Chapter 887 - 886: Beyond the Border

Chapter 887: Chapter 886: Beyond the Border

At the distant world boundary, the frontier of the describable universe’s order, an independent space known as the "Quiet Sea Space" floats silently in the void as always, with the order field supported by the Void Engine half-integrating with the world’s barrier, and under the artificial dome of the Quiet Sea, the sun shines brightly and a gentle breeze blows through the port.

The silver-white star-shaped engine body floats in the center of the Quiet Sea like a giant island, and at this moment, a gentle and low hum echoes on the "island"—the Void Engine is conducting routine self-checks.

In a sense, the entire "Quiet Sea Space" can actually be considered the engine room of the World Ark—the scale of the engine is so large that there is a "miniature world" with complete internal organs and rules inside the engine room.

In one of the control rooms of the main drive sequence, the tall and burly figure of the Captain stands by the monitoring console, with a large crystal shaped like a mirror embedded in the sunken pit at the center of the round room, and a large holographic projection floating above the crystal, displaying the current status of the Void Engine.

Lucrecia’s figure stands not far away, reporting to her father a series of recent events in the Old World—

The "Gate of Reincarnation," whimsically devised by the God of Death (former), the pollution crisis of the Dark Moon Royal Court and its peaceful resolution, the Tree Angel rooted but now harmless in the Old World, the resurrected Dark Moon People, and... the current state of the Old World.

"The situation is basically like this, Plande has turned into a Sky Island many times larger than the original city-state... it could even be considered as a small Floating Continent now," Lucrecia said while holding up a crystal ball, which projected the current appearance of Plande Sky Island, "The Tree Angel ’parasites’ at the center of the Sky Island, but considering it has now completed ’transformation’, using the term parasite is no longer appropriate... it is now part of this floating land, even supporting part of the local natural cycle."

The low and pleasant hum in the air gradually faded away, the Void Engine’s self-check process had ended, and the Captain turned away from the monitoring console, his gaze falling on Lucrecia’s crystal ball.

He touched his chin, then said seriously after a moment: "...this was part of the original design..."

Miss Witch nodded repeatedly: "Uh-huh."

"No, I mean it," the Captain seemed a bit embarrassed, "it was truly part of the design... at least one of the possibilities."

Lucrecia continued: "Uh-huh."

After nodding, she thought for a moment and added, "Uncle Yu did say that, he said it must be a part of your design."

Actually, Yu Sheng’s original words were not like that, but Lucrecia carefully considered and decided to phrase them more politely.

Taking care of her elderly father’s feelings was secondary, primarily to avoid getting into trouble.

Then she heard the Captain sigh: "Old Ba is still a straight-talker..."

Lucrecia held back her laughter for a long time and kept a straight face, nodding: "Uh-huh."

Fortunately, the Captain didn’t continue with the topic but instead raised his hand towards Lucrecia’s crystal ball, and the projection on the surface of the crystal ball flickered, then a "Plande Sky Island" miniature landscape was extracted from the stored information inside the crystal ball as if out of thin air.

All the data collected by Lucrecia on Plande Sky Island turned into an information projection, slowly rotating in front of the Captain.

"...Hmm, it has indeed stabilized now, and there is data interaction with various other information clusters, indicating other Sky Islands definitely exist. You just said Old Ba... Lao Yu rescued all those ’Dark Moon People’ and placed them on the Sky Island?"

"Yes," Lucrecia nodded, "Moreover, those ’Moon People’ plan to build their city near the Angel Giant Tree next. I’ve discussed with Uncle Yu, and we plan to entrust them with the future protection and maintenance of the Angel Giant Tree and Calibrator."

The Captain showed a look of interest: "Oh?"

"Because Tree Angel itself is entangled in information with the World Bridge, and those newly born ’Moon People’ are effectively Tree Angel’s ’offspring’ now," Lucrecia laughed, "although they themselves have no idea about this, factually speaking, from the moment of their rebirth, they have become the guardian race of the Calibrator and Angel Giant Tree."

"...That’s truly an unexpected bonus," the Captain said thoughtfully, then asked, "How about Erin? How is her calibration data at the Mind level now?"

"After I return, I will assist Uncle Yu in executing the Calibrator’s deployment process; once synchronization between the Tree Angel and the Calibrator is established, I will begin extracting data from Erin’s Mind. This should maximize the chances of success and stability during the process."

The Captain nodded: "Very well, proceed according to your plan."

"Uh-huh."

At this moment, the door of the control room suddenly slid open quietly, interrupting the conversation between father and daughter. Lucrecia turned her head and saw a black-haired figure peeking in as if sneaking, while beside him, a Demon Hunting Dog composed entirely of pitch-black skeletons and smoke was crawling on the ground.

"Shirley, Gou," Lucrecia frowned, "What are you two doing? Sneaking around like thieves."

"Are you done discussing business?" Only then did Shirley boldly stride in, looking around while speaking, "I’m never usually allowed here by the Captain... got a bit nervous at the door."

"Of course, any equipment you’ve touched ends up error-ridden; last time you watched the console for ten minutes and I returned to find eight red frames on the projection," the Captain sighed, "I still don’t know how you managed that."

"I didn’t do anything!" Shirley was quite aggrieved, "Gou can testify, I just snoozed for a minute..."

Lucrecia: "...Don’t you think sleeping like that is itself quite problematic?"

Shirley said righteously: "But Gou was awake!"

The Captain and Lucrecia simultaneously looked at the Demon Hunting Dog lying on the ground, whose large skeletal head shook, letting out a very human-like sigh: "Ah, it’s alright, I’m used to it..."

"...Let’s not talk about it," the Captain shook his head helplessly, "Weren’t you supposed to be patrolling near the Barrier border? Why did you come back suddenly—have you found something again?"

"Yeah," Shirley immediately nodded and said, "When we were patrolling the shallow sea area, Gou found something. It looks like it drifted in from ’outside’ again... Take a look."

As the girl spoke, she rummaged through the pocket of her dress, then pulled out a palm-sized object and handed it to the Captain.

It was flat, surrounded by a ring of faint light at the edges, yet overall it had a gaseous, semi-transparent, hazy texture... a "planet."

It looked like a planet with a scale error, even more so after being squashed by inexplicable forces.

The Captain gently received the flattened phantom of the planet, hardly feeling any weight. On the phantom, one could faintly see the shapes of mountains, rivers, land, and oceans, as well as shadows resembling clouds floating around this distorted planet.

"Captain..." Shirley asked cautiously, "Can it be saved? Is there any way to save it?"

The Captain shook his head lightly.

"It’s almost evaporated completely, take it to the Archives, and don’t forget to make a record."

Shirley pouted slightly and whispered under her breath: "Damn it..."

The Captain heard her swearing but did not reprimand her as usual; instead, he just reached out and tousled the girl’s hair.

Shirley took back the lightweight, flattened planet and left the room with Gou. Then they walked through the corridor of the control zone, through the third sector of the main drive sequence, through the lush artificial forest area of the inner island, and arrived at a special facility located at the base of the center Sun Tower.

Through layers of gates, they set foot on a long bridge, and Shirley entered a seemingly boundless giant Archives—an independent space specifically opened up and illuminated by sourceless light, countless giant display cabinets floated in all directions, and a silver-white long bridge stretched all the way out; at the end of the bridge, a large display cabinet already floated awaiting in mid-air.

Shirley led Gou to the end of the bridge, and on both sides of the bridge, in front of them, the display cabinets were filled with all sorts of items.

Deformed and oddly shaped small planets, architectural structures twisted into balls or torn into pieces, clouds with human contours, light clusters entirely unrecognizable, constantly trembling sounds, stones shining with changing colors, rivers looped from end to end...

All are twisted and grotesque remnants, all are bizarre echoes that have surpassed the bounds of rationality.

After the world was destroyed, the surviving information structures float in the void, continually evaporating, drifting aimlessly.

These remnants fall into the Universe of Order; larger pieces turn into wandering arks like the Boundary Land, while smaller ones form phenomena like Dark Angel.

As for the rest, they will continue to evaporate away, orderly information structures will gradually dissolve into the void, into meaningless "nothing," becoming smaller and fewer, until they scatter apart, unable to maintain a rational structure.

These fragments occasionally fall onto the Barrier of the world, onto the faint starlight river at the edge of the Quiet Sea.

Shirley carefully held the flattened little planet and placed it in an empty display cabinet.

Then she conjured a pen out of thin air and left her not-so-neat handwriting on the label of the display cabinet:

"Flattened planet, don’t know its name, x year x month x day, picked up by Gou and Shirley. Sleep tight."

A large part of the items here were picked up by Gou and her, because they often patrolled the faint starlight river at the edge of the Quiet Sea, while the rest were mostly recovered by Tirian or Lucrecia.

Shirley clapped her hands and watched as the display cabinet slowly floated into the distance.

"Today I’m determined to drink wheat juice!"

She said with determination.

Gou shook his head: "The Captain said..."

"The Captain doesn’t know."

Gou: "The Captain knows everything; he knows everything."

"Well, since the Captain knows and doesn’t stop me, it proves he actually permits me to drink..."

Gou: "..."

Gou fell silent, but Shirley, while walking back, suddenly reminisced and said with some sentiment, "Ah, it’s a pity I never got to teach Erin to drink..."

Gou couldn’t help but say, "If you could teach a solid puppet to drink below the throat, then you’d really be impressive."

"Right, right, you think I’m impressive too, don’t you?"

"I’m saying you’d be hung on the highest mast of the Lost Home by the Captain! And then I’d be hanging with you."

"Tsk..."