Ashes Of Deep Sea
Chapter 692 - Chapter 692 Chapter 689 The Ignored Connection

Chapter 692: Chapter 689: The Ignored “Connection”? Chapter 692: Chapter 689: The Ignored “Connection”? In Light Breeze Harbor, the dim “sunlight” permeated from the sea surface, enveloping the entire City-State under the “night sky.” The information carried by the light silently flowed through the entire sea area, yet only one personified machine could understand this information.

Honestly, even Duncan found this a bit inconceivable.

So, in the eyes of this personified machine, how many things differed from common human knowledge? Were the skies in her eyes blue? Were the tree leaves green? What did the human contours, what did the surging waves of the sea look like in her vision?

And even if she described what she saw–could the colors, sounds, and shapes she talked about truly be the same as those perceived by ordinary people?

It seemed to be an eternal contradictory cycle, a mystery forever unresolved.

Alice turned her head, her beautiful, large eyes reflecting the glow of the gas lamp. She looked at Duncan with a mix of confusion and concern and didn’t speak until after a long time, whispering, “Captain, the things that I see–they are useful, aren’t they?”

The disordered thoughts gradually converged, and Duncan refused to let the messy associations continue. He suddenly agreed with something Alice had said before–certain annoying and inherently unanswerable questions were better left unpondered.

So, he smiled and slowly relaxed, “Of course, they’re useful–other than those messages, what else did you see? After the sun went out, what different things did you ‘see’?”

Alice quickly grasped what Duncan meant. She furrowed her brows, recalling earnestly and looked around before speaking uncertainly, “If I have to say, there was always a buzzing sound…”

Duncan frowned, “Buzzing?”

“Yes, buzzing, a very light noise, and I can’t even be sure if it’s really a ‘sound.’ It’s just this kind of noise that keeps ringing in my head, but if you don’t pay close attention, it gets ignored,” Alice gesticulated as she explained, then pointed out the window, “When I saw that ‘sunlight,’ the sound seemed a bit stronger…”

Duncan nodded lightly, and after a moment, he asked again, “Did you hear this buzzing sound last time the sun went out? Did you see those messages about the ‘Observer Effect Stability Anchor’?”

“No,” Alice shook her head, supporting her head, “It was only after coming to Light Breeze Harbor that I ‘saw’ and heard about the malfunction information from the ‘sunlight’ here…”

Listening to the personified machine’s narrative, Duncan couldn’t help falling into contemplation–

According to Lucercia’s statement, just a while ago, Light Breeze Harbor’s another set of observation equipment had also received faint signals from the extinguished sun, and their characteristics were completely consistent with the signals emitted by the “Luminous Geometric Body.” This meant that during the period when the sun was out, the real body of Anomaly 001 was actually “broadcasting” the “Observer Effect Stability Anchor malfunction” report, yet Alice stated that she did not “see” this content during the previous sun outage, but rather detected the malfunction information from the “sunlight” here after arriving at Light Breeze Harbor… Why was that?

Was it because the malfunction wasn’t that severe when the sun went out last time, and therefore Anomaly 001’s real body didn’t report the malfunction? If this was the case, the situation would be more severe than anyone had anticipated, because it meant that the entire system had deteriorated even further–in such a short period.

The living room fell silent. Lucercia, Maurice, and the others gathered around, listening to Duncan and Alice’s exchange, and looked at Duncan’s changing expression on his face with some concern. After a while, Nina couldn’t help but speak, “Uncle Duncan, do you know what that ‘Observer Effect Stability Anchor’ means?”

Duncan opened his mouth but suddenly found himself at a loss.

In this world, just explaining the concept of planets and the universe was already an incredibly difficult task; how was he to explain the far more abstract ‘observer effect’? How to explain those unbelievable phenomena between the macroscopic and microscopic worlds?

And what was more important–could the observer theory he knew really apply here?

He looked up with a nuanced expression, gazing out at the world beyond the window.

“I can roughly guess some of it, but it deviates greatly from what I know of ‘observer theory,’ which is supposed to happen in the microscopic world, not…”

He hesitated, then stopped.

If Anomaly 001’s other name truly was “Observer Effect Stability Anchor,” could this already explain the real mechanism behind this ancient anomaly’s “Suppressing Pollution” and “Stabilizing Order”?

Unconsciously, he thought of the truth behind the Great Vanishing, of the underlying conflict in all things in the world, and the various Transcendent anomalies across the world caused by cognitive pollution and based on that–the collision and annihilation between the “order foundation stones” of microcosms within each universe. When these foundation stones collided and annihilated each other, mixing into an immensely chaotic and complex “information broth”… Would the observer effect really still be limited to the microscopic world?

In the instant when the mathematical laws of various universes were torn apart, when the material structures of all things were completely annihilated, reduced to foundational informational elements, perhaps the distinction between “microscopic” and “macroscopic” had long since vanished!

Amidst the tempestuous surge of thoughts, Duncan unwittingly murmured, “…The specific manifestations of foundational information pollution and law conflict… Is it actually an out-of-control observer effect in the macroscopic world?”

Maurice and Lucresia looked at each other in astonishment, and then a few seconds later, they both turned their heads, “Ah?”

“Later, I’ll try to explain to you what the observer effect is and some of my conjectures about it, but that’s going to take a lot of time and effort,” Duncan quickly waved his hand, “Right now, I’m more interested in another question.”

Lucresia immediately asked, “Another question?!”

Duncan nodded, turning his gaze to the gothic doll standing beside him, looking completely harmless (mainly because she hadn’t caught on yet).

“Have you ever thought about–why can Alice see and understand these ‘signals’?”

“Oh, right!” Sherry suddenly caught on (since this was the only question she’d understood so far), “How she can ‘see’ is one thing, seeing as how only she can see those ‘lines’–but how does she understand them? So many experts and scholars in the City-State have gone bald without figuring it out!”

Fenna keenly noticed the serious and thoughtful expression on Duncan’s face as he raised the question. “Do you already have an answer?”

Duncan heard this and slowly nodded, thinking for a moment and organizing his words before he brought up the contents recorded in the “Book of Desecration”:

“You should remember, according to the book, that after two failed creations, it was the ‘Crawling King’ who succeeded in Creation during the third long night, initiating the deep-sea era.”

Fenna immediately nodded, “Yes, we remember that.”

“The ‘construction’ of Specter 001 also took place in that same era,” Duncan continued, serious, “The Crawling King enlisted the Kritios Clan as his assistants, and together they designed and built the ‘sun,’ and the Crawling King is the ‘The Saint’ we know–Now, do you remember how Alice was born?”

“Oh, I know this!” Sherry suddenly enlightened, “The Saint’s Replication kneaded her out at the bottom of the sea!”

Everyone caught on.

Their eyes all fell on Alice.

Alice listened blankly as everyone discussed around her, only now vaguely catching up with their train of thought, and after assuring herself that she hadn’t messed anything up, her face showed a look of smug satisfaction for some reason.

“We’ve always known that, in a way, Alice is actually a ‘Deep Creation,’ but a lot of the time, we’ve only noticed her connection to the Frost Queen, Lei Nora, and overlooked her relationship with The Saint–that’s the important part,” Duncan said, a faint complexity in his expression as he watched the inexplicably smug doll, and he thought back to the scene in the garden of that mansion where he had accidentally connected with The Saint, “It seems now that this connection might be more significant than we imagined, at least now we can be sure of one thing, she can understand the ‘system language’ The Saint used in the ‘Genesis Blueprint’…”

Nina thought for a moment, “Like a punch card reader understanding the output tape from a difference engine?”

“…That’s not a bad way to understand it.”

Alice looked at Duncan, then at the other people around, as if she had some questions, but then she furrowed her brows as if she heard or saw something–after a brief moment, she suddenly spoke, “The system has restarted.”

Duncan instantly looked up, and almost at the very moment Alice’s words fell, a low and ethereal roar suddenly entered everyone’s minds.

With the deep rumble that seemed to fill the whole world in an instant, Duncan noticed a streak of rosy light appear in the sky outside the window–

The sun, which had previously sunk near the sea level and extinguished there, becoming dormant, was reignited.

Sherry was the first to run to the window, peering out at the scene on the street below; she saw the rosy light spread over the rooftops, and a squad of Knowledge Guards at the corner looked up in surprise at the sky.

Nearby residents who had hidden in their homes began to react, opening their windows to look outside.

Sherry happily waved out of the window, greeting a neighbor who appeared at another window not far away, but she received no response–everyone’s attention was on the sky that had just lit up again with rosy light.

Then, faint cheers came from somewhere, and after a while, the sound of a loudspeaker broadcast came from the street corner–the broadcast mentioned the news of the sun reigniting and reminded residents not to leave their homes rashly, as night would soon fall and the martial law would continue into the night, until the sun rose normally the next day.

Duncan listened to the faint broadcast coming from outside, watching the rosy light slowly fade from the sky, and he let out a soft breath.

The sun rising as usual… now, even that had become uncertain.