Ashes Of Deep Sea Chapter 777

Chapter 777: Chapter 774: Intersection Window Chapter 777: Chapter 774: Intersection Window After crossing the Six Nautical Miles threshold, “Homeloss” and “Brilliant Starship” entered a peculiar… “state”.

The ocean and the fog had disappeared, and a strange dim light that had pervaded the sky now evenly covered the entire world outside the ship's hull–every “boundary” seemed to have failed, and everything that had once been clearly demarcated now appeared overnight as a uniform texture without distinction between up and down… “background color”, and both ghost ships seemed to be flying through this uniform background color, “floating” in the air.

“…This is not what the church described,” Fenna said, looking out at the scenery beyond the ship's hull, speaking instinctively, “According to the records, even if you cross the Six Nautical Miles threshold by some distance, there are supposed to be a sea surface and sky… I remember Miss Lucrecia also mentioned this.”

Duncan, contemplating, raised his head and silently glanced at the “sailor” who was gripping the wheel with a tense expression. After a moment, he broke the silence, “Perhaps this is the phenomenon that should occur when anomaly 077 'effectively takes place'–we are navigating through a special 'channel' that is protecting us from the time turbulence outside the threshold.”

“How long will we sail in this 'channel'?” Alice asked curiously.

Duncan thought for a bit and shook his head, “Even I don't know.”

Alice then turned her curious gaze towards the sailor at the helm.

The already nervous anomaly 077, noticing the doll's clear gaze, became even more tense, shrinking his neck and saying, “Don't look at me, I don't know either–I'm just steering the ship…”

While saying this, he tried to keep a serious face, grasping the wheel and slightly adjusting the direction, but in truth, he also didn't know where to “steer”, merely shaking the wheel in place to appear busy–given the bizarre circumstances, the ship's specific “direction” clearly had nothing to do with the wheel…
Duncan, seeing through this but not pointing it out, sensed the condition of “Homeloss” to ensure everything was normal, then no longer paid attention to the sailor's situation, instead looking up towards the “Brilliant Starship” floating nearby, calling out in his mind, “Lucy, how are things on your end?”

“Everything's normal on the ship–except Rabi got so scared that he hid in a box and absolutely refuses to come out,” Lucy's voice quickly responded, “He keeps ranting that we're 'crashing'… crashing towards doomsday. I'm kind of concerned about that.”

“Crashing towards doomsday?” Duncan frowned upon hearing this, rapidly pondering the meaning of the delusional rabbit's words. Then he looked toward the other side, his gaze passing over the deck and looking at the ship's hull outside at the exceedingly voidlike, evenly “gray-white”.

“What it refers to… might be that 'outer barrier',” Duncan murmured thinking, “Or whatever lies beyond that barrier.”

“What lies beyond the barrier?” Lucy's voice sounded somewhat bewildered.

“…The ashes, the chaotic and unknowable remnants of the old world not used as 'bricks' for the Shelter,” Duncan spoke slowly, recalling a recent conversation with Lei Nora, recalling the Frost Queen's mention of the terrifyingly pure “void” beyond the end of the world, he suddenly realized, “…For a fish, the gaseous world truly represents an unfathomable void and doomsday.”

Aboard the bridge of “Brilliant Starship”, Lucy, hearing her father's words, seemed to understand something; then she turned her head to look at the slightly trembling box on the floor near the helm–half of Rabi's ear drooped out of the box, shivering.

Miss Witch frowned, “…As a nightmare that brings terror to others, do you need to be this frightened?”

“Rabi… Rabi isn't the bringer of terrifying nightmares, Rabi is… just terror itself…” Rabi muttered muffled from inside the box, as if to encourage himself, but the tone of his voice changed halfway, “It's truly terrifying, my lady! We're falling, falling fast! Don't you feel it–getting colder, darker, narrower, like diving headfirst into a thin tube from a bottomless abyss, about to suffocate, freeze, be crushed to death, just imagine, imagine that scene…”

Lucy walked over expressionlessly, kicked open the box lid, and single-handedly grabbed the rabbit and swung it against the wall.

The ragdoll rabbit “pia ji” hit the wall, finally going motionless.

“Is it just that your vocabulary and imagination are rich?” Lucy glared fiercely at the flattened bunny slowly sliding down the wall, rubbing the goosebumps on her arm unconsciously, “Don't describe your pile of imaginations again–keep your thoughts to yourself, otherwise next time it won't just be smacking you against the wall.”

Lying flat on the ground, the ragdoll rabbit “puff-pouf” fluffed up again, clumsily got up mumbling “oh,” and obediently walked back to the nearby box.

But halfway there, Lucy, grabbing his ear, dragged him back.

“Stop lazing around, go find something to do,” Miss Witch said in an indisputable tone, “Take a few tin men, go near the aft boundary line and watch it, the ship's Spiritual Body seems unstable here… Don't let those soulless shadows escape from inside, I don't have the spare energy to deal with this trouble. Go.”

“Oh, okay, my lady…” Rabi drooped his head and answered, walking out of the bridge with short steps.

After the rabbit left, Luny came over from the side, “Weren't you a bit too harsh on Rabi just now… it's just a bit scared.”

“It's overly frightened–I need to find something to distract it,” Lucy then exhaled softly, waving her hand, “It comes from the deeps of the Spirit Realm, it can feel many 'changes' that humans can't sense, in my eyes where nothing exists, it probably feels 'very lively'…”

At this point, she suddenly paused and then looked at the automaton in front of her with some confusion, “But then again… didn't you feel it? When I was making your mimic soul, I also used 'ingredients' from the Spirit Realm.”

Luny paused for a moment, thought seriously, and shook her head, “I didn't feel anything.”

Lucy's expression became subtly nuanced as she sized up Luny–it might have been her imagination, but she always felt that Luny exhibited a clear and pure…”quality” since she started playing with a living doll named “Alice” aboard the Homeloss. This feeling became especially pronounced after the two dolls learned how to swap heads.

But the last time she secretly tested Luny's intelligence, there didn't seem to be any change–an issue she had yet to dare mention to her father.

“Mistress?” The automaton noticed the gaze fixed on her and tilted her head in confusion.

“…It's nothing.” Lucy waved her hand, pushing the strangely eerie thoughts to the back of her mind just as something caught the corner of her eye.

Outside the porthole, in the even and pure “gray-white background,” some visibly discernible lines and shadows had appeared.

“What is that?” Luny also saw the abstract line patterns appearing on the “channel outer wall” and suddenly opened her eyes wide in surprise.

Almost immediately as her words ended, those abstract, seemingly peeled from a specific individual, “outlines” suddenly changed in the gray-white background–
The black lines trembled, rapidly contracting and twisting into orderly contours; shadows suddenly expanded, becoming the color filling the outlines. A ship–a ship that seemed to be “stamped” on the exterior wall of the channel, flatly emerged from the gray-white background and gradually entered the course between the Homeloss and the Brilliant Starship.

The scene was as if a lost voyager had suddenly “intruded” into the channel, and that abstract, distorted ship's silhouette swiftly acquired a logically consistent…”shape” after entering the “sight” of the Homeloss and the Brilliant Starship.

Lucy was taken aback for a moment, then rushed to the porthole like a gust of wind, staring intently at the ship that had suddenly appeared in the channel.

She suddenly recognized the blurry markings on that ship.

“It's the Sea Song!”

It was the Sea Song–sailing on a lengthy voyage, wandering in the shattered streams of time.

It had drifted from a fractured stream of time, entering the pathway between the Homeloss and the Brilliant Starship during this brief “convergence window.”

Suddenly, the stern deck of the Homeloss quieted down.

Everyone involuntarily looked up, staring at the ship floating in “midair” outside the ship's railing, watching its flag gradually becoming distinct and the increasingly clear name on its hull–the Sea Song was sailing in its own time flow. It seemed completely unaware of the nearby Brilliant Starship, as if a misalignment in their times obscured its “view.” It passed at a distance that could have almost led to a collision with the side of the Brilliant Starship, then came alongside the Homeloss.

There, it adjusted its position and then… sent a series of light signals.

Unusual 077 suddenly clutched the wheel tightly.

He widened his eyes, fixating on the flashing lights on the side of Sea Song, silently counting the intervals and illumination, as though counting his own long-lost heartbeat–
“Short light-dark-short light-dark-long light…”

He didn't continue counting. While the light signals of the Sea Song were still flashing, he had already closed his eyes and then, as if using all his strength, shouted with his raspy voice–
“Captain! The vessel ahead is asking our intentions!”

The sailor's hoarse voice echoed on the Homeloss.

Duncan took a gentle breath, his face serious and solemn.

“Respond with lights,” he said softly, “salute them.”

Chapter end

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