Duncan silently listened to the voices in his mind—Vanna and Morris's steady and reliable reports, Lucrezia's helpless complaints, and sometimes Shirley's frantic shouts and Nina's tireless reminders. These voices, traveling across vast stretches of time and space, were like warm anchor chains. Even after the two "avatars" he had left in the city-state had gradually failed, they still firmly anchored him to the side of reason and humanity.

Afterward, he temporarily ended his communication with Vanna and the others, slowly walking across the entire deck, past the stairs and ramps at the stern, to the towering stern control platform.

The puppet still stood quietly at the control platform, her hands tightly gripping the dark helm. Her unfocused eyes stared ahead, and countless invisible threads extended from her body, connecting her to the *Lost Country* beneath her feet, and to the illusory projection of the *New Hope* in the high sky.

Thin wisps of mist suddenly emerged from all directions on the deck, flowing and converging.

Duncan noticed the strangely appearing mist, instinctively frowning. Immediately afterward, he realized that the gray-white background in the distance seemed to be gradually "cracking"—at the end of that uniformly textured "channel," large patches of mist appeared, and deep within the mist was a sense of emptiness.

Almost in that instant, he heard the intermittent and blurred voice: "Transition complete…"

The *Lost Country* gave a slight shake, but it did not produce the obvious vibration that had occurred when it entered a certain "medium" when it reached the border node earlier. The channel shattered silently, and the endless and thin mist filled the surroundings almost in the blink of an eye. The next moment, Alice, who was at the helm, blinked, and the puppet's consciousness suddenly returned to her body.

"Captain!" The puppet girl looked at Duncan, her face instantly blooming with a happy and eager-to-please smile. "We're here!"

Duncan nodded, but was suddenly stunned as he was about to speak—he noticed that the edge of the *Lost Country* was rapidly becoming "blurred"!

No, not just the edge, the entire ship was rapidly becoming "blurred"! Enveloped in the mist, everything in his vision seemed to suddenly lose its clear "boundaries." Details disappeared from the deck, the masts gradually dimmed in the mist, and even Alice in front of him seemed to be rapidly transforming into some illusory form as if merging with the mist.

And the ghostly green flames that enveloped the *Lost Country*'s entire body also dissipated in this process!

Alice seemed to notice something. She was stunned in place, then slowly lowered her head, looking at her rapidly losing detail and "blurring" hands: "...Eh?"

But the next second, Zhou Ming-Duncan suddenly reacted.

A layer of hazy starlight was suddenly infused into the ghostly green flames enveloping the *Lost Country*'s entire body. Duncan's eyes seemed to shine with billions of stars, and the *Lost Country*, which was originally on the verge of information collapse, was quickly reconstructed and re-assigned in his vision—under the burning of the starlight-filled flames, the deck and masts almost instantly returned to their original state, and Alice's figure stabilized before his eyes.

The puppet barely reacted to what had happened. She saw the flames on the ship suddenly "change color," and then the same flames surrounded her. After a few seconds of daze, she belatedly raised her hand to look at it, exclaiming, "Wow—"

Duncan still felt a little lingering fear in his heart. He took a light breath, finally having a little sense of reality about this "Edge of Ashes" that Rey Nora had discovered.

This was the real border of order, the edge of nothingness, the "primordial sea" where information units had not been assigned. The information here had not yet been defined, and everything "created" from within the sanctuary, even the *Lost Country* returning from the subspace, was not a "data structure" that could exist stably here—because there was no data structure here at all!

In this place, probably only existences that had experienced the Great Annihilation and had gained "self-stability" on the information level could maintain their relative "safe stability."

Such as the "reverse singularity," such as the wreckage of the *New Hope*.

Duncan took a deep breath, calming his mood, reaching out and patting Alice's hair, then looking around—speaking of the wreckage of the *New Hope*, where was Rey Nora?

He and his ship had arrived at the location of the escape pod's positioning signal, but as he looked around on the towering stern deck, he did not see any physical objects in this chaotic and void "mist."

"Can you sense the signal from the escape pod?" Duncan asked Alice with a slight frown. "We should be at the location, right?"

"Yeah, theoretically it should be right here," the puppet finally recovered from the beautiful starlight around her, quickly sensed the direction of the escape pod, and then scratched her head a little confusedly. "The signal is nearby...I just sensed it, why can't I see it..."

The corner of Duncan's mouth suddenly twitched: "Could it be that we crashed into her again..."

Alice was stunned when she heard this, keenly capturing the key point: "Again?"

Duncan: "...You don't need to worry about that, let's find Rey Nora first."

As he spoke, he slowly released his perception, carefully controlling the "reverse singularity" part of his power while trying to find abnormal auras around the *Lost Country*.

At this time, he was thinking about two things in his mind—first, the unlucky Frost Queen had better not have been knocked away by the *Lost Country*, and second, the unlucky Frost Queen had better not have been run over by the bottom of this big ship…

He was here to meet the Queen by appointment, not to let the Queen "hit the jackpot." If they met again, it would be awkward, and even difficult to explain.

At this time, Alice also reacted. The puppet girl racked her brains for a long time, and finally clapped her hands: "Oh...the *Lost Country* 'flew' directly according to the positioning signal of the escape pod, so when it landed, wouldn't it directly land on the escape pod..."

Duncan sighed deeply—what's the use of reacting now.

He shouldn't have let Alice transition directly according to the positioning beacon of the escape pod. At least he should have set a safe distance of "xx from the transition beacon," but how could he have imagined that the positioning of the *New Hope* thing was so precise? When the *Lost Country* went to the Four Gods nodes before, it didn't directly crash into their foreheads...

Just as he sighed in his heart, Duncan suddenly sensed something.

He "scanned" a "physical object" that did not belong to the *Lost Country*.

But the location of that physical object...was on the *Lost Country*.

Duncan raised his head in confusion, looking in a certain direction in his perception. After some confirmation, the expression on his face gradually became subtle.

Alice also noticed: "Ah, Captain, did you find it?"

"Let's go and see the situation first." Duncan mumbled casually, and led Alice away from the control platform. They walked through the platform and connecting stairs, following the guidance in the induction, and finally came to the… captain's room door at the stern.

Alice raised her head and looked at this familiar place, holding her head with both hands: "This is the captain's room, I don't see anything else."

Duncan was still staring at the captain's room door (the Door of the Forsaken), he sensed the changes that had occurred here, and even… gradually understood the changes that had occurred here.

After frowning and trying to think for a long time, he finally took a step forward and put his hand on the… hinge side of the Door of the Forsaken.

The distorted and misplaced space-time structure emerged in his mind, and turned into a reality mapping that could be understood. He found the node of this space-time misalignment and gently pushed.

The door opened—it was pushed open from the position of the hinge.

Alice stared blankly at this scene, and it took a long time before she blurted out: "It can be opened from here?!"

Duncan: "...Don't make noise, I'm thinking."

Behind the door was a hazy halo, and there seemed to be an "indoor space" that did not belong to the *Lost Country*, shrouded in a layer of constantly shaking optical phenomena.

Unlike the process of pushing open the Door of the Forsaken in "normal circumstances" and directly teleporting to the "single apartment," what appeared before Duncan this time seemed to be a real "entrance," an entrance that could even allow entities other than him to enter.

He first reached into the halo himself to try it out, then turned to look at Alice: "Do you want to come?"

Alice nodded without hesitation: "Yes!"

Duncan reached out to the puppet girl: "Follow me—grab my arm, and don't let go until you confirm it's safe."

Alice immediately listened obediently and grabbed Duncan's arm, following the captain into the hazy halo.

They seemed to pass through a cool curtain, and after a very brief dizziness and sensory dislocation, the scene before them quickly stabilized.

A magnificent and spacious room appeared before Duncan and Alice, real and down-to-earth.

Rey Nora was sitting on the big bed in the center of the room with a dazed expression, staring blankly at Duncan and Alice who suddenly pushed the "door" in—this Frost Queen seemed to have just suffered a great shock, and at this time she seemed a little stunned. It wasn't until Duncan walked towards her that she suddenly reacted and raised her hands, gesturing in the air.

"...It just ran over!"

Rey Nora's expression gradually became a little frantic.

"Such a big ship! It just ran over head-on! Half of the room was smashed into pieces by the oncoming mess, and it took a long time to recover. Then you pushed open the wall and walked in! Such a big hole! Can't you go through the door?"

Pushed open the wall?

Duncan was stunned for a moment, and looked back at the direction he came from.

He saw Rey Nora's door, the door was well embedded in the wall, still tightly closed, but there was a big hole in the wall next to the door—that was where he and Alice came in.

Space-time misalignment.jpg.

Alice quietly poked Duncan's arm: "Captain, why aren't you talking?"

"...Don't make noise, I'm thinking again."

(End of this chapter)