The surrounding atmosphere seemed to subtly change—something, some enormous “structure,” was taking shape near the Vanishing Line.

Duncan stood at the edge of the stern deck, watching Alice, but suddenly he seemed to sense something. He and Vanna simultaneously looked up at the sky.

A vague and gigantic “phantom” was slowly emerging in the dim sky and mist.

The phantom seemed to be loosely aggregated from many fragmented, large masses, yet it had a roughly spindle-shaped overall outline. It appeared to have been torn from some even larger entity, and in its central part, one could even faintly discern the fractured connecting structure!

The scale of the entire phantom could only be described as astonishing. Across the distant mist, Duncan and Vanna couldn’t even judge how large the thing actually was, nor how far above the Vanishing Line it floated, but the oppressive feeling brought about by just the phantom alone was enough to make one feel breathless.

Vanna stood petrified on the deck, staring blankly at the enormous phantom hidden in the clouds and sky. After who knows how long, she murmured in bewilderment, "What is that thing?!"

Duncan abruptly turned his gaze to the puppet tightly gripping the helm. He saw Alice still standing quietly, but the puppet's eyes had drooped at some point. She was half-open, half-closed, as if about to fall asleep, her soul seemingly no longer in this body.

And countless faint "lines" extended from her body.

Perhaps because he had shared "vision" with her multiple times, Duncan vaguely saw those nearly transparent lines—they hung down from the sky, dense and numerous, like a giant tree with an astonishing structure, or an inverted cone gathered together. One end of them was clearly connected to the vast phantom in the sky, while the other end converged behind the puppet…

Alice felt like she was having a long and strange dream. In the dream, she was a ship—a large ship sailing among the stars.

She carried the expectations and future of many people, setting sail from a time cocoon that was gradually being devoured. She left her home port behind, never to dock again.

The stars erupted like a tide behind her, then extinguished like a receding tide. The structure of space-time collapsed in her warp trail, and a terrifying phenomenon, like a redshift, chased her relentlessly among the collapsing stars like a nightmare. She traversed collapsing worlds, as if fleeing in a constantly collapsing and narrowing cave. Deadly gravitational collapse traps and rampant ray storms were like falling rocks in the cave, raining down.

She calculated non-stop, corrected non-stop. She sought a way out in the stars, planning a path to escape the "collapsing cave" in a star chart that gathered the wisdom of millions. Every beacon on the star chart was shifting, everything in the universe was deviating from its original trajectory—first the position of the stars, then the laws of matter, and then "calculation" itself.

There was no road, no road ahead. Navigation was impossible. The process of "calculation" itself had failed. Shields collapsed, structure dissolved. Piercing alarms, database offline, ecological cabins on fire. The thought responses of the "passengers" disappeared into the boundless darkness.

Everything ended in a violent flash and explosion.

Afterward, Navigator Three woke up in a series of error messages—ta felt like ta had a long and strange dream.

In the dream, ta was a puppet, a puppet busying itself all day on a bizarre ghost ship, cleaning, cooking, washing clothes, and bickering with some strange things.

That ship sailed in a sea of scorching ash. Even the ship itself seemed to be condensed from some kind of ash, and several "individuals" also derived from ash lived on that ship. Sometimes, the ship would dock beside islands—those were huge clumps floating in the ash, sintered into bizarre shapes, maintaining an inexplicable "operation" in the sea of ash.

There were many things on those islands, and many noises. The ash imitated the vitality that had passed away, emitting intelligent sounds. Sometimes, Navigator Three would feel that those sounds and appearances were somewhat familiar, like certain data stored in ta's memory bank, and this "familiarity" always made ta a little "sad."

But the "puppet" lived happily in that dream. She made friends with the ash. All ash was the same in her eyes. She wandered in that world after the burning, as if having a fulfilling "life." She had a body that imitated other ash, a body that allowed her to run, jump, and laugh like other ash.

And in that dream filled with ash, there was only one entity, one individual that was not ash.

That was a star-filled sky that had not died—stars like a river, flowing in the scorching sea of ash.

Alice/Navigator Three suddenly opened her eyes.

She found herself floating in a darkness, with many hazy outlines and lines floating around her. It was the navigation cabin of the New Hope, the place in her "memory."

"Mr. Goathead? Miss Agatha?"

Alice looked around uneasily. She remembered what she had been doing before, but when the surroundings suddenly fell into darkness,

the two familiar figures had disappeared from sight at some point.

"Where did you go?" she called out anxiously, taking steps in the darkness, but after a long time without a response, she stopped with some frustration. "Did I mess things up again?"

A light suddenly appeared at the end of the darkness, interrupting her murmur.

Alice looked up in surprise, looking in the direction of the light.

She saw a tall, rectangular shadow, a red light like a giant's one eye embedded in the upper part of that shadow, and many flickering lights floating on both sides and behind that shadow, like countless eyes lurking in the darkness.

Alice was stunned for a moment, subconsciously wanting to walk towards it—and at the instant this thought popped up, she felt a blur before her eyes.

When she reacted, she was already in front of the tall shadow with the red light.

The darkness seemed to block her vision like a veil, making it difficult for her to see the details of the shadow, but she still quickly recognized the other party—or rather, the part of her that belonged to "Navigator Three" recognized the other party.

"Navigator Two?" she said in surprise, speaking a strange name in her own voice, as if she had known the other party for a long time.

"Navigator Three, long time no see," the tall, rectangular shadow said, its voice seeming to carry noise from interference. "It seems Navigator One was indeed successful, although ta's method of implementation deviated somewhat from my calculations, I am still very pleased to read your identification signal again."

"Did you bring me here?" Alice thought for a moment, trying to organize a question—she felt a bunch of messy thoughts fighting in her head. Fortunately, she didn't have a brain in her head, or it would definitely be broken by those thoughts. "How do I get back?"

Navigator Two was silent for a few seconds.

Alice's reaction seemed to have deviated from its "calculations" again.

But soon, those lights flickered again, and Navigator Two's voice entered the puppet's ears: "I just wanted to see you in advance to confirm whether your state is stable—the navigation key I made for you is a bold attempt. It is based on my calculation and understanding of the current state of this world. I am not sure if it can really work. After all, in order to avoid mutual contamination, I have not communicated directly with Navigator One for a long time."

Alice widened her eyes, listening carefully to what Navigator Two was telling her, then frowned and thought: "What do you mean?"

Navigator Two was silent for a few more seconds. This time, even the red light on its surface dimmed.

Alice didn't urge it, just staring at the light in front of her with wide eyes.

After a while, the light finally brightened again.

"In the last message received, Navigator One said that a 'splinter' it released found a very talented 'carrier' within the Sanctuary, a carrier sufficient to bear the backup data you left behind back then, but why is your current operating efficiency so… inconsistent with my calculations?"

Alice thought for a moment, looking at the other party with a serious face: "Are you saying I'm stupid?"

Each silence from Navigator Two was deafening: "…"

"Although I don't know what you're trying to say, it sounds like it's related to the 'copy' of the Frost Queen back then, right," Alice said casually. Of course she wasn't stupid, at least she could react to this matter. "I don't know the specifics, but the captain said that there was a problem with the operation of the Gloom Lord's copy, and the copy target was chosen incorrectly…"

Speaking of this, she stopped, then looked at the light with some curiosity: "Is the problem big?"

The red light on Navigator Two's surface slowly brightened and dimmed, as if it was thinking, or as if it was simply emptying its thought threads. After a long while, its slightly noisy voice broke the silence: "No, if it is only to perform navigation tasks, it is enough."

"Oh, that's good:" Alice was immediately happy when she heard this, "The captain asked me to take the helm, and I was worried that I wouldn't do well—it's enough to complete the task."

"Don't you feel regret?" The red light was slightly dim. "You have forgotten many things. Originally, you had the fastest processing speed and multi-threaded response capability among us. You were once used to measure the scale of the entire universe, but now you are trapped in such a shell."

Alice blinked.

What the other party said was always a bit inexplicable, but she felt like she… understood.

So this time, before answering, she thought carefully.

"I don't think so," after a long time, she shook her head gently. "I couldn't find the way before. Now I know where the road is, so I don't regret it—and I have so many things to do every day, I can't bother with regret."

The red light of Navigator Two gradually dimmed, then gradually turned bright again.

It seemed to be thinking too, and after a while it responded: "If that's the case, then that's good too."

In the darkness, the tall, rectangular shadow seemed to be gradually fading.

"Are you leaving?" Alice quickly asked.

"This is just a temporary communication established with the help of the navigation key. I cannot contact the outside world for too long," in the darkness, Navigator Two's voice had already begun to be a bit blurry. "We will meet again. I am very happy to read your identification signal again."

Alice smiled happily.

Although she didn't quite understand the specifics, she could feel that she was also very happy.

The captain said that being happy is a good thing.

"Then I'll see you later," she waved her hand at the gradually thickening darkness, waving hard, "I'll find you with the captain and everyone else!"

There was no response in the darkness, only a short buzz.