Deep Sea Embers

There was silence in the corridors of the underground archives.

It is located in the underground of the highest-level city-state university in Qingfeng Harbor, which is comparable to a city-state under the management of the Deep Sea or the Church of Death. Ordinary, at least it has to be an "abnormal" or similarly dangerous pollution carrier with the top 100 numbers like Alice.

And this level of anomalies and pollution carriers have a common characteristic: the characteristics of living things.

They may have incredible thinking ability, they may have the means to communicate with people, they may have the tendency to move and escape, no matter how strong or weak this "living creature characteristic" is, they can at least achieve the instinct of seeking advantages and avoiding disadvantages—that is, Just like the original Alice would instinctively be honest even though she didn't know Duncan at all.

In short, he has some brains, although not much, but he is afraid of death.

Duncan likes this kind of brains, which will save a lot of trouble in many cases.

Lucrezia glanced at this side with a hint of awe, while Nina and Shirley opened their eyes wide in surprise, and then raised their faces triumphantly - I don't know what the two of them are so proud of of.

Ted Lear was stunned for a moment, and then looked at Duncan with complicated eyes - he was not as fearful as ordinary people, but he was not vigilant or hostile either. He seemed to be thinking about something, and after a few seconds Then suddenly came out a sentence: "When you stay in Qingfeng Harbor, you can come here more often."

"Oh?" Duncan was a little surprised, "When other city-states dealt with me for the first time, they wished that I could stay away. Places like the Central Cathedral were heavily guarded at the first time, why did they invite you here? gone?"

Ted raised his finger and pointed to the quiet corridor: "You are here, I can take a vacation."

Duncan: "...?"

However, the "Keeper of Truth" in front of him didn't care about the subtle reactions of others after he said a word. He just said that, and then walked further into the corridor.

The others raised their heels to follow, but this time Duncan deliberately took a few steps behind. He came to Lucrezia's side and asked in a low voice: "I don't remember anything about this 'Keeper of Secrets', he has always been like this. ? I mean... this kind of resentment that seems to have worked overtime for a lifetime."

Lucrezia also lowered her voice: "Your Excellency Ted is leading the graduation class recently."

Duncan was stunned when he heard this: "...the leader of the defenders of the city-state is also responsible for this? I remember that when Fanna was a judge, she didn't have similar extra work."

"The power bestowed by the gods is closely related to the words and deeds of believers. Studying and disseminating knowledge is a necessary process for the believers of Lahem to 'perform the sacrament'. Therefore, the entire priest system of the Academy of Truth is formed in the form of a 'college'. The superior priests You must serve as a mentor to teach students, the higher the level, the heavier and more difficult the teaching tasks—so, the Keeper of Truth has to lead the graduation class, and it is the most difficult class."

Duncan: "..."

Hearing these wonderful new knowledge told by Lucrezia, he couldn't help feeling some strange feelings in his heart, so he couldn't help raising his head to look at the secret keeper not far away.

Ted Lear, who was walking in front, instantly noticed this gaze, and he glanced back, a trace of doubt flooded the Keeper's heart——

Why is this "Captain Duncan" who lost his memory due to the influence of the subspace and was just like a stranger to him just now, looking at this side suddenly full of inexplicable understanding, nostalgia and sympathy?

After a moment of doubt, Ted Lear shook his head, and stopped in front of a door near the end of the corridor.

"This is it, Containment Room No. 24." He raised his hand and pointed to the door in front of him.

This door depicts many sacred runes. The whole body seems to be made of black steel, and the surface is inlaid with dots of silver-white metal particles. The black is like a little bit of silver and white being attracted in, a feeling of being out of the body arises spontaneously, which makes her look away quickly in fright.

Nina raised her head and looked at the corridor where she came, and then looked around the No. 24 sample containment room. She frowned slightly curiously: "I can't even see a single guard here? Such an important and dangerous place, no Are there guards?"

"There are guards at necessary nodes, but the fewer people around the containment rooms, the better," Ted Lear glanced at the curious girl, and explained casually, "because some 'abnormalities' have With the ability of psychological parasitism and mind jumping, too many guards near the containment room will make those things have the possibility of breaking through the containment."

"For most of the 'abnormalities' and pollutants, the correct sealing method is far more important than the number of security guards," Lucrezia added on the side, "a correctly placed stone or metal powder sprinkled on the ground Some anomalies can be kept quiet for several years, but an extra 'person' may cause invisible and intangible forces to break through the containment, so the core area of ​​many sealing facilities has the least number of people, and many sealing measures are in place. It takes effect on its own in human circumstances.”

"Those guards outside the core area are not so much for dealing with the monsters inside, but more for dealing with external intrusions and preventing people from coming in to destroy the containment conditions," Ted Lear nodded, stretched out his hand to press On the door of the sample containment room, with a soft "click" sound from nowhere, the door opened, "But... the sample sent in this time is really the most special one I have ever seen. One, I'm not even sure if it should be in the sample containment room or somewhere else."

The door opened, and a brightly lit but not very spacious room appeared in front of everyone. The floor and walls of this room were filled with intricate and delicate sacred symbols, oil lamps with special grease added and gas lamps on the walls. There are so many to an astonishing degree, and other than that, there are no extra furnishings and furniture in the room, only a boxy platform in the center, on which is placed that weird..."sample".

A clergyman in a college robe, with a strange black mask on his face, and his hands tightly locked by locks was standing by the platform, who seemed to be the guard of this containment room——when Ted Lear led a group of When people walked into the room, the "guard" with weird locks on his hands looked up, then his eyes fell on Ted, and he nodded slightly.

"Does the sample show signs of activation?" Ted asked.

The caretaker shook his head silently.

"Is there any sign of the shackles being opened?" Ted asked again.

The watchman raised his hands, showed the shackles on his hands to the keeper, and shook his head again.

"Okay, it's hard work, let's go to rest first." Ted looked relieved, nodded slightly and said, "I will take over here-remember, put the 'shackles' back on the 'stone statue' personally, don't Try swapping places with the stone statue, and don't respond to its 'cry for help'."

The caretaker nodded without saying a word, turned and walked out of the room.

"The shackles are part of the Anomaly-087 'Statue'," Ted Lear explained to Duncan and the others after the guards left. Take the shackles for a certain period of time, the person wearing the shackles cannot speak, and can imprison and restrain a selected entity in front of him during wearing, we usually use it to assist in the control of dangerous objects that have just been discovered and whose nature is not yet clear.”

"For example...a 'reality invader' who suddenly appeared in the market and whose origin is a mystery."

Lucrezia muttered softly, and looked up at the weird "substance" that seemed quiet and glowed with iron-gray metallic luster on the platform in the center of the room.

That thing looks like a mass of steel that has cooled and solidified, but the contours of the surface still have a strange soft and smooth feeling, as if it once wriggled and undulated like some kind of mollusk, and then solidified quickly It became like this, and on its smooth "skin", there are occasionally some angular protrusions, and those raised structures give people the feeling...

It was as if something was about to break free from the inside of this mass of "matter".

"These bumps appeared after the sample was sent to the containment room," Ted Lear explained on the side, "in the few minutes after it was sent to the containment room, it suddenly showed a strong activity , the surface structure has changed a lot, we once thought it would try to break free from the seal here, and even considered sending it to a higher-level containment area, but after those few minutes, its activity fell off a cliff again , down to what it is now—almost a solid piece of metal."

"Almost?" Duncan keenly noticed the key words in the other party's words.

"Yes, almost, because it is actually still 'alive'," Ted Lear nodded, "There is always a weak active 'signal' in the core area of ​​this mass, even if the entire mass has been Freezing like this, the core is moving, you can even hear it—"

While speaking, the Keeper opened his magical big book again, opened one of the pages and tapped it with his finger.

A stethoscope-like device emerges out of nowhere from the air above the pages of the book.

Ted Lear casually put the book back under his arm, picked up the "stethoscope" and hung it around his neck, and carefully pressed the other end of the stethoscope on the surface of the "solidified metal".

In the next second, a rhythmic sound echoed throughout the room——

Plop, plop, plop...

"It has a heartbeat," Ted Lear looked up. "Inside this mass of metal, there is a heart that is still alive."