In the middle of the gorgeous big bed, the "room owner" who had just woken up was leaning on the pillow, looking at Duncan, the uninvited guest, with curious eyes, and the long silver hair and purple eyes were so familiar.

Duncan subconsciously called out the name "Alice" - the deep, hoarse, and dull "voice" came directly from the chest cavity of his body.

But then he frowned slightly, came to his senses from the momentary surprise and astonishment, and looked at the lady thoughtfully.

She is not Alice - although her appearance is exactly the same, her temperament is completely different. More importantly... Alice would not appear in this place, so the greater possibility is...

"Lei Nora," Duncan guessed the identity of the person in front of him. With a questioning look, he looked into her eyes and slowly spoke, "Frost Queen?"

"It seems like I haven't heard this name for a long time," the lady who just woke up smiled. She adjusted her leaning posture on the bed, with curiosity in her eyes, "Who are you? How did you get into this room without opening the door?"

"Door?" Duncan frowned. After hearing the word "door" again, he became curious, "What door?"

The lady didn't say anything, but just raised her hand and pointed not far away.

Duncan looked in the direction of the other person's finger and saw a closed door with intricate patterns painted on it - it was obviously the door to this dormitory.

"The ones who can come here are either servants of this mansion or guests holding keys. You are obviously not a servant of the mansion, but you don't have a key either."

Duncan's heart skipped a beat - the key! The other party just mentioned the key!

"The key you're talking about is a brass key used to wind up puppets?" He turned around and said calmly, covering up all his emotional fluctuations. "Are you really the Frost Queen Lenora?"

"I am," Lenora smiled and shook her head slightly, "but you haven't answered my question yet - who are you?"

Duncan suppressed the changes in his emotions in his eyes, quickly sorted out his thoughts in his mind, and spoke slowly: "...You can call me Duncan."

He only said his first name, without mentioning the more famous surname. Lenora's eyes widened slightly after hearing it, and then she showed an increasingly happy smile on her face: "Ah, it turns out to be you - the legendary Captain Duncan. It is much more reasonable for you to enter this room, but... I didn't expect you to be in this posture."

Duncan was startled when he heard this, then he looked down at his body.

It is still that extremely strange black human body, as if the Creator created a "rough draft" without having time to refine the details when creating humans. This abstract appearance can really not be called "friendly".

"This is just a temporary incarnation," Duncan explained with some embarrassment. He then noticed something strange in the other party's attitude. "You don't seem that surprised? Did you know I would come?"

"I don't know, but I lost the ability to be surprised many years ago," Lenora said calmly, "If you always see too many things you shouldn't see, understand all kinds of bizarre and strange forms of this world, always experience death before death comes, and are trapped in dreams before falling asleep, then sooner or later you will lose this ability..."

She smiled, and spoke in a nonchalant tone as if she was talking about the weather: "Even if there are still unpredictable things in the world, numbness will allow you to face all accidents calmly."

Duncan looked into Lenora's eyes and calmly recalled all the information about the Frost Queen.

It is said that Le Nora is a natural psychic, whose spiritual gifts allow her to communicate with a large number of invisible beings. It is said that she can even predict the future and know the truth out of thin air...

Duncan sorted out this information in his mind, but his expression did not change. Instead, he walked to a corner of the room, pulled a chair to the big bed, sat down, and looked into the eyes of the Frost Queen seriously: "I have many questions, and I hope you can answer them."

"I have many questions, too," Lenore smiled. "I haven't talked to anyone in so long, and a visitor is very precious to me—so if you are willing to answer my questions, I will answer yours, too."

"Okay, I won't be polite then," Duncan said straight to the point, "Where exactly is this place? Why are you here?"

"Ah, is it such a difficult question to answer at the beginning..." Lei Nora frowned, as if she was really worried about how to organize her words, and then she slowly spoke, "To explain it in more understandable words, this is a 'drifting place' - it is not a specific place, but a 'connection' of many places. Do you see the darkness at the end of the room? The scenery outside sometimes becomes something else - the right conditions can connect it to the right 'place', but for me, its only function is to connect my dreams to the deep sea below the frost.

"Do you need me to explain to you what the deep sea beneath the frost means?"

"No need," Duncan shook his head. "Go on, tell me, why are you here?"

"Okay, it seems you already know what is in the deep sea," Lenoir exhaled softly, "I am here to embrace a dream and ensure that the existence in the deep sea can continue to sleep."

Duncan's eyes were serious: "Saint Lord of the Deep?"

"...It seems that you know more than I thought." Lenora looked at Duncan quietly, "But you are wrong. Although "He" is indeed from the 'Crawling King', the existence in the deep sea is not the real Lord of the Deep. Strictly speaking, it is just a replica."

In an instant, Duncan recalled a sentence he had seen in that strange "dark space" before - the cluster controller had begun to replicate itself.

The huge "pillar" in the deep sea was indeed not the real body of the Lord of the Deep, but just a replica that appeared in the real world for some unknown reason!

So the most accurate scenario is... the replica of the ancient god penetrated the "original blueprint of the city-state" in the deep sea, and the power it released led to a series of subsequent events? And the source of all this... was because the "Lord of the Deep" completely lost control?

So can we assume that before this replica appeared in the real world, the Lord of the Deep was not out of control? His condition has been deteriorating over the long years until now?

So if we continue to think along these lines... what about other gods? If the "terrible evil god" in the eyes of the world is actually deteriorating from a stable state to an out-of-control state, then what about the "four gods" in the mortal world? Will they lose control? Or... have they actually begun to gradually lose control?

Duncan thought of the accidents that happened to Plande and Frost, who were blessed by the Goddess of Storms and the God of Death, and the malfunctioning Anomaly 001... Is this obvious, gradual failure of large-scale systems a sign that the entire world is "out of control"?

The pending conjecture was confirmed, and a lot of chaotic thoughts instantly flooded into his mind. In the blink of an eye, Duncan thought of a series of events that had taken place on the vast ocean during this period.

At this moment, Lenora's voice came from the other side, interrupting his brainstorming: "Now it's my turn to ask a question."

Duncan quickly gathered his thoughts and organized his ideas: "Go ahead and ask."

"How did you get here?" Lenora asked with curiosity in her eyes.

"In the deep sea below Frostbite, I found the 'replica' and discovered an 'entrance' to this place at its breaking point," Duncan said without hiding anything. "As for how I came to such a deep place... I took the Frostbite City-State's submersible."

"Submersible?" Leigh Nora frowned, but soon she seemed to guess something, "Ah, it seems that they really have secretly built a new one..."

"Did you know that the 'rebel government' would build a new submersible after you... died?" Duncan was a little surprised. "As far as I know, the 'Abyss Project' was the source of the rebellion, and they used this as an excuse to... 'execute' you."

"They will," Lenora just smiled, "because they are Frostmen."

Duncan didn't say anything for a while, just looked at the former queen quietly.

The latter continued calmly: "The Frost People will never die silently and meekly. When the darkest moment comes, we will burn everything to survive. So when my Abyss Plan goes out of control and the city-state is in a survival crisis, there will definitely be rebels who will rise up and overthrow me to ensure the survival of more people. When they discover the secrets of the deep sea, they will definitely build submersibles like me and try to solve this problem.

"They will improve their machines, slow down their plans, learn from my radical lessons, and do all this in a gentler and more harmless way. If they still fail, new rebels will emerge, chop off the heads of the incompetent, and try another way... and continue to challenge the cold darkness in the deep sea."

"This will continue until the last Frostman dies, or the darkness dissipates."

She raised her head and looked calmly into Duncan's eyes - in the latter's weird and terrifying "rough" body, only those eyes carried a little human light.

"I just didn't expect that the person who came down in the submersible would be... the legendary Captain Duncan, and a Captain Duncan who had obviously regained his sanity. It seems that my successor is even more extreme than I was back then?"

"...They failed," Duncan was silent for a few seconds, then shook his head and said, "A disaster destroyed the city-state government, and they failed to restart the Abyss Project before the situation got out of control. The only good news is that the disaster was eventually resolved, and the submersible was the 'trophy' we found after the situation calmed down."