Ashes Of Deep Sea Chapter 564

Chapter 564: Chapter 563: Revisiting the Garden Chapter 564: Chapter 563: Revisiting the Garden Just as before, Alice had unconditional trust in the captain's words–she didn't even question why Duncan suddenly needed to use the key again, and happily agreed.

But Duncan still seriously explained to this doll, “I need to enter Alice's Mansion again, to confirm some conjectures about the 'Old World.'”
Alice nodded vigorously, even though she didn't quite understand what the “Old World” the captain mentioned was, but she knew it was a very serious and solemn matter.

Since they had cooperated once before, this time she quickly found a comfortable, stable place to sit down, then turned around to expose the keyhole on her back.

“Actually, I discussed with Nina before, asking her to help me modify the back of my clothes, to see if we could make a hole around the keyhole,” she said happily while waiting for the captain to “wind her up,” “but she was worried about sand, dust, and other debris getting into my keyhole… I think she's being overly cautious, I'm not going to roll on the ground, how would sand get into the keyhole?”

“Better to keep it covered usually,” Duncan said offhandedly, “who knows if this delicate mechanism is fragile, if something gets stuck inside I wouldn't know how to fix it.”

“Miss Lucracia might know how to fix it, Luny was repaired by her… But you're right, it's better to be careful, Luny's head took a long time to fix…”

The silver-haired doll rambled on, talking about these eerily bizarre matters just like common household conversations. Duncan couldn't help but show a slight smile on his face, then shook his head smilingly, picked up that peculiar brass key, and carefully inserted it into Alice's keyhole like last time.

The familiar click sounded, the key began to turn on its own, Duncan steadied himself for a moment, and the next second, he felt the light and shadow in front of him change, his senses rapidly focusing and reshaping.

After a moment, he opened his eyes in the darkness, adapting to the changes in his senses after the environmental shift. After the scene in front of his eyes stabilized, that bizarre “garden” shrouded by a cartoon sky, lush and overgrown, reappeared before him.

The silver-haired gothic doll, identical to Alice, was still quietly leaning next to the pillar in the center of the garden, sleeping among the vines and thorns, and the easel in the doll's hand was just like before, unchanged in both position and form.

Duncan blinked, and instead of moving hastily, he cautiously checked his surroundings and compared them with the scenes in his memory.

Half a minute later, he confirmed that there were no abnormalities in the surroundings; everything remained as it had been when he left– he even felt as if, in his absence, time within this “Mansion” had paused, resuming only upon his return.

…This might not be an illusion.

Duncan recalled the peculiar “headless butler” who had once talked to him about the special time rules within Alice's Mansion, and he pondered thoughtfully.

After a short contemplation, he raised his head and looked up at the “sky” above the garden.

During his last visit here, he had been distracted by the various bizarre and peculiar scenes within the mansion, and with so many questions crowding his mind, his limited energy had been dispersed everywhere; though the sky of this garden had caught his attention, he hadn't observed the bizarre cartoon graffitis too closely.

This time, he looked much more intently.

Clouds drawn like children's crayon sketches floated against the pale blue sky background, exaggerated “sunlight” rays filtering through the clouds, while the “sun,” painted in golden yellow, released light and warmth, maintaining the garden's vitality, as vivid as he had seen last time.

Still full of “childlike fun,” yet also overflowing with eeriness from the “childlike fun.”

Suddenly, Duncan slightly squinted his eyes.

He carefully observed the golden-yellow sun, and this time, he finally noticed a detail he had overlooked before–
There was no Rune Circle around the “graffiti sun!”

“No wonder… no wonder I felt something was off last time, but couldn't quite put my finger on it…”
Duncan muttered, his expression subtly changing, he finally confirmed where the greatest sense of dissonance in this eerie graffiti sky emanated from: it was a normal sun, though crudely painted, it was undoubtedly the “sun” that he was familiar with!

But precisely because he was too familiar with it, that hasty glance last time had failed to notice this glaring “anomaly”– if natives like Morris or Fenna came over, they'd probably have sensed something amiss at first glance.

Duncan's eyebrows furrowed slightly, having confirmed the sky contained a “normal sun,” the secrets hidden within Alice's Mansion seemed to be quietly revealing a corner to him.

Above the Endless Sea, the “sun” is a man-made celestial body with a dual Rune Circle structure, a common knowledge recognized from the Deep Sea era to this day, a “fact” that hasn't changed over ten thousand years, no one in the world knows what the “true sun” looks like, even those Sun Cultists who claim to worship the True Sun God depict only a distorted, terrifying old god when preaching–
So, this “normal sun” or “primitive sun” in Alice's Mansion… who left it behind?

This doll “Alice” was “born” after Frost Queen Lei Nora plunged into the deep sea, then why does the depths of Alice's Mansion connected to her record the appearance of the “sun” before the Great Obliteration?

And if considering the “World Aggregation Theory” on the Great Obliteration, that the Deep Sea era was formed by the accumulation and reshaping of countless Old World remnants, then which Old World does this “primitive sun” recorded in Alice's Mansion belong to?

Does it represent a certain star of a particular Old World? Or is it merely an abstract symbol?

For some reason, Duncan thought of that plump pigeon at this moment.

With a furrowed brow, he shook his head, rearranging the complex information in his mind over and over until suddenly, another clue emerged–
The birth of Alice.

Her image was indeed a Replication of the Frost Queen Lei Nora, but her original corpse was also an erroneous replication of the “Alice Guillotine”–it had been proven that for the abnormal “Shaper” of 099, the source and process of the Replication weren't important, whether it was a great human or a sturdy piece of wood, they were merely the initial “material,” what mattered was the “Shaper” himself.

The erroneous replication of the Saint had created abnormal 099.

Could it then be assumed that this so-called “Alice's Mansion” was also a creation of the Saint's erroneous replicant–and building on that, even the Saint's erroneous replicant should retain a lot of the “original” information, could some “things” in Alice's Mansion have their origins directly linked to that ancient god lingering in the Endless Sea?

Duncan raised his head, examining carefully the abstract, simple sun as well as the clouds and sunlight surrounding it.

…Could these graffiti-like images be a part of the memory unintentionally revealed by the Saint, or some kind of “message” intentionally conveyed to the outside?

The more Duncan thought, the more likely it seemed, because one thing was unquestionably clear:
The true appearance of the “Original Sun” existed only in a time before the great annihilation, and the secrets of Alice's Mansion should also be traceable to before that time, and from what intelligence was currently available… only the four gods and those mysterious, enigmatic “ancient gods” of the world's depths could possibly have some understanding of the world before the great annihilation.

A thought struck Duncan, and he looked down to see the drawing board in the doll's hands.

After hesitating briefly, he bent down, carefully maneuvering around the surrounding thorns, and slowly pulled the drawing board from the doll's hands.

The front of the drawing board still depicted that bizarre vortex, the twisted stars, and an ominous dark red glow, while on the back edge of the frame, familiar script was still engraved:
“…The messenger brings news from afar that the chosen clan has picked up the lost ancient stars and forged them into the blessed crown–The third long night has ended.”

The chosen clan picked up the lost ancient stars and forged them into the blessed crown.

Duncan's gaze lingered long on this sentence.

This described the ancient Cretan clan under the guide of the Crawling King, constructing Vision 001 and lifting it into the sky.

When he first entered this garden and saw this line of text, he could not understand what it meant.

But now, he suddenly realized.

He thought of that ten-meter diameter “moon”–that was a “part” that had fallen off from Vision 001's Rune Circle.

The Rune Circle that bound the sun could be considered a glorious “crown.”

And the “moon,” twisted and compressed by an unknown force… naturally fit the description of a “lost ancient star.”

Some slight noises suddenly came from deep within the garden, startling Duncan from his thoughts.

He abruptly raised his head, looking in the direction of the sound.

There were only lush plants there, dark shadows between the dense bushes and shrubs.

But Duncan was sure that he had really “heard” something.

This was the deepest part of Alice's Mansion, where, according to the headless butler, even the senior servants of the mansion weren't allowed to enter casually–only the mistress Alice and someone called “the Gardener” would come here, but that “Gardener” seemed to have disappeared long ago.

An intruder? Or had the “Gardener” returned?

Slowly Duncan furrowed his brows, he casually stuffed the drawing board back into the doll's arms and carefully walked toward the lush bush.

“Rustle… rustle…”

The faint noises came again from somewhere in the shadows.

Suddenly, something caught the corner of his eye–
A shadow, like a slick and eerie tentacle, was slithering and writhing through the darkness on the edge of the garden!

Chapter end

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