Ashes Of Deep Sea

The night faded, and the pale scars filling the sky began to dissipate gradually. Duncan stood on the stern deck, looking up at the sky, not missing a single detail of the day-night transition.

He saw the scar become transparent and illusory, bit by bit, like a dream awakening. The gray-white mists that seeped out around it merged with the sky first, followed by the body of the scar – yet throughout this process, the position of the “scar” never changed.

Duncan blinked and a further speculation rose in his mind: If the mark in the sky hadn’t changed its position, did that mean it wasn’t some distant astronomical structure? Could it be a mere “imprint” on the backdrop of the atmosphere, a mirage that moved in synchrony with the Endless Sea?

Or was it because the planet upon which the Endless Sea was located (if this was indeed a planet) and the scar were in perfect synchronous motion? Or perhaps the scar was indeed moving, but the movement was imperceptible to the naked eye due to the short observation period?

Various conjectures bubbled in his mind, but Duncan knew all too well that without sufficient evidence and reliable experimental verification, these conjectures were just that – conjectures. A natural phenomenon could have a myriad of possible explanations, but without theoretical and evidential support, it was all talk.

The “sun” rose.

First came a golden brilliance at the horizon of the sea, and then a massive luminous structure abruptly emerged from the surface of the sea. With the resplendent glow of dawn, the light sphere secured by a dual rune structure appeared in Duncan’s line of sight.

As the rune structure revolved slowly, the sun ascended majestically, a process that seemed to have a sound of its own – a low, powerful, and slow rumbling that echoed in Duncan’s mind. Yet when he concentrated to listen, the sound suddenly vanished.

He frowned, doubting whether he had just experienced an auditory hallucination, but the memory the sound left was so vivid he could not deny it.

Was it … the sun’s declaration to the world as it rose? Or was it just one of the many illusions brought by the Endless Sea?

No one could answer Duncan’s question, as the vast and boundless Endless Sea continued to guard all its secrets as usual.

The pigeon Ai Yi, as comfortable as ever, perched on Duncan’s shoulder. Suddenly, it stood up and started flapping its wings vigorously, looking out to the sea and loudly chirping, “Fries! I want some fries!”

Duncan couldn’t help but laugh. He glanced at the whimsical pigeon and suddenly felt that having such a creature around wasn’t so bad – its odd outbursts always gave him a sense of “homey familiarity.”

“Sadly, there are no fries on board,” he said as he idly played with the pigeon’s beak, turning to walk towards the captain’s quarters, “but you’re right about one thing, it’s time to find something to eat.”

Shortly thereafter, the captain of the Homeloss prepared his traditional breakfast characteristic of a ghost ship – Duncan used the navigation table in the captain’s quarters as a dining table, placing several plates beside the sea charts on the empty surface. Today’s breakfast, like last night’s dinner, yesterday’s lunch, and every meal before, consisted of jerky, cheese, and plain water.

Duncan sat at the navigation table, carefully and ceremoniously spreading a napkin for himself. A goat head statue stood quietly opposite him. To his left, the cursed doll Alice, who had come to say hello early in the morning, and on his right, the peculiar pigeon perched on the tabletop.

Suddenly, Duncan felt that this scene was apt for his persona as the “Ghost Ship Captain” – a goat carving representing a demon, a cursed doll he couldn’t discard, the Eloquent Bird with knowledge of the Otherworld, and the ghost ship’s captain at the head of the table. This scene needed no editing to be a movie poster.

But only those on board the Homeloss knew the true state of its provisions.

Duncan sighed, looking down at his plate – the movie-poster-like scene was over, now followed by the stark reality of daily sustenance aboard the Homeloss.

He picked up the knife and forcefully cut into the cheese, the sound of hard objects rubbing against each other squeaking and cracking. He prodded the jerky with his fork, which clinked crisply as it collided with the plate.

Curious, Alice watched this and couldn’t help but ask, “Captain, isn’t today’s meal the same as yesterday’s?”

“Tomorrow’s will be the same as well,” Duncan looked up at the cursed doll, “Do you want to try it?”

Alice thought for a moment, picked up a piece of jerky with her hand, chewed on it vigorously, then spat it out immediately with a “ptui ptui”: “It doesn’t taste good at all!”

“You can’t stomach it even if it’s tasty—you have a stomach?” Duncan took away the remaining half-strip of jerky from Alice’s hand, “You really tried it when I told you to.”

As he spoke, Duncan looked at the food on his plate with some concern.

The only food they could find on the ship was like this: the jerky tasted like thick cardboard with salt, and the cheese was like friable wood mixed with sand. No matter how it was processed, it always had a strange smell. He had tried boiling the jerky in water, baking it, or pan-frying it, yet, after much effort, he couldn’t make the taste or texture any better.

The good news was that the food was at least not rotten and wouldn’t poison anyone. The bad news was that the relentless passage of time turned these non-rotten substances into something extremely ill-advised to swallow. Duncan had every reason to believe the cheese was older than he was by several cycles, and if the jerky were alive, it had surely witnessed the rise and fall of a century.

The captain of the Homeloss might not worry about scurvy, but Duncan still yearned for a healthy diet—at least, he hoped the food on his plate would be younger than himself.

Even the same age would do.

The “Homeloss Supply and Inventory Plan” and the “Land Exploration Plan” that he had considered yesterday once again surfaced in his mind.

But these were not achievable in a short time.

Duncan sighed and continued to cut the “firewood” on his plate with a vindictive attitude, while Ai Yi, who had been tilting his head and watching for a while on the table next to him, walked over curiously. The bird first glanced at its owner, then looked at the contents of the plate, “Are the crystal mines depleted?”

Duncan glanced at the pigeon and casually tossed it some cheese crumbs that had fallen off. Ai Yi pecked at them twice, then froze as if it had crashed, standing motionless…

The bird stayed frozen for a good three or four seconds before suddenly coming to life. It flapped its wings frantically and flew to a nearby shelf, uttering a frantic noise, “I’d rather starve to death, die out there, jump off here, than eat…”

Duncan felt a bit wounded, while the goat head, which had finally quieted down across the table, couldn’t help but produce a creaking sound of wood friction.

Before the creature began carving out its firestarter, Duncan finally nodded, “Speak, if you have something to say.”

“Yes, captain,” the goat head finally had the opportunity to speak and immediately started babbling, “I’ve been wanting to ask since yesterday, this creature that you brought with you… its name is ‘Ai Yi,’ right? Why can I never understand what it says? I pondered all night, what exactly does ‘recharge Q-coin’ mean?”

Duncan’s eyebrows lifted— he hadn’t expected the goat head to hold out this long before asking the question, underestimating its self-control!

“Don’t worry about it; this bird’s way of thinking is very peculiar,” Duncan continued his carpentry without stopping his hands and casually said the excuse he had prepared long ago, “It seems to communicate with people using a language that only it can understand. Listen to it enough and you can roughly guess what it’s trying to say.”

“Is that so?” The goat head pondered on its own, “But I always feel like there’s a certain logic hidden in its words… as if behind that language, there’s a complete and consistent set of knowledge… Did you find Ai Yi while you were traveling in the Spirit Realm? Could it possibly be a projection from the deep depths of the Underworld? You know, the deeper you go, the more likely you are to encounter projections from misaligned spacetimes, displaying information from lost eras, or even fragments from the future. Is it possible that Ai Yi is talking about things from another temporal dimension?”

Duncan’s work of cutting paused imperceptibly for a moment, then continued as if nothing had happened, and he said in an even tone, “Then I wish you luck in figuring out the logic behind Ai Yi’s language.”

The goat head’s words might just be a wild guess, but the information revealed inevitably stirred up waves in Duncan’s heart!

During his travels in the Spirit Realm, had his soul come closer to a “deeper layer” of this world? The deeper one went, the more one could see projections from misaligned spacetimes? And those projections could even display scenes from different timelines?

Duncan hadn’t seen any “scenery from different timelines” while walking in the Spirit Realm, but there was one thing the goat head got right—Ai Yi did indeed come from another temporal dimension.

So… was this pigeon brought to this world by a person named “Zhou Ming” from Earth, or was it, as the goat head suggested, from a deeper layer of this world?