Chapter 227: Chapter 231 Reliable ssenger Perley
Ai Yi flapped energetically into the shop, perched on the handrail of the stairs with her chest puffed out and an air of arrogance, as her mung bean eyes darted here and there.
The brightly-feathered parrot that had followed her in also swept into the shop, settling on the counter beside Duncan’s hand, striding and hopping about as if completely at ho without any restraint.
Duncan stared in astonishnt at this unexpected visitor when the parrot also lifted its head, looking unabashed at Duncan. After a while, it suddenly flapped its wings, emitting a loud and grating sound, “Ah! Polly!”
“You’re called Polly?” Duncan asked curiously, with no real expectation of a response from the parrot. After all, a parrot’s speech is just mimicry. To his surprise, the bird actually nodded its head upon hearing his question, waving its wings, “Polly! It’s Polly!”
Duncan’s expression beca wooden for a mont, then he turned to look at Ai Yi, who was loftily surveying the ground floor from the stair’s handrail, “Where did you find this… ‘friend’?”
“Friends co from afar,” Ai Yi imdiately flapped her wings, one eye on Duncan, the other eye flicking uncertainly towards the window, “Since they’ve co!”
...
Nina imdiately asked with curiosity, “What does that an?”
Having learned the secret of Duncan and the Holoss, Nina knew about Ai Yi’s ability to speak. She had been quite surprised at first but had since cald down—however, like everyone else, she found it difficult to make sense of the pigeon’s random utterances.
“Perhaps it ans she doesn’t know where the parrot ca from either,” Duncan used his imagination to translate for Ai Yi and turned his head to look at the parrot and pigeon in succession, finally unable to restrain himself, “Ai Yi… I don’t object to you making friends, but are you aware that you’re different species? At least find another pigeon…”
“The sea embraces all streams, tolerance is greatness,” the pigeon chanted zealously, head cocked, eyes staring blankly, “Tolerance is greatness!”
Duncan: “…”
He often pondered life and doubted himself during his conversations with Ai Yi, wondering if he really was communicating with this bird spirit on the sa wavelength.
This feeling of sohow misaligning yet magically communicating was truly exceptional.
By this ti, Sherry, A Dog, and Alice had also been drawn over by the commotion, all three crowding around the counter to observe the fearless parrot. Alice, curious, reached out to poke the parrot’s wing, which simply hopped aside to avoid her touch, then cocked its head in a staring contest with the doll.
“What’s this?” Alice inquired, looking towards Duncan with curiosity, “It looks completely different from Ai Yi.”
Sherry imdiately responded, “Of course, it’s different; that’s a parrot, and Ai Yi is a pigeon.”
“What’s a parrot?” Alice asked, the very soul of curiosity, “Is it edible?”
“No,” Sherry shook her head and then countered the doll, “Why are you always concerned about this when you don’t need to eat?”
“I’m responsible for cooking for the ship… for Mr. Duncan!”
There was a cacophony of voices around the counter, but Duncan did not join in. Instead, he thoughtfully watched the self-proclaid “Polly,” feeling a nagging sense of familiarity with the bird, as if he had just seen it sowhere not long ago.
“Where are you from? Why have you co here?” he suddenly asked.
In the exchange just now, he had sensed that the parrot had the ability to communicate with humans—clearly indicating an unusual origin.
The parrot turned its head, tilted its brain, and pondered, “Polly! Go, deliver ssage!”
“Deliver a ssage?” Duncan was montarily stunned, his expression growing serious, “What ssage? Who to?”
The parrot seed to think, recalling sothing before opening its beak to speak. However, before it could say anything more, Ai Yi suddenly fluttered over, shouting at the top of her lungs, “Get so fries!”
The parrot got a fright, “Ah! Polly!”
“Get so fries!” The pigeon landed in front of the parrot, nodding seriously, “Get so fries.”
“Polly?” “Get so fries!”
The two birds communicated like this, forcing Duncan to interrupt from the side, “Stop—Ai Yi, be quiet. Polly, what ssage are you supposed to deliver, and to whom?”
The parrot seed stunned, hesitating while rocking back and forth for several seconds before reluctantly responding, “Get so fries.”
Duncan: “…”
He suddenly realized sothing, whatever ssage the parrot had previously wanted to convey, it clearly had forgotten all about it by now…
Then, the parrot Polly seed to dredge up so useful information from the remnants of its mory. It suddenly jumped up, flapping its wings vigorously, “Tell the captain, tell the captain! Tell… get so fries!”
Soon after, the large parrot started shouting “get so fries,” and with wings beating, it flew straight towards the door. Before the others could react, it had already burst through the door, soared into the sky, and accelerated towards the Upper City District of the Plunder City-State.
Nina wanted to stop the parrot but was too late. She could only watch regretfully as its figure flew farther and farther away, then turned her head muttering, “Ah, it flew off.”
Duncan didn’t respond—his expression beca serious imdiately after hearing Polly shouting “tell the captain,” and he began to recall why he felt vaguely familiar with this parrot.
He had indeed seen this bird—when Holoss and Sea Mist overlapped on their courses, in one of the cabins on Sea Mist!
“Ai Yi, chase after that parrot.”
“…That’s more or less the situation.”
In a secluded eting room within the grand cathedral of Plunder City-State, Valentin, the old Pontiff dressed in civilian clothes, said to Tyrion sitting across from him on the sofa by the coffee table.
“Holoss last took the Sun Shard, thwarting the arrival of the Crawling Sun and neutralizing the impact of historical contamination on the City-State—although we still can’t be sure… your father’s intentions.”
Tyrion’s expression was sowhat subtle, and sowhat stiff.
He couldn’t rember how many years it had been since he was last thrown into such a state of ntal paralysis by astonishnt—he understood every word the old Bishop said, but even in his most outlandish dreams, he had never considered such things happening!
“Holoss really just left like that? It seems as though it only ca to save the day,” said the renowned “pirate captain” unbelievably, “It took the Sun Shard… and then? That’s it? It didn’t do anything else?”
Valentin and Fenna beside him exchanged a look, both wearing expressions of helplessness and hesitation.
At this point, it was truly hard to tell Tyrion to his face, “Your dad just robbed half the city of its fries.”
“…No, that’s it,” after much hesitation, the old Bishop still couldn’t bring himself to ntion it, he shook his head with a sigh “I know you’re confused—Mr. Tyrion, we’re just as confused as you are, and if even you don’t know what your father intended, then we are even more clueless.”
“My father ceased to be my father a century ago,” Tyrion slowly shook his head and said solemnly, “That’s just a counterfeit, cobbled together with crude thods after being ripped apart by Subspace, an empty shell with no humanity inside…”
Tyrion suddenly stopped mid-sentence, and for so reason, he recalled those few seconds when Holoss and Sea Mist passed each other, the indifferent and distant words he had heard—
“I’m busy.”
The great pirate suddenly felt a bit of hesitation.
Inside that shell on Holoss… was there really no humanity? The voice that spoke to him back then and the aura he felt from that figure… was it really just the chaotic echo of Subspace?
As Tyrion was lost in thought, the voice of the young Judge ca from across, interrupting his reverie, “The question of whether Captain Duncan possesses ‘humanity’ is exactly what we’re about to discuss.”
“Hm?” Tyrion looked at Fenna with confusion, “What do you an?”
“In fact…” Fenna hesitated, then exchanged glances with Bishop Valentin before nodding slightly, “We’ve had more than one communication with your father recently.”
Matters concerning Holoss were classified information, and so were the conversations with Captain Duncan; these details shouldn’t have been revealed, but Tyrion’s unique status made these problems no longer relevant.
“Communication? You and my father?!” Tyrion was indeed shocked, almost standing up from the sofa, “This isn’t so awful joke?”
“Please remain calm, this is a very serious issue—no one would joke about such matters after the City-State nearly perished,” Fenna looked at Tyrion calmly, then paused slightly, “Strictly speaking, I’ve had a few communications with your father, and based on my observations… ‘Captain Duncan’ doesn’t seem to match the descriptions in the files anymore.”
Tyrion noticed her grave deanor, cald down quickly, and his expression beca especially serious, “Judge, how did you establish communication? Why would he reach out to you? And… what did he say?”
“It was initially an accident… no, thinking about it now, it might’ve been an intentional arrangent by your father,” Fenna collected her thoughts, speaking while recalling, “I touched the ‘fire’ he left behind and established contact through it. As for why he chose … unfortunately, no one knows…”
Fenna concealed the details about being marked and the “contamination that couldn’t be cleansed,” vaguely summing up the process as “established contact,” and then told the details of her several communications with Captain Duncan to the “pirate captain” before her.
This man, theoretically, knew Duncan Ebnomal best.
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