Chapter 268 – Beneath the Darkness

Chapter 268 – Beneath the Darkness
The bottom of the “model” is growing.

As Zhou Ming Duncan’s thoughts spread, the structure of the underground world of the city-state of Prand surfaced in his mind little by little, and these parts that appeared in his cognition were now transformed into new parts that corresponded to this “collectible”.

The rough, rocky disk-like thing, with the speed of the naked eye visible growth, and covered the entire underground part of the city-state of Prand, and then began to gradually extend, showing more bizarre details – thousands of years of sedimentary layer, as if the tiny spikes like the increase of living things, as well as in the layers of sedimentary layer between the meandering coiled …… grotesque projections.

It felt like the rough outer skin of some kind of echinoderm, or the ugly outer layer of a rock that had been corroded in a strong acid.

Finally, this growth process stopped.

At the bottom of the “model” representing the city-state of Prand, there is now a disc-like base.

However, Zhou Ming frowned.

He could feel that …… his spreading consciousness in the City State of Prand did not stop, but continued to extend towards the “bottom”!
In the darkness, in the coldness, in the transcendent perception that exceeded the ordinary five senses and six senses, he felt that his spirit was just like mercury sinking into the soil as it continued to penetrate and flow downwards, and he clearly felt that his “gaze” had crossed over the thick concrete, soil and rocks, and had crossed over some kind of extremely dense, but non-golden, non-stone “shell” that was not gold or stone. He felt his “gaze” pass over thick concrete, soil and rock, over some kind of extremely dense but non-golden and non-stone “shell”, sinking all the way into the cold sea water, and then continuing downward, continuing downward!
In the blink of an eye, he felt that he had sunk into a dark sea, crossed the 850-meter-thick base, and extended rapidly along some invisible but existing “pathway”!
And how much further after that? A hundred meters? Two hundred meters?

Zhou Ming couldn’t be sure, all he knew was that his senses were still spreading downwards, clearly out of the range of the City State of Prand, clearly no new structures had appeared on the “collection” in his hands, but his mind was still flowing along some kind of invisible “medium”! He was still flowing along some invisible “medium” of his mind!

His first reaction, of course, was to tense up and subconsciously try to control the tendency of his mind to “fall” towards the depths of the sea, but before he had time to react, this continuous “fall” suddenly stopped.

As if he had suddenly hit some invisible “limit” or reached the end of the “medium”, his senses finally stopped at a certain depth in the deep water below the city-state and stabilized at that position.

Zhou Ming felt his heart pounding, it was a kind of sudden fall, but in the middle of the fall, he was violently pulled by a rope, and it took him nearly half a minute to calm down, and control his breathing and heartbeat.

He then took a moment to compose himself before slowly holding up the model of the Prendergast in front of him and observing the thick layer of “rock plate” spreading out from underneath the base of the Prendergast.

Rough and ugly structure, but in general quite regular, its bottom is a jagged fracture surface, giving people the feeling …… as if from some place on the hard broken down the same, or in the process of “generated” from the top down was disturbed, resulting in leaving an ugly fracture. An ugly fracture.

And the internal structure of this disk, completely chaotic piece, difficult to perceive, difficult to peep.

However, Zhou Ming’s attention was not focused on the base of the disk, but rather on the mid-air below the base.

A portion of his extended “consciousness” was now hovering at that location.

Zhou Ming slightly closed his eyes.

In the next second, the perception from afar was instantly strengthened.

He felt that he was in a dark and cold ocean, with unmeasurable amounts of seawater wrapping itself around him and weighing him down, and the oppression was so real that it was as if even his consciousness was being suppressed and bound in some way, and when he tried to open his eyes in this darkness, he could only see endless nothingness.

Gradually, however, the nothingness seemed to appear in some small light.

Was it some kind of plankton in the deep sea? Some kind of luminous fish? Or something else?
Zhou Ming tried to identify it for half a day before realizing …… that it was the bottom of the Planders.

He was “looking up” at Prandtl and saw the bottom of the rough disc base, which had some tiny glowing structures in the extreme darkness.

But it is impossible to see what it is …… pure consciousness perception, and across such a long distance and thick sea water, can convey the information is too vague.

Zhou Ming then slowly adapted again, trying to cast his attention in another direction: deeper under the sea.

He only felt an endless emptiness, an endless darkness.

There …… seemed to be nothing in the deep sea.

But after another moment, he suddenly vaguely sensed something.

Something extremely large and deadly, perhaps even as huge as Prender, was sleeping in that infinite darkness.

Zhou Ming couldn’t see it, couldn’t hear it, the extreme darkness and silence hid all the details of that massive existence, yet he could be certain that something existed there, dead silent and dormant, as if it had been there for ages.

After an unknown amount of time, Zhou Ming returned without success.

In the end, he couldn’t “see” what was in the deep sea directly below Prand.

However, he vaguely realized something…

The huge structure hidden underneath the city-state was probably the reason why Frost Queen Rei Nora had pushed forward with the Subterranean Abyss plan half a century ago!

There is one below Frost, there is one below Prand, and I am afraid that there is one below …… other city states as well!
Zhou Ming gently breathed a sigh of relief, stood up, held up the model of Prand’s city-state, and slowly came to the shelves at the end of the room.

The model now had an additional “base”, but it could still fit into the storage compartment on the shelf – as if the model and the compartment had been reserved with plenty of space from the very beginning.

However, before placing the model in, Zhou Ming’s eyes once again fell underneath the base, and a trace of doubt couldn’t help but surface in his heart.

His consciousness could spread through the City State, yet in the deep sea, his own consciousness had clearly exceeded the physical boundaries of this City State model …… Its base structure came to an abrupt end after 850 meters, but after that his consciousness extended downwards for another hundred or two hundred meters… …How did the next hundred or two hundred meters extend down? What exactly was that invisible medium?
Zhou Ming slowly placed the model back into the shelf. ……

The sun once again rose into the sky as usual.

In the lower part of Prand, in the small open space in front of the antique store, Duncan watched as Nina rode her bike merrily in a circle, rode back and forth through the streets, and finally came to a steady stop in front of him.

“Uncle! I’ve gotten pretty good at it!”

Nina had one foot propped up on the ground with a look of excitement and pride on her face.

A small smile appeared on Duncan’s face, “Not bad, riding quite skillfully indeed – but you’re parking your car on the top of my foot.”

Nina hurriedly looked down and instantly panicked as she moved her wheel out of the way, “Ah! Sorry!”

“That’s okay.” Duncan smiled and waved his hand, then breathed a sigh of relief and looked up at the sunlit street.

All was as it had been in the city-state.

The deep darkness and massive shadows beneath the sunlit streets all seemed like something from another world, not affecting people’s daily lives in the slightest.

But ever since he had completed his exploration of “below” Prand, he could not help but think of the cold, dark depths of the sea, and the vast structures he perceived there.

It made him lose his mind at times.

He couldn’t even help but wonder if that Frost Queen from half a century ago had been like this as well. Had she also somehow peeped into the secrets of the deep sea …… even, more than she had peeped into herself?
“Uncle you’re lost in thought again?”

Nina’s voice suddenly came from the side, interrupting Duncan’s rambling thoughts.

“Are you alright? Always wandering off since morning.”

“I’m fine,” Duncan waved his hand hurriedly, then glanced up at the end of the street as if to change the subject, “But then again, Alice isn’t back yet.”

“She hasn’t been gone long,” Nina said casually, “And you don’t have to worry so much, do you, it’s just a trip to buy a newspaper, it’s not like you have to travel halfway across town, you shouldn’t be able to lose it, right?”

“I’m not really sure about that,” Duncan sighed, “It’s the first time she’s really gone out on her own – even though it’s only to the newsagent down the street.”

“I think it’s fine,” Nina said thoughtfully and surely, “I even practiced with her many times before we left, including how to explain to people what she’s buying, how to make change, and to say thank you when she gets it …… She’s all learned it.”

“Gee, I hope so,” Duncan sighed, “mostly because she was going to get a beating with a pan when she went to the galley to get a plate at the beginning of the ship.”

Nina froze, “I don’t think those two things can be generalized ……”

As she spoke, Alice’s figure appeared in the view of her uncle and nephew.

With a newspaper in her arms and a bright smile on her face, Miss Mannequin was running all the way towards this side with her neck sticking out, shouting as she ran, “Mr. Duncan! The newspaper is back!”

Nina laughed, “See, I told you Miss Alice must be okay!”

Duncan, however, was instantly alarmed after seeing Alice’s running movement, and rushed up to meet her while warning in a loud voice, “Don’t you run! You slow down!”

Saying what he was afraid of, just as he spoke, he watched Alice fall head over heels in front of his eyes less than five meters away, falling to the ground.

However, in the next second, this mannequin climbed up in a single bound like nothing, patted her skirt, picked up the newspaper that fell on the ground again, and came to Duncan with a smile, “Newspaper!”

Duncan, however, did not pick up the newspaper at the first time, but was full of incredulity looking at the doll lady whose head was still there, and only after a long time did he hold back a sentence, “…… fell like this, how did your head not fall off?”

Alice continued to maintain that confident posture with a straight neck, her face was a bright smile, “I found a good way to reinforce it!”

Duncan looked at the doll skeptically, “A good way?”

Alice: “I put glue on it!”

Duncan: “……?!”

Dumbfounded for two or three seconds, he couldn’t resist asking, “Who taught you that?”

“Shirley!”

(Moved tomorrow’s update to today because of the Day of Silence.)
(End of this chapter)