Duncan stood at the top of the tall spiral staircase, overlooking and scanning the old and magnificent mansion, and once again confirmed his judgment: this mysterious mansion and the room where the Frost Queen Lenora slept before were almost exactly the same in style!

With a thought in his mind, he immediately turned around and looked in the other direction of the top of the spiral staircase.

There was a deep corridor on the second floor. On the walls on both sides were hung strange oil paintings with no clear details. Between the paintings were iron candlesticks as black as thorns. The flames on the candlesticks were pale. The light and shadows in the corridor were dim. In the deepest part of the corridor, there seemed to be a door vaguely between the hazy and dim shadows.

Is that the room of the owner of the mansion?

Duncan immediately took a step forward and walked quickly towards the depths of the deep and dim corridor. The old wooden floor creaked monotonously under his feet, and the pale candlesticks on both sides of the corridor seemed to be disturbed by the breeze he brought and swayed irregularly. The corridor, which already looked eerie and strange, suddenly had swaying light and shadow, and looked even more hazy and dark.

Duncan stopped at the end of the corridor, frowned, and looked at the darkness in front of him.

There was no door here - the door that had appeared in the shadows before seemed to be just a fleeting illusion. In front of him was only a corridor that came to an abrupt end. The floor, walls and roof of the corridor were broken and fractured here, and on the other side of the fracture was only an empty and terrifying dark space.

Duncan carefully walked to the edge of the shattered floor, leaned his head to look outside, then turned his head and looked around the fracture zone.

Outside was an endless void, and the corridor under his feet was floating abruptly and lonely in the air. He could not see the other parts of the mansion around him, let alone the room and door that should theoretically be at the end of the corridor.

Duncan stepped back and looked quietly at the empty place.

There should have been something here, a room, a door, and now it was gone, as if it had been "ripped" from the mansion and disappeared into the nothingness.

Suddenly, a rustling sound came from nearby, interrupting Duncan's thoughts.

He suddenly looked in the direction where the sound came from.

A headless figure in a black coat was standing by the wall not far away, bending over and carefully wiping a marble decorative table.

Duncan thought briefly, then walked towards the headless figure.

The headless figure did not flee like the previous fleeting figures, but slowly straightened up. When Duncan approached, he even bent slightly, showing a decent posture like a well-trained butler.

However, the bare structure above his shoulders only made this polite posture seem even more weird and terrifying.

"Sir, who are you looking for?" A hollow and muffled voice came from the chest of the headless body, sounding polite.

A strange feeling emerged in his heart, but Duncan had dealt with many strange things in this world after all, so he quickly ignored this strange feeling and talked to the headless body in front of him with a calm face: "Why is the room at the end of the corridor gone?"

"It left," the headless figure replied, "a long, long time ago."

Duncan frowned, and then asked, "What about the people in the room? There should have been someone in the room, right?"

"The owner of the room also left, leaving with the room - a long, long time ago." The headless body replied.

"A long, long time ago?" Duncan couldn't suppress the dissatisfaction in his heart, "Didn't he just leave?"

"Yes, guest, I just left a long, long time ago," the headless figure replied politely, "Here, everything that has happened happened a long, long time ago - and the next thing will happen a long, long time later."

The words spoken by the headless body were strange and difficult to understand, but Duncan could not help but be led to many speculations in his mind by these strange and obscure words - discontinuity of time? Fault? Is this mansion in some kind of time fault?

Duncan suddenly thought of the brass key. He came to this strange mansion after turning the key. And that brass key came from a sane end-of-life preacher - a group of people with discontinuous time.

Brass key?

Duncan's heart moved, and he suddenly felt something. He immediately looked at his hand - the cold touch seemed to have been delayed for a long time, and suddenly entered his palm at this moment, and a brass key was lying there quietly.

At the same time as he saw the brass key, the headless body standing opposite him seemed to suddenly notice something. The body shook, and a dull voice came from its chest: "Ah, so you are the distinguished guest holding the key - excuse me, are you here to see the hostess?"

"Mistress?" Duncan was confused. "Didn't you just say that the mistress had left the room? And she left a long, long time ago..."

"There are two hostesses," the headless body said slowly, answering guests' questions patiently like a butler. "One is the hostess of the room. She never leaves the room, and now she has left with the room. The other is the hostess of the mansion - she never enters the mansion."

The words of the headless body became more and more strange, and Duncan was confused by it, but he quickly guessed that the "hostess who never leaves the room" should refer to the Frost Queen Lei Nora, and then he had a vague guess about the other "hostess".

"What's the name of the other mistress?" he asked, staring at the headless body in front of him.

"This is Alice Mansion," the headless body replied quickly, "and the hostess's name is, of course, Alice."

Duncan lowered his eyelids calmly, controlling the subtle changes in his eyes.

Everything was as expected - he entered the mansion after turning the keyhole on Alice's back, so how could this strange mansion have nothing to do with "Alice"?

The name of this mansion is "Alice Mansion". Alice is the mistress of this mansion, and Lenora is only the mistress of that room - the latter never steps out of her room, so rather than being a "mistress", it sounds more like a special prisoner, which is consistent with the information revealed by Lenora:

She was bound to the "Drifting Land" in order to control the "Ancient God Replica" in the deep sea.

Now, thanks to the "help" of a certain Warp Shadow, this particular prisoner has escaped along with her cage.

The "warden" of this prison is wandering outside the prison?

Duncan couldn't help but think of Alice's innocent and happy smile. He just couldn't connect that silly doll with the identities of "the mistress of Alice's mansion" or "the warden of the drifting land".

So he quickly controlled the random thoughts in his mind, sorted out his expression and raised his eyes to look at the headless body in front of him: "Why does the mistress of the mansion never enter the mansion?"

"She is resting in the garden," the headless body replied. "She has been resting for a long time, but it is not time for her to return to the mansion yet."

Taking a break in the garden?

Duncan's mind was turning, but he remained calm on the surface: "Can I go meet the 'hostess'?"

"Of course," the headless body said immediately. Although there was no head, Duncan felt as if the other party had a "gaze" on the brass key. "You are the guest holding the key. You can open any door in this mansion - including the door to the garden. Please follow me and I will take you to the garden."

Duncan nodded and followed the headless body towards the spiral staircase connecting the first and second floors of the mansion.

On the way to the garden, he tried to chat with the other party with the idea of ​​gathering as much information as possible: "What is your identity here?"

"I am the butler here, guest," said the headless body claiming to be the butler, "ordinary servants and maids dare not approach you, so I came here."

"There are still many servants and maids here?" Duncan recalled the whispers he had heard in the hall before and the phantoms he had occasionally seen. "It sounds like this place is quite lively on weekdays?"

"The Drifting Land accepts drifters and all souls that stray into this place. Here, everyone has no home to go - so it is at least a good shelter."

"What's your name?" Duncan asked again.

"I don't have a name, guest. You can just call me butler," said the headless butler. "Most of the servants and maids here don't have names. Those who have names will gradually lose them. People who lose their hometowns will eventually lose their names. This is our fate. I was the first to come here, and I lost my name a long time ago."

"The lost people..." Duncan suddenly stopped and repeated the word subconsciously.

"Guest?" The headless butler also stopped and turned to "look" at Duncan curiously.

"It's okay, I was just a little distracted." Duncan reacted quickly and shook his head.

But just as he was about to take another step, an oil painting on the nearby wall suddenly caught his attention.