After the sun went out, the remaining faint light hung high in the sky. The faint light could not illuminate the sea, but made the whole world appear darker and more terrifying.
The White Oak sailed into these dark depths.
The lights on the boat were already lit, and the combined light of oil lamps and electric lighting spread out, illuminating a small area of the sea nearby. The fine waves undulated in the weak light, and seemed to have a sticky and ominous texture.
Lawrence held the rudder and responded to the voice in his mind: "...The situation on the White Oak is not bad. Except for the sailors being a little nervous, there are no problems on the ship, but the surroundings around us have fallen into darkness, and
We have lost contact with other ships on the channel, and the navigation has also failed. Now we can only see darkness from the stargazing room."
Duncan's voice echoed directly in his mind: "Can you contact the nearest Cold Harbor to you? You should have just left that city-state not long ago."
"No," Lawrence looked back at the communication station not far away and saw that all the lights on the machine were red. "The communication was completely cut off. The priest tried to use psychic resonance to contact the cathedral in Cold Harbor, but there was no response.
In response - the psychic resonance with Purander can barely be maintained."
"There is nothing wrong with Purande, and Hanshuang is also fine. The current situation is that except for the three city-states of Hanshuang, Purande and Qingfeng Port, all city-states have been unable to contact each other. It feels like...
It's as if they all disappeared after the sun went out."
Listening to Captain Duncan's description, Lawrence's expression gradually became tense, and he swallowed hard, as if he did not dare to continue thinking about it.
Then he lowered his head and glanced at the instrument panel next to the steering wheel, quickly confirming various parameters.
"We are sailing at full speed towards Puland. This is a very busy route. In theory, we should see a transit port soon - that is an affiliated island of the city-state of Lensa. We will confirm the situation there.
, and will remit it to you as soon as possible..."
Lawrence was talking so quickly in his mind, but before he could finish speaking, a sudden sound of rapid footsteps interrupted what he wanted to say later.
A crew member ran into the bridge in a panic: "Captain! Captain! Come and take a look! That 'sailor' discovered something terrible!"
"Anomaly 077?" Lawrence's expression suddenly changed, and then he turned to look at the first mate on the side, "Gus, you take the helm, I'll go over and check the situation!"
First Mate Gus immediately stepped forward: "Yes, Captain!"
Lawrence quickly left the bridge, hurried through the stairs and corridors under the leadership of the crew member, and came to the deck at the stern of the White Oak. As soon as he arrived here, he saw the man who was busy on the edge of the stern deck.
Lu Lu's skinny figure.
Abnormality 077, this weird living mummy was busy working on something beside a huge iron bucket. It kept mumbling while busy. Lawrence walked up and heard clearly what the mummy kept mumbling: "It's over.
It's over, it's over, we're done this time, no one can leave, no one can go back, the whole world is over, I might as well sleep to death..."
This guy has as much negative energy as ever.
Lawrence didn't want to hear Anomaly 077 continue talking, so he immediately stepped forward and interrupted the guy loudly: "What are you doing?"
The mummy suddenly became excited, as if it woke up from a dream, and quickly nodded and bowed: "Captain! Captain, you are here... Oh, good, I will be settled now that the captain is here..."
"That's enough, that's enough," Lawrence waved his hand and asked again, "What on earth are you doing?"
"You have to look at this, you have to look at this..." the mummy said hurriedly, then ran to the iron bucket and stirred it twice with a large iron tongs - the sound of thick grease came from inside.
Lawrence then discovered that the iron bucket was filled with oil, and Anomaly 077 was using iron tongs to hold a piece of rag and stir it in the bucket of oil. Then the mummy took out the rag that had been soaked in oil and touched it again.
He took out a lighter from an unknown crew member and lit the ball of cloth.
Under Lawrence's frowning gaze, Anomaly 077 threw the burning rag into the sea with great force - the fireball fell on the sea and quickly drifted behind the White Oak with the waves.
Anomaly 077 babbled: "This is the method used by sailors in the past to roughly estimate the speed of the ship - before the invention of your exquisite and fancy machines, this was the way it was done. It is not very accurate, but it is very useful..."
"I know, I've learned about this," Lawrence interrupted, "but what exactly do you want me to see?"
"Sailor" waved his hands vigorously and pointed into the distance: "Keep looking, we are almost there. Look at the fire drifting into the distance..."
Lawrence frowned and turned to stare at the flame floating on the sea - it was drifting quickly behind the White Oak. This was natural, because the White Oak was sailing forward at full speed, so this phenomenon did not occur.
What's weird.
Until the flame suddenly stopped in the distance.
Lawrence's eyes froze for a moment.
The ball of fire, which in theory should have continued to drift into the distance until it was finally swallowed up by the waves or exceeded the limits of the naked eye, stopped in the distance.
A rough estimate is that that location is only a few hundred meters away from the White Oak.
Lawrence stared in that direction, looking at the flame that stopped several hundred meters away from the tail of the White Oak. In this scene, it was as if the flame was following the White Oak at constant speed, until after a long time, the flame
Finally it gradually became fainter and extinguished at the edge of the dark sea water.
The "sailor" picked up a rag with iron tongs, covered it with grease, lit it and threw it into the water.
The second fireball entered the water, floated backwards quickly, and then stopped at the same distance.
Anomaly 077 finally threw away the iron pliers in his hand. He turned to look at Lawrence, with a sad expression on his skinny and terrifying face: "Captain, do you think... how can we explain this matter scientifically?"
This time, Lawrence did not make fun of this "anomaly" as usual for insisting on using science to explain things. He just stood quietly on the edge of the deck. After an unknown amount of time, he said as if talking to himself: "You
see it?"
Anomaly 077 next to him was stunned when he heard this: "Ah? Who are you talking to?"
Lawrence did not answer, but Duncan's deep and majestic voice came from his mind: "I saw it, and by sharing your vision, I saw it very clearly."
"What... do you think of this phenomenon?" Lawrence asked cautiously.
"The laws of physics are becoming unfamiliar. It is most likely due to the 'chaos' in the space field, or it may be a deeper reason. In short, after the sun goes out, the Infinite Sea is changing rapidly - and the White Oak and its surroundings are
In a small area, it is still normal."
Lawrence thought for a while and then spoke hesitantly: "This is your power at work..."
"Maybe, but I also need some time to figure out the reason."
Listening to the voice in his mind and looking at the dark and chaotic sea in the distance, Lawrence fell into deep thought.
However, at this moment, a strange low sound that seemed to come from the sky and echoed throughout the world suddenly interrupted his thoughts.
It was a strange, slow buzzing sound, like a giant beast panting with difficulty, or some unimaginably huge device slowly starting up.
Like the whole world, it echoes in everyone's ears.
Lawrence raised his head in astonishment and looked at the extinguished sun.
The double rune rings around the sun are flickering in and out, and with the flickering of the rune rings, the dark sphere at the center of Vision 001 gradually emerges with wisps of light.
The wisps of light were faintly red at first, like bloodshot threads, but then they began to spread to the entire sphere and quickly became brighter...
…
The huge luminous geometry floats on the sea, and the "sunlight" it releases evenly shines on the Qingfeng Port not far away, as well as the Brilliant Star docked near the floating dock.
On the scientific research platform at the highest point of the Brilliant Star, Lucretia was staring closely at the large circular crystal lens in front of her.
There was a light blue shimmer floating around the crystal lens, while the center of the lens showed groups of undulating, alternating light and dark colors.
The clockwork doll "Luni" stood near Lucretia, adjusting the dazzling observation equipment with her precise and dexterous hands while reporting to her mistress: "Starting from just now, the luminous geometry has been released.
There are these weird 'signals' in the 'sunlight' that comes out. They are invisible to the naked eye, but can be captured by the observation lens on the ship. What appears is this kind of light and dark ripples that are constantly undulating..."
Lucretia raised her head and looked towards the front of the room - this scientific research platform was closed, but there was a special window at the end of the room. The "sunlight" from the luminous geometric body was introduced into the room through the window, and then passed through a
A series of complex lens devices were processed and finally split into spectrograms and projected onto specific observation devices. This entire device was designed and built by her herself.
This is a large-scale installation she built specifically to study the "luminous geometry" - and now, it is working.
Lucretia retracted her gaze and glanced at the recording instrument on the table next to her that was continuously spitting out paper tapes - the long paper tape recorded the spectral changes captured by the lens system, and the jumping black lines showed clear and definite
’s periodicity.
"These 'light signals' are regular..." she said softly.
"Yes," the puppet Luni nodded, "Each set of signals is sent with a twelve-second period. After repeating three times, there will be an interval of thirty seconds, and then it will appear again."
"Is it sent from that 'stone ball'?"
"It's impossible to be sure - there are people from the Academy of Truth monitoring the stone ball near it, but they haven't noticed any changes in the ball itself. These 'light signals' are more like they come directly from the luminous area around the ball out of thin air..."
In the middle of speaking, the doll Luni suddenly paused.
"Mistress, the light signal has stopped."
Lucretia looked at the crystal lens in front of her in astonishment.
The alternating light and dark colors with constant fluctuations have disappeared.
She was stunned for a while, then she seemed to suddenly think of something, and her figure suddenly disintegrated, turning into colorful pieces of paper flying in all directions, and then spiraled out of the window.
The colorful pieces of paper were flying in the sky above the deck and quickly condensed into shape again. Lucretia stood on the upper deck of the Brilliant Star, squinting her eyes and looking up at the sky.
Through the pale golden "sunlight" that diffused on the sea, she saw an extremely bright luminous object hanging high in the sky.