Chapter 516: After the Sun Reignited
Chapter 516: After the Sun Reignited
The sun rekindled.
After being extinguished for twelve full hours, the dark sphere that hung high in the sky and remained still once again became the “sun” that brought warmth and light to the world, and resumed moving.
In Prand, in Frost, and in Windy Harbor, everyone who had witnessed the extinction of the sun saw the restoration of Vision 001.
However, the panic caused by the sun’s extinction didn’t subside so easily – the residents of the city states were still anxious, the scholars and clerics looked at the relighting of the sun with the same confusion and nervousness as they did when they saw it go out before, and the administrators of the cities were still trying to find ways to confirm the situation in the other cities, and everyone desperately wanted to know –What the hell happened?
Fluttering pieces of colored paper rolled across the deck like a gust of wind, through the windows, and into the captain’s cabin, where Lucrecia’s silhouette coalesced out of the pieces of paper, and she stepped over to her crystal ball, activating it and awaiting the response from the other side with a slight sense of anxiety.
As soon as Tirion’s figure appeared, she spoke quickly, “I see the sun has re-lighted on my side, what’s the situation on your side?”
“My side certainly is, at least for now it seems that we are still seeing the same sun,” Tirian had a hint of fatigue in his eyes but seemed to be in good spirits, “It may take me a while to get the atmosphere in the city-state to relax now that everyone is worried about whether the sky above their heads will fall into darkness again ……”
“…… The sun is a symbol of security, sheltering us from the daytime for ten thousand years, so in other words, as soon as it goes out once, the most basic and solid ‘sense of security’ in everyone’s mind has suffered a heavy blow, the “Lucrecia sighed, casually voicing the feelings in her heart, “No one is not worried about this, not even me.”
“Did you gather any useful information on your end during the sun’s extinction?” Tirian asked, “You have all sorts of equipment over there ……”
Lucrecia immediately nodded, “Yes, after the sun went out, a group of observation devices I set up in the Bright Star received strange signals coming out of that ‘luminous geometry’, after that, when I organize the information to give you a copy of it, you see if the scholars on the Frost side have any I’ll see if the scholars on the Frost side have any clues. Later on, I will also go to Light Wind Harbor again, to see if the monitoring devices set up by the Truth Academy in various parts of the city have found anything ……”
“Good, I’ll wait for your news.”
Lucrecia hmmmed, then she hesitated for a few seconds before speaking hesitantly, “How is the situation on father’s side? He was still at sea when the sun went out ……”
“I’ve been in contact with him before, everything is fine on the Lost Country, maybe even …… better than in the city,” Tirian exhaled, “I’ll be in touch with him again afterward, don’t worry, if I notice anything is wrong …… I’ll be the first to tell you.”
Lucrecia nodded softly, and after saying goodbye to her older brother, she casually extinguished the crystal ball in front of her.
……
Lost Country, in the captain’s room, the oval mirror in front of Duncan’s eyes floated the figure of the White Oak’s captain, Lawrence, who was reporting on the latest situation so far:
“The waters around the White Oak have returned to normal, and that weird phenomenon from before hasn’t reappeared, it seems that with the sun re-lighting, everything is getting back on track ……”
“How’s the navigation situation?”
“The stargazing room can already see the ‘stars’ again,” Lawrence immediately nodded and said, “but it will still take a little time for the Spirit World lenses to recalibrate, and at the moment, roughly speaking, the White Oak hasn’t deviated too much from its course. .”
“Good, report back to me in time if there is any subsequent situation.”
The illusory spirit flame at the edge of the mirror rose and contracted, and Lawrence’s figure in the mirror faded away with it, but Duncan still stood in front of the mirror, which had returned to its normal state, frowning in thought.
The sun had returned, and the situation was actually more or less what he had expected at the beginning – although Vision 001 was indeed in trouble, this huge and ancient “device” would not completely collapse in a short time, and it would probably last for a long time with constant failures and repairs, and today’s extinction was just a temporary event. Today’s extinction is only temporary – but correspondingly, its rekindling is also temporary.
Duncan was more concerned about something else than the brief extinction of the sun: the strange phenomena that had occurred after it had gone out.
The first eerie phenomenon was the disruption of communication in the city-states other than Prand, Lightwind Harbor, and Frost.
If it was true that all the communication in the boundless sea was interrupted, then it would not be disturbing, but there were three city-states that did not have any problem, and if it was said that Prand and Frost had some kind of special characteristics because they had turned into “visions”, then what was the matter with Windy Harbor?
The second weird phenomenon is even more puzzling than the “communication breakdown” – what is the “border” that the White Oak observed?
The burning cloths were thrown into the sea from the ship, and theoretically, they would keep drifting to the opposite direction of the ship’s heading because of the ship’s movement, but in the case of the sun’s extinction, those cloths all “stagnated” near a certain “boundary” after drifting out for several hundred meters. ……
According to Lawrence’s report, this strange phenomenon disappeared after the sun was re-lighted – the cadaveric “sailor” confirmed this with a few more tests.
Duncan frowned.
The phenomenon observed by the White Oak was actually very small in scale, compared to the “loss of connection” of all the city-states on the infinite sea, the “border” was limited to a single ship, but what was behind the phenomenon was hidden… …but what lay behind that phenomenon seemed far beyond imagination.
Duncan vaguely felt that he seemed to have touched a certain key “secret” in the boundless sea, and that the “real side” of the whole world seemed to be hidden in the twelve hours after the sun went out.
At that moment, a call from afar suddenly interrupted his thinking.
Duncan immediately snapped back to his senses and swept his gaze across the mirror in front of him. In the next second, the illusory and transparent fire of the spirit body once again enveloped the mirror, and the depths of the mirror quickly became pitch black, while Tirian’s figure emerged in it.
“Father, on your side ……”
“All is well with me here, the sun is restored, is it not?” Duncan took the initiative to speak without waiting for the other to finish, “How are things in Frost?”
“Everything is fine on the Frost side,” Tirian immediately replied, “Having you ‘watching over’ the cemetery side has greatly reduced the pressure from the church and city hall, and the order in all parts of the city is under control at the moment, but the citizens’ panic will probably need to be calmed slowly, I will call a meeting afterward to discuss what to do to explain the sun going out to the commoners ……”
Duncan noticed that Tirian seemed to be surreptitiously glancing this way as he spoke, as if he were …… discreetly watching for a change in his demeanor.
He immediately figured out why this was.
“Don’t worry, I’m still me, and wasn’t replaced with anything from subspace because of the brief extinction of the sun,” Duncan smiled, speaking the big truth with a bemused expression, “If you don’t believe me, go over to the cemetery and talk to my ‘avatar ‘ to confirm it in person?”
“Ah, no, I didn’t mean anything else!” Tirian explained in a panic, “It’s just that …… Lucy is a little worried about your ……”
“I know,” Duncan interrupted the other man, waving his hand indifferently, “but you can rest assured that my mental health is very good – better to talk about what’s going on in the city than worry about me. Have communications with the other city-states been restored?”
“We can now receive signals from Cold Harbor, and psychic communications with the other distant city-states have been restored,” Tirian said with a nod, “I’ve arranged for people to inquire about the various city-states, and it should be soon …… “
He stopped abruptly at that point, and immediately afterward his gaze turned away.
It seemed that someone had entered the domed office and was reporting something to him.
Duncan didn’t say anything, and withdrew his gaze at the first opportunity, hiding the connection between the mirrors – so as not to frighten the “ordinary people” over there.
After a few minutes, the flames around the edge of the mirror flared back up, and Duncan heard Tirion’s call and turned his gaze to the mirror again.
Tirian’s figure appeared in the mirror again, this time with a look of obvious dismay on his face.
Duncan sensed the change in the other man’s expression and frowned slightly, “What happened?”
“We …… just established contact with Cold Harbor and inquired about the situation in their city-state during the sun’s extinction,” Tirian spoke in a hesitant tone, seemingly struggling to think of how each word should be phrased, “and it turns out that they were surprised –They were completely unaware of the sun going out!”
Duncan’s expression froze momentarily.
After a dozen seconds or so, as if he suddenly thought of something, he broke the silence with unusual seriousness, “To be clear, was it the Cold Harbor side that never observed the sun going out, or was it that they never experienced those twelve hours before at all?”
Tirian froze at his words, quickly understanding the meaning of Duncan’s sentence.
“You mean ……”
“Go and confirm it again, see if there is any record of communication interruption with Frost on the Cold Harbor’s side, if in their eyes the whole world has always been business as usual, and the communication with Frost has never been interrupted …… then this matter can be more complicated than we thought.”
“Yes, I’ll confirm it right away,” Tirian said quickly, “and the other city-states, I’ll go and confirm them one by one as well!”
Duncan nodded and waved his hand to disperse the flames floating around the mirror, but just as he was about to ponder over the matter, another sudden exclamation of alarm came from Goathead not far away, “Captain! The situation is not quite right! You come over and look at the charts!”
Charts?
Puzzled in his mind, Duncan quickly turned to the nautical table and swept his eyes over the eerie charts surrounded by fog.
In the next second, he saw the projection of the Lost Country ship on the chart, as well as …… the city-state markings that were slowly emerging next to this projection.
“We …… are near Lightwind Harbor?”
(End of chapter)