Duncan knew that his idea was bold and bizarre, even by the standards of this unpredictable deep-sea era, it was too outlandish to be dismissed as re whimsy—transforming an actual celestial body into this ten-ter-diater "stone sphere" floating above the ocean’s surface was simply indescribable.
But once the idea erged, he found it hard to completely expel it from his mind, no matter how preposterous it felt, his mind would not stop making connections.
Because... it was just too similar, not only in appearance, but also a strong... "intuition", and even an "affinity" as if transcending ti, transcending dinsions of worlds, was stirring in his mind.
Duncan stared at the sphere before him, with its pale texture. For a mont, he even felt as if he had returned to that familiar world, gazing at his holand’s... moon.
He watched the moon, now floating beside the Brilliant Starship’s gunwale, his expression frozen for a long ti until he heard footsteps approaching and Lucy’s voice entered his ears, "Father, this is it."
Duncan turned his head, unaware of how strange his own pallor looked: "Ah... yes, it is... it."
Lucy obviously noticed the oddity in Duncan’s expression and tone, and she seed a bit tense before her concern ca through, "Are you okay? You look a bit pale... Is there sothing wrong with this stone sphere?"
"It’s... fine, thank you for your concern, Lucy," Duncan waved his hand, trying to adjust his expression, then turned back to the sphere, "It..."
He stopped.
He had no idea how to explain this to Lucy, how to describe the concept of the "moon," how to explain another world and his present reaction, just as he had been clueless about explaining what a "planet" was to Tyrion before.
So, he just opened his mouth, then awkwardly changed the subject: "Has it undergone any changes since it landed? Was it always like this?"
"Yes, it was like this from the beginning," Lucy nodded imdiately, recounting the process of discovering the fallen object and adding so details about its transition to Light Breeze Harbor, "...It floats at a certain height above the sea surface through an unknown chanism; without disturbance, it remains completely stationary but can be towed by external force from a ship. Its interior is solid and dense. Several cautious samplings have shown the inner texture to be similar to stone, but so far, we’ve only collected material from the more superficial layers—the deeper the layer, the harder it becos, impervious to our drill bits..."
Duncan listened quietly, then asked further, "Anything else? What else have you discovered?"
"We’ve also been trying to decipher the mystery of these ’lights’ around it," Lucy continued, "The massive Luminous Geotric Body surrounding the ’stone sphere’ incessantly emits ’sunlight’. The scale of the sunlight can illuminate the entire City-State; however, the light does not originate from the ’stone sphere’, or at least not in any way we understand ’emission’—the light seems to ’materialize’ directly in the nearby space, then spreads evenly outward.
"To verify this, we built a large shading tent to completely enclose the sphere. It turned out this had no effect on the Luminous Geotric Body or the ’sunlight’ above the nearby sea...
"Furthermore, we confird that the surface of the sphere is covered with a very, very fine ’dust’, adhered by an unknown force. It can be scraped off for sampling, but unless external forces intervene, it doesn’t fall off the sphere, even the dust at the bottom of the sphere remains, as if so invisible force is ’holding’ it..."
Lucy did her best to explain to Duncan all the tests the scholars had conducted on the "stone sphere", as well as the information she knew so far.
Throughout this process, she kept an eye on changes in Duncan’s expression, trying to guess what feelings might be hidden beneath his overly serious countenance.
Yet she couldn’t see through him; all of her father’s thoughts seed to be shrouded in a thick fog, enshrouded deep within that familiar yet strange countenance. The only sure thing was that her father truly, deeply cared about this "stone sphere"—more than she and Tyrion could have imagined.
After a long silence, Duncan finally spoke up, "You’ve done a lot of sampling?"
"Yes, we’ve scraped off surface samples from various parts of the stone sphere, and this sampling process is still ongoing," Lucy nodded, " The depths of the stone sphere are very hard, difficult to sample, but its upper layer is relatively ’looser,’ from which we can peel off ash-grey fragnts, showing properties similar to stone powder..."
At this point, she paused, glanced hesitantly at Duncan, then raised her hand pointing to the research platform floating nearby, "Would you like to go over there and take a look with ?"
"...Yes."
Duncan and Lucy arrived at the "research station" built by the Elves and then onto a platform directly connected to the surface of the stone sphere via the upper bridge of the research station.
A ten-ter diater is negligible for a celestial body, but as an object close at hand, it was still quite massive, even discounting its height above the sea surface, the sphere’s own diater was higher than a three-story building.
The Elves had fixed a platform to this massive body’s "waist," secured with hoops encircling the sphere and a series of anchors and braces. The platform was small, just a few square ters in area, but enough to stand on.
Duncan stood there, reaching out his hand to touch... the moon.
The rough, cold sensation traveled from his fingertips, just like touching a piece of stone.
He withdrew his hand, looking at the faint gray-white dust adhering to his fingertips. He rubbed his fingers together, letting the gray-white dust slowly drift downward.
So of the dust slowly floated toward the sphere and resettled on its surface.
"This phenonon also puzzles us," Lucresia’s voice ca from beside him. "The dust scraped from the sphere seems to be attracted to the sphere itself. When it’s close enough, the fragnts will actively return to the surface of the sphere. However, this ’attraction’ exists only between the substances of the sphere itself. We’ve tested it with other light powders..."
Duncan hmd, but didn’t say much more.
"I heard from my brother that you call this odd stone sphere ’the moon’," Lucresia said cautiously, watching Duncan’s reaction, "and that you were very excited when you saw it... Do you know sothing about this stone sphere?"
"It..." Duncan hesitated, then finally began to speak slowly, "It’s different from what I knew. It should be bigger, much bigger than what it looks like now..."
"Bigger?" Lucresia blinked. "Bigger than the Holoss?"
"Much bigger than that."
"Bigger than the Pilgrimage Ark of the Four Gods Church? Or even bigger than the City-State?"
Duncan shook his head: "It’s bigger, incomprehensibly big."
"...Could it be even bigger than the Endless Sea?"
"I haven’t asured the Endless Sea, but... perhaps," Duncan murmured as if to himself, "perhaps it’s bigger than the Endless Sea, because this sea, nad ’Endless,’ is essentially just a cage wrapped in a fog."
Lucresia’s eyes widened.
For so reason, at that mont, she suddenly thought of her childhood. The recent exchange of questions seed to suddenly rewind a century, stirring mories that had long been buried in the deepest recesses of her mind—she vaguely rembered that many, many years ago, she had asked her father similar questions.
Back then, she had asked her father just how vast the Endless Sea was.
Her father told her the sea was imnse, bigger than the Holoss, bigger than the City-State—it was vast as its na suggested and could contain a person’s lifelong curiosity and urge to explore.
She rembered it well and followed in her father’s footsteps to beco an explorer, a "Frontier Scholar," as a mber of the Exiled Fleet. She followed her father to many places, including the distant and enigmatic "frontier." She felt that her father had not deceived her in her youth—the sea was indeed vast.
Yet now, her father was telling her that the "Endless Sea" was just a cage surrounded by mist.
The "stone sphere" before her, rely ten ters in diater, was supposed to be bigger than the Endless Sea.
Lucresia narrowed her eyes and looked up at the "moon" before her, trying to imagine it being bigger than the Endless Sea. For the first ti, she felt her imagination was so limited—she couldn’t even begin to understand, let alone imagine, what her father was saying.
"A ’moon’ so large... What imnse space could possibly contain it?" she couldn’t help asking. "Like you said, it’s even larger than this world..."
The Endless Sea was not the entire world.
This sentence instinctively surfaced in Duncan’s mind, but he controlled the urge to blurt it out.
Because he truly hadn’t asured the world, nor had he traversed the mist called "frontier."
He did not dare to confirm whether the Endless Sea was indeed the entirety of this world.
And Lucresia could never understand what a universe that could contain billions of stars would look like.
Even if she had a ship by the na of "Brilliant Starship."
"...I’m sorry, Lucy," Duncan finally sighed softly. He turned his head, looking into the eyes of the "Witch of the Sea," "I can’t explain this to you."
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