The chart room was the same as always. The sunlight from the boundless sea poured into the room through the portholes, making the old objects that embodied a century of time reflect a brilliant glow. A black goat head sculpture quietly sat in a corner of the chart table, controlling the direction of the Lost Homeland, and the surface of the ancient chart was covered with mist. In the layers of surging mist, the trajectory of the known route was expanding straight forward in a certain direction.
The end of the track is the city-state of Pland. The flickering light has now appeared in the fog ahead and is gradually closing the distance between it and the Lost Homeland at a speed imperceptible to the naked eye.
The door opened and Duncan appeared at the door.
The goat-head sculpture immediately moved. Its wooden neck creaked and it turned its head in the direction of the voice. "Ah, it's the great captain who has come to his loyal deputy! Is everything going well for you? You have been busy since yesterday. Are you in a good mood today? Today's weather..."
"Stop, stop, stop. There's no need to repeat similar greetings several times a day." Duncan raised his hand to interrupt the other party before he finished speaking, and then his eyes lingered on the goat-headed man's face for a moment as if inadvertently.
The goat head was the same as always, showing no expression, and its obsidian eyes were still strangely cold. It stared at this side from the table with an inhuman look in its eyes.
But there was no smell of danger, and nothing was different from usual.
This guy seemed to have been following Duncan's orders seriously. When Duncan told it to concentrate on driving the boat, it really just concentrated on driving the boat.
"Captain, you look worried?" Goat-Head's voice sounded, with the familiar enthusiasm that only a lackey could show.
"You seem to have captured some prisoners... but they no longer seem to be on board?"
"They disappear after the sun comes up."
Duncan walked slowly to the navigation table and said calmly as he sat down, "They are some missionaries of the End."
"Ah, the Preachers of the End... troublesome and dangerous guys. They are really hard to catch. They always appear inexplicably and run away inexplicably." The Goat Head started chattering immediately. Just as Duncan was familiar with, as long as a topic was opened, this guy would blurt out a series of nonsense, but these nonsense often contained useful information, so there was no need to bother to interrogate him.
"But how did they offend you? Those crazy preachers rarely show up. Compared with the Sun Cultists or the Annihilation Cultists, they are low-key and rare..."
"They attacked a human I was keeping an eye on, and I captured him to use on Alice to test his abilities." Duncan said casually while observing the reaction of the goat-head.
"They also said a lot of weird things about the warp... How much do you know about these cultists?"
"I suggest you don't pay too much attention to their crazy 'preaching,'" the goat head said immediately. "Just calling the name of the warp frequently may attract dangerous attention, not to mention dealing with those lunatics who follow the warp? Of course, a great being like you may not be affected by them, but listening to them too much is not a good thing..."
Then it paused, and continued: "Let me tell you, I don't know much about those lunatics, and not many people in this world understand them. The Preachers of the End are probably the weirdest group of guys among all kinds of cultists. They are good at appearing and disappearing, and their thinking is fragmented. And unlike ordinary cultists, there are not a large number of lower-level rabble - they are much fewer in number, and there is no one who can communicate normally with people..."
Goat Head kept talking on and on, and the more he talked, the more nonsense he said. But even in the midst of this endless nonsense, Duncan still heard some key information.
According to Goat-Head, the number of Preachers of the End is far less than that of the other two cults that are also a major threat to civilization (i.e., Followers of the Sun and Cultists of Annihilation). Judging from current records and activity trajectories, their number may be only a thousand, or even less.
In general, there are a large number of ordinary people who serve as "lower-level believers" in cults. These mobs have little power and live a normal social life, except that their minds are
Apart from being corrupted, they are basically the same as ordinary people, but the Preachers of the End do not have such an underlying structure - as long as they appear, they must be "priests" with great power.
No one knows how a cult group can operate and maintain itself to this day in the absence of grassroots support, just as no one knows the specific process of the transformation of Sun Cultists and Annihilation Cultists among ordinary people.
In addition, although the End Preachers contain the word "preach" in their name, in fact they seem to have almost no cases of successful "preaching" - their sanity has long evaporated, and their language and logic are different from those of ordinary people. Although they always recite some "truths" related to the warp whenever they show up, no sane person will listen to their instigation, and those with weak wills... ... have already been contaminated by the warp and turned into monsters before being bewitched by them.
In other words, it is theoretically impossible for the End Preachers to increase their numbers through "preaching".
Finally, the Preacher of the End is elusive, very elusive.
Duncan has experienced this personally.
Goat Head said that he didn't know much about the Preacher of the End, but the information he told him was not less at all.
"A group of missionaries who are so crazy that they can no longer preach?" Duncan stroked his chin and muttered thoughtfully.
"Where did the first End of the World Preacher come from?"
"Who knows?" The goat-headed man's neck creaked and shook.
"Perhaps it grew directly from the subspace..."
Duncan didn't pay attention to Goat Head's obviously made-up "subspace joke", and he also didn't mention his "non-linear conjecture" about the Preacher of the End to the other party.
He was just thinking, if he, who had just come into contact with the End Preacher, could come up with such a conjecture, then what would the guardians and bishops in the human city-states who had been fighting against heretics for a long time know about the group of Warp believers? Would they have a more complete theory to explain the weirdness of those lunatics
"Captain, you seem to be very concerned about those End of the World Preachers?"
In the silence, the voice of Goat Head suddenly broke the silence in the room. "It's rare to see you look so serious..."
Duncan raised his head and looked at the goat head quietly.
"Tell me, if the history of a city-state is polluted, can it be saved?"
He said this suddenly.
Frank and casual, as if just discussing an ordinary "academic conjecture" in leisure time.
The goat head was stunned for a moment (although its hard face had no expression to begin with), and after two or three seconds it responded: "Historical pollution? Oh, this is a high-end topic. It sounds like something that can only be done in the subspace..."
"This is something that can only be done in the subspace?" Duncan raised his eyebrows. "Why do you say that?"
"Apart from the dangerous thing called subspace where time, space, and cause and effect are all messed up, what else can so easily pollute the history of a city-state?" Goat Head said casually.
"There is nothing in the world with such power... Well, it's not like there isn't one. If we talk about power alone, there might be one that's qualified, but that thing is hanging in the sky..."
Listening to Goat Head's chattering, Duncan's heart skipped a beat.
The time, space and causality of the subspace itself are chaotic
This was the first time he heard such clear and direct information related to the subspace.
Along with this piece of information, what came to his mind was what he recalled the Frost Queen saying to him in that illusion - please don't pollute history.
He frowned, temporarily suppressed his complicated thoughts, and returned his gaze to the goat. The goat immediately noticed the captain's gaze, stopped chattering, and quickly reacted: "Ah, no wonder you suddenly pay attention to those end preachers... ... Could it be that they..."
"They may have done something big," Duncan said darkly. "It makes me a little... annoyed."
He stared into the eyes of the goat head quietly, and the goat head also stared at him expressionlessly.
Looking at him, as if they were observing each other, but there seemed to be no additional communication.
"The city-state has its own defenders, and there are also those fire bearers who keep an eye on the thread of history," the goat-headed man said, "Anyway, no matter how much trouble those end-of-the-world preachers cause, they can't threaten you. Even if they can pollute history, they can't pollute you and the Lost Homeland..."
Duncan raised his eyebrows: "Will it not pollute me and the Lost Homeland?"
"... We are returning from the warp, Captain..." Goat Head said slowly.
"Everything can be contaminated—except the Warp, and we've been in it long enough..."
Duncan frowned. For some reason, some of the crazy words that the End Preachers had said suddenly emerged in his mind.
After a moment of silence, he couldn't help but mutter softly: "The promised ark..."
(Book recommendation time! The title of the book is "I Stand Under Billions of Lives", and the author is Chen Laite. In fact, this book was recommended once before, but unfortunately it was reported and closed for a while. Now the content has been refurbished and reborn. The new content is about a mentally ill guy who refused to work overtime for free and ran away from home. It is an interesting story in a magical world. If you are interested, you can go and have a look.)