As always, Alice always had unconditional trust in the captain's words - she didn't even wonder why Duncan suddenly wanted to use the key again, and she happily agreed.
But Duncan still explained to the puppet very seriously: "I want to enter the 'Alice Mansion' again to confirm some speculations about the 'Old World'."
Alice nodded her head. Although she didn't quite understand what the "old world" the captain was talking about, she knew that it was a very serious matter.
Because she had cooperated once before, this time she quickly found a comfortable and stable place to sit down, then turned around and revealed the keyhole on her back.
"Actually, I discussed it with Nina before and asked her to help me modify the back of my clothes to see if I could make a hole for the keyhole," the doll said happily while waiting for the captain to "wind up" it, "but she was worried that sand and dust would get into my keyhole... I think she was overly worried. I wouldn't roll on the ground, so how could sand get into the keyhole?"
"It's better to block it normally," Duncan said casually, "No one knows if this delicate structure is fragile. If something gets stuck in it and breaks it, I don't know how to repair it."
"Ms. Lucrecia might be able to fix it. She fixed Lu Ni's head... But you're right. It's better to be careful. Lu Ni's head was fixed for a long time..."
The silver-haired puppet kept muttering to himself, just like ordinary people chatting about family matters, talking about these things that seemed too weird and strange to others. Duncan couldn't help but smile faintly as he listened. Then he smiled and shook his head, picked up the strange brass key, and carefully inserted it into Alice's keyhole, just like last time.
A familiar click was heard, and the key began to turn by itself. Duncan calmed himself down slightly, and the next second, he felt the light and shadows in front of his eyes changing, and his perception was quickly orienting and reshaping.
After a moment, he opened his eyes in the darkness and adapted to the changes in his five senses after the change of environment. After the scene in front of him quickly stabilized, the strange "garden" shrouded by the cartoon sky and lush and green appeared in front of him again.
The silver-haired Gothic doll that looked exactly like Alice was still leaning quietly against the pillar in the center of the garden, sleeping among the vines and thorns. The drawing board in the doll's hand was the same as before, with no change in position or shape.
Duncan blinked and did not move rashly at the first moment. Instead, he carefully checked the surrounding situation and compared it with the scene in his memory.
Half a minute later, he confirmed that there was nothing unusual around him and everything remained the same as when he left - he even had a feeling that the time in this "mansion" had stopped while he was away, and it was not until he returned that the time here started moving again.
…This is most likely not an illusion.
Duncan recalled what the strange "headless butler" had told him about the special time rules in Alice Mansion, and he was lost in thought.
After a moment's thought, he raised his head and looked up at the "sky" above the garden.
The last time he came here, a lot of his energy was attracted by the various strange and weird scenes in the mansion, and there were a lot of questions in his mind. His limited energy was scattered everywhere, so even though the sky of this garden caught his attention, he didn't observe those weird cartoon graffiti too carefully.
And this time, he looked particularly seriously.
It seems as if the clouds drawn by children's crayons are floating against the background of the light blue sky, and the exaggerated "sunshine" lines pass through the clouds, while the "sun" painted with golden paint is releasing light and heat as we saw last time, maintaining the vitality of the garden.
It is still full of “childishness”, and still overflowing with weirdness in the “childishness”.
Duncan suddenly narrowed his eyes slightly.
He carefully observed the golden sun, and this time, he finally noticed a detail that he had overlooked before -
There is no rune ring structure around that "Graffiti Sun"!
"No wonder... No wonder I felt something was wrong the last time I saw it, but I couldn't put my finger on it..."
Duncan muttered, his facial expression changing slightly, and he finally confirmed where the biggest sense of incongruity brought to him by the sky in this weird graffiti came from: it was a normal sun, although the brushstrokes were abstract and simple, it was undoubtedly the "sun" he was familiar with!
But it was precisely because he was too familiar with it that he failed to notice the obvious "abnormality" when he took a quick look at it last time - if "indigenous residents" like Morris or Vanna came over, they would probably feel something was wrong at first sight.
Duncan's eyebrows frowned little by little. After confirming that there was a "normal sun" in the sky, the secret hidden in this "Alice Mansion" seemed to be quietly revealed to him.
In the vast ocean, the "sun" is an artificial celestial body with a double rune ring. This is common knowledge recognized by the world. It is a "fact" that has not changed in the past ten thousand years since the deep sea era. No one in the world knows what the "real sun" looks like. Even those sun believers who claim to believe in the real sun god only describe a distorted and terrifying ancient god creature when preaching.
So who left this "normal sun" or "original sun" in Alice Mansion?
The doll "Alice" was "born" after the Frost Queen Lenore fell into the deep sea. Then why is there a record of the appearance of the "sun" before the Great Annihilation deep in the Alice Mansion connected to her?
And if we take into account the speculation of the "World Aggregation Theory" on the mass annihilation, the deep sea era was formed by the accumulation and reshaping of the debris of countless old worlds. So, this "original sun" recorded in Alice Mansion...which old world should it belong to?
Does it represent a star in some old world? Or is it just an abstract symbol?
For some reason, what Duncan thought of at this moment was the fat pigeon.
He frowned and shook his head, reorganizing the complicated information in his mind again and again. Suddenly, another clue emerged in his mind -
The birth of Alice.
It is true that her image was copied from the Frost Queen Lenora, but her original coffin was also a false copy of the "Alice Guillotine" - it turns out that for the "shaper" of Anomaly 099, the source and process of the copy itself are not important. Whether it is a great human or a piece of hard wood, they are just the initial "material". What is really important is the "shaper" himself.
It was the "erroneous copy" of the Lord of the Deep that created Anomaly 099.
So can we think that this so-called "Alice Mansion" is actually a "creation" of the erroneous copy of the Lord of the Deep - and extending it further, even if it is an erroneous copy of the Lord of the Deep, it should also retain a lot of information about the "original body", so some of the "things" in this Alice Mansion may have their source directly pointing to the "ancient god" stranded in the Deep Sea?
Duncan raised his head and carefully looked at the abstract and simple sun, as well as the clouds and sunlight around it.
...Are these graffiti-like images part of the "memories" accidentally leaked by the Lord of the Deep, or some kind of "information" consciously conveyed to the outside world?
The more Duncan thought about it, the more he felt that this was possible, because one thing was certain:
The true appearance of the "original sun" only exists at the time node before the great annihilation. The secret of this Alice Mansion should also be able to be traced back to before that time node. According to the information currently available...only the four gods and those mysterious and strange "ancient gods" deep in the world may have a certain understanding of the world before the great annihilation.
Duncan's heart moved. He lowered his head and saw the drawing board in the puppet's hand.
After a slight hesitation, he bent down, carefully walked around the thorns, and slowly pulled the drawing board out of the puppet's hand.
The front of the drawing board still depicts the strange vortex, twisted stars, and ominous dark red light, and on the border on the back of the drawing board, the familiar words are still engraved on it:
〖…The messenger brought news from afar that the chosen clan had picked up the lost ancient stars and forged them into a crown of blessing—the third long night had ended.〗
The chosen clans picked up the lost ancient stars and forged them into blessed crowns.
Duncan's eyes stayed on this sentence for a long time.
This describes the process of the ancient Cretan clan, led by the "Creeping King", building Vision 001 and lifting it into the sky.
When he first entered the garden and saw this line of text, he could not understand what it meant.
But now, he suddenly understood.
He thought of the "moon" with a diameter of ten meters - it was a "part" that fell off the rune ring of Anomaly 001.
The runic ring that binds the sun can be seen as a glorious "crown".
And the "moon" that was twisted and compressed by an unknown force...naturally fits the description of a "lost ancient star".
Some slight noises suddenly came from the depths of the garden, waking Duncan from his thoughts.
He suddenly raised his head and looked in the direction where the sound came from.
There was only lush vegetation over there, and dim shadows between the dense bushes and the shades of the short trees.
But Duncan was sure that he had really "heard" something just now.
This is the deepest part of Alice's mansion. According to the headless butler, even the senior servants in the mansion are not qualified to enter here at will - only the mistress Alice and the so-called "gardener" will come here, but the "gardener" seems to have disappeared a long time ago.
Invaders? Or is the "Gardener" back?
Duncan frowned slowly, stuffed the drawing board back into the puppet's arms, and walked cautiously towards the lush bushes.
"Rustle...rustle..."
A faint sound came again from somewhere in the shadows.
Suddenly, he caught something out of the corner of his eye.
A shadow, like a slippery and strange tentacle, was crawling in the darkness at the edge of the garden!