Chapter 188: Chapter 192: Ark of Promise
In the chart room, as always, sunlight from the Endless Sea streamed through the portholes, casting a brilliance upon the antiquated artifacts that had gathered a century’s worth of time. The black goat-head statue sat quietly in the corner of the chart table, controlling the direction of Homeloss, while the surface of the ancient sea chart was enveloped by rolling, thin mists. Within these swirling layers, the trajectory representing the known routes stretched straight toward a certain direction, moving forward.
At the end of the course lay the Plunder City-State. The shimmering point of light had now appeared in the fog ahead and was slowly closing the distance to Homeloss, barely perceptible to the naked eye.
The door opened, and Duncan’s silhouette appeared in the doorway.
The goat-head statue immediately stirred, its wooden neck creaking as it turned its head toward the source of the sound. “Ah, the great captain has come to his faithful deputy! How are things going for you? You have been busy since yesterday, do you have a good mood today? Today’s weather—”
“Stop, stop, stop, there’s no need to repeat such greetings several times a day.” Duncan interrupted before the other could finish, his gaze then casually lingering on the face of the goat-head statue for a moment.
The goat-head, as always, showed no expression, and its obsidian-crafted eyes remained eerily cold. It watched from the table with a non-human quality in its gaze.
But there was no dangerous aura, nor anything different from usual.
It seemed that the statue was always seriously following Duncan’s orders. Duncan had instructed it to focus on steering, and it merely focused on steering.
“Captain, you seem to be heavily burdened?” The goat-head’s voice rang out, carrying a familiar, obsequious enthusiasm, “It seems you’ve captured some prisoners… but they don’t seem to be on board anymore?”
“They disappeared after the sunrise,” Duncan casually moved to the navigation desk and sat down, “They were a few Doomsday Preachers.”
“Ah, Doomsday Preachers… troublesome and dangerous fellows indeed. They are indeed hard to capture, always appearing and disappearing mysteriously,” the goat-head immediately began to prattle as Duncan knew it would. Once a topic was brought up, it would produce a stream of nonsense which, however, often contained useful information without needing much probing, “But what did they do to provoke you? Those insane preachers usually don’t show themselves much and, compared to Sun Cultists or the cult of obliteration, they are much more low-profile and rare…”
“They attacked a human I was observing, and I captured them incidentally for Alice to test her abilities,” Duncan said offhandedly while observing the goat-head’s reaction, “They also babbled a lot of nonsensical stuff related to Subspace… How much do you know about these heretics?”
“I would advise you not to pay too much attention to their insane ‘sermons,’” the goat-head immediately said, “Just frequently invoking the name of Subspace can attract dangerous attention, let alone dealing with those madmen who follow Subspace. Of course, someone as great as you might not be affected, but listening to them always isn’t good…”
It paused briefly, then continued, “I tell you, my understanding of those lunatics is limited, and not many in this world know about them. Doomsday Preachers should be considered the strangest among various heretic groups, expert at disappearing without a trace, with fragmented and incoherent thinking, and unlike common heretics, who have a large number of low-level followers—they are far fewer in number and lack anyone who can communicate normally…”
The goat-head rambled on, the nonsense increasing towards the end, but even amidst this verbosity, Duncan still picked up some key pieces of intelligence.
According to the goat-head, Doomsday Preachers were far fewer in number compared to two other equally troubling heretical forces, the followers of the sun and the cult of obliteration. Based on current records and observed patterns of activity, their number might only be in the thousands, possibly even fewer.
Typically, heretical groups had a large number of ordinary people forming a “lower tier of Believers,” who were powerless and led normal social lives apart from their corrupted thinking, essentially indistinguishable from ordinary people. However, Doomsday Preachers lacked such a base structure—whenever they appeared, it was always as powerful “clergymen.”
No one knew how a cult operated and sustained itself without this lower-tier support, just as no one understood the specific process of conversion among ordinary people by Sun Cultists and servants of obliteration.
Additionally, though Doomsday Preachers bore the word “preacher” in their name, it seemed they had almost no instances of successful “preaching”—their sanity had long evaporated, and their language and logic were alien to common folks. Despite always muttering some “truth” related to Subspace whenever they showed up, any person of sound mind wouldn’t listen to their trickery, and the weak-willed… would have been turned into monsters by Subspace contamination beforehand.
In other words, it was theoretically impossible for Doomsday Preachers to increase their numbers through “preaching.”
Lastly, Doomsday Preachers were extremely elusive, very much so.
Duncan had already experienced this firsthand.
Having claimed to know little about Doomsday Preachers, the goat-head nonetheless revealed substantial information.
“A group of preachers so deranged they can’t even ‘preach’ anymore…” Duncan stroked his chin, muttering thoughtfully, “So where did the original Doomsday Preachers come from?”
“Who knows?” the goat-headed figure’s neck creaked and groaned as it swayed, “Maybe it sprouted directly from subspace…”
Duncan did not pay attention to the goat-head’s clearly fabricated “subspace joke,” nor did he share his own “non-linear speculation” about the Doomsday Preachers.
He just pondered, if someone like him who had just encountered a Doomsday Preacher could come up with such speculation, what then could the long-standing guardians and bishops in the human city-states, those who continuously battled heresy, possibly know about the group of subspace believers? Did they have a more complete theory to explain the oddities of those lunatics?
“Captain, you seem to be very interested in those Doomsday Preachers?” In the silence, the voice of the goat-head suddenly broke the quiet in the room, “It’s rare to see you with such a serious expression…”
Duncan looked up and quietly glanced at the goat-head.
“What do you think, if a city-state’s history had been contaminated, could it still be saved?”
He suddenly asked this.
Calmly and casually, as if merely discussing a mundane “academic speculation” during leisure.
The goat-head was stunned (although its rigid face was originally expressionless), and it took two or three seconds before responding, “Historical contamination? Oh, that’s a high-level topic, sounds like something only subspace could pull off…”
“Only subspace could pull off such a thing?” Duncan raised an eyebrow, “Why do you say that?”
“Besides subspace, this inherently chaotic and dangerous entity where time, space, and causality are all entangled, what else could so easily pollute the history of a city-state?” the goat-head casually said, “There’s nothing in this mortal world that possesses such power… oh, not to say there isn’t one; speaking of power alone, there might be one so capable, but that thing hangs in the sky…”
Listening to the goat-head’s rambling, Duncan felt a jolt in his heart.
Subspace itself has chaotic time and causal relationships?
This was the first time he heard such clear and direct information related to subspace.
And along with this information emerging in his mind, he remembered a phrase the Frost Queen had said to him in that illusory vision—
Please do not contaminate history.
He frowned, temporarily supressing the complex thoughts in his mind, and turned his gaze back to the goat-head, which immediately noticed the captain’s stare, stopped its chatter, and quickly responded, “Ah, no wonder you suddenly took interest in those Doomsday Preachers… Could it be that they…”
“They might have stirred up a big mess,” Duncan murmured, “which makes me somewhat… restless.”
He quietly watched the eyes of the goat-head, which also looked back expressionlessly, as if observing each other, yet seemingly with no additional communication.
“The city-state has its guardians, and those Fire Transmitters watching over the course of history,” the goat-head began to speak, “no matter what those Doomsday Preachers stir up, they pose no threat to you, even if they could contaminate history, they can’t contaminate you and Homeloss…”
“Can’t contaminate me and Homeloss, you say?”
“…We returned from subspace, Captain,” the goat-head slowly said, “everything in the world can be contaminated—but subspace is an exception, and we… have already stayed in subspace long enough.”
Duncan frowned, and for some reason, the frenzied words once spoken by those Doomsday Preachers suddenly surfaced in his mind.
After a moment of silence, he couldn’t help but murmur softly, “Ark of Promise…”
(Book recommendation time! The book’s title is “Standing Below Billions of Lives,” by author Chen Laite. Actually, this book was promoted once before, but unfortunately, it was reported and went into a period of closure. Now the content has been renewed and reborn, featuring the interesting story of a mentally ill young man who refuses unpaid overtime and runs away from home in a magical world. If interested, check it out.)