Those "sun fragments" that briefly illuminated the night sky broke the tense calm of the long night - after a quarter of the "sun ring" disintegrated and fell in the sky in front of the whole world, at least seven city-states sent out fleets to search for the luminous geometric bodies that fell on the vast ocean.
In the first forty-eight hours of the Long Night, the Infinite Sea, which had been peaceful for more than a dozen centuries, was so close to war for the first time.
Fortunately, a huge fleet led by the heavy flagship of the Academy of Truth, "Balance of All Things", arrived near the largest "falling point" in the central sea before all the city-states, and took control of several of the largest solar fragments in advance. The authority of the church once again played a role and continued the shaky balance between the city-states. The fleets of several city-states did not clash over the scramble for solar fragments, but agreed to the church's distribution plan, temporarily shelving the dispute and sending the solar fragments to the cities that were currently in the worst situation and most in need of sunlight support.
But during the four-hour confrontation, a crack, a bad omen, had begun to spread quietly among the many city-states in the Infinite Sea.
In the days to come, sunlight will become a scarce resource for survival.
But for Duncan, who is still staying in Breeze Harbor, these things are still far away.
An unexpected piece of information was delivered to Duncan from Phaeron - the source of the information was Captain Lawrence of the White Oak, and the content of the information was related to the mysterious anomaly 077 "Sailor".
On the first floor of the witch's mansion, Lawrence's figure appeared in the oval mirror on the wall, and his voice came from the mirror: "... He said that he was the first mate of the Sea Song, and they crossed the six-nautical-mile critical line of the border. That happened on January 21, 1902..."
Duncan stood beside the oval mirror. He frowned immediately after hearing Captain Lawrence's story. "It is only January 22, 1902 in the New City-State Calendar. You mean... the mummy named 'Abnormal 077 Sailor' was still a priest of the Deep Sea Church at this time yesterday, and was carrying out a mission to cross the border?!"
“He said this,” Laurence said seriously, and he was obviously not joking. “He said his captain’s name was Kalani, and he described the details of the ship’s departure. He said he knew it was only the second day after the Sea Song crossed the border six miles, but he told me that Captain Kalani and her sailors had been wandering around for half a century after crossing the border…”
Duncan frowned and said nothing, but Lucrecia, who was standing next to him, heard the noise and her eyes widened in surprise: "Half a century?!"
"Maybe... even longer, ma'am," Lawrence in the mirror frowned and said cautiously, "If what the 'sailors' said is true, they were only able to rely on clear mind to record the days in the first half century, and then they lost the concept of time - they drifted in the endless fog, neither alive nor dead, just like psychiatrists who unfortunately fell into the 'void fault' at the edge of dreams when treating people, and the Sea Anthem also fell into the fault at the edge of the world, so..."
Lawrence paused, as if disturbed by the movement beside him. Then a hoarse and vague voice came from the edge of the mirror. It was the hoarse voice of the "sailor": "So we were 'forgotten', Captain, ahaha... We were forgotten by death, forgotten by the sea, and finally even time and reason forgot us. So we became immortal, almost drifting forever at the end of the world... But in the end... Hiccup, the goddess had mercy on us, and the goddess had mercy on us. We were suddenly remembered by Her... So we drifted to the right course again... Hiccup!"
Duncan frowned. He quickly understood what the "sailor" meant and said, "The correct route is..."
"We found Him! A huge..." The sailor suddenly raised his voice, but then stopped abruptly as if someone was strangling him. He uttered a series of vague mutters before continuing, "I can't remember, I can't remember what He looks like, but we did find Him... We found the source of the call, and that is our mission - the Pope asked us to find Him because He conveyed the revelation to the Pope...
"Most of us stayed there. They didn't want to go back, didn't want to go back and face the world that was already hopeless. They had drifted for too long, and all their glory and firm beliefs had been washed away by the endless fog. And we also encountered... encountered...
"What did we encounter? I don't remember clearly, Captain. I don't remember clearly... I just remember that Captain Kalani and I returned from the fog. There were only two of us left. Strictly speaking, it was just me. Captain Kalani was just a wrinkled shadow at that time. She couldn't remember what she looked like, so I had to complete the steering..."
When the sailor said this, his voice turned into a series of vague mumbles, as if his thinking was not clear, and the chaotic memories that had just appeared were like broken puzzles circling in his withered brain, making him sometimes clear and sometimes confused.
Duncan ignored the sailor's subsequent mumbling. He paused for a moment and then continued, "But you are now Anomaly 077 - an 'anomaly' that was taken in by the city-state many years ago. You have appeared in this world for hundreds of years, and your first appearance was on an expedition ship that had been missing for three years."
The sailor fell silent for a long time. After an unknown amount of time, Lawrence suddenly broke the silence: "He said he didn't know what happened either - he didn't remember how he came back to this world, nor where the Sea Song went, and he didn't know why he ended up like this, an 'anomaly' that stirs up storms everywhere. He said the world in his eyes was misplaced, and the world he saw now was very different from what he remembered... but he couldn't explain it to me."
Duncan was silent for a moment and exhaled softly.
"I understand. Please take care of Anomaly 077 first. I will contact you if there is anything else."
"Yes, Captain."
The flames in the mirror gradually faded away, and it turned into an ordinary piece of glass again.
Lawrence withdrew his gaze from the mirror and turned to look at the mummy sitting in the corner of the room - Anomaly 077 sat there in a daze. The large bottle of wine in his hand was empty, but he would pick up the glass bottle from time to time and pour it meaninglessly over his mouth twice.
"Alcohol has no effect on you at all," Lawrence finally frowned, standing up and walking to the side of the mummy. "You can't get drunk, and you can't fall asleep with this stuff—not alcohol, not poison, not even revolver bullets—but you tried this last one."
The mummy was stunned for a moment, and threw the bottle aside. He raised his head somewhat dully and looked at the old captain in front of him. After two seconds of silence, he muttered: "Where is the twelve-pound cannon..."
"If you're still awake until the end of the world, I wouldn't mind if you tried it—you could even try that sixty-four-pounder on the dock, if you're interested."
Lawrence said casually and sat down on the chair next to the mummy.
"But since the world is about to end, you don't have to try those things - we will all fall asleep sooner or later, even though you took a few more detours than us."
The "sailor" turned his head and looked at Lawrence blankly.
His withered and shriveled eyeballs moved, and the drunkenness brought about by self-hypnosis did not last long after all. After a moment of daze, the mummy who had lost its peace finally lowered its head slowly, holding its head with its dry hands like bones.
"I lost my journal..."
The mummy muttered vaguely and desperately.
"What?"
"The log, Captain Kalani's log. She wrote a lot of things before she disappeared. She asked me to bring the log back. That was our mission..." The mummy muttered. He seemed to want to cry bitterly, but he seemed to have forgotten how to express this emotion that only the living should express. "I lost it. I lost the captain's log... I remember I stuffed it in my body. When the Sea Song passed through the fog again, it was with me, but I don't know where it is now... Everything is different. I can't remember..."
Lawrence listened to the confession of the mummy in a daze, and in the mirror beside him, Martha's figure with a complicated expression quietly emerged - they were silent, staring at the "sailor", and the only sound in the room was the latter's vague and low mumbling... The sound was like a corpse that had forgotten how to shed tears and was trying to learn how to cry.
Duncan turned his head and saw that everyone had come behind him. Many pairs of eyes were looking at him or at the mirror behind him that had returned to its original state.
"... That mummy actually has such a great origin?" Shirley muttered softly.
Vanna seemed to be thinking about something. "The Sea Song crossed the six-mile boundary yesterday... I remember Her Majesty Helena mentioned this matter before. She mentioned that the major churches have begun to send advance ships to impact the six-mile boundary in the hope of bringing back information from 'outside the world'."
"But why would the first mate of an expedition ship that just crossed the border yesterday become 'Anomaly 077' that appeared in the world more than two hundred years ago?" Nina was confused, "And there is also the 'half century'..."
"… Perhaps, this is because the concept of 'time' has begun to fail," Duncan said softly, "Or perhaps, this is the characteristic of the sea area outside the border - the entire crew of the Sea Song verified the first characteristic outside this border with their lives."
Morris frowned when he heard this, and seemed to think of something immediately.
But before the old scholar could speak, a sudden knock on the door from the entrance interrupted his thoughts.
A guest is coming.
(End of this chapter)