Chapter 1 The Old Voice

Accompanying the aged but loud voice, Duncan heard a clattering sound from the small house, as if someone had hurriedly gotten up and bumped into debris. Immediately afterward, footsteps approached, and an old man with a hunched back, sparse white hair, a dusty gray coat, and a face full of wrinkles appeared near the doorway.

The person called "Old Ghost" stood inside his caretaker's cabin, bent over, his slightly cloudy eyes scanning the outside. It was hard to tell if he could clearly see the figures of the people standing outside the door, but he hurriedly lowered his head and muttered, "The Queen is coming to inspect... I haven't prepared properly... those assistants are getting more and more unreliable, and the messengers..."

"Old Ghost!" Nemo had to interrupt the old man's muttering with a loud voice. "The Queen isn't coming! The Queen isn't coming back! We have guests today—esteemed guests arranged by Captain Tirian. Stop muttering, they're here to see you."

As he spoke, Nemo turned his head, his face apologetic as he said to Duncan, "Sorry—as you can see, he's a bit neurotic, and often suddenly recalls things from decades ago. But despite that, as long as he's dealing with pipes and valves, he immediately becomes lucid."

"Lucid? I'm lucid!" Just as he said that, "Old Ghost" suddenly flicked his eyes, as if he had suddenly understood. He looked at Duncan and the others, muttering, "Guests, to think that unfamiliar faces can still enter this place... Have the credentials been checked, and the password?"

"Checked, of course, they've been checked," Nemo said immediately, while carefully glancing at Duncan. "These are all honored guests, just treat them... just treat them as if Captain Tirian himself has come."

"Oh, then come in, although there's nothing to see here," Old Ghost mumbled, stepping aside. "Just a bunch of old antiques, if you don't mind."

Vanna turned her head to look at Morris, whose eyes remained fixed on "Old Ghost."

After a moment, Morris shook his head, his voice very low. "It's hard to tell—his mind isn't quite right to begin with, and his memory is intermittent."

Duncan heard Morris's soft report, his expression unchanged. He simply followed behind the muttering old man and stepped into the abandoned caretaker's room.

The rest room wasn't large, and was brightly lit by a gas lamp. As expected, it was piled with all sorts of things. Apart from a bed in the corner, the visible area was almost entirely filled with shelves that had been bent and deformed under the weight, and boxes on the floor. All kinds of mechanical parts, spare valve kits, and work tools filled them to the brim.

Even a skilled acrobat would leave with at least a Class 10 disability.

"What a mess," Alice muttered softly, looking at the chaotic scene in the room. "I really want to clean it up..."

"Ah, I'm terribly sorry!" Old Ghost, who was walking among a pile of debris, immediately turned around and bowed. "Your Majesty, I've been neglecting my duties lately, and this place is a bit chaotic..."

Alice was immediately stunned. "Huh?"

Duncan's eyes also changed slightly, but just as he looked at Old Ghost and was about to say something, the old man suddenly faltered again, muttering to himself as he got up, "Strange, where did I put my kettle... How can I not even offer a cup of water when guests arrive..."

Duncan and the others exchanged glances.

"No need to look for your kettle, the guests are just here to ask you about something," Nemo said at this time. "About the current state of the Second Aqueduct, and your own situation, they're here to investigate."

"Investigate?" Old Ghost stopped immediately, turning around with a particularly serious expression. "Does General Tirian need to investigate his own troops? Could there be a traitor? Is it in our area? Or over in the central district? I thought they've been acting strangely lately..."

"There are no traitors, but there may be other sleepers who are being threatened by some kind of supernatural contamination," Vanna said, stepping forward, but she almost tripped over the debris on the floor—this chaotic little cabin was a real challenge for her six-foot-three frame. "Have you contacted people in other areas recently? Has anyone shown abnormal behavior?"

"Abnormal? It hasn't gotten that bad, but the contact in the central district has been saying lately that there are gurgling sounds in the abandoned pipes over there, as if someone wants to activate the Second Aqueduct," Old Ghost waved his hand. "As for the Second Aqueduct's condition, you can all see it. The things the Queen built back then were really solid, but after all, it's been abandoned for so many years. There are many areas down there that can't be approached, and sometimes the underground river seeps into the cracks in the rocks, bringing strange sounds, which is normal..."

The old man's words would often stray from the topic, and Duncan had to interrupt to bring the topic back on track. "The central district you mentioned... is that the area where the Boiling Gold Mine is located?"

"Boiling Gold? Ah, yes, Boiling Gold, it's all there—the Great Cathedral is there, the Queen's Palace is there, the mine is there. That mine is very deep, several hundred meters deep," Old Ghost sat down on his bed, and suddenly slapped his leg as he spoke. "Ah, that's right, the sound should be coming from a certain level of the mine, the Second Aqueduct over there is quite close to the mine... I told you, the contact over there is too nervous, acting all strange..."

The old man began to mutter to himself again, but this time Duncan didn't interrupt—he had fallen into thought.

He recalled the circumstances of his initial arrival in Frost, recalling the first body he used here—a worker who had accidentally fallen to his death in the Boiling Gold Mine, falling to the bottom of the mine. What the search party finally brought up was a counterfeit made of "Source."

And now, Old Ghost had mentioned that the "contact" lurking in the central district had heard strange sounds coming from the Second Aqueduct's pipes, sounding as if something was surging inside—the Second Aqueduct in the central district, and a certain level in the Boiling Gold Mine, were very close.

Considering that they were both "antiques" left over from the Queen's era half a century ago, Duncan even suspected that the two were not just "very close."

Maybe those pipes were interconnected!

He quickly noted this clue, and then asked, "Is there a way to go directly to the underground of the central district from here? How do you usually meet with the contact?"

"From here? That won't do, there's a completely dark road in the middle, it's been polluted for a long time, and the other roads have all collapsed. You have to go from the ground, but the ground is now full of rebel claws, you have to be very careful..." Old Ghost muttered, but suddenly shouted, "Queen's Guard! The rebels are coming, quickly destroy the shaft!"

The old man suddenly stood up from the bed, looking around nervously, as if the rebels would attack this place in the next second, but suddenly he stopped, his eyes falling on Alice.

"Oh, I made a mistake, the Queen is safe and sound..."

Alice was immediately flustered and waved her hands quickly. "I... I'm not the Queen..."

Duncan's eyes were deep as he looked at the old man standing next to the bed, who faltered again, and after a few seconds looked at Alice somewhat blankly. "Girl, who are you?"

"Old Ghost, you're really senile—it's not just the problem of inhaling too much toxic smoke back then, your eyesight is failing!" Just then, Nemo's voice suddenly rang out, interrupting the strange moment. The informant nodded apologetically to Duncan. "Sorry, Old Ghost is usually a bit strange, but he seems particularly bad today. He probably hasn't interacted with outsiders for too long, and he's a bit excited to see you, so he's mixed up things from back then."

"... It's okay," Duncan said lightly, slowly withdrawing his gaze from the old man.

He wasn't very concerned about whether the old man had really seen the shadow of the Frost Queen in Alice after her disguise—was it a brief moment of clarity in a muddled mind? Had he seen through the disguise? Or was it just a memory mix-up? None of that mattered.

If this crazy old man really saw a bit of the Frost Queen's phantom in Alice, and felt a moment of peace in his heart because of it, that would be a good thing.

Just then, Nemo seemed to suddenly remember something, and frowned. "Strange, why hasn't Crow returned yet?"

"Crow? He went to check the northern corridor," Old Ghost waved his hand. "That guy is a slowpoke, he always has to wander around outside for a long time before coming back."

Nemo's tightly locked brows didn't relax at all. "... That's not right, even if he's a slowpoke, he should be back by now. The lights over there often malfunction, and his lantern can't last that long... Old Ghost, when did he leave?"

"Two or three hours?" Old Ghost thought for a while, seeming to become a little serious. "Now that you mention it, it really seems like he's been gone for quite a while."

"I have a bad feeling, Crow has been in the depths of the aqueduct for too long," Nemo's tone finally became serious, and he looked up at Duncan and the others. "I have to go find him."