even if I manage to influence only one single student, I still feel that my years have not been wasted.”

Morris spoke slowly and calmly. Then he seemed to realize something, and a gentle, apologetic smile appeared on his face: “Forgive me. Occupational habit. I started preaching a bit.”

“It’s all right. I think it’s very worthwhile ‘preaching’,” Duncan said at once, waving his hand. “To be honest, I’m quite happy to talk with you. Look, you’re a history expert, and I’m an antique dealer. In a way, we’re colleagues.”

[From the “teacher” side, they were colleagues too, Duncan added silently.]

“To be honest, if I judged only from the first impression when I walked into this antique shop… I really wouldn’t believe your word ‘colleague’,” Morris said, spreading his hands. “But now I somewhat believe it. You at least have one genuine piece.”

Duncan kept a very calm expression. In his heart he thought: it was far more than one genuine piece. The moment the old gentleman filled out the bank check, Duncan had already mentally gone over every cargo hold on the Vanished. If he weren’t worried about crashing the market, he would already be planning the interior design of his eighth branch shop.

Steadying himself inside, Duncan kept up his relaxed smile: “Nina told me you’re actually more specialized in ancient history, especially the history around the ancient kingdom of Critt?”

“Strictly speaking, there is only ‘after’, not ‘before’,” Morris corrected at once. “The ancient kingdom of Critt was the Dawn of Civilization in the Deep Sea era. Before that ancient kingdom, there was the Great Annihilation. That was the break in civilization. No one can say clearly what the world looked like before that point in time. At best we have contradictory accounts from the wild tales passed down in various city-states.”

Duncan looked thoughtful: “A break in civilization… like a ‘Horizon Limit’ crossing the river of history…”

Morris clearly heard that term for the first time: “Horizon Limit?”

“A concept,” Duncan explained. “Applied to the event of the Great Annihilation, you can see it as an invisible wall in time. All information on the far side of the wall can’t be transmitted to this side. Whether it’s optical observation or chains of cause and effect, everything is cut off at that boundary. You can never stand on one side and learn what happened on the other, as if the timeline of all things only suddenly appears starting from that boundary.”

“That is a very interesting description!” The old gentleman’s eyes opened a little wider, and there was even a faint light in them. “A Horizon Limit across history… a wall of time… Yes, that is very apt! Mr. Duncan, forgive my earlier mistaken impression and… my condescension. You are more professional than I thought. Do you also often study ancient history?”

“No, I don’t know much about ancient history. I just have a flexible way of thinking, and sometimes I come up with odd metaphors,” Duncan said modestly at once. He knew he should appear a bit ignorant right now. “But I really am curious about the Great Annihilation. You just said that in formal scholarship there is no accepted view of history before the Great Annihilation, but there are many conflicting accounts in the ‘unofficial histories’ of different city-states? What sort of records are those?”

“Just wild tales and strange legends… but yes, I’ve studied a few,” Morris said slowly after thinking for a moment. “For example, there was once a record in Pland. It was a hand-copied manuscript from New City-State Calendar year 1069. The original no longer exists. In that copy, the world before the Great Annihilation was described like this:

“The world was a sphere, floating in a boundless sea of stars. Countless celestial bodies lit the night as stars. In the sky there was one Sun and three Moons. Humans occupied three continents. One of the continents was frozen in ice year-round, so people built a device called ‘the dome’ to cover the land and create ‘eternal spring’. The dome’s power source was modeled after the Sun in the sky and used some component in seawater as fuel, almost everlasting…”

Morris paused there, as if giving Duncan a moment to think, remember, and sort things out. Then he continued:

“And on an island near Cold Harbor, explorers found an inscription carved into rock. It also described the world before the Great Annihilation. Scholars put in huge effort to decipher it, and were left deeply puzzled.

“The stone text said that a homeland called ‘Homeworld’ had already been exhausted. All people had boarded a gigantic ship named ‘Abinix’. This great vessel could cross the sea of stars and used dust and gas captured from the void as fuel. After the ship had sailed for forty-seven thousand days and nights, it was suddenly caught in a ‘great flash and vortex’. The ship then broke apart and vanished in the whirlpool. The descendants survived by rising from the sea and left their memories of the homeland carved in a cave.

“Of course, even those records are not as bizarre as the tales left by the Elves of Lightwind Harbor.

“Elves have lifespans of a thousand years. Their history should have been more detailed and reliable than that of any short-lived race. But for some reason, the history of Lightwind Harbor is the most fragmented and absurd of all city-states. Many of their archives have even been twisted by some unknown force into unreadable Lost Tomes. Because the corruption is so severe, they had to be sealed away. And in the narrative poems the Elves pass down by word of mouth, the world before the Great Annihilation is described like this:

“The world was a dream, a single breath taken by the Great Demon God Saslokar while half-asleep. The Elves were born in that dream and kept Saslokar sleeping peacefully. But one day, this demon god dreamed of a Great Flood. Saslokar woke in fright, and the flood spilled out of the dream into the Mortal Realm. The Elves were swept into the Mortal Realm by that flood. The demon god Saslokar vanished upon waking, and the Elves could never return to that peaceful, gentle homeland. So, after the flood, they settled down in the Deep Sea era.”