Chapter 178 Crossing the Line

On the fringes of order, the composition and operational rules of information presented a bizarre and chaotic state—Duncan thought about it seriously for a long time and decided to give up thinking.

Anyway, the good news was that Leina Nora hadn't been flung away by the Ghost Ship, nor had she been crushed under the hull—the bad news was that she'd been rammed "into" the ship, and she was still dazed.

This reminded Duncan of a famous painting:

A dog hit by a car on the road and embedded in the front bumper, taken to the highway.jpg.

Duncan cleared his throat twice, shaking off the somewhat absurd associations in his mind. He and Alice took two steps forward, with a hint of apology and concern on his face, "Sorry, I wasn't paying attention when I was sailing... Are you alright?"

Alice, standing beside him, was looking down, seemingly pondering something. She suddenly poked Duncan's arm, "Captain, I remember that the Ghost Ship crashed into the White Oak first, and then I came to your ship. Now it's the Frost Queen's turn. Isn't this a full circle?"

Duncan glared at her, "'Full circle' isn't used that way!"

Leina Nora seemed to have recovered a bit at this time. She rubbed her aching head, adjusting to the situation as she stood up from the bedside. "I'm fine, just the impact was a bit strong—I didn't expect your appearance to be so... 'shocking'."

As she spoke, her gaze fell on Alice, with a slightly strange and complicated look in her eyes. She carefully sized up the doll whose appearance was almost identical to hers, and the latter also turned her gaze over, looking at Leina Nora with curiosity.

After a long while, Leina Nora suddenly smiled and reached out to Alice, "Hello."

Alice also smiled happily, grabbing Leina Nora's hand and shaking it up and down, "Hello!"

"This is incredible," Leina Nora secretly marveled at the doll's strength, turning to Duncan and saying, "I didn't expect that Alice and I would meet for the first time in the real dimension in such a state... Although it's hard for us to say whether this place is actually the 'real dimension'."

As she spoke, she subtly withdrew her hand, turned and came to the wall on the other side of the room, and waved her hand.

The wall "shattered" silently in the blink of an eye, turning into a transparent curtain. Outside the curtain was endless nothingness, and a chaotic mist floating and filling the void.

"I have been waiting here for a long time," Leina Nora slowly opened her mouth as she looked at the "scenery" outside. "During this time, I tried to 'sail' along the edge of this dense fog, but I didn't find anything. There is only this chaotic and empty mist—in fact, at first I couldn't even see these mists, but could only feel that there was something 'there'. It was after the last contact with you that I had the ability to observe these mists, but that's all."

"Don't tell me you've even tried to go deeper into the 'fog'," Duncan looked at Leina Nora with a strange look in his eyes. "That's not ordinary recklessness."

"Don't worry, although I'm enthusiastic about exploration now, I haven't lost my mind yet," Leina Nora shook her head with a smile. "The dangers deeper in are unimaginable. Even with the protection of the 'Drifting House', I probably wouldn't be able to come back alive if I went in."

"Your judgment is rational," Duncan breathed a sigh of relief. "That is the 'raw data sea' that has not been completely defined and assigned. Any entity that enters will be instantly cleared into the same unassigned state—it's not the same concept as the 'boundary' state here."

Leina Nora nodded gently, then looked at Duncan curiously. "Now that you're here, what are you going to do next?"

"First confirm my guess, and then do some research and testing to see if I can generate some 'samples' in this raw data sea," Duncan said immediately, obviously having a plan in mind. Then he looked at the Frost Queen in front of him with some curiosity, "But now I'm more curious about another thing... Can you get out of this room?"

Leina Nora was stunned for a moment, "Get out of here?"

As she spoke, she looked up at the door-shaped hole left when Duncan and Alice pushed through the wall to enter the room—the glowing "passage" still existed steadily.

"You mean..." she gradually reacted, "Go to the Ghost Ship with you?"

"This is a stable door, although it seems a bit strange how it opens," Duncan nodded. "I feel like it can accommodate people freely entering and exiting, but I'm not sure if you are an 'entity' that can leave this room."

"...It should be possible," Leina Nora frowned slightly, thinking seriously and saying, "I have stretched my hand out from the door to retrieve the 'intangible things' in this sea of ash, and I have also left the room and entered your 'palace' floating in the endless void—although I am bound to be part of this 'Drifting House', as long as I don't leave too far, there doesn't seem to be any problem."

"That's good," Duncan smiled when he heard this, reaching out to Leina Nora in a gesture of invitation, "Want to be a guest on the Ghost Ship?"

The Frost Queen also smiled and bowed slightly, "It would be an honor."

Passing through the cool curtain again, and experiencing the familiar slight dizziness and sensory dislocation, Duncan and Alice returned to the deck of the Ghost Ship.

Then Duncan turned around to confirm, and saw that Leina Nora had indeed successfully passed through the door—she stood in front of the "Door of the Lost", with an expression on her face that seemed a bit dazed.

Leina Nora's eyes widened. Even though she had been somewhat prepared in her heart, she couldn't help but feel a moment of trance after actually passing through the door.

Now, she was standing firmly on the deck of the Ghost Ship, a wide "world" surrounded her, and everything in her field of vision looked so real and..."spacious".

She stepped out of her cage.

"I..." Leina Nora's lips moved a few times before she finally made a sound, "I actually walked out of the room..."

"Welcome to my ship. Before exploring this vast sea of ash, I'll take you on a tour here," Duncan said with a smile, opening his arms in a welcoming gesture. "There's no one here now, so it may seem a bit deserted, but it used to be very lively."

Leina Nora listened in a daze. At this time, she finally adjusted her mentality, stretched hard outside the cage with a faint smile.

"It feels so good to be out."

She said softly, and looked back at the direction she came from.

The Door of the Lost, pushed open from the hinge position, stood quietly in her field of vision.

Duncan noticed that Leina Nora had suddenly stopped moving, and casually asked, "What are you thinking?"

"...I'm thinking..."

"Ahem, this door is magical. Through different opening methods, it can reconstruct 'passages' in chaotic temporal relationships," Duncan coughed dryly, keeping a straight face and explaining in a serious and professional manner. "But you only need to know two opening methods—normally pulling it open from the door handle can lead to my captain's room, and pushing it open from the hinge position now connects to your Drifting House."

Leina Nora blinked her eyes and couldn't help but ask curiously, "What's the principle?"

Duncan thought for a while, and continued to keep a straight face, "Because it's magical."

Leina Nora immediately stopped asking.

Duncan took a step forward, closed the "Door of the Lost" in the normal way, and after restoring it to its normal state, he pulled its handle again, opening the door leading to the captain's room.

He turned to Leina Nora in a gesture of invitation.

In the captain's room, the black wooden goat head on the nautical chart table immediately creaked and turned its neck to look at the figures entering the door after hearing the movement, and then noticed the Frost Queen walking side by side with Alice at first glance.

It was obviously stunned for a moment, and then exclaimed, "Whoa! I bet this is definitely not two Miss Alices—Captain, you've brought a remarkable guest."

"This is my first mate," Duncan raised his hand and introduced, "Its name is Sasslohkah, but you can just call it Goat Head."

Then he pointed to Leina Nora and said to Goat Head, "This is the Frost Queen. I probably don't need to introduce her too much—don't worry about the middle principles and processes, anyway, she's on the ship now, and will be here as a guest for a while."

"Hello, First Mate. You can just call me Leina Nora," Leina Nora nodded politely, but then she was stunned for a moment, as if vaguely realizing something, "Wait... Sasslohkah? This name seems..."

"That was a long time ago," Goat Head shook his head reservedly, with a vicissitudes of life in his tone. "At that time, I was still complete, with a body under my head... But now I am just the first mate of this ship, Captain Duncan's most loyal first mate."

As he spoke, he stretched his neck hard to his side again, pointing to another "goat head" (Dream Skull) placed on the other side of the nautical chart table with his chin: "This is also Sasslohkah, my other head, but this head has a problem and cannot communicate now. Usually I chat with it unilaterally—this is a good listener, silent and patient. The captain usually complains that I talk too much and tells me to shut up, but this head won't, and I keep telling you that I always feel that this head actually responds. When I talk to it a lot, sometimes it moves a little bit, but the captain always says that it's just my imagination..."

"Shut up."

"Yes, Captain."

Leina Nora looked at this scene with a dazed expression, and didn't react to what happened just now. She felt that the Goat Head opened his mouth and said a few words, and suddenly a wall of sound waves rolled towards her, without any punctuation marks in the sound waves...

The last time she felt this kind of impact was a few tens of minutes ago, when the Ghost Ship rolled towards her...

(End of this chapter)