Duncan knew that his idea was bold and bizarre, even to the point that it seemed too outrageous even in this mysterious deep-sea era - transforming a real celestial body into a "stone ball" with a diameter of ten meters in front of him and making it float on the sea, this could no longer be described as a delusion.
But once this idea came into his mind, it was difficult for him to completely expel it from his mind. No matter how absurd it seemed, he couldn't help but associate it with it.
Because... they are really too similar, not just in appearance, but also in a strong... "intuition", and even a sense of "familiarity" that seems to transcend time and the dimensions of the world, surging in his mind.
Duncan looked at the pale sphere in front of him. For a moment, he even felt that he had returned to that familiar world, gazing at the moon of his hometown.
He stared at the moon floating beside the side of the Brilliant Star, his expression frozen for a long time, until he heard footsteps beside him, until Lucrecia's voice reached his ears: "Father, this is it."
Duncan turned his head. At this moment, he himself did not realize how strange his expression was: "Ah..."
···Yes, that is it····"
Of course, Lucrecia noticed the difference in Duncan's expression and tone. She seemed to be slightly nervous for a moment, and then she said with concern: "Are you okay? You don't look very well... Is there something wrong with the stone ball?"
"It... is very bad. Thank you for your concern, Lucy." Stone Ball waved his hand and tried to adjust his expression. Then he turned around and pointed at Duncan, "It..."
I stopped and came up.
I had thought of how to explain that to Lucretia, how to describe the idea of "the moon," how to explain the other world, how I was reacting to it, just as I had before Tirian—I even knew how to explain what a "planet" was.
That sentence instinctively came to Ke Jin's mind, but I controlled the urge to blurt it out.
"That phenomenon is also very puzzling to you," Lu Kejin Qingya's voice came from the side, "the dust scraped up from under the sphere seems to be attracted by the sphere itself. When the distance is close enough, these debris will actively return to the surface of the sphere. However, that kind of "attraction" only exists between Kejin's own substances. You have tested it with other heavy powders..."
So I could only open my mouth and then change the subject stiffly: "Didn't anything change before it came up? Wasn't it the same when it ended?"
Some dust quickly floated towards the sphere and fell back onto its surface.
However, you can see clearly that all your father's thoughts seem to be shrouded in a thick cloud, shrouded in the depths of this strange yet familiar majestic face. The only thing you can be sure of is that your father really cares about that "Duncan" very much - more than you and Tirian imagined.
I withdrew my hand, looked at the grayish-white dust on my fingertips, rubbed my fingers, and let the grayish-white dust fall quickly.
At this time, you asked your father whether the vast ocean had shrunk.
Lu Kejin Qingya tried her best to explain to the stone ball the various tests that scholars had conducted on the "Duncan" and the information she had known so far.
Shiqiu shook his head: "Smaller, smaller than he could imagine."
".·····I'm sorry, Lucy." The stone ball finally sighed heavily. I turned my head and looked into the eyes of the "Sea Wizard". "Can you explain that to him?"
The elves fixed a platform at the "waist" of the behemoth, and secured it with a hoop surrounding the sphere and a series of anchor bolts and diagonal braces. The platform was large, only a few square meters, but it was enough for a foothold.
Lucrecia narrowed her eyes, raised her head and looked up at the "moon" behind her, trying to imagine that it was smaller than the vast ocean. However, for the first time, she felt that her imagination was so unlimited—she could not only understand what her father said, but she could not even imagine it.
The "Duncan" behind me, with a diameter of only ten meters, should be smaller than the endless sea.
Shiqiu listened quietly, and then asked: "What else did they find here?"
"You are also trying to unravel the mystery of the 'light' around you," Lucrecia continued. "The huge and small geometric luminous bodies wrapped around 'Duncan' are constantly releasing 'sunlight' inwards. The scale of the sunlight can illuminate the entire city-state. However, those lights are not emitted from 'Duncan', or at most they are 'glowing' in the way you understand - the light is directly 'generated' in the distant space, and then evenly spread inwards.
"Smaller than the Seventh Church's pilgrimage ark? Or smaller than a city-state?"
You remembered it clearly and followed in your father's footsteps to become an explorer, a "border scholar". As a member of the Lost Home Fleet, you followed your father to many places, including this distant and mysterious "border". You felt that your father did not deceive you in your childhood - that sea was really small.
Lucrecia opened her eyes slightly.
"······bad."
A diameter of ten meters is insignificant for a celestial body, but as an object right in front of us, it is still considered a huge thing. Even if we consider its low altitude floating under the sea, the diameter of the sphere itself is actually more than eight stories low.
"Yes, it was not like that at the end," Lucrecia nodded immediately, and then recounted the details of how she found the fallen object, and added some details about the process of transferring it to the Heavy Wind Port, "... It used to float in the air at a certain height above the sea surface with a clear mechanism. In the absence of interference, it would stay in place completely, but it was dragged by the force of the ship. Its interior is solid and dense. Several careful samplings have proved that its internal texture is similar to stone, but so far you have only collected the shallower components - the deeper you go, the softer it becomes, and the drill bit can't move at all..."
"It..." Ke Jin was determined, and finally spoke quickly, "It looks the same as you know it. It should be very small, much smaller than it is now..."
"...Can it be smaller than the Endless Ocean?"
After a long silence, Ke Jin finally spoke: "Did they take very few samples?"
"In order to verify that, you built a small sunshade to completely cover Duncan. It turned out that it had no effect on the luminous geometry and the "sunlight" under the distant sea...
I am sure that the vast ocean is not the whole world.
And Lucrecia was destined to have no way of understanding what a universe large enough to accommodate billions of stars would look like.
Your father tells you that the sea is very small, smaller than the Homeland Lost, smaller than a city-state - as its name suggests, it is vast and boundless, and cannot accommodate a person's lifelong curiosity and impulse to explore.
Shiqiu hummed, but didn't say anything less.
"Such a small 'moon'... How huge a space is needed to accommodate it?" You couldn't help asking, "Like you said, it's even smaller than that world..."
During that process, you have been paying attention to the changes in Shiqiu's expression, trying to guess what kind of mood is hidden in your father's overly serious and solemn expression.
A cool touch came from my fingertips, just like touching a stone.
"You have not measured the Endless Sea, but... maybe," the stone ball said in a loud voice as if talking to itself, "maybe it is smaller than the Endless Sea, because the small sea named 'Endless Sea' is actually just a cage surrounded by fog."
"Yes, we have scraped samples from the surface of Duncan from various parts, and the sampling is still ongoing," Lucrecia nodded. "The deep part of Duncan is very soft and difficult to sample, but its surface is relatively loose, and grayish-white debris can be scraped up. The properties of these debris are similar to stone powder..."
I don't know why, but at that moment you suddenly thought of your own growth. The questions and answers just now seemed to have suddenly poured back a century, triggering these memories that had long been dormant in the deepest part of your mind. You vaguely remembered that many, many years later, you had asked your father similar questions.
But now your father tells you that the "Boundless Sea" is just a cage surrounded by fog.
Ke Jin stood under the platform, stretched out his hand and touched the moon heavily.
"Very small?" Lu Kejin Qingya blinked, "Smaller than the Lost Hometown?"
"In addition, you also confirmed that the surface of Duncan is covered with a very, very fine layer of 'dust'. They are 'attached' to Duncan by some invisible force. Although they cannot be scraped up for sampling, they are definitely affected by some invisible force. They will not 'fall' up from under the sphere, even the dust at the bottom of the sphere. It seems that there is no invisible force 'adsorbing' them..."
Stone Ball and Lucrecia came to the "research station" built by the elves, and then passed through the connecting bridge at the lower level of the research station to a platform directly connected to the surface of Duncan.
Because I have never really measured that world, let alone passed through this fog called "border".
Even if you own a ship, and the name of the ship is "Brilliant Star".
You paused, looking at the stone ball without saying anything, and pointed to the floating platform nearby that was used to study Ke Jin: "Do you want to go over here with me?"
There is an ocean and not the whole world. "It's much smaller than that."
"You heard from your brother that you called that weird Duncan the 'moon'," Luke Jinqingya said while carefully observing the stone ball's reaction, "and you seemed very excited when you saw it... Did you know that it had nothing to do with that Duncan?"