Duncan listened silently to the voices in his heart, the calm and reliable reports from Fenna and Morris, the helpless complaints from Lucy Lecia, and sotis the noisy chattering of Sherry and the nagging of Nina—these voices that crossed the vast stretches of space and ti seed like temperature-laden anchors that, even after his two "avatars" left in the City-State were gradually becoming ineffective, still firmly anchored him on the side of reason and humanity.
After that, he temporarily ended the communication with Fenna and others, slowly walked across the entire deck, passed through the staircase and ramp at the stern, and arrived at the towering helm at the stern.
The puppet still stood quietly at the helm, her hands tightly gripping the black and heavy steering wheel, her focus-less eyes staring straight ahead, while countless invisible threads stretched out from her body, connecting her to the Holoss beneath her feet and to the ethereal projection of the New Hope up high in the sky.
Thin mists suddenly began to spread from all directions on the deck, flowing and converging.
Duncan noticed the eerily appearing mist and subconsciously furrowed his brows, and right after, he realized that the gray-white backdrop in the distance seed to have gradually "cracked" open—patches and patches of fog erged at the end of the uniform "corridor", and deep within the mist was a sense of emptiness.
Almost at that instant, he heard that intermittent, vague voice: "Jump complete..."
The Holoss experienced a slight shake, not as obvious of a vibration as when it had previously reached the border node and entered so kind of "dium," the passageway silently shattered, and the endless, thin mist filled the surroundings in the blink of an eye; the next second, Alice, who was at the helm, blinked her eyes, and the puppet’s consciousness suddenly returned to her body.
"Captain!" Miss Puppet looked at Duncan, her face instantly blood with a happy and credit-seeking smile, "We’ve arrived!"
Duncan nodded, but just as he was about to speak, he suddenly froze—he noticed that the edges of the Holoss were becoming rapidly "blurred"!
No, not just the edges, the entire ship was quickly going "blurry"! Enveloped by the mist, everything in his field of vision seed to have suddenly lost clear "boundaries", the details on the deck began to disappear, the masts grew dim in the fog, and even Alice right in front of him, seed to be fusing with the mist and was rapidly transforming into so kind of ethereal form.
And that pale green fla enveloping the whole body of the Holoss also dissipated in the process!
Alice, sensing sothing, stood there in shock, then slowly lowered her head, looking at her hands that were rapidly losing detail and becoming "blurry": "...Eh?"
But the next second, Zhou Ming-Duncan suddenly reacted.
Starry light began to suffuse the pale green fla that enveloped the whole body of the Holoss, Duncan’s eyes seed to shine with a billion stars, and the Holoss, which had been on the verge of information collapse, rapidly reassembled and regained definition in his vision—under the fla burning with pervasive starlight, the deck and masts almost instantaneously returned to their original state, and Alice’s figure also stabilized in front of his eyes.
The puppet hardly had ti to react to what had happened when she saw the ship’s fla suddenly "change color", and then the sa flas surrounded her. After being stunned for a few seconds, she finally raised her hand to look at it and exclaid in amazent: "Wow—"
Yet Duncan still felt a bit of an after-shock in his heart, he took a light breath, and for the first ti truly sensed sothing substantial about the "Ashen Edge" that Lei Nora had discovered.
This is the true boundary of order, the frontier of nothingness, the "Primordial Sea" where information units are not yet assigned a value. Here, information has yet to be defined, and any "creation" from within the Shelter, even the Holoss returning from subspace, can’t stable exist here as a "data structure"—because there are no data structures here at all!
Perhaps only beings that have survived the great annihilation and achieved "self-stabilization" on the informational level can maintain relative "safety and stability" in this place.
Such as the "Reverse Singularity," such as the wreckage of the New Hope.
Duncan took a deep breath, calming his emotions, and gently patted Alice’s hair; he then looked around—speaking of the wreckage of the New Hope, where is Lei Nora?
He and his ship had already arrived at the position of the escape pod’s signal, but as he looked around from the towering stern deck, he saw no solid entities in this chaotic and void "fog."
"Can you sense the signal from the escape pod?" Duncan asked Alice with a frown, "We should be in the right place, right?"
"Yeah, theoretically it should be right here," the doll finally snapped out of her fascination with the surrounding beautiful starlight, quickly sensed the position of the escape pod, then scratched her head in confusion, "The signal is nearby... I just sensed it, why can’t I see it..."
Duncan’s lips suddenly twitched: "Don’t tell we’ve knocked her flying again..."
Upon hearing this, Alice was startled and keenly caught the key word: "Again?"
Duncan: "...You don’t need to worry about that. Let’s find Lei Nora first."
As he spoke, he slowly released his perception, cautiously controlling his own power that belonged to the "Reverse Singularity," trying to detect any unusual aura around the Holoss.
At this mont, he had two thoughts in mind—the first was that he hoped the unfortunate Frost Queen hadn’t really been knocked away by the Holoss, and the second was that he hoped the unfortunate Frost Queen hadn’t been crushed under the hull of the massive ship...
He had co to et with the queen, not to let the queen "run into a stroke of luck." It wouldn’t just be awkward if they t later, explaining would also be difficult.
By this ti, Alice had also realized, and after racking her brain for a while, Ms. Doll slapped her hand: "Oh right... the Holoss ca directly according to the escape pod’s signal, so if it landed, wouldn’t it have landed right on top of the escape pod..."
Duncan sighed deeply—what’s the use of realizing it now.
Had he known, he wouldn’t have let Alice teleport directly to the escape pod’s beacon; he should have set a "distance from teleportation marker XX" for a safe distance. But how could he have expected that the New Hope’s beacon was such an accurate thing? When the Holoss went to the Four Gods node before, it didn’t crash directly onto Their foreheads...
And just when he felt such a sigh in his heart, Duncan really sensed sothing.
He "scanned" an "entity" that did not belong to the Holoss.
But the location of that entity... was right on board the Holoss.
Duncan raised his head in confusion, looked towards the direction he perceived, and after a mont of confirmation, a subtle expression gradually took over his face.
Alice also noticed: "Ah, Captain, have you found sothing?"
"Let’s go check it out first." Muttering this, Duncan left the cockpit with Alice, crossing platforms and stairways, following the guidance of his senses, they finally arrived in front of the door to the captain’s quarters at the stern of the ship.
Alice lifted her head to look at the familiar place in front of her, holding her head with both hands: "This is the captain’s quarters, I don’t see anything else."
Duncan, however, still stared intently at the door of the captain’s quarters (The Displaced’s Door), he sensed the changes that had happened here, and even... gradually understood the changes that occurred.
After frowning and pondering for quite so ti, he finally took a step forward and placed his hand by the... hinge side of The Displaced’s Door.
The twisted and dislocated ti-space structure erged in his mind, morphing into a real mapping that could be deciphered; he found the node of this spatial dislocation and gently pushed with his hand.
The door opened - pushed open from the position of the hinges.
Alice watched this scene with her mouth agape, and after a long while managed to exclaim, "You can open it from there?!"
Duncan: "...Be quiet, I’m thinking."
Behind the door glowed a misty halo, seemingly a "room" that didn’t belong to the Holoss, shrouded by a layer of continuously trembling optical phenonon.
Unlike the "normal" process of being directly teleported to the "bachelor apartnt" after pushing open The Displaced’s Door, what appeared before Duncan this ti seed to be a concrete "entrance", an entrance that could even allow entities other than him to enter.
He first reached into the halo with his hand to test it out, then turned his head to look at Alice: "Do you want to co?"
Alice nodded without hesitation: "Yes!"
Duncan reached out to the doll-like lady: "Follow - hold onto my arm, and don’t let go until it’s confird safe."
Alice obediently grabbed Duncan’s arm and followed the captain towards the hazy glow.
It was as if they had passed through a layer of icy curtain, after a very brief mont of dizziness and sensory disorientation, the sight in front of them stabilized rapidly.
A grand and spacious room appeared before Duncan and Alice, real and solid underfoot.
Lei Nora sat on the large bed in the middle of the room with a sowhat vacant expression, staring blankly at Duncan and Alice who "entered" through the door — the Frost Queen seed to have just received a huge impact, appearing to be in a stupefied state, until Duncan approached her, then she suddenly reacted and raised her hands, gesturing in the air.
"...They just rolled right in!"
Lei Nora’s expression gradually grew a little frantic.
"Such a huge ship! It just ca barreling towards head-on! Half the room was smashed to pieces by a ss of things, and it took a good long while to recover, then you pushed through the wall and walked in! Such a big hole! Couldn’t you use the door?"
Pushed through the wall?
Duncan was montarily stunned and looked back at the direction they had co from.
He saw Lei Nora’s room door, the door that was nicely set in the wall, which was still shut tight, but next to the door on the wall, there was a big hole — that was where he and Alice had entered.
Spatial dislocation.jpg.
Alice quietly poked Duncan’s arm: "Captain, why aren’t you saying anything?"
"...Be quiet, I’m thinking again."
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