As night faded away, the pale scar that occupied the entire sky gradually disappeared. Duncan stood at the back of the ship, looking up at the sky, not missing any detail of this moment of day turning into night.
He saw that scar slowly becoming transparent and unreal, like a waking dream. The grayish-white light mist around it first blended into the sky, and then the scar itself followed suit. Throughout this process, the position of the scar remained unchanged.
Duncan blinked, feeling a vague suspicion arise in his mind: since the scar in the sky did not change position, could it mean it wasn’t some distant astronomical structure? Could it be just a kind of "mark" in the atmosphere, moving in sync with the endless sea?
Or maybe the planet where the endless sea was located (if this really was a planet) was moving in sync with the scar? Or perhaps the scar was actually moving, but he couldn’t see it because he hadn’t been observing for long enough?
Various guesses surged in his mind, but Duncan knew very well that until he had sufficient evidence and reliable experiments, these guesses were just that—guesses. There could be countless explanations behind a natural phenomenon, but without theory and evidence, everything was just empty talk.
Then the "sun" rose.
First, a golden glow appeared on the horizon, followed by a massive glowing structure suddenly emerging from the sea. Accompanied by brilliant rays of light, a spherical light body, locked in a double rune structure, came into Duncan's view.
As the rune structure slowly operated, the sun rose solemnly. This majestic process seemed to carry some kind of sound—a deep, powerful, slow rumbling echoed in Duncan's mind, but when he tried to listen closely, the sound suddenly vanished.
He frowned, doubting whether he had imagined it, but the memory of that sound was so vivid that he couldn’t deny it.
Was that… a declaration from the sun as it rose to this world? Or just one of the many illusions brought by the endless sea?
No one could answer Duncan's doubts; the vast, boundless endless sea kept all its secrets as always.
Pigeon Ai Yi sat comfortably on Duncan's shoulder as usual, then suddenly stood up, flapping its wings vigorously while looking at the sea and loudly squawking, "Get some fries! Get some fries!"
Duncan couldn’t help but laugh. He glanced at the strange pigeon and felt that having such a creature around wasn’t so bad—its odd remarks often gave him a sense of "home."
"Too bad there are no fries on the ship," he said, playfully poking the pigeon’s beak before turning toward the captain's cabin. "But you’re right about one thing; we need to get something to eat."
A moment later, the captain of the Lost Home prepared a traditional ghost ship breakfast for himself. Inside the captain's cabin, Duncan used the navigation table as a dining table, placing several plates on the empty surface beside the nautical charts. Today’s breakfast, like yesterday’s dinner, yesterday’s lunch, and every meal before that, consisted of jerky, cheese, and plain water.
Duncan sat at the navigation table, carefully and ceremoniously laying out a napkin for himself. The goat head sat quietly across from him, while to his left was the cursed doll Alice, who had come over to greet him early in the morning. The strange pigeon perched on the table to his right.
Duncan suddenly felt that this scene was starting to fit his role as the "ghost captain"—the goat wooden sculpture representing a demon, the unavoidable cursed doll, the talkative bird with knowledge of other realms, and the ghost captain sitting at the head of the table. This could easily be a movie cover without any edits…
But only those involved knew the true state of the food situation on the Lost Home.
Duncan sighed and looked down at the food on his plate—the cinematic opening scene ended, and what followed was the reality of life on the Lost Home.
He picked up a knife and forcefully cut into the cheese, producing a squeaking sound as the hard material scraped against the knife. He then poked at the jerky with a fork, and it made a crisp clinking sound when it hit the plate.
Alice watched curiously and finally couldn’t help but ask, "Captain, isn’t today’s meal the same as yesterday’s?"
"Tomorrow’s will be the same too," Duncan replied, glancing at the cursed doll. "Want to give it a try?"
Alice thought for a moment, then directly picked up a piece of jerky and chewed on it a couple of times before spitting it out, "It tastes terrible!"
"If it tasted good, you still couldn’t eat it—do you even have a stomach?" Duncan took the remaining half of the jerky from Alice’s hand. "You actually tried it."
Saying this, he looked at the food on the plate with a hint of worry.
These were the only foods available on the ship. The jerky tasted like thick cardboard sprinkled with salt, and the cheese felt like loose, sandy firewood. No matter how he prepared it, it always had a strange taste. He had tried boiling the jerky or roasting it, but despite his efforts, he couldn’t improve the taste or texture at all.
The good news was that at least the food wasn’t spoiled and wouldn’t poison anyone. The bad news was that the passage of time had turned these non-rotting materials into something extremely unappetizing. Duncan had every reason to believe that this cheese was older than he was, and if the jerky were still alive, it had witnessed at least a century of ups and downs.
The captain of the Lost Home might not have to worry about scurvy, but Duncan still longed for a healthy diet—at least, he hoped the food on his plate would be younger than him.
Being the same age would be fine too.
The "Lost Home supply plan" and "land exploration plan" he had thought about yesterday resurfaced in his mind.
But these were not things that could be achieved in a short time.
Duncan sighed again and continued to cut the "firewood" on his plate with a vengeful attitude. Meanwhile, Ai Yi, who had been tilting its head and watching for a long time, curiously approached. The bird looked at its owner, then glanced at the food on the plate, "Not enough crystal ore reserves?"
Duncan looked at the pigeon and casually tossed it some cheese crumbs that had fallen. Ai Yi pecked at them a couple of times, then suddenly froze in place, as if it had crashed…
The bird stood still for three or four seconds before suddenly moving again. It flapped its wings and flew to a nearby shelf, sounding frantic, "I’m going to starve today, die out there, jump off this ship, and I won’t eat…"
Duncan felt a bit hurt, while the goat head across the table, which had finally been quiet for a while, couldn’t help but make squeaking sounds from the wood.
Before this creature started its own fire, Duncan finally nodded, "Speak if you have something to say."
"Yes, Captain," the goat head finally had a chance to speak and immediately became noisy, "I’ve been wanting to ask since yesterday, this one you brought… is called ‘Ai Yi,’ right? Why can’t I understand what it says? I thought about it all night; what does ‘charging Q coins’ mean?"
Duncan raised an eyebrow—he hadn’t expected the goat head to hold onto this question until now, and he had underestimated its self-control!
"You don’t need to worry about it; this bird has a strange way of thinking," Duncan continued his woodworking, casually saying the excuse he had prepared long ago, "It seems to communicate using a language only it understands. If you listen enough, you can roughly guess what it means."
"Is that so?" The goat head pondered, "But I always feel like there’s some kind of logic hidden in its words… It’s as if there’s a complete, coherent knowledge behind that language… Did you discover Ai Yi while walking in the spirit realm? Could it be some kind of projection from a deeper layer? You know, the deeper you go, the more you see projections from misaligned timelines, including fragments of lost eras we haven’t understood, or even bits of the future. Maybe Ai Yi is talking about things from another timeline?"
Duncan’s cutting work paused for a moment, barely noticeable, then everything returned to normal as he replied in a calm tone, "Then I wish you luck in figuring out the logic behind Ai Yi’s language."
The goat head’s words might have been idle speculation, but the information they revealed inevitably stirred something in Duncan’s heart!
While walking in the spirit realm, did his soul draw closer to a "deeper" layer of this world? In deeper places, could he see projections from misaligned timelines? Could those projections even show scenes from different timelines?
Duncan hadn’t seen any "scenes from different timelines" while walking in the spirit realm, but the goat head hadn’t been wrong about one thing—Ai Yi was indeed from another timeline.
So… was this pigeon brought to this world by a person named "Zhou Ming" from Earth, or was it really, as the goat head said, from a deeper layer of this world?
(End of Chapter)