Ashes Of Deep Sea
Chapter 761 - Chapter 761 Chapter 758 The Sailors Intel

Chapter 761: Chapter 758 “The Sailor’s” Intel Chapter 761: Chapter 758 “The Sailor’s” Intel The brief illuminations of “Sun Shards” breaking the long night’s tense veneer of calm–after a quarter arc of the “Sun Ring” disintegrated before the eyes of the world and plummeted from the sky, at least seven City-States deployed fleets to find those fallen luminous geometric bodies on the Endless Sea.

Within the first forty-eight hours of the Long Night’s commencement, the Endless Sea, peaceful for over a millennium, came closer to war than ever before.

Fortunately, a massive fleet led by the flagship “Universal Balance” of the Academy of Truth arrived before all City-States at the largest “fall site” in the central sea area and took control of several of the largest Sun Shards. The Church’s authority once again played a role, extending the precarious balance between the City-States–several city fleets did not engage in conflict over the Sun Shards but agreed to the Church’s allocation plan. They set aside their disputes for the time being and delivered the Sun Shards to the cities that were in the worst condition and in most urgent need of sunlight support.

But during that four-hour standoff, a crack, an omen, had already begun to spread silently among the many City-States of the Endless Sea–

In the days to come, sunlight would become a scarce life-sustaining resource.

However, for Duncan, who was still staying in Light Breeze Harbor, these events were still a long way off.

An unexpected piece of intelligence had been delivered to Duncan from Farun–information from Captain Lawrence of the White Oak. The content of the intelligence was related to that mysterious anomaly 077, “The Sailor.”

In the witch’s mansion on the first floor, Lawrence’s figure appeared in the oval mirror on the wall, and his voice came from within the mirror, “…He said he used to be the first mate on the Sea Song. They crossed the critical line Six Nautical Miles from the border, and it happened on January 21st, 1902…”

Duncan, standing next to the oval mirror, furrowed his eyebrows immediately after hearing Captain Lawrence’s story, “It’s only January 22nd, 1902, in the new City-State calendar. You mean to say… that the corpse named ‘Anomaly 077-Sailor’ was still a clergyman of the Deep Sea Church performing a border-crossing mission at this time yesterday?!”

“That’s what he said,” Lawrence replied seriously, evidently not joking, “He said his captain was named Karan and described the details of the ship’s departure. He said he knew it was actually just the second day after the Sea Song crossed the border Six Nautical Miles, but he told me Captain Karan and her sailors had been wandering for half a century after crossing the border…”

Duncan remained silent, knitting his brows, while Lucia, who was beside him, heard the conversation and widened her eyes in surprise, “Half a century?!”

“Possibly… longer, ma’am,” Lawrence said with a furrowed brow in the mirror, speaking cautiously, “If we go by what ‘The Sailor’ says, they were only able to keep track of days with a clear mind for the first half-century. Afterward, they lost all sense of time–they drifted in boundless fog, neither alive nor dead, as if they’d fallen into the ‘void fault’ at the edge of Dreamscape that psychiatrists accidentally fall into during Treatment. The Sea Song also fell into the world’s edge fault, and so…”

Lawrence paused, seemingly distracted by some commotion on his side, and then a hoarse and indistinct voice came from the edge of the mirror, the rough voice of “The Sailor”: “And so we were ‘forgotten,’ captain, haha… We were forgotten by death, forgotten by the sea, and eventually even time and reason forgot us, leaving us to drift at the world’s end, ageless and undying, almost eternally adrift… But at last… *hic* the goddess took mercy, oh how she took mercy, and we suddenly remembered Her… And so we drifted back to the right course… *hic*!”

Duncan’s eyebrows were tightly locked as he quickly grasped “The Sailor’s” meaning and spoke, “The right course you’re referring to is…”

“We found Her! A huge…” The Sailor suddenly raised his voice, but then stopped abruptly as if someone had choked him, muttering a string of sounds before continuing, “I can’t remember, I can’t remember what She looked like, but we really found Her… found the source of the call, that was our mission–The Pope sent us to find Her, because She conveyed a revelation to the Pope…

“Most of us stayed there, they didn’t want to return, didn’t want to face that doomed world again. They had drifted too long, all their glory and conviction had been eroded away by that endless fog, and we encountered… encountered…

“What was it again? I can’t quite remember, captain, I can’t remember clearly… I just recall I and Captain Karan returned from the fog, just the two of us, strictly speaking, just me alone–Captain Karan was nothing but a wrinkled shadow then, she couldn’t even remember her own face, so I had to take over steering the ship…”

The Sailor’s voice turned into a series of mumbles, his thoughts apparently not clear, as scattered memories, like broken puzzle pieces, swirled through his withered brain, leaving him sometimes lucid, sometimes confused.

Duncan, however, ignored The Sailor’s subsequent mumbling. He pondered briefly and then said, “But now you are Anomaly 077–a ‘strange object’ sheltered by the City-States many years ago. You have appeared in this world for hundreds of years, and the first time you showed up was on an exploratory ship that had been missing for three years.”

The Sailor quieted down, remaining silent for a long time, and after an indeterminate pause, Lawrence suddenly broke the silence, “He says he doesn’t know what happened–he doesn’t remember how he returned to this world in the end, he doesn’t remember where the Sea Song finally went, and he doesn’t understand why he eventually turned into this, into a ‘strange object’ that whips up storms. He says the world he sees has been displaced, the world he sees now is vastly different from the one in his memory… but he can’t explain all of this to me.”

Duncan fell into silence for a moment, then let out a gentle sigh.

“I understand. Take good care of Anomaly 077 for now–if anything comes up, I’ll contact you again.”

“Yes, captain.”

The flame within the mirror gradually faded, becoming once again nothing more than an ordinary piece of glass.

Lawrence withdrew his gaze from the mirror and turned his head to look at the mummy sitting in the corner of the room–Anomaly 077 sat there somewhat dazedly with an empty bottle of alcohol in his hand, still intermittently lifting the glass bottle and meaninglessly tipping it over his mouth.

“Alcohol actually has no effect on you,” Lawrence finally frowned, stood up, and approached the mummy, “you can’t get drunk, and you can’t pass out from this stuff–alcohol won’t work, poison won’t work, not even bullets from a revolver–after all, you’ve tried that.”

The mummy paused for a moment, casually threw the bottle aside, and slowly lifted his head to look at the old ship captain standing in front of him, and after a two-second delay, he muttered, “What about a twelve-pound cannon…”

“If you’re still awake on the day the world ends, then I wouldn’t mind you giving it a try–you could even try the sixty-four-pounder on the dock if you’re interested.”

Lawrence said casually, taking a seat on a chair beside the mummy.

“But since the world is ending, you might as well not bother trying those things–we’ll all rest eventually, although you took a bit more of a detour than the rest of us.”

The “sailor” turned his head, staring blankly at Lawrence.

His withered, shriveled eyeballs moved slightly; the drunkenness induced by self-hypnosis couldn’t last long. After a moment of being dazed, the mummy, who had lost his peace, slowly bowed his head and hugged his head with bone-dry hands.

“I lost the journal…”

The mummy murmured despairingly.

“What?”

“The journal, Captain Karan’s journal–she wrote many things before she dissipated, she told me to take that journal back, it was our task…” The mummy mumbled, seeming as if he wanted to burst into tears, but he seemed to have forgotten how such emotions unique to the living were to be expressed, “I lost it, I lost the captain’s journal… I remember I had tucked it on me, while the Sea Song was crossing through the thick fog, it was on me, but now I don’t know where it is… everything has changed, I can’t remember…”

Lawrence listened to the mummy’s confession in a daze, while in the mirror beside him, Martha’s complex expression emerged silently–they remained quiet, silently watching this “sailor,” with only the latter’s indistinct, low murmur filling the room… That voice, like a corpse that had forgotten how to cry, was trying to learn how to lament.

…

Duncan turned his head to see that everyone had already gathered behind him, many eyes either looking at him or at the mirror that had returned to its normal state.

“…That mummy actually has such a significant past?” Sherry muttered softly.

Fenna pondered, “The Sea Song just crossed the Six Nautical Miles boundary yesterday… I remember Queen Helena mentioned this before, she said the major churches had started to dispatch vanguard ships to break through the Six Nautical Miles boundary, hoping to bring back information from ‘beyond the world.'”

“But why would the first mate of an exploration ship that just crossed the boundary yesterday turn into ‘Anomaly 077,’ who appeared in the world more than two hundred years ago?” Nina was puzzled, “And there’s also that ‘half a century’…”

“…Perhaps, it’s because the concept of ‘time’ has begun to lose its meaning,” Duncan said softly, “or maybe, this is precisely the trait of the seas beyond the boundary–the entire crew of the Sea Song verified the first trait of the world beyond with their lives.”

At these words, Morris furrowed his brow, seemingly coming to some realization.

But before the old scholar could speak, a series of sudden knocks from the direction of the entrance interrupted his thoughts.

A visitor had arrived.