Deep Sea Embers

Due to the delay in the afternoon, when Shirley and Nina returned to No. 99 Crown Street, it was almost dusk, and it was time for dinner.

In this "City of Elves", there are really not many diets that can be called normal, but fortunately, normal ingredients can always be bought. Lucrezia's "servants" prepared a sumptuous meal for the guests At dinner, Nina and Shirley finally ate "food that humans should eat".

It's just that they didn't eat well for this meal.

What they heard and saw in that underground containment facility still makes them a little dizzy—there are too many things they don’t understand, too many things go beyond the Three Views, about the great annihilation, about the beginning of history. "Black Wall", about those doomsdays, about those old worlds that were destroyed, and this "new world" born in the age of deep sea...

For two girls who are strictly "big kids", these things are a bit too complicated and ahead of their time.

After a hasty dinner, Shirley returned to her room. She sat in front of the table in a daze for a while, then heard the soft sound of chains shaking beside her, and Agou poked her head out of the shadows.

Shirley lowered her head, glanced at this "friend" who had almost eaten herself, but raised her since she was a child, and asked seriously: "Did you understand all the things the captain said today? The fragments of several worlds are piled together and then the deep sea age or something..."

"I can understand part of it," Agou lay down and gently rubbed his huge head against Xue Li's knee, "but I didn't understand those parts that were beyond common sense."

"I hardly understand," Shirley said honestly, "of course, I understand those sentences, but it's a bit difficult for me to imagine how those things happened-after all, why do we Do you want to care about how this world was born?"

She said in confusion that although she knew she was acting superficial, she had never had anything to hide in front of Agou.

"You can still live without knowing anything, can't you?" She continued, "Anyway, the two of us have survived like this for more than ten years..."

Agou suddenly raised his head, his empty eye sockets filled with blood-colored light stared straight at Shirley's eyes, and a deep and hoarse voice came from his skeletal body: "I don't know anything, I can live, but We also need to know that this survival is not something to be taken for granted—it is true for ordinary people, and it is also true for the world itself.”

Agou's suddenly serious attitude startled Shirley. She froze for a moment, then vaguely seemed to understand something, showing a thoughtful look.

"The world will not 'survive' like this forever," Agou looked at Shirley's reaction, then put his head down again, and said in a muffled voice, "The Great Annihilation can destroy those 'old worlds', then Today's deep-sea era may still be ended by another force, and ordinary people may not know about it until the day when the end comes, and they will usher in the end in the illusion of long-term peace, just like that In the hometown of the 'Warrior', for those people who are waiting for the triumph of the brave in the kingdom, 'ignorance' is their greatest blessing... For them, they don't know anything and they can live, because they don't know that there is still a chance of death. How far.

"But Shirley, we're not the ones who stay in the kingdom - we're on the Lost Country.

"You have also seen those omens, the black sun descending in Pland, the blueprint of the Creator out of control in the depths of the frost, the boundless sea when vision 001 went out, and those nagging cultists... If you are A 'man who lives in the kingdom', you can't touch them."

Agou chattered, it shook its head, carefully put away its fangs, and rubbed the tip of its nose against Xueli's knee.

"Shirley, you can live without knowing anything, but you already know it now—the captain is worried about those ominous omens, and you are also the same, but you didn't notice it yourself."

Shirley became quiet. She sat quietly on the chair for a long time before she stretched out her hand to press Agou's skull, with a little anxiety in her voice: "Agou, are we those who walk in the wilderness... Like that 'warrior', are we also trudging towards the end?"

"We go to the end, the doom to us, 'cognition' goes both ways, when we know it's there, there's no difference, the only question is... how and when To catch up with us, I think that's what the captain is worried about."

"...Agou, why do you understand so well? Understand... this feeling?"

The blood in Ah Gou's eyes slowly changed from light to dark: "Because I have felt something similar - when you were very young."

It raised its head and looked into Shirley's eyes.

Its voice was soft, as it had been years ago, trying to lull a frightened little girl to sleep during a thunderstorm—

"At the beginning, you were a...little creature that I couldn't understand at all. You are so small and weak. Your arms can be broken easily like thin sticks. Even if you live with demons, you are also fragile as if can die...

"Every day, every second, I worry about this 'death' coming, I don't understand your breathing, I don't understand your heartbeat, I don't understand how human beings survive, I don't even understand when you are hungry It was only a few days later that I realized that you needed to find food—as a deep demon, I wasn't used to 'thinking' at that time, and you... didn't communicate much with me at that time.

"So I always feel that you may die anytime and anywhere because of something that I can't understand. Your breathing, heartbeat, blood flow, these strange 'phenomena' are all extremely fragile 'temporary balance' in my eyes, The end of any link will take you away from me, so when you wake up as a child, you will always see me groping and watching beside you, because I want to check your breathing and heartbeat, to check if you are dead. .

"This kind of worry is very similar to the captain's worry today."

Agou paused for a moment, raised his head to look at the second floor, but quickly looked away again.

"I can't be compared with the captain, and I shouldn't speculate on his thoughts casually, but today, in his eyes, I feel the familiar... worry. This seemingly vast and boundless sea, to him Yan Yan is probably equivalent to the you in my eyes many years ago-a small and weak 'strange thing', I don't know how it survives, I only know that it will die at any time."

Agou talked a lot, and now it finally calmed down, but Shirley still stared at it blankly, without making a sound for a long time.

"Why don't you speak?" Agou asked suspiciously.

"You... never told me this before," Shirley said in a daze, "So when I was young..."

"It's all in the past," Agou said in a low voice, "If you survived, all the worries and difficulties at the beginning are 'in the past'."

Shirley pursed her lips, and suddenly raised her head worriedly, looking in the direction of the second floor: "Agou, tell me...will we be the warrior and his companions in the story?"

"If possible, I don't want to be like them," Agou shook his head, "Soldiers can't stop the end of the world with a steel sword, and their arduous journey to the end is doomed to futility—but since the captain Leading us, then we obviously have more than just a steel sword, so I am willing to be optimistic."

"Captain..." Shirley sighed, "I don't know what the captain is doing now...he didn't even come down for dinner."

"Would you like to go up to deliver food later and take a look?"

"Um, not yet—Alice will definitely be going anyway."

"That's true."

...

Looking at the wonderful sky outside the window where the day faded and the sky was dim, but there was always a layer of faint golden "sunshine" permeating the gaps in the high-rise buildings, Duncan breathed out slightly, turned around and turned on the light in the room.

Although the "sunshine" permeating the streets has brought eternal "illumination" to Qingfeng Harbor, after Vision 001 falls, the sunlight that spreads from the nearby sea and is blocked by layers of buildings is impossible to illuminate. Light up the whole city. In the depths of the city-state, night can still be seen where the "sunlight" is blocked by buildings, and here, people still need the comfort of lights.

The bright lights dispelled the darkness that was spreading from all around, making the room seem a little warmer.

Outside the window, as the power of vision 001 faded, in the starless and moonless sky, the pale gap in the creation of the world was gradually emerging.

The cold and pale brilliance diffuses in the night, but it is fragmented by the "sunlight" diffused between the high-rise buildings, presenting the weirdness that cannot be seen in other city-states, where the creation of the world and the sun appear at the same time and intersect Scenes.

Duncan looked at the split-like "trauma" in the sky, but he was still recalling the "memory illusions" he saw today in his mind.

He thought of the "crimson" across the sky, like a huge scar.

What exactly is that "red light" that straddles the universe and whose propagation laws seem to no longer conform to the common sense of physics?

Whether it's in the vision of New Hope when it crashed, or in the oil painting of Alice's mansion, or in the hometown of "Warrior" who is on the verge of destruction, there is that red light.

There is no doubt that the red light is the "culprit" that scholars have been pursuing hard to lead to the "big annihilation" event, or at least the "first symbol" of the big annihilation.

Looking at the "creation of the world" that also traversed the sky, Duncan inevitably had a series of unfounded "associations" in his mind——

The destruction of every "old world" is accompanied by the appearance of that huge red light, while in the "deep sea age" of the new world, the pale creation of the world hangs high in the sky... Between the two, there will be what link?

The "creation of the world" that illuminates the night sky in the boundless sea is the reverberation of the old doomsday? Or is it the remnant of the destructive force from the Great Annihilation?

Duncan even had a more disturbing conjecture——

Did that destructive force never dissipate at all, it just turned into a state of deep sleep, facing the sky every night, and the so-called "creation of the world"... was just the form of that "red light" during the deep sleep.

Could the function of vision 001 be to periodically "hypnotize" that "doomsday crimson"?

In this series of speculations, Duncan's eyes gradually became serious, and another question that he hadn't thought about before suddenly appeared in his mind at this moment.

In his hometown, at least in the hometown in his memory...he had never seen that "red light".