Chapter 671 – A Difficult Future

Chapter 671 – The Obscure Future

Inside the “Witch’s Mansion” at 99 Crown Street, Light Wind Harbor.

Shirley is a little bored lying in front of the window sill, looking out at the scenery on the street.

Tranquility and order have returned to this city-state, although many people are still suffering from the “after-effects of the dream world”, but the physical damage caused by the incident of Lightwind Harbor is obviously far less than that of Prand and Frost, at least in the visible market, most people’s daily life has returned to the track they are familiar with.

There were children running through the unblocked intersections with cheers and joy, holding flowery windmills in their hands as they made their way through the streets in the bright sunlight.

The time was nearing midday, Vision 001 was high in the sky, there were many beautiful blue roofs in the opposite neighborhood that were basking in the sunlight, and the occasional Knowledge guards in Guardian uniforms could be seen standing high above, vigilantly and carefully observing the situation within the neighborhood.

“Yawn ……” Shirley stretched a long lazy waist and twisted her head to look at Nina next to her, “What have you been doing since early in the morning?”

Nina sat behind a small table near the window, head down, grabbing a pen to write and draw in a large notebook, the other hand is grabbing a glowing “fireball”, and from time to time to the edge of the mouth to nibble on a small mouthful, hearing Shirley’s words she did not raise her head: “Doing mechanical design, and after that to be taken to the custom workshop! ……”

Shirley listened to a stare, can not help but come over to look at Nina book on those dazzling gears and connecting rods a glance, special puzzled to look at their own friend who is keen to learn: “…… old man is not said to write a letter to Prender to help you do a withdrawal? In the future do not need to take the test you still so hard for what?”

Nina instantly raised her head and looked at Shirley with a serious face, “It’s not a withdrawal, it’s an early completion – I didn’t have much to do on the ship, so I finished all the high school courses, Mr. Morris and Uncle Duncan discussed it and said that it doesn’t make much sense for me to go back to school like this right now, and that the average person’s developmental route and not suitable for me, so they gave me an early finish ……”

Shirley was dumbfounded, “It can still be like this?”

“The average person can’t, but Mr. Morris vouched for it – he can,” Nina took another nibble of the little sun in her hand and said vaguely as she crunched and chewed, “And I think it’s pretty good too, anyway, I I don’t have many friends at school, and I’ve been following Uncle Duncan on his adventures out there for so long, I probably won’t fit in when I go back ……”

Shirley didn’t pay attention to what Nina was saying in the last sentence, her attention had already fallen on the “small fireball” that the other party was chewing on from the middle, and finally couldn’t hold back after half a day, “You’ve been chewing on this all day long hey…. …Is this delicious?”

Nina casually handed over the small sun: “Do you want to taste it?”

Sherry instantly jumped out two meters away, “I haven’t lived long enough!”

“It’s actually not hot at all ……,” Nina resentfully took the little sun back, mumbling under her breath, “It’s a pity, I wanted to ask Ms. Vanna to try it before, and she refused… …”

“Anyone in their right mind surely couldn’t take this – it’s rather the fact that you can actually use this as a snack that’s scary,” Shirley kept a safe distance from Nina, eyeing the fireball in the other woman’s hand with a strange look. “Is it really okay for you to just eat it ……? Did the captain and the old man really let you do that?”

“Yeah, Mr. Morris even encouraged me to keep ‘testing’ and ‘observing’ after confirming that doing so wouldn’t have any effect on me,” Nina nodded, and “He said that the process of my ‘devouring’ this sun might reveal the relationship of transformation and compatibility between certain fragments of the Old World, and might even help in the search for a solution to the underlying chaos of all things. …… It’s hard to hear the details, but he and Uncle Duncan have been talking about it for a while now. But he and Uncle Duncan have been discussing over this matter for quite some time ……”

While saying that, she picked up the small sun and put it on her mouth to take a small bite: “They have been discussing more and more profound things lately, this morning after uncle came back from the ship they discussed for two hours, I also heard them say that they want to think of ways to catch another Ultimate Preacher over to study the research and also discussed where to catch… …”

Shirley instantly revealed a strange look when she heard half of it, and twisted her head to look at the living room not far away.

Duncan and Maurice were sitting on the couch in the living room, and in fact their discussion had been going on intermittently and had not ended until now.

Alice was lying on the coffee table next to Duncan, grasping a pencil in her hand, scribbling her “drawing” on a piece of white paper with great concentration.

“…… We have never been closer to the ‘truth’ of the origin of the world than we are today, and the ‘impact’ observed in the deepest recesses of Silentis’ memory is indeed the the only ‘event’ to date that can explain the Great Annihilation. …… I’ve been in contact with my mentor since yesterday, and as far as I know, he’s already shared this information with three other popes… …”

Maurice said with a serious face, while in his hand, he unconsciously fiddled with a delicate crystal tricorder, the sunlight that poured in from the window shone on the tricorder, constantly refracting various brilliant colors in his hand.

Duncan slowly nodded, ”The Great Annihilation brought about a deadly chaos and conflict that remains rooted in the nature of all things to this day……. The Third Long Night failed to resolve this underlying conflict, but only delayed its onset, and now it seems this ‘delay’ has reached its limit, and the coming of the ‘twilight’ is indeed inevitable.” “The question now is what exactly will happen after the ‘twilight’ descends, and in what form will the so-called ‘fourth long night’ occur and end,” Morris’s tone was not without apprehension, “The obvious fact is that, one way or another, our present ‘Age of the Deep’ will be turned upside down in the process, and the city-states of the infinite sea …… may be as much a part of it as the previous two Long Nights as wiped out.”

He stopped abruptly and after a few seconds of silence shook his head, “Or even worse.”

Duncan didn’t say anything, but after the topic of the upcoming Twilight, his mind couldn’t help but think of the scene he had seen in subspace.

Ancient kings surrounded the pale giant that had died in the creation of the world, burying an ancient god in a dimly lit apocalypse.

If every “long night” corresponds to a “dusk”, then the reflection he saw in the giant’s one eye was the scene of dusk.

He thought of the starlight that filled the sky, and the roar in the depths of the starlight.

After being silent for an unknown amount of time, he finally spoke softly, “Perhaps, only the ‘Kings’ can really answer my questions.”

Morris looked up in surprise, “What did you say?”

Duncan shook his head and did not answer Morris’ question, but changed the topic after a moment of thought, “From the information we have so far, no matter whether it is the Annihilationists or the Children of the Sun, they are all making preparations for the coming ‘Twilight’, and one of the most frequently mentioned words by those Annihilationists is ‘new position’ – in the next era after the Deep Sea Era, they want to occupy a position in advance.”

“This may correspond to the concept of the ‘outcast communities’ in the Third Long Night,” Morris said with an immediate nod, “and according to the evidence you have recently found, not all ‘communities ‘ were able to coexist after Genesis, and there were many communities in the Third Long Night that were excluded from the Shelter, of which the Black Sun may have been only one – more abandoned communities likely did not even survive the slightest bit of information… …”

He pauses briefly here, seemingly lost in thought, before continuing, “And based on the premise that ‘the basis of all things is conflict and destruction’, and the condition that ‘the gods construct the next age on the ashes of the world’ , the coming Fourth Long Night may mean constructing the next age from the ashes of the Deep Age, a most likely outcome is ……”

Maurice hesitated a bit, while Duncan had already said what he hadn’t finished, “The next age, a ‘shelter’ even more narrow, cramped, and crowded than the Age of the Deep.”

There was a brief silence in the living room, except for the soft sound of Alice’s swishing and sketching on the paper – the doll didn’t care about the questions she didn’t understand, she was just immersed in her ‘creation’, still in high spirits.

After a minute or two, Maurice slowly lowered the prism in his hand.

“There will be more ‘communities’ abandoned, more civilized creations turned into ‘profane archetypes’ for the next age, destroyed, banished, not allowed to remain in the dimension of reality, not even allowed to remain in the historical record… Much of what we hold dear in this age will become tainted and taboo in the next, just as the Sun Remnants were abandoned in the last age ……”

Duncan nodded softly, “So the cultists are making preparations so that they can take up a birthplace for themselves ahead of time in the next, narrower ‘world’, or even if it’s just a ‘spot’ that won’t be easily erased ‘, stealing the power or remnants of an ancient god is what they came up with – of course, whether or not it’s effective is debatable.”

“But then what? Will there be a Fifth Long Night, a Sixth Long Night? The cycle might go on and on, even faster and faster, until some limit is reached, and in the process the …… ‘shelter’ will become smaller and smaller, more and more confined… …”

Maurice’s mind flared, and by the end was already describing, as if to himself, the end calculated from his obscure and pessimistic reasoning.

The embers could be rekindled, but rekindling always had its limits, and the ever-shrinking fire could only ever hold fewer warmers than the last time, until the firewood ran out and all things fell silent in the cold for eternity.

In the next age, there may not be a boundless sea, the last resting place of civilization may be a city, and beyond that, a town, a neighborhood, a house, a small piece of stone floating in nothingness, on which the last wisps of “civilization’s” muddled sanity are entwined, recalling in a daze the afterglow of the civilizations of the past, and in the last spirit of the last time, the last of the civilization’s spirit will be in a state of bliss. The last wisp of “civilization’s” muddled sanity is wrapped around the stone, recalling the afterglow of the past civilization in a haze of stupidity, and dying in the last dreamy murmur of waning sanity.

That would be the true end of all things.

(End of chapter)