Ashes Of Deep Sea
Chapter 593 - Chapter 593 Chapter 592 Stone

Chapter 593: Chapter 592: Stone Chapter 593: Chapter 592: Stone After standing in front of this “room” made up entirely of chaotic lines and color patches for quite some time, Duncan turned his head slightly, using the corner of his eye to observe the reaction of the goat head on the table.

From the perspective of that “goat head,” it should also be able to see the scene inside the room–he wanted to know what reaction the goat head would have after seeing this bizarre, disordered room.

But it had no reaction at all. It still stared calmly in Duncan’s direction with those emotionless, pitch-black eyeballs, looking like a real piece of wood when silent.

Duncan turned back and after a moment of hesitation, he finally took a step toward the eerie room assembled from jumbled lines.

At the same time, he was also ready to forcibly ignite a flame, awaken Silantis, and break free from this “Dreamscape” if things went wrong.

But the worst-case scenario he imagined didn’t occur.

He crossed that threshold, and a layer of water-like, translucent ripples flickered faintly throughout the chaotic room. After that, no other reaction followed. The room itself didn’t collapse, and he seemed unaffected by those disordered colors and lines.

Duncan walked deeper into the room and casually shut the door behind him–the unsettling silent stare of the bizarre “goat head” was finally blocked out.

The chaotic colorful lines stretched beneath his feet. On either side, furnishings outlined by lines, resembling yet not resembling anything in particular, surrounded him. Duncan observed everything in the room cautiously, sensing an extremely eerie atmosphere around him. After a moment, his gaze finally settled on a corner of the “room.”

A few translucent colorful lines quivered there, interconnecting to form a geometric outline. The vibrating edge of the contour seemed to be filled with a layer of calm water, faintly reflecting the surrounding scenery.

Duncan approached the geometric shape and gently brushed his hand across the calm “water surface.” Wisps of pale green flames spread along the surface, and moments later, the scene reflected on that surface became clear–it turned into a mirror.

The next second, shadows stirred in the center of the mirror, with Agatha’s figure quietly emerging from it.

The lady in the mirror looked shocked at the disordered, strange place outside the mirror.

“Is… is this what’s behind that door?!”

Duncan nodded lightly, “Yes, this is what’s inside the door–this is the ‘deepest part’ here.”

“This place looks… so bizarre,” Agatha frowned tightly, “Why is it like this?”

However, Duncan seemed to have figured out some things. He spoke indifferently, “Because on the Homeloss in the real world, the goat head never dares to peek into the captain’s cabin. It doesn’t know what this room looks like.”

At least, it doesn’t know what this room looks like after the “captain” moved in–this was the part Duncan didn’t say out loud.

Agatha instantly grasped the deeper meaning of Duncan’s words.

“Are you saying… that this ‘Homeloss’ is really ‘created’ by the goat head of the real world?” she blurted out quickly, “It turned the shadow of Homeloss into this ship sailing in darkness and fog, but it can’t replicate the parts of the ship it doesn’t understand…”

Speaking up to this point, Agatha suddenly furrowed her brow, then couldn’t help but shake her head, “But in the real world, the goat head acts as if it knows nothing about these things, and how it managed to do all this…”

“Perhaps it truly knows nothing,” Duncan spoke calmly, his gaze slowly sweeping around, “I have a bold guess now: this ship might be a dream of its.”

“Its dream?!” Agatha was startled upon hearing this, and then remembered something, her face showing confusion, “But it clearly says it never dreams, doesn’t even rest, and I’ve seen it for myself–the first mate is always awake, including during the appearance of The Dream of the Nameless, when it was steering the ship, just like always.”

“Because it doesn’t know it’s dreaming, doesn’t even know it can dream, even…” Duncan paused all of a sudden, a bolder idea irresistibly surfacing in his mind. He hesitated for a few seconds before murmuring to himself, “Perhaps our ‘first mate’ has never woken up.”

Realizing the meaning of the captain’s words, Agatha slowly widened her eyes.

Duncan then broke the silence again, “So, now there’s only one last question left.”

Agatha repeated unconsciously, “The last question?”

Duncan lifted his head, looking at the door standing amidst a mishmash of lines, his gaze seemingly piercing through the door, observing the “goat head” on the table outside. After a while, he muttered to himself, “Saslouka is dead, has been dead for a very long time…”

…

Nightfall came over the desert–very suddenly, darkness descended all around, the Sky Light that once diffused across the sky seemed to be absorbed by something, immediately receding, and the quiet night colors blanketed the vast sand sea and the extensive ruins within.

Now, only that huge, unsettling dark red “crack” remained in the sky, the crack red as blood, its edges like mist, it covered the sky, exuding an immense sense of oppression.

Even a Judge as willful as Fenna instinctively avoided looking up at that “world scar.”

But the giants accompanying them seemed to have long since adapted to all of this.

On the edge of the city’s ruins, they found a corner sheltered from the wind and sand invasion. This spot had once been part of some solemn structure, but now only a few melted and twisted dark walls remained. The giant had picked up many gray-white rocks from the nearby ruins and piled them up in a sheltered corner by the wind. Then he picked up two stones and patiently knocked them together.

To him, the quiet darkness of the desert and the dark red suppression of the world’s wounds seemed to no longer exist. It was as if only the clinking rocks remained in his eyes. The “tap, tap, tap” of his striking resounded monotonously in the night, carrying far and wide.

Fenna sat under the shelter of the wall rampart, watching the giant’s actions with curiosity. After a long while, she could not help but ask, “What are you doing?”

“Ignite,” the giant said indifferently, “It gets very cold here at night.”

“But those are just rocks,” Fenna said, looking at the gray-white stones the giant had collected, her tone full of confusion, “…Are they flammable stones?”

“They’re ordinary rocks,” the giant did not turn around, “There’s nothing else here, just sand and rocks.”

Fenna opened her mouth, “Then…”

She was interrupted before she could finish her sentence by the sudden leap of sparks–tiny sparks burst out from between the rocks the giant was striking, falling among the pale heap on the ground. Following that, the sparks turned into flames, with bright light rising from the stones, growing more vigorous.

Fenna watched the scene, unable to comprehend.

“Fire, and rocks, they’re the most important things,” the giant watched the flames burning within the rocks quietly, as if speaking to Fenna, and as if to himself, “The ignited flame is like eyes opening in the night, and shattered rocks surpass fangs and claws. When they kindle twigs and strike stones against each other, incredible things happen…”

The giant turned his head, his gaze falling, “Traveler, do you know? The history of civilization begins with fire and stone.”

Fenna listened to the giant’s words, half understanding, and slowly nodded her head.

Her cultural classes hadn’t been great, but not so bad that she couldn’t grasp the meaning behind the giant’s words. What she didn’t understand was… why the giant was suddenly telling her all this.

What did this have to do with “stones being able to ignite”?

But the giant clearly had no intention of explaining further. He quickly returned to his “work”–inserting his hand deep into the heap of stones, as if he didn’t care about the scorching flames, he took a rock that had been blackened by fire, knocked off a corner of it with a casual strike, creating a sharp angle. Then the giant picked up the large staff that he had placed to one side and, using the sharp angle of the rock, began to painstakenly carve something into its surface.

The staff was made of a durable material, and the sharp angle of the rock was brittle and easily broken, so the giant’s engraving work was very slow; often, it took many attempts to leave a not-too-deep scratch on the staff, and he frequently redid the rock to make new “engraving knives”.

The surface of that large staff was covered with dense marks… Were all those engravings made that way?!

Even after just a short observation, Fenna realized this was an almost impossible and terribly slow task. She couldn’t imagine how long it took the giant and how much amazing patience he had to leave countless marks on that huge staff–it seemed that even she, with an endless lifetime, could not accomplish such a feat!

Yet the giant was silently and patiently carving, using the only tool he could find in this dead world–the stone charred by fire.

Fenna finally could not contain herself and broke the silence, “…What are you doing?”

“Recording,” the giant said slowly, “Recording things I still remember, documenting events that have happened in this world.”

He stopped, laying the staff before Fenna and pointing to the end where there was a string of intricate symbols.

“Here, they learned to use fire.”

The giant spoke softly, as though there was a hint of pride in his tone.

Fenna followed the direction of the giant’s finger, finally getting a clear view of those intricate symbols.

Simple lines outlined two tiny human figures standing before an abstract fire, their hands raised high as if cheering and jumping, as if worshiping the fire.

For some reason, Fenna suddenly felt a heavy force press upon her heart. She instinctively looked up along the staff, observing those dense symbols–she quickly discovered that not all of them were pictograms; moving up the staff, the pictograms slowly became abstract and unfamiliar scripts, which evolved into various shapes, some splitting into letters, while others still retained their pictorial structure…

Her gaze finally rested on a small blank space at the tip of the staff; beside her, the campfire crackled, its light reflecting and leaping in that spot.

Fenna slowly raised her head, her eyes moving along the rough-hewn stones and the gaunt arms, finally settling on the giant’s face.

That face, marked with wrinkles, watched the nearby fire quietly, unmoving, like another stone.