Ashes Of Deep Sea
Chapter 752 - Chapter 752 Chapter 749 Walking Against the Light

Chapter 752: Chapter 749 Walking Against the Light Chapter 752: Chapter 749 Walking Against the Light The captain had already arrived.

Almost the instant the words of the uninvited guest in the white robe ceased, a swirling green flame rose within the room, and a figure stepped out from within the fire.

Sherry leapt to her feet as soon as she saw Duncan, “Captain, Captain! A Doomsday Preacher just suddenly came here! This one seems to be the sane type; he says he wants to have a talk with you…”

“I know,” Duncan raised his hand to interrupt Sherry’s frenetic speech, as his gaze steadily rested on the uninvited guest, “I was wondering when you all would finally appear before me–I didn’t expect it to be so soon.”

“You knew I would come?” the white-robed elder asked casually, his face remaining calm despite his questions filled with doubt and surprise.

“You would have come sooner or later, since ‘Twilight’ has already begun. Members of the Doomsday Survey Team who are still sensible at this moment would probably be very willing to meet with me, and as it happens, I am also quite eager to have a talk with you,” Duncan spoke while his eyes surveyed the surroundings, “…this isn’t a good place to talk. We could change the location for our discussion.”

No sooner had Duncan finished speaking than Sherry, Ah Gou, and Morris, who was busy applying various blessings on himself, began nodding in agreement…

However, the uninvited guest seemed not to have noticed the reaction of the three, only looking at Duncan, “That’s fine. Let’s go somewhere closer to the Subspace; I feel a bit more comfortable there.”

Somewhere closer to the Subspace? Duncan frowned slightly at those words, but after a moment of silence, he slowly nodded his head, “Alright.”

Upon hearing this, Morris instinctively widened his eyes slightly, “Captain, are you sure you want to bring…”

“It’s alright,” Duncan waved his hand, “I have my own judgment. Sherry, go to the captain’s cabin and fetch my brass lantern.”

Before long, Duncan, holding the brass lantern, and the uninvited guest in the tattered white robe, walked silently through the lower decks of the Homeloss–they had passed through the cargo hold where the light reversed, and were now on the last corridor, with the staircase leading to the bottom of the hold at the end of the hallway.

The brass lantern cast a ghostly green light, dispelling the gloom that surrounded them. In the empty corridors of the ship’s hold, only the echo of footsteps could be heard–most of the time, those of two people, but occasionally, Duncan would notice that only his own footsteps resounded–the “Doomsday Preacher” seemed not to be entirely present in the current reality. At times, he was like a weightless Spiritual Body, making no sound as he walked along the old wooden corridor, and sometimes his presence would nearly dissipate, as if he had suddenly gone to a very distant place…

This piqued Duncan’s curiosity, yet he remained polite and did not pry.

As they neared the last door, the “Doomsday Preacher” broke the silence, “You actually don’t need this lantern–it’s meant for a mortal.”

Duncan came to a sudden halt, kept quiet for a moment, and then continued forward, “But this ship needs it.”

“…You truly are full of goodwill,” the Doomsday Preacher murmured softly, his tone seemingly carrying genuine praise.

“If it were not too long ago, I would never have imagined that one day I would be escorting a Doomsday Preacher here–especially in such a calm and composed state,” Duncan said offhandedly, “My initial contact with you all was not pleasant.”

“Is it possible that the one you first encountered was also me?” The white-robed Doomsday Preacher revealed an inscrutable smile, speaking calmly, “Or at least one of them.”

Duncan turned his head, studying the other’s face carefully in the light of the lantern.

An aged traveler dressed in a white robe, hunched over, the lines on his face as though they were etched by the knife of time; his sunken eyes glinted with a sort of pale gold, metallic sheen. His demeanor was serene, his smile faint, with only the flow of years quietly streaming in the depth of his eyes.

Duncan withdrew his gaze and turned to continue walking, “I don’t know, I have no recollection of your face–anyway, whether or not you were among those I captured on the ship back then is unimportant. What matters is here and now, you are conversing with me.”

“It seems you have come to understand us very well.”

Duncan neither agreed nor disagreed; he had already reached the last door and stretched his hand towards the doorknob.

“We’re here, the place closest to the Subspace on this ship.”

His voice had fallen, and he had already pushed open the somber wooden door—the structure of the hold behind the door came into view.

The unextinguished light illuminated the cabin. The once shattered structure of the hold had been repaired during the Light Breeze Harbor incident, and now it had returned to its complete form. The sturdy hull, grown from the spine of ancient gods, closed in all around, blocking the chaotic streams of light and murmured whispers that projected from Subspace. The eerie wooden door that led directly into Subspace still stood in the depths of the cabin, firmly closed and silently upright.

Duncan led his “guest” into the cabin, with the Doomsday Preacher closely following behind, lifting his head to survey the cabin walls and the ceiling, and uttering a sigh of wonder, “Ah… You have repaired this place…”

“You know quite a bit,” Duncan commented offhandedly, hanging the lantern on a nearby column and looking back, “Did someone from your group visit here sometime I don’t know about?”

“I have seen its wreckage—it could have been the past, or maybe the future,” the white-robed old man appeared to be reminiscing, a slight frown on his brow, “…It disintegrated in flames, fell into darkness, its true and magnificent appearance captivating.”

Duncan did not respond to this subject; he had been contemplating various things along the way. He now organized his thoughts a little before asking, “How many members of the Doomsday survey team who retain their sanity are still around?”

He paused, then added, “I mean, at this current time point.”

The white-robed old man was silent for a while, his expression still calm, “Only I am left.”

Duncan felt as if his breath and heartbeat had both skipped a half beat.

Then, he heard the white-robed old man’s voice again, “Captain, do you know what it feels like to grope in the dark?”

This last clear-minded Critan calmly spoke, slowly spreading his arms as if the eternal darkness still loomed before his eyes–

“The term ‘Doomsday survey team’… I haven’t heard this appellation in a long time; it turned to dust in history the moment we started our journey.

“The ‘time’ of this world is limited, something we’ve known from the beginning. The entire Endless Sea, the entire Deep Sea Era, is like a meticulously set clock predetermined to run only for a certain period. We knew it could run only for so long, and our only hope was to find a way to ‘wind up’ the world again before the hands of the clock stopped…

“Your wisely-following seeker is about to construct the entire ‘world’ concept. He was the first to introduce ‘time’ as a coordinate axis into the world model, and in our eyes, that axis seemed even more… real, solid, and icy cold.

“Our mission was to move along the axis of time, while at every point of divergence that might lead to a new branch of history, we would observe and guide, doing everything possible to extend the lifespan of the Shelter, while seeking ways to continue forward at the end of time.

“To us, this process felt a bit like… walking with our back to the light.

“The very day when the anomaly 001 was first ignited in the experimental field was the starting point of light, that was the Shelter’s most stable moment. Everything had just come into being, resources were plentiful, time lines firm, and all looked beautiful, seemingly eternal—we set out on that sunny morning and threw light to our back, walking toward the darkness at the end.

“As we distanced ourselves from the ‘starting point,’ we watched the world gradually sink into decay. All the tiny, unavoidable flaws left at the dawn of Creation began to expand, evolving into various deadly dangers. The light faded, and darkness grew. We turned our backs on the sunlight, walking into the night, and the further forward we went, the darker it got—we tried our utmost to adjust, observing the possibilities in the weakening light to delay the onset of darkness… To some degree, we succeeded.

“The originally ‘designed lifespan’ of this Shelter was eight thousand years—but by avoiding wear and tear, reducing chaos, and lowering the ‘sun’s’ load, it has already outlasted its time by two thousand years.

“Yet in the face of time’s relentless flow, our success is trivial and doomed to be completely erased.

“At the end of the time axis, there is only darkness; no matter how hard we try to prolong the light from the ‘starting point’ into the future, or pick up stray sparks on this increasingly darker path, nothing can illuminate the time’s end, which looms like an endless black wall… We crash into that boundless darkness, feeling around in vain, returning empty-handed, then we recalibrate the entire time axis, revalidating all possibilities, doing everything we can to extend the future, and hit the darkness again, time after time… countless times.”

The white-robed old man lifted his head, gazed at some dark corner in the dim cabin, and after a long while continued to speak, “There is no path ahead—that was the last words left by the first member who lost his sanity before he left, he as a scout stayed in time’s end longer than all of us, traversed every possibility, and in the end chose to give up, even chose… to return to the past, to ‘correct’ those futile days.

“That is the first Doomsday Preacher in the mouths of the world’s people… He just recently lost control, and it’s been too long since I last saw him, I can’t remember his name.”

Duncan listened quietly, in silence for a long time before slowly speaking, “And you, stayed sane to the end, even came clear-headed to my presence.”

“Yes,” the white-robed old man turned his head, his gaze settling on Duncan, “Because at this current time point, I have entered your line of sight—when the order of the world totters, the cause can come after the effect.”