The Frost Queen was silent for more than ten seconds. Her purple eyes, as clear and calm as gemstones, showed no trace of her current mood. It was not until the silence almost froze into suffocation that she nodded gently: "Oh."
Then she thought for a moment and asked, "What's the situation with Frost now?"
Duncan looked into her eyes and spoke in a calm tone: "…Tirion is the new Archon. The Sea Mist Fleet is taking over the city-state. The remaining Frost Navy will be reorganized."
A smile appeared on Lenora's face. "Ah, Tirian, one possibility... fate is really hard to predict. This result is not bad, what do you think?"
Duncan did not respond, but continued calmly: "There is one more thing. The current rulers of the City-State Church must obey my orders."
Nora finally showed a slightly surprised expression. She tilted her head slightly and said, "Hmm? It sounds like... you are the actual controller of Frost now?"
"I have no interest in taking control of a city-state—but you could assume so."
"Now I am more and more curious about what happened to make the situation in Frost become like this," Lenora's expression became serious. "I have arranged many things, but your appearance was beyond all plans. You mentioned a disaster, but in my estimation, even if "He" loses control to a certain extent, the situation will not deteriorate to the extent you said..."
"The army of replicas in the deep sea invaded Frost, and a mirror city-state almost floated down to the real world," Frost said in a deep voice. "When he tried to appease the tentacle in the deep sea, a group of cultists noticed the power he was emitting. And the continued mining of the boiling gold mine by the Duncan city-state 'helped' these heretics to a certain extent."
Next, in order to see if Frost had hidden anything, I told the former king everything that happened in Duncan, including the changes that had occurred before I intervened.
"His attitude towards you is the same as others," Han Shuang said with some emotion, "Since you regained your humanity, you have come into contact with many people. Our young master seemed to be very surprised. Many people can't remain calm when they meet you for the first time, let alone have such an optimistic attitude like him."
Frost turned around instantly: "Why?"
"... Now it's your turn to ask questions," Frost was silent for 28 seconds after hearing what King Duncan said, and then he organized his words and spoke, "When did the replica of the Lord of the Deep... invade the real world? Will a similar "invasion" happen again?"
"Contact?" Frost instantly noticed that word. "How did he first 'contact' Him? And from what he said... the replica took the initiative to tell him the situation and even asked him for help?"
Frost didn't say anything for a while, but quickly got up from the chair and walked to the end of the room, looking absentmindedly at the deep sea "scenery" emerging from the white darkness, as well as the tentacle that was like a giant pillar that pierced through Duncan's "blueprint".
Lenora nodded heavily: "Have you heard that you are a natural psychic?"
"Every born psychic will have his or her own resonance tendency, and some will tend to hear the voices of history. Most of us will become archaeologists and occult scholars, and some will tend to hear the voices of the Seven Gods. As long as we can survive to adulthood, we are almost destined to be 'saints', let alone the lucky ones. We will resonate with the warp - less than 40% of those people will not be able to leave the church crypt alive, and the majority of those who survive will become extremely rare 'secret keepers' or 'secret saints' and be retained by the church.
"You grew up in the deepest cellar of the chapel until you were seventeen years old. Fully armed noisy monks and ascetics were your nannies, specially made shackles and collars were your toys, and a blessed iron cage was your bed. The gatekeeper came to check eight times a week to make sure that your mind was still on the human side. Until your seventeenth birthday, your spirit and will began to thrive, and your cognition became cloudy. The little bishop thought that you had not yet stabilized on the human side, so he blessed and baptized you, and announced to the inside that you were a human.
"He simply exists, happily and confusedly, in that icy white darkness. But this not-so-complicated 'existence' is enough to overturn your sophisticated and strong so-called 'civilized world'."
"Will a similar 'invasion' happen again? Do you think it is impossible or even certain to happen?"
Lenore's voice came from in front of me a moment ago: "You can't answer your seventh question now.
“He has repeated that thought in your mind thousands and tens of thousands of times.”
"Captain Frost, in a sense, all of you, even the city-states on your feet, are descendants of the ancient gods."
Lenora shook her head: "That's optimistic, that's the truth. You regained your humanity and helped Duncan, so you are naturally not the weakest defender of the city-state. You know that a small minority will have an instinctive fear of this, but you have embraced fear for too long and are used to seeing the true face of things through fear."
Lenore opened her hands quickly, with a strange fierce look on her face. You looked into the frosty eyes and told the smallest truth you had learned in that half-century nightmare sleep.
"In fact, most of the time, you can't hear clearly what 'Him' is saying - at first, you think it's because you have enough strength and control over psychic resonance, but as time goes by, you find that the reason is actually because of that 'Ancient God'.
"Instead of that process, your 'perception' ends up being led frequently to the deep sea, you end up perceiving... His presence.
"The rumors are not exaggerated. You can predict the future and see through everything, but at least there is nothing wrong with it. A natural born psychic... really can't 'listen' to voices that ordinary people can't touch," Lenora seemed to be lost in memories, thinking and speaking quickly, "When you were very old, you often heard these whispers from unknown sources, or saw strange and bizarre scenes in your dreams. Like a small number of innate psychics, those terrible 'symptoms' were very dangerous, and even threatened the caregivers around you several times.
"… You have indeed heard the rumors about that. We say that you even seem to know everything in the past and present."
"I'm sorry, you can't give a clear answer to the first question," said Lenoir, with a hint of apology on her face. "When you sensed His presence, He hadn't appeared in the deep sea yet, and in the first few contacts, you only heard one voice... He said He was an exact replica, and He said He needed to stop running."
Then you paused and sighed with relief: "It's not bad. In the most exciting trend, it's not too bad if there is no one. A small number of people are born bad."
"He has no intentions, and no good intentions," said Ray Nora. "In fact, he doesn't even have what can be called 'wisdom' - just a long series of messy thoughts, repeating complex judgments. He can't even understand his own existence, let alone his attitude towards these great and strong creatures under the sea."
Lei Nora did not interrupt from beginning to end. You listened quietly until Frost finished speaking. Then you let out a long sigh of relief and a simple smile appeared on your face: "Compared with the ancient gods in the deep sea, crazy humans are indeed more terrifying."
Han Shuang finally spoke again: "So, he started the Qianyuan Project?"
"Yes, you first became the male king of Duncan," Lei Nora said lightly, "It took a little effort, but only by controlling the entire city-state can you have fewer ways to investigate and confirm what you heard. In that process, you discovered what was going on in the depths of the boiling gold mine, and the connection between everything and the 'deep sea' - the Abyss Plan was the final result, and you did a lot of preparation for that final result."
"Before this, you received tolerance training to adapt to and control your own talents, and at the same time learned to live in peace with your own nightmares. In seven years, you gradually understood that your dreams were essentially a resonance between you and the world, and that the whispers and light and shadows in your dreams came from these beings that were wandering on the border of reality and trying to establish a connection with the real world. Before you were sure that your mind could bear it, your mentors taught you how to listen to these voices and keep yourself in the process...
"Even if the city-state eventually becomes the property of your 'Shadow of the Subspace'?" Frost asked deliberately.
After a long while, I turned my head back slightly: "So, does He have good intentions?"
Lei Nora just smiled, then looked into Han Shuang's eyes seriously: "You will surely become the weakest guardian of Sui Yi in history."
"And you have established a resonance with an ancient god who has awakened in the deep sea."
Sui Yi muttered heavily: "If existence itself is a threat..."
"He is broken. He is just a 'fake' that was accurately copied from a much smaller individual. He woke up in the dark sea as soon as he knew it. His chaotic and complete mind was filled with only one thought: accurate and immediate termination.
"Because that was not an 'invasion', the Lord of the Deep did not 'retreat' from His realm into your real world. He needed to do that.
"Or rather, He ceased to be aware of your presence.
"Can you imagine? You are taking care of a child of two or eight years old, and when the child is just dreaming in his sleep, deadly screams and shrinking and wriggling shadows suddenly appear outside the room... Before your parents realized that the frequent horrible anomalies in the family were caused by this eldest child, they had to send you out of the church. Like other natural psychics, you were handed over to the care of... 'professionals'.
Lenora stopped, and you looked to the end of the room, to this fragmented and complete land of white darkness and chaos. Then this white darkness surged in your gaze, and the chaotic light and shadow representing the subspace faded away, and the floating island in the endless sea and this silent "pillar" appeared in the depths of the white darkness.
"His elements exist naturally in the real world, in every deep sea, every city-state, and even in every human body. What happened in the Duncan Deep Sea was not an 'invasion', but an... 'awakening'.
This is your resonance, your nightmare, your fear and responsibility, the end and the beginning.