Ashes Of Deep Sea Chapter 509

Chapter 509: Chapter 510 “The Answer Chapter 509: Chapter 510 “The Answer Zhou Ming returned to his bachelor apartment, where everything remained exactly as he had left it.

When he stepped on the familiar, slightly worn floor, looked at the things in the room that had never changed, and listened to the humming of the fan from the computer that was always on, his thoughts finally settled down bit by bit.

A subtle, indescribable feeling floated in his heart, Zhou Ming stepped over a few scattered objects on the floor and came to the tightly closed window, looking at the constantly surging white fog outside.

He stared at the fog for a long time and then reached out to push the window–naturally, the window did not budge.

The flour sprinkled on the windowsill and the deliberately stacked cans also remained as they were initially, seemingly conveying a silent and lonely atmosphere without words.

For a long time, he just stood quietly in front of the window, maintaining a posture as if gazing into the fog, his mind empty of thoughts, not knowing how much time had passed before he suddenly blinked, turning his head like a startled statue.

Beside the unmade bed, the computer monitor on the desk was faintly glowing. The “Network Unconnected” prompt would still occasionally pop up in the lower right corner, the notebook he had left when he went out remained thrown in the corner of the table, that notebook had not been flipped through by him for a long time.

Zhou Ming walked over, sat down at the desk, stared blankly at the empty screen for a while, then reached out to pull the keyboard and mouse he had pushed to the corner, opened the browser, and carelessly typed a line in the search box–
“Does the world exist beyond the dense fog?”

Of course, the browser did not provide any effective search page–after pressing the Enter key, the cursor on the screen blinked a few times, then error pages about network disconnection and remote server not responding popped up.

This result was naturally expected, Zhou Ming had known from the beginning, a long time ago when the fog had just blocked the room, he had already tried various means to contact the outside world using this strangely behaved computer.

He did not expect the screen to show any different content this time.

He just wanted to type that sentence out–not asking anyone, not expecting any answers.

Listening to the monotonous buzzing of the fan beside him, Zhou Ming sighed, threw the keyboard and mouse back into the corner, then picked up the notebook, flipped it open to a blank page, and bent down to write seriously:
“To the world outside the fog, greetings from someone inside the room.

“Before long, I will arrive at a place on the 'other side' of the door, a City-State situated in the frontier, I am going there to confirm some things.

“But even without confirmation, I think I already know the answer, because in the eerie world on the other side of the door, countless unimaginable events are actually happening, and my 'Intuition' there has always been very accurate.

“Based on this, I no longer expect a response from beyond the fog, nor do I expect anyone to cross that fog to knock on my door or window, I still cannot determine what exactly has happened in this world, but perhaps… the one encountering changes is not me, but you.

“In my quiet, narrow little house, everything is still as it was before; I have a bed, a sofa, a coffee table, a desk, and chairs, my wardrobe is beside my bed, there is also a large rack, most of which is still empty…

“I have not cleaned the room for a long time.

“There is hardly any dust here–I know, most of the dust in human dwellings comes from human skin fragments falling off, as well as pollution caused by daily activities, and I have not been active here most of the time, so most places here are actually still very clean.

“Even without dust, the room looks somewhat messy now, because the last few times I returned to the room, I was in a hurry and left without tidying up.

“It is not good to keep it this way forever–if everything is as I thought, I feel… I should keep this room clean and tidy.

“Additionally, maybe I should not say this, maybe saying these things is meaningless already, but… I hope all is well with you beyond the fog.

“Goodbye, I am going to clean up this room now.”

Zhou Ming breathed softly, threw the pen back into the pen holder, took another careful look at what he had just written, then closed the notebook and placed it in the corner of the desk.

Then he silently stood up and began to carry out the task he had planned in his notebook–cleaning and tidying up the room.

Starting from the slightly messy bed, folding the quilt, arranging the pillows and sheets, then the items on the desk, the coffee table, then the wardrobe, bookshelf, and the clutter on the sofa and floor.

There wasn't much dust, and no need to mop, he simply wiped away the sparse dust on all the furniture surfaces with a piece of paper, then tossed it into the trash can.

At the very end, Zhou Ming approached the window.

He silently looked at the objects on the windowsill, and after standing there for a long time, he reached out to put the tools he had tried to use to open the window–including a hammer and wrench–back into a toolbox by the side, then placed the stacked cans and other miscellaneous items where they belonged.

Then, he wet a paper towel, held it with his left hand, and pressed it onto the windowsill. He kept this position for a full ten seconds, finally took a deep breath, and slowly wiped the windowsill clean.

The flour, once used to check if anyone had opened the window or entered the room, was completely wiped away by the damp paper towel.

Now, the room was thoroughly clean and tidy.

Zhou Ming sighed, calmly surveyed the room, confirming his labor's results. He then picked up the trash bag he had just packed up–a black plastic bag that was not very heavy, as it mostly contained waste paper and empty cans, but when he lifted it, he still felt it had some weight.

He carried this bag of things to be discarded to the entrance of the studio apartment and opened the door.

As always, the pitch-black, surging fog undulated at the door. The fog seemed to hide all the secrets of the world but was chaos too profound to be reasoned out.

Standing before this surging black fog, Zhou Ming hesitated for a moment, then raised his hand and threw the trash bag into the fog.

In the moment the plastic bag left his hand, he felt a strong impulse to pull it back, as if those pieces of waste paper and empty cans were the only treasures left in the world, and he was the last gambler of this world, determined to preserve every gram of matter in the room–yet, this impulse was eventually suppressed. He opened his hand and calmly watched as the plastic bag fell to the other side of the door, quickly disappearing into the swirling fog.

He knew those objects would not “reach the other side of the door”–only he himself could arrive at that world as “Duncan,” everything else would vanish in the swirling fog as it passed through the door.

Now, those things meant to be discarded had completely disappeared from “the world outside the room.”

Zhou Ming wiped his hands, took a step forward, ready to leave this place–on the other side of the door, Alice was still waiting for him to have dinner.

But just as he was about to step through the door, a faint sound caught his attention; it was the noise of the computer fan speeding up suddenly.

Zhou Ming instantly stopped, retraced his steps, and looked towards where the sound was coming from.

The dimly glowing computer screen, which previously displayed a network connection interruption and no response from the remote server prompts, was flickering. Then those prompt texts suddenly disappeared, and the loading bar at the bottom of the page turned from red to green and slowly began to move forward.

Zhou Ming felt his heart explode in that moment, a suffocating sensation seeping into his lungs; the next second, he quickly closed the door and dashed to his desk.

The loading bar at the bottom of the browser interface continued to advance, the eerie green resembling a slowly and firmly spreading flame, as the previously blank page finally revealed the loaded content–
It was an image.

Zhou Ming stared intensely at the gradually emerging picture.

The Moon.

It seemed to be a view taken directly from some position in space, showing the Moon floating in the dark universe, its grayish-white surface covered with ringed craters forming ravines, as if many strange and contrasting patterns–although no expert in astronomy, Zhou Ming was profoundly familiar with this classic image.

And he confirmed once again that the painting he had seen in Tirian's office indeed depicted the Moon–down to every detail, clearly only capturable by someone who had seen the Moon up close.

Zhou Ming slowly sat back in the chair, leaned back, his expression frozen as he stared at the Moon image almost filling the entire screen. After a long time, his gaze shifted upward to the line of text he had just typed into the search box:
“Does the world exist beyond the fog?”

He remained silent, taking a long time before he suddenly “woke” himself from a state akin to being made of stone, and quickly grabbed the keyboard beside him to type new text:
“Is this the answer?”

“Who provided this answer?”

Rapidly typing these two questions, Zhou Ming stared intensely at the computer screen.

However, no “person” responded, and no new tracings or loading bars appeared on the screen, just a cursor idly spinning in place, like a silent, stagnant eye–amid the gradually restoring subdued, soft sound of the fan's rotation, he once again heard only his own breathing and heartbeat.

Moments later, the Moon image on the screen was refreshed away due to a loading failure, leaving the interface bleak, with only one line of text left:
“Network connection interrupted or remote server not responding.”

Chapter end

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