Chapter 41 The Source

The morning light was faint. The Anomaly 001, locked by dual rune rings, was slowly rising from the distant horizon. In the gradually spreading rosy light, the massive ghostly sailing ship was floating on the boundless, calm sea, gradually being plated with a layer of brilliance in the morning.

At the end of the distant sea, deep in the faint morning mist, one could vaguely see the silhouette of Frost City—the city's wounds and the joys and sorrows of countless people were transformed into a hazy image in the mist at this distance, as if dissolving in the sunlight.

Duncan sat quietly on the edge of the deck at the bow of the ship, propping up his fishing rod beside him, watching the fishing line reflect the sunlight in the rosy dawn. Occasionally, he would raise his head to look at the distant Frost City.

At this time, most parts of the city were still quiet. He didn't need to spare too much thought to pay attention to the incarnations in the city and could enjoy the tranquility on the ship.

The pigeon Aï was walking back and forth on the large wooden barrel beside him. A pile of French fries was placed on the barrel lid, brought from Frost City—unlike those in Pland, the people of Frost added some special spices when frying the potatoes, giving them a salty aroma. Aï was obviously very satisfied with this. It occasionally glanced at its fishing master or at the distant sea, spending the rest of its time devouring its food.

On Duncan's other side, on another shorter wooden barrel, Shirley was lying there, writing furiously, her expression as distressed as if facing a life-or-death enemy.

Agou was quietly lying beside Shirley, holding a copy of "Modern Geometry" in its paws, while the deck next to it was piled with draft paper covered with marks and diagrams.

Feeling this moment of tranquility, Duncan couldn't help but curl the corners of his mouth. The gloom that had accumulated in his heart for many days gradually dissipated.

But obviously, not everyone on the scene was enjoying this "tranquility."

"Why can Nina sleep in the cabin... but I have to get up early in the morning to rush my homework here..." Shirley couldn't help but mutter, her expression so bitter that water could be squeezed out of it. "If I had known that I could only do homework when I got back to the ship, I might as well have stayed in the city, at least I could occasionally go out shopping..."

"There's nothing to shop for in Frost right now, and for the foreseeable future, life in that city won't be comfortable," Duncan said lightly when he heard this. "Also, stop complaining about your homework. Who told you your homework was eaten by a stray dog? You said it yourself."

Shirley raised her head aggrievedly: "Then why doesn't Nina have to make it up?"

"Everyone knows that she must have already finished it. Morris can give her a comprehensive test to check her self-study situation during this time," Duncan glanced at Shirley. "Nina is different from you. She doesn't need to be urged."

Shirley shrank her neck: "Then... is there a possibility that I have actually written..."

Duncan said expressionlessly: "How do you spell the plural form of 'pebble'?"

"I haven't learned that yet..."

"This is the content of the second page of your previous homework. You haven't even finished two pages."

Shirley's expression froze, and she immediately fell silent. Then, the girl let out a long sigh and lowered her head to fight desperately with her spelling homework.

Duncan shook his head with a smile, then his gaze couldn't help but fall on the dog beside him—the latter was temporarily putting the book aside at this time, using its paws to hold a pencil and draw auxiliary lines on the draft paper on the deck.

Duncan's gaze made Agou's soul tremble suddenly. The dog's head shook subconsciously, and the auxiliary line was crooked.

"C... Captain?" Agou raised its head nervously, wanting to avoid Duncan's gaze but not daring to actually turn its head away, its dog head shaking non-stop.

Duncan reached out and touched Agou's ugly skeleton head, his expression a little subtle. After a few seconds, he couldn't help but open his mouth and say, "Is your learning progress a little too fast? I feel like you'll be able to keep up with Morris's teaching progress in a while?"

"Ah? I don't feel it," Agou was stunned when he heard this, the red light in its empty eye sockets flickering, as if it was a little dazed. "I just feel that these things are quite interesting... Is there a problem with learning progress being fast?"

Duncan thought for a while and shook his head with a smile: "Never mind, there's no problem. It's always good to learn more things. If you and Shirley average it out, at least you won't be illiterate."

Agou vaguely said "oh." Duncan breathed a sigh of relief and looked back at the fishing rod that was still motionless.

He hadn't caught a fish all morning.

"After such a big battle, I'm afraid I won't be able to catch fish in the surrounding waters for a short time," he sighed regretfully, slowly packing up his fishing gear. "The movement was too great, even the Deep Sea Spawn don't want to get close to this place..."

When Shirley heard this, she couldn't help but raise her head again: "Then are we going to leave here? When are you going to pick up Mr. Morris and Sister Vanna from the city?"

Duncan stopped packing up his fishing rod and turned his head to look at Shirley: "Did I say that the matter of Frost is completely over?"

"Ah?" Shirley was a little dazed. "Wasn't it all settled? And you recommended Mr. Tirian to the City Hall. I thought you were going to hand over the rest of the matter to him to finish."

"Indeed, I plan to hand over the troubles in this city to him to deal with—but there are things that the Sea Fog Fleet can't solve," Duncan continued packing up, casually saying, "Those things, I have to deal with myself. Before they are resolved, the *Sea Wanderer* had better not leave here."

Shirley still didn't react: "Things that the Sea Fog Fleet can't solve? What is it..."

Duncan lowered his eyelids and glanced at her lightly: "Where did the Mirror Frost come from?"

Shirley thought for a while and said uncertainly: "Was it... summoned from the deep sea by those cultists?"

"That's about right, summoned from the deep sea—Mirror Frost is a 'product,' a transformed thing, and everything we destroyed in this process, including the sacrificial site deep in Mirror Frost, is essentially just a 'summoned object.' Since there are summoned objects, there is a source of summoning."

Shirley finally reacted, and a look of astonishment gradually appeared in her eyes.

"Are you saying... the things at the bottom of the sea are still there?!"

"If my judgment is correct, everything near the sea surface, whether it is those counterfeits or the mirror city itself, is essentially just the spread and projection of power, like a huge plant constantly growing from bottom to top. In the fierce battle that just ended in Frost, we only destroyed the overgrown canopy of that out-of-control plant, but its roots are still there," Duncan said calmly. "Don't forget that the Frost Queen threw several submersibles into the sea back then to barely touch the main body of that thing—that power has a 'physical form' in the deep sea."

Shirley finally couldn't sit still. She almost jumped up: "Ah? Then wouldn't we have to dive into the deep sea to fight that thing? Otherwise, will it soon create another mirror image?!"

"Soon? Not necessarily," Duncan shook his head with a smile. "Things are not as serious as you think. Even if the main body is still there, it must have been severely damaged now. I have almost completely burned the spreading parts of it. The rest... after losing the ritual support of those cultists, it is mostly in a state of dormancy or hibernation. Even if we really leave it alone, it may take another half a century before it causes problems again."

Speaking of this, he suddenly stopped and reached out to the air beside him.

"You're right, Agatha?"

A cluster of ghostly green flames burned on Duncan's fingertips and quickly jumped and spread in the air, forming a vortex-like curtain. In the blazing curtain, the blind goddess official in a black dress and wearing an eye patch was standing there in a prayer-like posture, her hands clasped in front of her chest.

Shirley and Agou stared blankly at this scene.

"Yes, this is exactly what we are worried about," Agatha raised her head, her slightly magnetic voice sounding ethereal. "Everyone who knows the truth about the *Submersion Project* will worry about this—we only destroyed the 'product' that appeared on the sea, but we have no power to destroy the 'main body' that may still be dormant in the deep sea."

"We can't let it go for another fifty years, and then repeat the Frost defense war when the next crisis comes," Duncan said. "I don't mind helping out every time, but there will always be unnecessary victims in the war."

"...The current Frost probably doesn't have the resources to manufacture such submersibles," Agatha said after a moment of silence. "It's not just a problem with the submersibles themselves, but also the other equipment, data, personnel, and resources needed for the submersion... All of these are things that a Frost recovering from ruin cannot produce."

"Then prepare as soon as possible and let your City Hall think of a way," Duncan said lightly. "If that doesn't work, prepare an iron coffin that can be detonated in the deep sea, put a corpse in it, and I can use this medium to go to the seabed to see the situation—although the power that a temporary incarnation can carry is limited, as long as a stable channel is established, I should be able to spread the flames to the seabed."

(Time to recommend a book~ "Luminous Bulwark," by the author Will-Fall Panda. Here is the author's own book recommendation:

Extraordinary Awakening, the building is about to collapse.

Flesh and blood are weak, how can we ascend?

The story begins with taking over a ruler that carries the truth.)

(End of this chapter)