"Captain, are you sure this is okay?" Alice looked at the "little flame" in Duncan's hand nervously, and kept grabbing the lace decoration on the edge of her clothes with both hands, "Don't burn down my house..."
Duncan held a ball of spiritual fire in his hand, looking for a place to start next to Alice's "coffin" while looking back at the puppet helplessly: "My spiritual fire is completely under control - don't you believe in my power?"
Alice waved her hands when she heard this: "I believe it, I believe it..."
Duncan then withdrew his gaze and calmed himself down.
With the current conditions on the Lost Homeland, it is unlikely to conduct a complete test on Alice's "coffin", but this does not mean that he cannot do some "preliminary research" first. Now that he has become more and more proficient in controlling the spiritual fire, he has already vaguely grasped some ways to use this fire to explore the internal secrets of extraordinary things.
He still didn't dare to use this fire on Alice easily, but if it was used to study her wooden box...that was another matter.
After some preparations, Duncan finally slowly stretched out his hand and extended the cluster of flames on his fingertips to the surface of the gorgeous wooden box.
The flames sank silently into the box like an illusory reflection. Alice widened her eyes and carefully observed the movement in front of her. After a brief silence of two or three seconds, she saw a phantom-like flame suddenly spread across her field of vision.
The spiritual fire began to burn on the wooden box, burning from the inside out! The entire box suddenly became translucent, and in this seemingly real and illusory scene, the blazing flames began to quickly fill every detail in the box, as if reconstructing its "skeleton" structure!
"Hey, Captain, it's burning, it's burning!"
The puppet screamed in surprise, but her scream received no response - Duncan's attention was now focused on the control of the flames and the perception of the "coffin". He stared solemnly at the dancing flames and the illusory wooden box in front of him, and Alice's voice came to his ears as ethereal as if it came from another world.
Duncan's mind gradually calmed down. He felt that the surroundings were becoming increasingly quiet. Even the endless wind and waves on the boundless sea seemed to be gradually moving away from his perception. He felt that his power had infiltrated an extremely vast "place", and more and more "perceptions" were being transmitted into his consciousness through the channel established by the flames.
This was completely different from the feeling he had when he used fire to transform the Sun Amulet before!
If he had to make an analogy, using fire to transform the Sun Amulet felt as easy as filling a cup of water, but at this moment he felt that his fire was surging and pouring into a large lake. The sizes of the two were completely not on the same level.
Is this the difference between artificial mass-produced extraordinary items and the 099th-ranked anomaly?
Duncan suddenly had an epiphany, and in that flash of realization, he suddenly felt that the connection with the flames had finally reached a certain peak—the transfer of power suddenly became as smooth as a river, and then, a surging "memories" flooded into his mind!
The sound of waves... The waves are hitting the unfamiliar coastline, the cold wind is blowing over the high walls, the towering walls stand in the distance, vaguely as if frozen, and there are people... swaying, dim, with only outlines of people...
Duncan's vision was floating somewhere, as if it was two or three meters in the air above the ground. He looked around in astonishment, but only saw the strange city-state and the high platform on the coastline. He saw countless black shadows gathered around the platform, which seemed to be a shadowy crowd, but he couldn't see any of them clearly.
A buzzing and rumbling sound came from all directions, which seemed to be the sound of people whispering, but it was unusually loud and noisy. Duncan tried hard to distinguish it, and finally found that it was not the sound of people talking at all, but countless "voices of the heart" - the complicated and confused thoughts in the mind, the soliloquy in the tense and depressing atmosphere, the prayers to God and the pleas in fear.
Those "dark shadows" did not speak, but their voices swept across the coastal platform like a storm.
Duncan's heart moved and he suddenly turned around.
In the pale and dim light of the distant sky, he saw a towering object.
A guillotine - its sharp blade glowed coldly in the dimness.
Through the little historical knowledge in his mind and thinking about the origins behind Anomaly 099, Duncan has realized where he is.
He looked towards the bottom of the guillotine, and it seemed that as his cognition gradually solidified, the vague figure under the guillotine quickly became clearer.
He saw the queen, the Frost Queen who had been executed by the rebels half a century ago - her silver hair was like a waterfall, and her lavender eyes were still bright in the dim light. She was wearing a slightly thin dress in the cold wind, but she gritted her teeth to prevent her body from trembling at all.
She really had the same face as Alice.
Duncan felt something strange in his heart. He looked at the lady who looked exactly like Alice. Although he knew that this was the "authentic" one in history, he couldn't help but imagine the lively puppet on the ship in his mind. The next second, a voice suddenly came from nowhere and interrupted his thoughts -
"Your time is up, Frost 'Queen'."
The voice was cold and distant, yet it seemed to have penetrated the curtain of history as it rang beside the guillotine.
The next second, Duncan saw two phantoms suddenly appear next to the guillotine. The two phantoms came to the side of the Frost Queen, as if they wanted to press the queen's arms to make her kneel down under the guillotine. However, the queen's body remained motionless, and the two tall phantoms were as weak as children.
Duncan heard the noisy sounds around him suddenly become more violent than before. The countless black shadows suddenly swayed, and there were even some clear shouts in the middle. The cold and distant voice from before sounded again, and this time it seemed to have more anger: "Quiet! Maintain order in the execution ground!"
More phantoms appeared around the guillotine. The Frost Queen was finally suppressed under the cold torture device. She knelt in the cold dust, but still raised her head and calmly looked at the high walls of the city-state in the distance. Above her neck, the sharp and heavy blade began to rise gradually with the creaking sound of the capstan...
Duncan frowned. Although he knew it was just an illusion recorded in history, he subconsciously took a step forward when he saw Alice's face, wanting to reach out his hand...
But just as he made a "move", the Frost Queen under the guillotine suddenly turned her head slightly - she looked at where Duncan was, at the place where there should be nothing in her time and space. She opened her mouth and spoke clearly and softly:
“Whoever you are, please don’t pollute history.”
Duncan stopped in astonishment, and then he was even more astonished to hear someone next to the guillotine screaming: "Who are you talking to?!"
The Frost Queen had already retracted her gaze. She seemed to have suddenly figured something out, and a relieved smile appeared on her originally cold face. She turned her head and seemed to say to the executioner beside her: "Do it before the sun sets."
The guillotine fell suddenly.
Boundless darkness suddenly surged in from all directions, and the illusion in history began to tear into pieces of light and shadow. Duncan felt that his connection with "here" was rapidly weakening. He knew that this "echo" had come to an end. In the illusion that was constantly breaking apart, he could still hear some noisy and broken sounds. Those sounds came and went, and he could only vaguely hear a few fragments of them -
"...The Frost Queen is dead. We have cut off the channel for the Lost Homeland to return to the real world..."
"...Leinora attempted to build a second Lost Homeland... She colluded with the shadows of the warp, the evidence is irrefutable, and she deserves death..."
"...The new Archon will soon restore order, and all data related to the 'Abyss' exploration plan will be destroyed... Active informants will have a chance to be forgiven..."
"Pursue the rebel ship Umigiri and the defecting navy with all your strength...don't care if they live or die...wait, what's that sound...get away quickly, this place is going to collapse!"
Screams, shouts, the roar of giant objects breaking and collapsing, the roaring and surging waves...
Duncan suddenly broke away from the endless darkness, as if returning to the surface of the sea from a deep dive. At the end of the darkness, he heard a series of loud bangs, which sounded as if the entire cliff collapsed from the coastline and fell into the sea.
He witnessed a piece of history with his own eyes, and then heard it fall into nothingness in darkness.
He saw a phantom in history, and the phantom asked him not to pollute history.
He slowly opened his eyes and saw the familiar cabin and heard the familiar sound of waves. He also saw the familiar doll sitting at the head of the bed, pulling its head out and stuffing it back in, having a lot of fun.
Duncan: “……?”