Ashes Of Deep Sea
Chapter 696 - Chapter 696 Chapter 693 The Shadow Noticed Afterwards

Chapter 696: Chapter 693: The Shadow Noticed Afterwards Chapter 696: Chapter 693: The Shadow Noticed Afterwards “One third of the structure?”

Ted Riel was taken aback upon hearing Duncan’s words, and looked puzzledly at the chaotic, abstract lines he himself had drawn on paper — admittedly, he thought they were poorly done, but this was the closest to the “original impression” he could recall. The residual effects of the subspace constantly disturbed his mind, preventing him from clearly recalling the details of those memories. He himself had difficulty fully outlining the image from these disjointed lines.

However, from Duncan’s tone, he realized that this “Ghost Ship Captain” not only saw what was drawn on the paper but even knew what it originally should have looked like.

Duncan stood in front of the table, his eyebrows tightly furrowed as he carefully studied the details drawn by Ted, and after a while, he pointed to a certain spot on the drawing, “Is this structure fractured?”

Ted furrowed his brow, trying to recall for a moment, and finally a vague impression surfaced in his mind, “It seems so… but I’m not sure. I only caught a glimpse of it in haste, and didn’t even get a chance to see its complete lateral structure…”

“The structure here is fractured and extends outward; these are some connecting structures,” Duncan ignored Ted’s hesitant tone and casually picked up a pencil. He rapidly sketched lines on the blank part of the paper, and under his pen, a strange entity, possessing a symmetrical three-body structure and which, in the eyes of Ted and Lucia, had nothing to do with a “ship,” was swiftly outlined, “It consists of these three main structures… this here is where the engine group is located…”

Lucia had unconsciously moved closer to this bizarre “drawing”, staring at it for a full half-minute before she finally couldn’t resist asking, “What is this exactly?”

Duncan didn’t look up. After a few seconds of silence, he softly responded, “It’s called the ‘New Hope’.”

Lucia and Ted Riel looked at each other, then simultaneously exclaimed, “The New Hope?”

Alice also came over, and a beat slower, she asked, “What is the New Hope?”

Duncan raised his head, his gaze complex and peculiar as it landed on the gothic doll, but the latter seemed to have not grasped anything, just tilting her head to the side, “Why are you looking at me?”

“…It’s a ship, a spaceship,” Duncan withdrew his gaze, saying in a subtle tone that he himself couldn’t fathom, “It arrived at this world many, many years ago… or rather, like other ‘fragments’, it crashed into the pile of world debris we are in.”

“A spaceship? A flying ship?” Ted Riel’s voice carried a hint of surprise, then he quickly realized, “You mean another ‘world fragment’? A flying ship called the ‘New Hope’, whose wreckage fell into the subspace and became the mansion I saw…?”

He gestured with his hand, a look of utter incredulity on his face.

Duncan, however, didn’t address the confusion of the Truth Confidant. He just lowered his head again, gazing long at the drawing on the table — on the basis of Ted Riel’s rendition, the rough strokes outlined the huge spacecraft’s draft, which, though not highly accurate, was indeed what he had seen in that vision of hallucination, the “New Hope” dragging a long flame as it fell into this world.

He remembered how he had seen that vision.

It was when he was checking Alice’s “clockwork key”; he had spread his flame into the brass key — as he had done similarly each time he scouted transcendent objects, he saw the “echo” stored within that “clockwork key.”

In that “echo,” Alice’s clockwork key transformed into some kind of bizarre… data storage medium, and the New Hope crashed in the final scene of the vision.

For a long time, he had been searching for clues about that “spaceship,” seeking legends or historical records in this world related to an ancient crash, and at the same time, he often pondered one question–

Why were there visions of the New Hope’s crash recorded inside Alice’s “clockwork key”?

This seemingly harmless gothic doll, what connection could it have with a spaceship that crashed in the Ancient Era?

The gap between “doll” and “spaceship” was indeed enormous, so much so that even with Duncan’s imaginative power, he truly couldn’t link the two together. However, now… an even more astounding clue had appeared before him.

Ted Riel had seen Alice’s Mansion in the subspace — that mansion, in certain moments, would appear as the wreckage of one-third of the New Hope!

Duncan hadn’t doubted Ted Riel’s memory or statements without cause, but he quickly ruled out any possibility of an issue there — Ted Riel couldn’t possibly describe something he had never seen, and even if his memories were confused, he couldn’t “just so happen” to outline the spacecraft structure of the “New Hope.”

Some disjointed and fragmented clues seemed to be quietly forming connections, some astounding speculations emerged in Duncan’s mind.

With his thoughts fluctuating in his mind, Duncan reached into the pocket close to his body and fumbled out the brass key used to wind Alice’s clockwork.

The brass key lay quietly in his palm, its cold metal tail end featuring the classic “” symbol, as if hiding all the secrets within its infinite silence.

Moments later, he put away the key and looked up to meet the curious yet hesitant gaze of Lucia and Ted Riel.

“Let’s talk about something else first,” Duncan shook his head, his gaze falling on Ted, “what else did you see in the Subspace?”

Ted nodded, realizing that the “New Hope” might be pointing towards some overly ancient and dangerous secrets, he wisely controlled his curiosity and began to recount the incredible scenes he witnessed in the Subspace.

The monstrous structure standing in the wasteland, the throne with the headless giant figure, the unnamed warriors dead against the debris, and various other bizarre, indistinguishable entities that seemed either real existences or figments of the imagination.

Duncan did not interrupt him; he listened attentively, nodding occasionally, until Ted Riel’s narrative came to a pause, and he exhaled deeply.

The headless corpse on the throne, eerie remains beside the nameless warrior, the massive structure looming over the wasteland… All these were indeed bewildering, but anything was possible in the Subspace–at least, to Duncan, these were easier to accept than “Alice’s Mansion appearing in the Subspace” and “Alice’s Mansion being a part of New Hope.”

“…What an impressively memorable journey,” Lucia, after listening quietly for a long time, broke the silence in the room, “Fifteen minutes… Lord Ted, your experience of fifteen minutes could suffice for many scholars’ lifelong research.”

“I could write enough academic papers for the rest of my life based on these fifteen minutes, but honestly, I wish I had not gone through it,” Ted sighed, “Do you know? I still occasionally hear those buzzing noises in my mind… They scurry about in my consciousness like living creatures, and even though I’m trained in resilient psychology and willpower control theory, combating these noises is incredibly challenging, and this aftermath may last a long time…”

He shrugged with a grim expression,

“And what’s worse is, I have to return to the academy tomorrow, to deal with those obstinate students… Their clear yet foolish scholarly views are just another kind of ‘Subspace noise’ to me…”

Mr. Confidant muttered, raising his hand painfully to cover his forehead, clearly the echoes of the Subspace and the foreseeable shadow of the future were intertwining to cast a profound gloom in his heart.

Seeing this, Duncan could offer no consolation but simply sighed lightly and patted Ted on the shoulder, “I very much understand the feeling.”

Ted looked up at Duncan, puzzled, “How could you understand?”

Duncan paused, finding the question hard to explain, but soon, an image of Sherry’s homework and Alice’s sketchbook came to his mind.

“…My ship has minds clearer than your students.”

Ted was stunned for a moment, not quite grasping the full extent, then nodded with a complex expression, “It seems… you have your trials too.”

He fell silent, seemingly fatigued from recounting the long memories of the Subspace and wanting to relax his mind, but in less than half a minute, he seemed to remember something else.

“There’s another matter,” Ted looked up, his expression turning serious, “not about the Subspace, but about… the ‘White Oak.'”

“White Oak?” Duncan was puzzled, “What about that ship?”

“…I don’t know if it’s just my perception, after all, I was influenced by the Subspace then, and my senses and thoughts were very chaotic, but I always feel… there was something not quite right when talking to that ‘sailor’ on the White Oak.”

Listening to Ted’s words, Duncan’s expression became serious.

“A sailor… you mean that Entity 077? What was off about him?”

“I can’t quite put my finger on it, but after returning here, recalling my conversation with that ‘entity,’ I always felt like I wasn’t just talking to ‘him’,” Ted Riel frowned, carefully choosing his words while trying to recall, “I discussed some views on the world with him, the perspective of being an ‘entity,’ and while he answered…

I always felt like I could hear multiple voices… It’s as if there was something else hidden on that ship, and it was right beside that ‘sailor’ at the time.”