The bottom of the "model" is growing.

As Zhou Ming-Duncan's thoughts spread, the structure representing the underground world of the Pland city-state was gradually emerging in his mind, and these parts that appeared in his cognition have now become new parts corresponding to this "collection".

It was a rough, rocky disc-like thing that grew at a speed visible to the naked eye and covered the entire underground part of the Pland city-state. Then it began to gradually extend, revealing more bizarre details - thousands of years of sedimentary layers, growths that looked like tiny spikes, and... weird protrusions that meandered between the sedimentary layers.

It feels like the rough skin of some echinoderm, or the ugly outer layer left behind by a rock corroded in strong acid.

Finally, the growth process stopped.

The bottom of the "model" representing the Pland city-state now has a disc-shaped base.

However, Zhou Ming frowned.

He could feel... that his consciousness spreading in the Pland city-state did not stop, but continued to extend "downwards"!

In the darkness, in the cold, in the transcendent perception beyond the ordinary five senses and six consciousnesses, he felt that his spirit continued to penetrate and flow downward like mercury sinking into the soil. He clearly felt that his "gaze" passed through the thick cement, soil and rocks, passed through some extremely dense but neither gold nor stone "shell", and sank into the cold sea water, and then continued to go down, and continued to go down!

In just a blink of an eye, he felt that he had sunk into a dark deep sea, passed the 850-meter-thick base, and quickly extended along some invisible but existing "passage"!

And how much further does it extend after that? A hundred meters? Two hundred meters?

Zhou Ming couldn't be sure. He only knew that his perception was still spreading downwards. He had clearly left the scope of the Pland city-state, and there were clearly no new structures appearing on the "collection" in his hand, but his thoughts were still flowing along some invisible "medium"!

His first reaction was of course nervousness, and he subconsciously tried to control the trend of his mind "falling" towards the deep sea, but before he could react, this continuous "falling" suddenly stopped.

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

Zhou Ming felt his heart pounding. It was a sudden ups and downs as if he had fallen, but was suddenly grabbed by the rope halfway through the fall. It took him nearly half a minute to calm down and control his breathing and heartbeat.

Then he calmed himself down and slowly picked up the Plande model in front of him, observing the thick "rock bed" spreading out from under its base.

The structure is rough and ugly, but quite regular overall. The bottom is a jagged fracture surface, which gives people the feeling... as if it was broken off from somewhere, or it was disturbed in the process of "generation" from top to bottom, resulting in an ugly fracture.

The internal structure of this disk is completely chaotic, difficult to perceive and difficult to spy on.

But Zhou Ming's attention was not on the base of the disc, but on the air below the base.

A part of his extended "consciousness" was now hovering at that position.

Zhou Ming closed his eyes slightly.

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

He felt like he was in the dark and cold deep sea, with countless sea water wrapping and pressing him down. The feeling of oppression was so real that it seemed as if even his consciousness was suppressed and restrained. He tried to open his "eyes" in the darkness, but could only see endless nothingness.

But gradually, some tiny glimmers seemed to appear in the nothingness.

Is that some kind of deep-sea plankton? Some kind of bioluminescent fish? Or something else?

Zhou Ming tried hard to identify it for a long time before realizing... that was the bottom of Plande.

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

But I couldn't see clearly what it was... The information that could be conveyed by simple consciousness perception, coupled with such a long distance and thick sea water, was too vague.

Then Zhou Ming slowly adapted and tried to turn his attention in another direction: deeper under the sea.

He only felt endless emptiness and endless darkness.

In the deep sea...there seems to be nothing.

But after a while, he suddenly felt something vaguely.

Something extremely large and lifeless, perhaps even as big as Pland, was sleeping in the endless darkness.

Zhou Ming could not see it or hear it. The extreme darkness and silence hid all the details of that huge existence. However, he was sure that something existed there, dead and dormant, as if it had existed since time immemorial.

After an unknown amount of time, Zhou Ming returned empty-handed.

In the end, he was unable to "see" what was in the deep sea directly below Pland.

But he was vaguely aware of one thing——

That huge structure hidden right beneath the city-state was probably the reason why the Frost Queen Lenoir insisted on pushing forward the Abyss Project half a century ago!

There are some under Frost, there are some under Pland, there are some under other city-states... I'm afraid there are some too!

Zhou Ming breathed a sigh of relief, stood up, picked up Pland's city-state model, and slowly walked to the shelf at the end of the room.

The model now has an additional "base", but it can still be placed in the storage compartment on the shelf - as if enough space had been reserved between the model and the compartment from the beginning.

But before putting the model in, Zhou Ming's eyes fell on the bottom of the base again, and a hint of doubt emerged in his heart.

His consciousness could spread throughout the city-state, but in the deep sea, his consciousness clearly exceeded the physical boundaries of this city-state model... Its bottom structure came to an abrupt end after 850 meters, but after that his consciousness extended down another 100 or 200 meters... How did it extend the next 100 or 200 meters? What exactly was that invisible medium?

Zhou Ming slowly put the model back into the shelf.

※※※

The sun rose into the sky again as usual.

In the small open space in front of the antique shop in the lower town of Plande, Duncan watched Nina riding her bicycle happily around in a circle, then riding back and forth on the street, and finally stopping steadily in front of him.

"Uncle! I'm already very skilled!"

Nina put one foot on the ground with an excited and proud expression on her face.

Duncan smiled. "Yes, you are a very skilled rider. But you parked your bike right in front of my feet."

Nina quickly looked down and immediately moved the wheel away in a panic: "Ah! I'm sorry!"

"It's okay." Duncan smiled and waved his hand, then he breathed a sigh of relief and looked up at the street in the sun.

Everything in the city-state remains the same.

Beneath the sunlit streets, the deep darkness and huge shadows seemed to be something from another world and had no effect on people's daily lives.

But ever since he completed the exploration of "below" Pland, he couldn't help but think of the cold and dark deep sea and the huge structure he sensed in the deep sea.

This made him distracted from time to time.

He couldn't help but wonder if the Frost Queen half a century ago had been like this before? Had she also somehow discovered the secrets of the deep sea... or even discovered more than he had?

"Uncle, are you distracted again?"

Nina's voice suddenly came from the side, interrupting Duncan's wandering thoughts.

"Are you alright? You've been distracted since this morning."

"I'm fine," Duncan waved his hand quickly, then looked up at the end of the street, as if to change the subject, "But then again, Alice hasn't come back yet."

"She just left not long ago," Nina said casually, "and you don't have to worry so much. She just went to buy a newspaper. It's not like she has to cross half the city. She shouldn't get lost, right?"

"I'm really worried," Duncan sighed, "This is her first time going out alone in the true sense - even if it's just to the newsstand at the corner of the street."

"I think it's okay," Nina thought for a moment and said confidently, "I practiced with her many times before we left, including how to explain what you want to buy, how to get change, and how to say thank you after picking up the things... She learned it all."

"Oh, I hope so," Duncan sighed, "mainly because she was beaten with a frying pan when she went to the kitchen to get a plate at the beginning of the ship."

Nina was stunned: "I don't think these two things can be generalized..."

As they were talking, Alice appeared in the sight of the uncle and nephew.

The doll lady was holding a newspaper in her arms, with a bright smile on her face. She was running towards us with her neck held high, shouting, "Mr. Duncan! I bought the newspaper!"

Nina laughed: "See, I told you that Miss Alice would be fine!"

Duncan was shocked when he saw Alice running towards him. He rushed to meet her and shouted, "Don't run! Slow down!"

What is there to be afraid of? As he was speaking, he watched Alice fall headfirst less than five meters away from him and fall to the ground.

However, the next second, the puppet got up as if nothing had happened, patted her skirt, picked up the newspaper that had fallen on the ground, and walked to Duncan with a smile: "Newspaper!"

Duncan did not take the newspaper immediately. Instead, he looked at the doll lady with her head still on in disbelief. After a long while, he managed to say, "...How come your head didn't fall off after falling like this?"

Alice continued to maintain her confident posture with her neck held high and a bright smile on her face: "I found a good way to reinforce it!"

Duncan looked at the puppet suspiciously: "A good idea?"

Alice: "I put glue on it!"

Duncan: “……?!”

After being stunned for two or three seconds, he couldn't help but ask, "Who taught you?"

"Shirley!"