Chapter 19 The Alice Estate

Duncan stood at the top of the high, spiraling staircase, looking down and surveying the ancient and magnificent mansion.

He reaffirmed his judgment: this mysterious mansion was almost identical in style to the room where the Frost Queen, Ley Nora, had slumbered!

A thought struck him, and he immediately turned to look in the other direction at the top of the spiral staircase. There, a deep corridor stretched out on the second floor, its walls adorned with bizarre oil paintings whose details were indiscernible. Between the paintings were wrought-iron candelabras, as black as thorns, their flames burning with a pallid light.

The corridor was filled with dim light and shadows. In the deepest part of that hazy, shadowy gloom, there seemed to be a door. Was that the mansion owner's room?

Duncan immediately stepped forward and walked quickly towards the depths of the dark corridor. The old wooden floor creaked monotonously beneath his feet, and the pale candelabras on either side of the corridor swayed irregularly, as if disturbed by the breeze he stirred. The already sinister corridor became even more indistinct, its shadows flickering. Duncan stopped at the end of the corridor.

His brow furrowed as he looked at the darkness before him. There was no door. The door that had appeared in the shadows earlier seemed to be only a fleeting illusion. All that was before him was the abruptly ending floor of the corridor. The walls and ceiling were shattered and broken, and beyond that fractured edge lay a terrifying void of darkness.

Duncan cautiously approached the edge of the crumbling floor, peered out, then turned to look around the fractured area. Outside was an endless expanse of nothingness. The corridor beneath his feet floated abruptly and solitarily in the unanchored air. He could see no other parts of the mansion, nor the room and door that should have been at the end of the corridor.

Duncan stepped back, quietly looking at the empty space. Something should have been there—a room, a door. But now, it had vanished.

As if it had been "torn" away from the mansion and disappeared into the void. Suddenly, a rustling sound broke Duncan's reverie. He turned sharply towards the sound, and saw a headless figure in a black coat standing near the wall, carefully wiping a marble decorative table.

After a moment's thought, Duncan walked towards the headless figure. Unlike the fleeting figures he had seen before, this one did not flee. Instead, it slowly straightened up, and as Duncan approached, it even bowed slightly, assuming the proper posture of a well-trained butler. However, the bare structure above its shoulders made this polite and proper gesture even more bizarre and terrifying.

"Guest, whom are you looking for?" A hollow, muffled voice came from the headless figure's chest, sounding polite. An eerie feeling arose in Duncan's heart, but he had dealt with many strange things in this world. He quickly ignored the weirdness and began to speak with the headless figure with a calm expression.

"What happened to the room at the end of the corridor?"

"It left," the headless figure replied. "It left a long, long time ago." Duncan frowned, then asked, "What about the person in the room? There should have been someone alive in the room, right?"

"The mistress of the room left as well, leaving with the room, a long, long time ago," the headless figure answered.

"A long, long time ago?" Duncan couldn't help but feel a sense of incongruity. "Not just now?"

"Yes, the guest leaving just now is also a long, long time ago," the headless figure replied politely. "Here, everything that has already happened happened a long, long time ago. The next thing will happen a long, long time in the future." The headless figure's words were strange and difficult to understand, but Duncan couldn't help but be led by these bizarre and obscure words to many conjectures. Discontinuous time? A fault line? Was this mansion in some kind of time fault? Duncan suddenly thought of the brass key. He had come to this bizarre mansion after turning the key, and that key came from a lucid Endpoints Preacher. A time-discontinuous group, the brass key... A thought struck Duncan, and he immediately looked down at his hand. The cold touch, as if delayed for a long time, suddenly entered his palm. A brass key lay quietly there. And as he saw the brass key, the headless figure opposite him also seemed to suddenly notice something. The figure swayed, and a muffled voice came from its chest. "Ah, so you are a distinguished guest holding the key. Forgive my neglect. Are you here to see the mistress?" "Mistress?"

Duncan was puzzled. "Didn't you just say the mistress had left with the room, and it was a long, long time ago?"

"There are two mistresses," the headless figure said slowly, patiently answering the guest's questions like a butler.

"One is the mistress of the room; she never leaves the room, and now she has left with the room.

The other is the mistress of the mansion; she never enters the mansion." The headless figure's words became increasingly strange. Duncan was confused, but he quickly guessed who the "mistress who never leaves the room" was—the Frost Queen, Ley Nora. And he had a vague idea about the other "mistress." "What's the other mistress's name?" he asked, staring at the headless figure before him.

"This is the Alice Estate," the headless figure replied quickly. "The mistress's name is, of course, Alice." Duncan lowered his eyelids imperceptibly, controlling the subtle changes in his eyes. Everything was as he expected. He had entered this mansion after turning the keyhole on Alice's back.

How could this strange mansion not be related to Alice? The mansion was called the Alice Estate, and Alice was the owner of the mansion. Nora was only the mistress of that room. The latter never stepped out of her room, so rather than a "mistress," it sounded more like a special prisoner. And this was consistent with the information Nora had revealed: she was confined to the Drifting Land in order to control the "Ancient God replica" in the deep sea. Now, with the help of some subspace shadow, this special prisoner had broken out of prison with her cage, and the "warden" of this prison was wandering outside the prison? Duncan couldn't help but imagine Alice's simple, happy face. He couldn't connect that simple-minded doll with the "mistress of the Alice Estate" or the "warden of the Drifting Land." So, he quickly controlled his wild thoughts, straightened his expression, and looked up at the headless figure before him. "Why does the mistress of the mansion never enter the mansion?"

"She is napping in the garden," the headless figure replied.

"She has been resting for a long time, but it is not yet time to return to the mansion." "Napping in the garden?" Duncan's mind raced, but he maintained a calm expression. "Can I meet that mistress?" "Of course," the headless figure said immediately.

Although it had no head, Duncan felt as if a "gaze" was fixed on the brass key.

"You are a guest holding the key. You can open any door in this mansion, including the door to the garden. Please, follow me, I'll take you to the garden." Duncan nodded.

He "hmmed" and followed the headless figure towards the spiral staircase connecting the first and second floors of the mansion.

On the way to the garden, he tried to gather as much information as possible, attempting to strike up a conversation with the figure. "What is your role here?" "I am the butler here, guest," the headless figure said, calling itself the butler. "The roaming servants and maids dare not approach you, so I came."

"There are many servants and maids here?" Duncan thought of the whispers he had heard in the hall and the occasional glimpses of phantoms. "It sounds like it's usually quite lively here?"

"The Drifting Land accepts drifters and all souls who have strayed here. Here, everyone has nowhere to go, so it is at least a good shelter."

"What is your name?" Duncan asked again. "I have no name, guest. You can call me Butler," the headless butler said. "Most of the servants and maids here have no names. Those who have names will gradually lose them. Wanderers will eventually lose their names. This is our fate. And I was the first to come here. I lost my name a long time ago." "Wanderers..." Duncan suddenly stopped, repeating the word subconsciously.

"Guest?" The headless butler also stopped, turning to look at Duncan curiously.

"It's nothing, just a little distracted," Duncan shook his head, quickly reacting. But just as he was about to step forward again, an oil painting on the nearby wall suddenly caught his attention.