Deep Sea Embers

Duncan and Alice stood at the end of the stairs leading to the bilge, and what they saw was a strange and horrifying scene—the entire bottom of the Lost Homeland was in a fragmented state, and outside the shattered cabin, it was clearly A kind of nothingness permeated with endless dim gleams.

Is this the real "bilge structure" of the Lost Home? Then what is beyond this fragmented cabin?

Will such a scene exist under the sea level of the boundless sea?

Duncan cautiously took two steps forward and came to the shattered cabin. He stepped on the largest piece of wood and looked back to the direction he came from.

The "last door" still stands quietly on the spot, fixed on a floating plank. Behind the door is a dark staircase, which leads to the top obliquely—but around the door, there is nothing that should exist. There is nothing but an empty wall.

This door is floating alone in this space.

Duncan cautiously walked around behind the door, and found that there was nothing behind it. Through the open door, he could directly see the broken cabin on the opposite side.

"Captain..." Alice's nervous voice came over, the puppet looked around in fear, and finally its gaze fell on Duncan again, "This...is normal, right?"

In fact, Duncan has more confidence than this puppet. After all, the latter can blindly trust the captain. Where can he find confidence as a "captain" at this time? However, looking at Alice's nervous appearance, and thinking of the "crew rules" that Goat's Head once said, Duncan still forcibly controlled his uneasiness and maintained his usual serious and calm appearance.

"Don't worry," he said lightly, "The Lost Home is a ship you can't even imagine."

"Indeed, it's really unimaginable..." Alice said in amazement, Duncan's calm performance obviously reassured her a little, and she began to look curiously at the broken hulls and the chaotic light and shadow outside the hull, "Captain, what's going on outside?" ...doesn't look like there's water?"

Duncan thought for a while, and suddenly looked at Alice curiously: "Do you think this is below the surface of the boundless sea?"

Alice was taken aback: "Ah? Why did you ask me?"

Duncan said indifferently: "Because you have experience."

"Isn't that thrown by you..." Alice subconsciously said, but quickly swallowed it halfway through, and began to answer honestly, "I don't think so... the sea must be full of water, even if the boundless sea Something is wrong, there must be water under the sea level, but it looks like... like..."

"A void filled with chaotic streams of light," Duncan shook his head, and walked slowly forward. He came to the edge of the wooden fragments under his feet and looked down at the flowing light and shadow outside the cabin. "The bottom of the Lost Country... Not in the boundless sea."

Alice was taken aback: "Ah? Then where is this?"

Duncan didn't speak, looking inscrutable - in fact, because he didn't know either.

But he still has a vague guess: perhaps, this ship is actually sailing in several different dimensions at the same time? ! On the surface, it seems that the Lost Homeland is sailing in the boundless sea of ​​the real world, but in fact, different parts of this ship belong to different dimensions! ?

This also explains why the deeper you go into the Lost Home, the more eerie and eerie the surrounding cabins appear. Perhaps it is not the cabin itself that is eerie and eerie...

So if the dark and chaotic space outside the cabin is not the boundless sea, what is it? It doesn't look like the spirit world, nor does it look like the dark space seen when performing the spirit world shuttle... Could it be a "deeper" place? secluded? Subspace?

With countless guesses and hypotheses in his heart, Duncan slowly reached out and pulled out the pirate sword at his waist. Then, holding a lantern in one hand and a long sword in the other, he slowly leaned towards the edge of the fragment under his feet - at this moment he He was very cautious, even though the gap between these fragments seemed to be able to be jumped over in one step, he did not step rashly, but first tried it with his long sword.

God knows if something will pop out of these cracks and swallow anyone who hastily crossed them.

The next second, he opened his eyes slightly in surprise.

He saw that the tip of the long sword disappeared, but on the edge of the fragments opposite the crack, a section of the tip of the sword suddenly emerged.

Duncan frowned, and tested in a different direction, and a similar phenomenon happened again.

He finally understood slowly.

These seemingly cracked areas are actually still spatially continuous! The seemingly fragmented bilge structure is actually still intact!

He straightened up, looked around the cracks and the light and shadow flowing outside the cracks, and realized in his heart: these "fractures" were just optical results, but did not affect the continuity of space. It didn't break here, but for some reason, the "picture" outside the hull appeared inside the hull.

But what causes this? Is it spatial overlap? Or is it the wrong projection from high dimension to low dimension?

Duncan subconsciously mobilized all the reliable or unreliable knowledge in his mind, trying to explain the weird phenomenon here, while Alice watched the captain make some strange moves on the edge of the crack with a confused face, and then used a lantern to go around After looking at it for a while, I finally couldn't help but say: "Captain... are you using a special pacification ceremony to... pacify the cabin?"

With his back to Alice, Duncan silently put away his long sword, biting the bullet: "...Yes."

"Oh! That's amazing!" Alice's eyes lit up immediately, "Then do you want to perform a pacification ceremony for all the fragments here?"

"...that's enough," Duncan said with a stern face, and quickly diverted her attention before the curious puppet continued, "Let's move on."

As he spoke, he cautiously stepped forward with a lantern in his hand—when he took this step, he almost tensed up all the muscles and nerves in his body, and was always on guard against any unexpected situation when he crossed the crack, but what happened? Nothing happened.

Just like the previous test with the long sword, he directly "jumped" the process of crossing the crack, just like walking in a normal cabin, and walked directly to the opposite fragment.

Alice watched in amazement as the captain walked ahead, passing through as if ignoring the cracks under her feet, and followed up in a similar manner, but she still became nervous when crossing the cracks, and finally couldn't help speeding up and jumping forward ...

Then, of course, he slammed into Duncan in front of him.

Duncan felt the wind behind him suddenly, and then something hit his back firmly, and suddenly turned around subconsciously and raised his hand——

In the next second, he looked expressionlessly at the headless puppet behind him, while Alice's head was rolling and stammering more than ten meters away: "Yes... yes... right..."

"You wait here honestly, I'll pick it up for you," Duncan sighed, thinking in his heart why he brought this useless doll down while quickly catching up to Alice's head that had been rolling away. , picked it up with ease, "Do you want to consider putting a screw in your neck..."

Alice's head didn't seem to hear Duncan's complaints in the second half of the sentence. She just suddenly opened her eyes wide and looked in a certain direction: "There...there...there is...there is a fan..."

Duncan frowned, and turned his head to look in the direction Alice's head was trying to signal with his eyes.

A dark wooden door stood silently on the fragment at the end.

A door... There is still a door, and there is still a door!

When Duncan saw the notice on the door at the end of the stairs before, he wondered if this classic situation would happen, but when he saw that there was indeed an extra door in the "bilge space", he still couldn't help it. Hold on!

At this time, Alice's body also stumbled over, and Duncan returned the doll's head to her while looking at the door: "Is there such a door over there just now?"

Alice stuffed her head back on her neck with a "Bo'er", and glanced over there while moving her cervical spine: "It doesn't seem to be there, it only appeared after we walked over."

Duncan hummed noncommittally, and walked cautiously towards the door with a lantern in his hand.

In fact, in this weird cabin, he no longer needs the lighting of the lantern. Although the chaotic light seeping in from the cracks is dim, it is enough to maintain the basic brightness of the whole space, but he still maintains the light in his hand. Lanterns—this is a necessary prudence.

Although the goat's head hadn't reminded him about this, Duncan had already decided that as long as he was still in the cabin below the waterline, he would never turn off the light.

The new door looked unremarkable. The black door panel was not much different from the "last door" at the end of the stairs before, and it also had a similar style and material to the doors used in most cabins on the Lost Country.

Duncan raised his head, and above the door frame of this door, he saw a line of letters that seemed to be cast in copper:

"This door leads to the Lost Country".