Deep Sea Embers

Those "solar fragments" that briefly illuminated the night sky broke the tense calm surface of the long night - after a quarter of the "solar rings" disintegrated and fell in the sky in front of the whole world, at least seven A city-state sent a fleet to find those luminous geometric objects that fell on the boundless sea.

In the first forty-eight hours of the long night, the Infinite Sea, which had been at peace for more than ten centuries, came so close to war for the first time.

Fortunately, the huge fleet led by the Academy of Truth's heavy flagship "The Balance of All Things" arrived near the largest "falling point" in the central sea before all the city-states, and controlled several of the largest sun fragments one step ahead. The authority of the church was again It worked for once and continued the shaky balance between city-states - several city-state fleets did not break out into conflicts over snatching the sun fragments, but agreed to the church's distribution plan, put aside the dispute for the time being, and sent the sun fragments to the current situation. The worst cities that are most in need of sunshine.

But during the four-hour confrontation, a crack, a bad omen, had begun to quietly spread among the many city-states in the Infinite Sea——

In the coming days, sunlight will become a scarce life-sustaining resource.

But for Duncan, who is still staying in Breezeport, these things are still far away.

An unexpected piece of information was sent to Duncan from Faelun - the source of the information was Lawrence, the captain of the White Oak, and the content of the information was related to the mysterious anomaly 077 "Sailor".

On the first floor of the witch's mansion, Lawrence's figure appeared in the oval mirror on the wall, and his voice came from the mirror: "... He said that he was once the first mate of the Sea Song, and they crossed the border six nautical miles. The critical line, that's what happened on January 21, 1902..."

Duncan stood by the oval mirror. He immediately frowned after hearing Captain Lawrence's narration: "It's January 22, 1902 in the New City State Calendar. What do you mean...the man named 'Anomaly 077-Sailor' The mummy was still a priest of the Deep Sea Church at this time yesterday, and was on a mission to cross the border?!"

"That's what he said," Lawrence said seriously. He was obviously not joking. "He said his captain's name was Kalani. He also described the details of the ship's sailing. He said he knew that now it was actually It was only the day after the Sea Song crossed six nautical miles of the border, but he told me that Captain Kalani and her sailors lingered for half a century after crossing the border..."

Duncan frowned and said nothing, but Lucretia next to him heard the movement and her eyes widened in surprise: "Half a century?!"

"Maybe... longer, madam," Lawrence in the mirror frowned and said cautiously, "If according to what the 'sailors' said, they could only rely on their clear sense to record the days in the first half century, Then they lost the concept of time - they drifted in the boundless fog, neither alive nor dead, just like psychiatrists who unfortunately fell into the void gap on the edge of dreams when treating people. ', the Sea Song also fell into the fault at the edge of the world, so..."

Lawrence stopped, seemingly disturbed by the movement next to him, and then a hoarse, vague voice came from the edge of the mirror. It was the broken gong voice of "Sailor": "Then we were 'forgotten', Mr. Captain, ah Ha... we were forgotten by death, and then by the sea, and finally time and reason forgot us, so we became immortal, immortal, almost floating at the end of the world forever... But in the end... Hiccup, The goddess has mercy, and the goddess has mercy on us, and we were suddenly remembered by Him...so we drifted to the right route again...Hiccup!"

Duncan frowned. He quickly understood the meaning of "sailor" and said, "The correct route refers to..."

"We found Him! A huge..." The sailor suddenly raised his voice, but then stopped suddenly as if he was being strangled by someone. He let out a series of vague grunts before continuing, "I can't remember, I Can’t remember what He looked like, but we did find it… We found the source of the call, and that was our task – the Pope asked us to find Him, because He conveyed the revelation to the Pope…

"Most of us stayed there. They didn't want to go back or face the hopeless world. They had been wandering for too long, and all their glory and firm belief had been wiped away by the boundless fog. Clean, and we met... met...

"What happened? I can't remember clearly, Captain, I don't remember clearly... I just remember that Captain Kalani and I returned from the fog, and we were the only two left. Strictly speaking, we were the only ones left. I was the only one—Captain Kalani was only a wrinkled shadow at that time. She could no longer remember what she looked like, so I had to do even the steering."

When the sailor said this, his voice turned into a series of indistinct mumblings, as if his thinking was not clear, and the chaotic memories that had just appeared were like broken puzzle pieces hovering in his withered brain, causing him to wander from time to time. Sober and confused at times.

Duncan didn't pay attention to the sailor's subsequent grunts. He pondered for a moment and then said: "But you are now Anomaly 077 - an 'abnormal object' that was taken into custody by the city-state many years ago. You have already appeared in this world. It has been hundreds of years, and the first time you appeared was on an exploration ship that had been missing for three years."

The sailor fell silent and didn't speak for a long time. After an unknown amount of time, Lawrence suddenly broke the silence: "He said he didn't know what happened - he didn't remember how he finally returned to this world, nor did he remember Where did the Sea Song go in the end, and he didn’t know why he ended up like this, turning into an ‘abnormal object’ that caused a storm everywhere. He said that the world in his eyes was misaligned, and the world he saw now It’s so different from what he remembers…but he can’t explain it all to me.”

Duncan was silent for a moment and breathed out softly.

"I understand, take care of Anomaly 077 first - I will contact you if anything happens."

"Okay, Captain."

The flames in the mirror gradually faded and turned into a plain piece of glass again.

Lawrence retracted his gaze from the mirror and turned to look at the mummy sitting in the corner of the room - Anomaly 077 was sitting there in a daze. The large wine bottle in his hand had been emptied, but he still picked up the glass bottle from time to time and put it in his hands. Two pointless pours above the mouth.

"Alcohol actually has no effect on you at all," Lawrence finally frowned, stood up and came to the mummy, "Whether you're drunk or not, it's impossible to fall asleep with this thing - alcohol doesn't work, poison doesn't work, not even a revolver. Even bullets won’t work—this guy finally tried it.”

The mummy was startled for a moment, then threw the bottle aside. He raised his head somewhat sluggishly and looked at the old captain in front of him. He was stunned for two seconds before muttering: "Where's the twelve-pound cannon..."

"If you're still awake until the end of the world, I wouldn't mind you trying it - you could even try the sixty-four-pounder on the dock, if you're interested."

Lawrence said casually, came to the chair next to the mummy and sat down.

"But since the world is about to end, you don't have to try those things - we will all fall asleep sooner or later, although you have taken more detours than us."

"Sailor" turned his head and looked at Lawrence blankly.

His withered and shriveled eyeballs rolled around, and the intoxication caused by self-hypnosis could not last long. After a moment of sluggishness, the mummy that had lost its peace finally slowly lowered its head and held its head with skeletal hands. .

"I lost my diary..."

The mummy muttered vaguely and desperately.

"What?"

"The log, Captain Kalani's log. She wrote a lot before she disappeared. She asked me to take that log back. That is our mission..." The mummy muttered. He seemed to want to cry bitterly, but he It seems that he has forgotten how to express this kind of emotion that belongs to a living person, "I lost it, I lost the captain's log... I remember that I stuffed it into my body and put it on again on the Sea Song." When we passed through the thick fog, it was on me, but I don’t know where it is now...it’s different, I can’t remember..."

Lawrence listened blankly to the confession of the mummy, and in the mirror beside him, Martha's figure with a complicated expression quietly emerged - they were quiet, watching the "sailor" quietly, with only one person left in the room. He heard the latter's vague and low mumbling... The sound was like a corpse that had forgotten how to shed tears and was trying to learn how to cry.

…

Duncan turned his head and saw that everyone had come behind him. Many pairs of eyes were looking at him or at the mirror behind him that had returned to its original state.

"...That mummy actually has such a big origin?" Shirley muttered in a low voice.

Fanna was thoughtful: "The Sea Song just crossed the six-mile critical line yesterday... I remember Her Majesty Helena mentioned this matter before. She mentioned that major churches have begun to send advance ships to attack the six-mile boundary. borders, in the hope of bringing back intelligence from 'outside the world'."

"But an exploration ship that just crossed the border yesterday, why did its first mate turn into 'Anomaly 077' that appeared in the world more than two hundred years ago?" Nina was confused, "And there's that" Half a century'..."

"...Perhaps, this is because the concept of 'time' has begun to fail," Duncan said softly, "Or perhaps, this is the characteristic of the sea outside the border - all members of the Sea Song have verified with their lives that the sea outside the border Characteristic No. 1.”

Morris frowned when he heard this, and seemed to think of something immediately.

But before the old scholar could speak, a sudden knock on the door from the entrance interrupted his thoughts.

A guest is coming.