Ashes Of Deep Sea
Chapter 617 - Chapter 617 Chapter 616 Accidental Touch

Chapter 617: Chapter 616 Accidental Touch Chapter 617: Chapter 616 Accidental Touch Nina and Morris walked along the forest path. The Sky Light filtered through the dense canopy above, casting mottled pillars of light throughout the woods. A thin fog had risen at some point, making the sunlight scattered within it look even more dreamlike and nebulous.

The elf girl, who called herself “Xilin,” walked ahead, not far in front. She occasionally paused to glance back calmly, always appearing patient.

“Fog has formed in the forest,” Nina said softly under her breath as she looked up at the distant, dense shadows of the trees, “This is the first time I’ve seen fog here… How is it on your end, Uncle Duncan?”

She slowed her pace and listened intently, the serious look of someone deep in thought on her face. Morris, walking beside her, also slowed down, listening intently to the voice that came from deep within his thoughts.

After a moment, the old scholar’s voice resonated through their psychic connection, “You mean… the construction records of the Homeloss? The documents from the Prand shipyard back then?”

Then, the old man listened intently for a while, nodding his head seriously, before responding inwardly, “I understand… The data must still exist, but it certainly can’t be obtained by usual means. I’ll discuss it with Fenna later to see if we can consult some old friends in the City-State or perhaps the church.”

The voice in their minds gradually faded away.

Nina blinked her eyes curiously at her teacher, “Uncle Duncan, why are you suddenly looking for the construction records of the Homeloss?”

“I don’t know, perhaps the Captain discovered something deep within the ‘Homeloss in the Dreamscape’,” Morris said offhandedly, “But since he hasn’t elaborated, we’d better not ask directly.”

Clearly, after having been with the Homeloss for so long, the old man had mastered the safety protocols around the Captain.

Then, he paused and frowned slightly, looking at the fog entwined in the dense forest that seemed to grow thicker with time.

“The fog is getting thicker…” he said with some seriousness, “I’m not very knowledgeable about forests, but I feel there’s something off about this fog.”

Nina thought for a moment, eager to try, “Shall we try dispersing it with sunlight?”

Morris instinctively glanced at “Xilin” walking ahead and hurriedly waved his hand to dampen the girl’s enthusiasm, “Don’t be reckless, your sunlight seems to be a very intense stimulus for this Dreamscape.”

“Oh…”

In the time they were delayed, Xilin had stopped walking.

She seemed to always know precisely the distance between herself and Morris and Nina. Whenever it reached a certain extent, she would immediately stop, sometimes even curiously asking and urging them on–as she did now.

“What’s going on?” the elf girl asked, puzzled, looking at the two who were muttering behind her, “We don’t have much time to delay–we need to return before encountering the Corrosion, behind the Wall of Silence.”

“There’s a lot of fog around,” Nina quickly caught up with Xilin, and took the opportunity to ask directly, “Does it often get this foggy here?”

“Fog?” Xilin startled for a moment, then looked up, and around, before her face showed a dawning realization, smiling at Nina, “We are very close to our destination… We are almost inside the Wall of Silence.”

“You mean, this fog is caused by the ‘Wall of Silence’?” Morris’s voice quickly chimed in from the side, “Or is this ‘fog’ part of the Wall of Silence?”

“It’s spectacular, right?” Xilin didn’t directly answer the scholar’s question but looked around with an unusual excitement, entranced by the forest gradually being swallowed by the mist; it was as if she was the one seeing the Wall of Silence for the first time, “Here, you can’t even see its full shape–but Silantis can see it from up high, from the sky. The branches of Silantis overlook it…

“It closes before her, separating the entire realm from the outer Corrosion… We’re not there yet, there’s a little distance left. In the deep fog, there’s a barrier forged from light, that’s the core of the Wall of Silence, but we’re almost there, just a blink away…”

Xilin spoke excitedly. This typically calm, even somewhat mechanically-reactive ‘mental entity’ seemed to acquire very lively human characteristics in just a few seconds. She turned around and quickly headed towards the dense fog on the path, waving at Nina and Morris–

“Hurry, follow me, we’re about to return to safety!”

It was the first time Nina had seen her behave like this. She hesitated for a moment before realizing, only to see Xilin’s figure almost disappearing into the swirling dense fog. She quickly followed with Morris, but inexplicably, she felt…

Unable to catch up.

Although before this, Xilin always waited for her and her teacher who lagged behind, and the “Xilin” encountered by Sherry and Miss Lucricia had similar “behavioral patterns,” this time, Nina felt that she would not stop waiting for her–Xilin’s steps were so unhesitating, she was almost charging toward the thick forest in the fog, like a long-lost traveler returning home, a drop returning to the ocean.

The elf finally vanished in the boundless dense fog, never looking back.

Leaving Nina and Morris facing each other amidst the fog-enshrouded dense forest.

After a little while, Morris looked thoughtfully in the direction where Xilin last disappeared: “Her mental reaction directly vanished at the end of this path–just seconds after her figure left our sight.”

Nina pondered and said uneasily, “Then, are we lost… Everywhere here is fog and trees, and it all looks the same.”

“We didn’t know the way to begin with,” Morris seemed surprisingly calm, “In a dream, you don’t have to worry about ‘getting lost’–since theoretically, you are always lost in a dream.”

Nina listened to the teacher’s teachings in puzzlement, finding them reasonable. “That makes sense.”

Then she asked another question, “So what do we do now? Do I need to ‘fly’ up there and check it out? I can be more discreet.”

“Unless absolutely necessary, try to avoid provoking this Dreamscape,” Morris waved his hand dismissively and then vaguely confirmed the direction where Xilin’s mental reaction had vanished, pointing toward the far end of the path, “Let’s head in that direction, following the route Xilin last pointed out to us.”

“Okay!”

And so, the elder and the youngster began their trek through the seemingly endless fog and dense forest.

They only had a rough direction.

But Nina remembered what Xilin had said before leaving–that they were only a step away from the Silent Wall. In a distant past, Silantis had constructed the Shelter for the Elves at the end of this dense fog.

It was almost within a blink of an eye.

The Sky Light scattering through the gaps in the canopy had dimmed unnoticed, the mottled columns of light turning into suspicious shadows in the fog. The paths made by animals drinking water, hardly qualifying as “roads,” and even such “paths” were not always present–more often, the ground covered with dead branches and fallen leaves was even more elusive to tread upon.

Moreover, either by illusion or reality, Nina felt as if the ground ahead was increasingly difficult to navigate, with the vegetation becoming denser and more chaotic. Vines and bushes seemed to deliberately block their way, with the fog exuding a chilling atmosphere, as if… what lay ahead was not some “final sanctuary,” but rather the largest shadow in this vast Dreamscape.

She suddenly stopped.

Within the fog, she thought she saw something flash by.

Nina nearly unleashed a 6000 slap.

But she managed to restrain her overly bright impulse.

“I think I just saw something run through the fog,” Nina said to Morris, visibly shaken. “It startled me!”

Morris glanced at Nina, noticing the twin golden flames dancing in the depths of her eyes, while the air around her gradually settled from its distortion.

The old man suddenly seemed a bit nervous–not because he feared any real danger might appear from the fog, but because he was worried Nina might set the forest alight with a slap.

After all, the girl had a tendency to explode with surprise.

“Did you see clearly what it was?”

“No,” Nina shook her head, “It just seemed like a very tall ‘person’ that ran past in the blink of an eye, but it might not have been a person? The outline felt strange… as if it shifted shape.”

“…Can’t determine what it might be,” Morris said, frowning, “but I didn’t sense any mental activity just now, so it’s very likely just an illusion created by the fog… We still don’t know the principle behind this so-called ‘Silent Wall,’ so anything we see here might be possible.”

He paused before adding, unable to help himself, “The key is for you to stay calm… and control your impulse to act recklessly.”

Nina nervously nodded, continuing to keep an eye on the movements in the surrounding fog, and took a few more steps forward.

At that moment, a disordered wind seemed to suddenly sweep through the dense forest.

She felt the fog in front of her clear significantly, followed by the appearance of a hazy, distorted mirror-like “light screen” at the dissipating end of the fog.

That layer of shimmer trembled in the mist, its surface reflecting the distorted views of the forest, and something seemed to lurk behind the light screen, but it was too indistinct to make out.

Nina briefly froze, then realized–they had arrived.

That was the “Barrier of Light” at the end of the Silent Wall, described by Xilin!

In the next instant, Nina and Morris quickly approached the light screen.

A barrier crafted from light, standing majestically and commandingly at the boundary of the fog, stretching endlessly upwards into the sky and spreading endlessly to either side, with flowing brilliance slowly moving across its surface, seemingly isolating the worlds on either side of the light, silently guarding the infinite secrets beyond.

“It’s… beautiful.” Nina lifted her head in awe, instinctively uttering her admiration.

Morris stepped forward, asking Nina to step back a bit, then cautiously extended his hand, touching the seemingly thin layer of light.

And so, the Silent Wall silently collapsed.

This barrier, as if connecting heaven and earth, as if boundlessly wide, in all its grandeur and majesty, shattered soundlessly like a soap bubble.