As night faded, the Pale Scar that occupied the entire sky gradually dissipated with it. Duncan stood on the stern deck, looking up at the sky without missing a single detail of the transition between night and day.
He watched the scar slowly turn transparent and illusory, like a dream gradually awakening. The grayish-white mist drifting around it merged with the sky first, followed by the scar itself—and throughout the entire process, the "scar" never changed position.
Duncan blinked, a further speculation faintly arising in his mind: the mark in the sky had not changed position. Did that mean it was not some distant astronomical structure? Did it mean it was merely some kind of phantom "imprinted" upon the backdrop of the atmosphere, moving in sync with the Boundless Sea?
Or was it because the planet on which the Boundless Sea rested—if this truly was a planet—happened to remain in synchronous motion with that scar? Or was the scar actually moving, but the observation period had been too short for the naked eye to notice?
All sorts of guesses rose and fell in his mind, but Duncan knew perfectly well that without sufficient evidence and reliable experimental verification, they were only guesses. There could be countless possible explanations behind a natural phenomenon, but without theory and evidence to support them, everything was empty talk.
That "sun" rose.
First came a golden radiance appearing along the line where sea met sky. Then, a massive glowing structure abruptly emerged from the sea. Accompanied by magnificent dawn clouds, a sphere of light locked within a double-layered rune structure entered Duncan's view.
As the rune structure slowly operated, the sun rose solemnly. The majestic process seemed to have a sound—a low, powerful, sluggish rumble echoed phantom-like through Duncan's mind. Yet when he truly focused to listen, the sound suddenly vanished.
He frowned, wondering whether he had just imagined it, but the memory brought by that sound was so vivid that he could not deny it.
Was that... the sun's proclamation to this world as it rose? Or merely one of the many illusions brought by the Boundless Sea?
No one could answer Duncan's doubts. The vast and boundless sea guarded all its secrets as it always had.
Pigeon Ai Yi rested comfortably on Duncan's shoulder as usual. Then it abruptly stood up and flapped its wings hard, staring at the sea while squawking loudly, "Get some fries! Get some fries!"
Duncan could not help laughing. He glanced at the strange pigeon and suddenly felt that having such a bird around was not bad at all—its bizarre outbursts gave him a strange sense of familiarity from home.
"Unfortunately, there are no fries on this ship." He casually flicked the pigeon's beak, then turned toward the Captain's Cabin. "But you got one thing right. It's time to get something to eat."
A moment later, the captain of the Lost Homeland had prepared himself a traditional ghost ship breakfast—inside the Captain's Cabin, Duncan directly used the navigation table as a dining table and placed several plates on the empty space beside the sea chart. Today's breakfast, like yesterday's dinner, yesterday's lunch, and every meal before that, consisted of jerky, cheese, and plain water.
Duncan sat before the navigation table and solemnly laid out a napkin for himself. Goat Head sat quietly across from him. To his left was Alice, the Cursed Doll who had come over to greet him early in the morning, while the strange pigeon perched on the tabletop to his right.
Duncan suddenly felt that this scene was beginning to fit his image as the "Ghost Captain"—a demonic goatwood carving, an inescapable Cursed Doll, a talking bird knowledgeable about another world, and the Ghost Captain seated at the head of the table. Take a picture, and it could serve as a movie poster without any editing...
But only those aboard the Lost Homeland knew the true state of its provisions.
Duncan sighed and looked down at the food on his plate—the movie-poster opening scene was over. What came next was the mundane reality of life aboard the Lost Homeland.
He picked up his knife and cut hard into the cheese. A squeaking, grinding sound arose as hard objects rubbed together. Then he poked the jerky beside it with his fork, and the jerky struck the plate with a crisp clink.
Alice watched curiously and finally could not help asking, "Captain, today's food is the same as yesterday's?"
"Tomorrow's will be the same too." Duncan looked up at the Cursed Doll. "Want to try some?"
Alice thought for a moment, then directly picked up a strip of jerky with her hand, put it in her mouth, and chewed hard twice. Immediately afterward, she spat it out. "It tastes awful!"
"You couldn't eat it even if it tasted good—do you even have a stomach?" Duncan took the remaining half-strip of jerky from Alice's hand. "You actually tried it just because I told you to."
As he spoke, he looked worriedly at the food on the plate again.
These were the only edible things he could find on the ship. The jerky had the texture of thick salted cardboard, while the cheese was like loose firewood mixed with sand. No matter how he handled them, they carried a strange odor. He had tried boiling the jerky, roasting it, and pan-frying it, but despite all the effort, he had failed to improve their taste or texture in the slightest.
The good news was that the food had at least not spoiled and would not poison him to death. The bad news was that time had still turned these unrotted substances into something extremely unfit for consumption—Duncan had every reason to believe that the cheese was several lifetimes older than he was, while the jerky, if it had still been alive, had witnessed at least a century of storms and changing fortunes.
The captain of the Lost Homeland might not need to worry about scurvy, but Duncan still longed for a healthy, balanced diet—at the very least, he hoped the food on his plate could be younger than he was.
The same age would do too.
The "Lost Homeland Supply Replenishment Plan" and "Land Exploration Plan" he had considered yesterday surfaced in his mind again.
But neither could be accomplished anytime soon.
Duncan sighed and continued carving up the "firewood" on his plate with the posture of settling a blood feud. Ai Yi, who had been tilting its head and watching from the side table for a long time, curiously walked over. The bird first looked at its owner, then at the food on the plate. "Insufficient crystal ore reserves?"
Duncan glanced at the pigeon, casually pinched up some fallen cheese crumbs, and tossed them to it. Ai Yi lowered its head and pecked twice, then immediately stiffened from head to toe as if it had suddenly crashed...
The bird stood frozen for a full three or four seconds before abruptly moving again. Flapping its wings wildly, it flew onto a nearby shelf and cried out indignantly, "Even if I starve to death today, die outside, or jump off from here, I still won't eat..."
Duncan felt somewhat hurt. Meanwhile, Goat Head, who had finally remained quiet for half a day across the table, could no longer hold back and began making creaking wooden sounds.
Before the thing could drill its own fire, Duncan finally nodded. "Say what you want to say."
"Yes, Captain," Goat Head said, finally getting the chance to speak. It immediately became noisy. "I've wanted to ask since yesterday. This one you brought back... its name is Ai Yi, right? Why can't I ever understand what it says? I thought about it all night yesterday—what exactly does topping up Q-coins mean?"
Duncan raised an eyebrow at once—he truly had not expected Goat Head to hold it in until now. He had underestimated the thing's self-control!
"You don't need to worry about it. This bird thinks in strange ways." Duncan did not stop his carpentry work, casually delivering the excuse he had prepared long ago while making the sounds of chisels, axes, and saws with his knife and fork. "It seems to use a language that only it can understand to communicate with others. Listen long enough, and you can roughly guess what it means."
"Is that so?" Goat Head pondered to itself. "But I always feel as though there is some kind of logic hidden in its words... as though there is a complete, self-consistent body of knowledge behind that language... You found Ai Yi during Spirit World Walk, didn't you? Could it be some sort of projection from the Abyssal Depths? You know, the deeper one goes, the more information from misaligned time and space appears in the form of projections. Among them are lost eras we have never understood, and even fragments of the future. Perhaps Ai Yi is talking about things from another time and space?"
The cutting motion in Duncan's hand paused for an instant, so slight it was nearly impossible to notice. Then everything returned to normal, and he said evenly, "Then I wish you success in figuring out the logic behind Ai Yi's language."
Goat Head might have merely been making a wild guess, but the information revealed in its words inevitably stirred up waves in Duncan's heart!
During Spirit World Walk, had his soul approached the "deeper layers" of this world? And the "deeper" the place, the more likely one was to see projections from misaligned time and space? Could those projections even display scenes from different timelines?
Duncan had not seen any "scenery from different timelines" during Spirit World Walk, but Goat Head had not been wrong about one thing—Ai Yi truly came from another time and space.
Then... had this pigeon truly been brought into this world by an Earthling named Zhou Ming, or had it really come from the deeper layers of this world, as Goat Head claimed?
Before you continue