As the night faded, the pale scar that occupied the entire sky gradually dissipated. Duncan stood on the stern deck and looked up at the sky, not missing any details of the moment when day and night alternated.
He saw the scar becoming transparent and illusory little by little, like a waking dream. The gray-white light mist emanating from the scar first merged with the sky, and then the scar itself appeared - and during this entire process, the position of the "scar" never changed.
Duncan blinked, and a further speculation began to arise in his mind: the trace in the sky did not change position, did it mean that it was not some distant astronomical structure? Did it mean that it was just some kind of phantom "printed" in the background of the atmosphere, moving synchronously with the boundless sea
Or is it because the planet where the Infinite Sea is located (if this is really a planet) and the scar are moving in sync? Or is it that the scar is actually moving, but the observation time is too short to be detected by the naked eye
Various conjectures popped up in his mind, but Duncan knew very well that these conjectures were just conjectures before there was sufficient evidence and reliable experimental verification. There were thousands of possible explanations behind a natural phenomenon, but without theory and evidence to support it, everything was empty talk.
The "sun" rose.
First, a golden light emerged from the sky and the sea, and then a huge luminous structure suddenly emerged from the sea. Along with brilliant rays of light, a sphere of light locked by a double rune structure appeared in Duncan's field of vision.
As the rune structure slowly moved, the sun rose majestically. This majestic process seemed to have some kind of sound - a low, powerful, slow roar that echoed in Duncan's mind illusorily, but when he really concentrated on listening, the sound suddenly disappeared.
He frowned, wondering if he was hallucinating, but the memory brought by the voice was so vivid that he couldn't deny it at all.
Is that... a declaration to the world as the sun rises? Or is it just one of the many illusions brought about by the endless sea
No one can answer Duncan's doubts. The vast and boundless ocean keeps all the secrets as always.
Ai the pigeon was perched on Duncan's shoulder as usual. Then it stood up suddenly, flapping its wings vigorously, looking at the sea and shouting loudly: "Some fries! Some fries!"
Duncan couldn't help laughing. He took a look at the strange pigeon and suddenly felt that it wasn't bad to have such a bird around - the strange words that the pigeon blurted out from time to time always made him feel a sense of "hometown familiarity".
"It's a pity that there are no French fries on the ship," he fiddled with the pigeon's beak and turned to the captain's cabin, "but you are right about one thing, we need to get something to eat."
A moment later, the captain of the Lost Homeland prepared a traditional breakfast for himself, featuring the ghost ship's specialties. In the captain's room, Duncan used the navigation table as a dining table and placed several plates on the empty table next to the nautical chart. Today's breakfast was the same as yesterday's dinner, yesterday's lunch, and every meal in the past, with dried meat, cheese, and boiled water.
Duncan sat at the nautical table and laid out his napkin carefully and ritualistically. Goat Head sat quietly opposite him. On his left was the cursed doll Alice who came to greet him early in the morning. The strange pigeon squatted on the table to his right.
Duncan suddenly felt that this scene began to fit his character as the "Ghost Captain" - the goat woodcarving representing the devil, the cursed doll that could not be discarded, the bird that could speak and knew the knowledge of other worlds, and the ghost captain sitting in the main seat. This scene could be used as the cover of a movie without any retouching...
But only those involved know the current food situation on the Lost Hometown.
Duncan sighed and looked down at the food on the plate. The movie poster-like opening scene was over, and what followed was the real life of daily necessities on the Lost Homeland.
He picked up the knife and cut the cheese hard. A squeaking sound was heard from the friction of the hard object. He poked the dried meat next to him with a fork, and the dried meat collided with the plate, making a crisp clinking sound.
Alice watched this scene curiously, and finally couldn't help asking, "Captain, is the meal today the same as yesterday's?"
"Tomorrow's will be the same," Duncan looked up at the cursed doll, "Do you want to try it?"
Alice thought about it, picked up a piece of jerky, put it in her mouth and chewed it hard for a few times, then spat it out: "It's not delicious at all!"
"Even though it tastes good, you can't finish it - do you have an stomach?" Duncan reached out and took the remaining half of the jerky from Alice's hand, "I asked you to try and you really tried it."
As he spoke, he glanced at the food on the plate with some worry.
These were the only foods he could find on the ship. The jerky tasted like cardboard with salt, and the cheese was like loose wood mixed with sand. No matter how he processed it, it had a strange smell. He had tried boiling the jerky in water or baking or frying it, but he couldn't make the texture and taste of these things any better, no matter how hard he tried.
The good news is that these foods are at least not rotten and will not poison people. The bad news is that the power of the passage of time has still turned these unrotten substances into a state that is extremely not recommended for swallowing. Duncan has every reason to believe that the cheese is several years older than himself, and if the jerky is still alive, it has at least witnessed the ups and downs of a century.
The captain of the Lost Homeland might not have to worry about scurvy, but Duncan still longed for a healthy diet - at least, he wanted the food on his plate to be a little younger than himself.
Same age is fine.
The "Lost Homeland Material Supply Plan" and "Land Exploration Plan" that I had thought about yesterday came to my mind again.
But this cannot be achieved in a short time.
Duncan sighed and continued to cut the "firewood" on the plate with a vengeful attitude. Ai, who had been watching from the table next to him, came over curiously. The bird first glanced at its owner, then at the things on the plate: "Insufficient crystal ore reserves?"
Duncan glanced at the pigeon, picked up some cheese crumbs and threw them to it. Ai lowered his head and pecked at it twice, then immediately froze and stood there motionless as if his machine had frozen...
The bird remained frozen for three or four seconds before it suddenly moved. It flapped its wings and flew to the nearby shelf, making an angry sound: "I would rather starve to death today, die outside, or jump off from here, than eat..."
Duncan felt a little hurt, and the goat head on the opposite side of the table, which had been quiet for half a day, finally couldn't help but start making a creaking sound of wood friction.
Before this guy could drill himself to make a fire, Duncan finally nodded: "If you have something to say, just say it."
"Yes, Captain," Goat-head finally got a chance to speak and immediately started to talk. "I've been wanting to ask you since yesterday. The one you brought here... is it called 'Aiyi'? Why can't I understand what it says? I spent the whole night thinking about it. What does it mean to charge Q coins?"
Duncan immediately raised his eyebrows - he really didn't expect that this goat-head could hold back until this time to ask, and he actually underestimated this guy's self-control!
"You don't have to worry about it. This bird has a very strange mind," Duncan said without stopping his carpentry work. He made the sound of chiseling, axe and sawing with his knife and fork while casually saying the excuse he had prepared long ago. "It seems to communicate with people in a language that only it can understand. If you listen to it more often, you can roughly guess what it means."
"Is that so?" Goat-head pondered, "But I always feel that there seems to be some kind of logic hidden in its words... As if there is a complete, self-consistent set of knowledge hidden behind the language... Did you discover Aiyi while walking in the spiritual world? Then could it be some kind of projection from the depths? You know, the deeper the place, the more information from dislocated time and space will emerge in the form of projection, including some lost eras that we have never known, and even some fragments of the future. Maybe Aiyi is talking about things in another time and space?"
Duncan paused for a moment, barely perceptible to the naked eye, and then returned to normal. He said calmly, "I wish you can figure out the logic behind the Ai language soon."
Goat Head's words might have been just a random guess, but the information revealed in them inevitably caused waves in Duncan's heart!
While walking in the spirit world, did his soul approach the "deeper" level of this world? The deeper the place, the more projections from the dislocated time and space will be seen? Those projections may even show scenes from different timelines
Duncan didn't see any "scenery from different timelines" when he was walking in the spirit world, but Goat Head was right about one thing he said - Ai was indeed from another time and space.
So... was this pigeon brought to this world by an earthling named "Zhou Ming", or did it really come from a deeper level of this world as Goat Head said