Chapter 173 Sun Shards and an Unexpected Intelligence

Those fleeting “sun fragments” illuminating the night sky shattered the tense calm beneath the long night—after a quarter of a “solar ring” disintegrated and fell from the sky before the eyes of the entire world, at least seven city-states dispatched fleets to search for those luminous geometric shapes that had plunged into the boundless sea.

Within the first forty-eight hours of the long night's descent, the Boundless Sea, which had enjoyed peace for over a dozen centuries, came closer to war than ever before.

Fortunately, the massive fleet led by the Truth Academy's heavy flagship "Balance of All Things" arrived near the largest "impact site" in the central sea area before any of the city-states, and took control of several of the largest sun fragments ahead of everyone else. The Church's authority once again played its role, and continued the precarious balance between the city-states—several city-state fleets did not break out into conflict over the sun fragments, but rather agreed to the Church's distribution plan, temporarily setting aside their disputes, and sending the sun fragments to several cities with the worst situations and the most urgent need for sunlight support.

But in that four-hour standoff, a rift, an omen, had already begun to quietly permeate among the many city-states of the Boundless Sea—

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

But for Duncan, who was still staying in Light Wind Port, these things were still far away.

An unexpected piece of intelligence from Phaeton reached Duncan's hands—the source was Lawrence, captain of the White Oak, and the content was related to the mysterious anomaly 077, "Sailor."

On the first floor of the Witch's Mansion, Lawrence's figure appeared in the oval mirror on the wall, and his voice came from the mirror: "...He said he used to be the first mate of the Sea Song, and they crossed the six-mile border limit. That happened on January 21, 1902..."

Duncan stood beside the oval mirror. After hearing Captain Lawrence's account, he immediately frowned: "It's only January 22nd, 1902 of the New City-State Calendar. Are you saying...that the dried corpse called 'Anomaly 077-Sailor' was still a priest of the Deep Sea Church at this time yesterday, and was carrying out a mission to cross the border?!"

"That's what he said," Lawrence said with a serious expression, clearly not joking. "He said his captain was named Kalani, and he described in detail the details of the ship's departure. He said he knew that it was only the second day after the Sea Song crossed the six-mile border, but he told me that Captain Kalani and her sailors wandered for half a century after crossing the border..."

Duncan frowned without saying anything, but Lucretia, who was nearby, heard the commotion and widened her eyes in surprise: "Half a century?!"

"Maybe...longer, madam," Lawrence said cautiously, frowning in the mirror. "According to the 'Sailor', they were only able to record the days with a clear mind for the first half of the century. After that, they lost their sense of time—they drifted in the endless fog, neither alive nor dead, as if the mental physicians had unfortunately fallen into the 'void fault' on the edge of dreams when treating people. The Sea Song also fell into the fault at the edge of the world, and then..."

Lawrence stopped, seemingly disturbed by the movements around him. Then a hoarse, vague voice came from the edge of the mirror. It was the "Sailor's" broken gong voice: "Then we were 'forgotten', Captain, ha... We were forgotten by death, and forgotten by the sea, and in the end, even time and reason forgot us, so we were immortal and indestructible, almost eternally drifting at the edge of the world... But in the end... hic, the Goddess had mercy, it still depended on the Goddess's mercy. We were suddenly remembered by Her... So we drifted back to the correct course... hic!"

Duncan frowned tightly. He quickly understood what the "Sailor" meant and said, "The correct course refers to..."

"We found Her! A huge..." The sailor suddenly raised his voice, but then suddenly stopped as if someone had grabbed his neck, and after a series of vague grunts, he continued, "I can't remember, I can't remember what She looked like, but we did find... found the source of the call, that was our mission—the Pope asked us to find Her, because She conveyed revelations to the Pope..."

"Most of us stayed there. They didn't want to go back, didn't want to face that hopeless world. They had drifted for too long, and all the glory and firm beliefs had been worn away by the endless fog. And we also encountered... encountered..."

"What did we encounter? I can't remember, Captain, I can't remember very clearly... I only remember that Captain Kalani and I returned from the fog, leaving only the two of us, strictly speaking, only me—Captain Kalani only had a wrinkled shadow left at that time, she couldn't remember what she looked like, so even steering had to be done by me..."

As the sailor said this, his voice turned into a series of vague grunts again, as if his thinking was not clear, and the chaotic memories that had just appeared swirled in his withered brain like broken puzzle pieces, making him sometimes clear and sometimes confused.

Duncan didn't pay attention to the sailor's subsequent grunts. He pondered for a moment, then spoke again: "But you are now Anomaly 077—an 'anomaly' that was taken in by the city-state many years ago. You have appeared in this world for hundreds of years, and your first appearance was on an exploration ship that had been missing for three years."

The sailor fell silent, not speaking for a long time. After an unknown amount of time, Lawrence suddenly broke the silence: "He said he didn't know what happened—he doesn't remember how he finally returned to this world, nor does he remember where the Sea Song finally went, and he doesn't know why he eventually became like this, becoming an 'anomaly' that stirs up storms everywhere. He said that the world in his eyes has been misplaced, and the world he sees now is very different from what he remembers... but he can't explain all this to me."

Duncan was silent for a moment, then breathed a sigh of relief.

"I understand. Take care of Anomaly 077 for now—I'll contact you again if anything happens."

"Okay, Captain."

The flames in the mirror gradually faded, and it turned back into an ordinary piece of glass.

Lawrence withdrew his gaze from the mirror and turned to look at the dried corpse sitting in the corner of the room—Anomaly 077 was sitting there in a daze, the large wine bottle in his hand was already empty, but he still picked up the glass bottle from time to time and poured it meaninglessly above his mouth.

"Alcohol has no effect on you at all," Lawrence finally frowned and got up to come to the dried corpse. "You can't get drunk, and you can't fall asleep with this thing—alcohol won't work, poison won't work, even the bullets from a revolver won't work—you've tried the last one."

The dried corpse was stunned for a moment, casually threw the wine bottle aside, and looked up at the old captain in front of him with some slowness. After two seconds of being stunned, he muttered, "What about the twelve-pound cannon..."

"If you're still awake until the end of the world, then I don't mind you trying it—you can even try the sixty-four-pound cannon on the dock if you're interested."

Lawrence said casually, and sat down on the chair next to the dried corpse.

"But since the world is about to end, you don't have to try those things—we will all be sleeping sooner or later, although you've taken a few more detours than us."

The "Sailor" turned his head and stared blankly at Lawrence.

His withered and shriveled eyeballs moved. The drunkenness that came from self-hypnosis didn't last long after all. After a moment of sluggishness, the dried corpse, who had lost his peace, finally slowly lowered his head and hugged his head with his skeletal, dry hands.

"I lost the log..."

The dried corpse muttered vaguely and desperately.

"What?"

"The log, Captain Kalani's log. She wrote a lot of things before she disappeared. She asked me to bring the log back. That was our mission..." the dried corpse muttered. He seemed to want to have a good cry, but he seemed to have forgotten how this emotion, unique to the living, should be expressed. "I lost it, I lost the captain's log... I remember I stuffed it on my body at the time. When the Sea Song passed through the thick fog again, it was on me, but I don't know where it is now... It's all different, I can't remember..."

Lawrence listened blankly to the dried corpse's confession, and in the mirror beside him, Martha's complex figure quietly emerged—they were quiet, quietly watching this "Sailor." Only the latter's vague and deep murmur remained in the room... The voice was like a corpse that had forgotten how to weep, trying to learn how to wail.

…

Duncan turned his head and saw that everyone had come behind him, many pairs of eyes either looking at him or at the mirror behind him, which had returned to its original state.

"...That dried corpse actually has such a big background?" Shirley muttered softly.

Vanna was thoughtful: "The Sea Song that crossed the six-mile limit only yesterday... I remember Her Majesty Helena mentioned this before. She mentioned that the major churches have begun to send advance ships to impact the six-mile border, in the hope of bringing back information from 'beyond the world'."

"But an exploration ship that only crossed the border yesterday, why would its first mate become 'Anomaly 077', which had already appeared in the world more than two hundred years ago?" Nina was puzzled. "And there's that 'half a century'..."

"...Perhaps, this is because the concept of 'time' has begun to fail," Duncan said softly. "Or perhaps, this is precisely the characteristic of the sea area outside the border—the entire crew of the Sea Song used their lives to verify the first characteristic outside this border."

Morris frowned upon hearing this, seemingly thinking of something immediately.

But before the old scholar could speak, a sudden knock on the door from the direction of the entrance interrupted his thoughts.

A guest had arrived.

(End of Chapter)