Deep Sea Embers

Duncan noticed the faint redness in Morris’ eyes and the slight swelling of his eyelids. It seemed the old scholar had exerted great effort to find this information. There was a hint of excitement in his eyes, and he appeared unusually energized – the kind of spirit that arises from being immersed in research and making progress.

Duncan glanced at Nina and Alice downstairs and gave a slight nod: “You all keep an eye on the store.”

He then looked at Morris: “Let’s go upstairs and talk.”

The old man, holding the large book, stepped onto the stairs. The ancient wooden steps creaked as he followed Duncan to the master bedroom on the second floor – his first time in this location.

By the standards of a subspace shadow dwelling, the bedroom was somewhat plain, but given Mr. Duncan’s unusual “hobby” of “playing a mortal,” the simplicity of the room seemed quite fitting.

Morris carefully controlled his actions, indulging his curiosity without being overly intrusive before being told to sit after Duncan pulled two chairs from the side, gesturing for him to place the large book on the desk by the window.

“Tell me about your discovery,” Duncan said after sitting down, “What does that symbol represent?”

“As for its meaning… I have no clue yet. I just found its most likely origin,” Morris composed himself, opening the valuable-looking document, and turned to the page with a bookmark, “Take a look at this spot. It appears here.”

Duncan frowned slightly as he saw a drawing on that page, a rather exquisite hand-drawn illustration, depicting part of a large building that resembled the main entrance of a palace. The symbol, framed by a hexagon with a broken cross structure, appeared in the relief above the main entrance, taking up the center of the entire image.

As for the content of the scribbles… it seemed to be just some patterns with no discernible meaning.

As Morris had mentioned earlier, the symbol was in a very inconspicuous place – it was merely a small decorative element of an illustration, occupying less than a tenth of the entire image, without any special emphasis.

It was astonishing that Morris could find this book among a stack of documents and this tiny detail within the book.

“I have a vague impression that I saw it a long, long time ago. Thanks to the blessing of the god of wisdom, this ‘impression’ still works today, allowing me to find this ‘little thing’,” Morris explained, “This illustration is a copy, and its original first appeared in a document about the study of ancient Crete architectural relics. That document is not currently in Pland, but I believe some of my academic friends should be able to help…”

“Of course, even without the original, the content recorded in this book is useful. It mentions that the hand-drawn illustration portrays a lost ruin that once stood in a bordering sea area. The ruin was situated on an unnamed deserted island, which mysteriously vanished into thick fog around the year 223 of the new city-state era. Before its complete disappearance, several expeditions successfully landed on the island and verified the structure and age of the ruin, confirming that it was from the ancient Crete era. Based on the surface patterns and reliefs of the building, the entire structure likely had both academic and religious significance…”

As he spoke, Morris pointed to the text on the adjacent page of the illustration. Between the slightly yellowed pages, one could see the annotations written by the old scholar in his earlier years.

“The bold, deep lines of the symbols and the abundant rhombus elements in the patterns are characteristic of ancient Crete architecture. They revered a strong and powerful architectural style, with the main body of their palace buildings mostly in various rectangular or pyramid shapes. This building aligns perfectly with these characteristics…”

As Duncan listened to Mr. Morris’s interpretation, his gaze slowly scanned the drawings and sentences. His attention returned to the hexagonal pattern in the center of the main entrance relief, his brow furrowing slightly, “Regarding this symbol, is there no specific interpretation?”

“Unfortunately, this document is only a general introduction and does not involve a detailed interpretation of the various details of the ruins,” Morris shook his head. “But this is an inevitable situation – the ancient Crete kingdom is ten thousand years old, and the remaining ruins are few and most severely damaged. With the loss or ‘contamination’ of various materials, the knowledge available for later generations to analyze is fragmented, making it difficult for us to find an article specifically studying a pattern on a particular gate of the ancient kingdom…”

“Academic or religious facilities, entrance symbols…” Duncan thoughtfully stroked his chin, “Why would a group of ‘ascetics’ ten thousand years later carry a charm from the time of the ancient Crete kingdom?”

He turned to Morris: “Do you think it’s possible that there is a ‘Crete Remnant’ that has survived for ten thousand years?”

“…Some people say that a rigorous scholar should not blindly dismiss any possibility, even if the probability is extremely low, but from my personal perspective, I genuinely think it’s improbable.” Morris cautiously said as he pondered.

“A group resembling ascetics, possibly very few in number, extremely secretive in their activities, enduring the great chaos after the collapse of the ancient kingdom, the age of strife, the Old City-State wars, and preserving their lineage for a full ten thousand years without either breaking the line of descent or being discovered… If this possibility were to be true, I would rather believe they are a secret religious group established in modern times who happened to discover some ancient documents or similar ruins and adopted a symbol from the Crete period as their own emblem. This possibility seems even more likely.”

Duncan listened to the old man’s thoughts, humming noncommittally, and his gaze swept over the text once more.

In the materials, some paragraphs were clearly quoted from the records in the original manuscript, describing the fragmented words left by the explorers more than a thousand years ago:

“…It stands in the center of the island, the main building and surrounding auxiliary buildings almost occupying the entire island, as if the island was specifically created for this building…

“…The main material of the building appears to be stone, but stronger than stone, with a pale color. Soldiers tried to chisel open one of the wall bricks with an ice pick and succeeded only after much effort… The collision between the ice pick and the wall brick produced exaggerated sparks, and the broken part of the wall brick had a silvery-gray texture.

“There are several small islands nearby, all desolate with sparse vegetation and few insects… No remaining buildings, perhaps there were some, but they were too small in scale and had already been devoured by time…

“…On the third evening, a small boat patrolled around the island and found that a collapsed point that had previously been above water was now submerged, but there was no sign of a rising tide… Fog began to form in the nearby waters, the priest had a bad feeling, and after praying to the god of death, Bartok, and seeking guidance, he advised us to leave the island immediately.”

Duncan looked directly at the end of this quote, where the author of the document recorded: “On the seventh day after the exploration team withdrew, the fog dissipated, and another team arrived in the vicinity of the area, but the nameless island could no longer be found.”

“So it was swallowed by the thick fog…” Duncan sighed softly, unable to suppress his regret, “It sounds like the result of a border collapse.”

“It does seem that way – but at that time, there was no mature Sacred Emblem navigation technology or sufficiently accurate observation methods, so several abnormal phenomena, including border collapses and ‘fog devouring,’ were easily confused.”

“Fog devouring phenomenon…” Duncan recalled briefly and found the corresponding knowledge in his mind – he had been learning about this common knowledge through books lately, “If it really was a fog devouring phenomenon, then this island might reappear briefly in a similar dense fog in the future, but it seems that there are no records of such an occurrence.”

“Indeed, but it is also possible that the relevant materials were lost.”

Duncan hummed in agreement, his fingers involuntarily brushing over the illustration, touching the tiny broken cross mark on it.

“This drawing… There shouldn’t be any possibility of the copyist ‘taking liberties,’ right?” he suddenly asked uneasily.

“I don’t think so,” Morris immediately replied, “This is a very rigorous documentary material. The original manuscript’s illustrator and the compiler are known for their rigor as academic authorities. When they copy these materials, they would rather leave the unclear parts untouched for future generations than make any ‘supplementary adjustments’ without evidence. In other words, even if they made adjustments, they would certainly explain the corresponding situation in the notes.”

“It’s authentic and verifiable…” Duncan murmured thoughtfully.