Chapter 43: Chapter 43 Good morning, Mr. Duncan
Duncan put the book back and checked the other furnishings in the room, but didn’t find anything of value—the room was sparsely furnished and appeared to be seldom used. The most valuable clues were that book and the two old notebooks in the desk drawer.
The notebooks were filled with content related to steam mechanics and engineering principles, with occasional complaints about certain teachers or classmates interspersed throughout.
This made it easy to deduce that the occupant was a young person of school-going age.
Duncan slowly sifted through the fragments of memory in his mind, and after restoring everything in the room to its original state, he returned to the master bedroom.
After sitting on the edge of the bed and pondering for a while, he stood up and approached the nearby wardrobe, almost instinctively pulling open a drawer, guided by muscle memory.
A few bottles of strong liquor were quietly hidden in the back of the drawer, along with half a pack of painkillers and nerve-soothing pills left behind in this world by a heretic named “Ron.”
He had a severe illness that had deteriorated to the point of being incurable. Low-quality liquor and temporarily effective painkillers were staples in the drawer, but these trinkets obviously did nothing to prolong the life of a person afflicted with disease.
Therefore, this man, who had lost hope in life, turned to the Solar Sect. Missionaries told him that the healing power of the Sun God could solve all incurable diseases and purify the body and mind of the converted. To some extent, the believers did fulfill that promise:
They had bloody, bizarre rituals that used fresh blood as a medium to transfer the vitality of innocent people into the bodies of sick believers. Duncan didn’t know the principle behind the ritual or whether it could truly cure terminal illnesses. He only knew from remaining fragments in his memory that a heretic named “Ron” indeed improved after the ceremony and became even more devoted as a believer of the Sun, even donating a large portion of his fortune to the “Messenger.”
However, Duncan wasn’t concerned with what had happened among those dead heretics.
He reached further back into the drawer, skillfully found a hidden compartment, and after fumbling inside for a bit, he found a revolver and a box of well-kept bullets.
The Plunder City-State didn’t prohibit the possession of firearms, as long as one had the proper legal procedures. Yet an antique dealer living in the Lower City District obviously lacked the funds and status to obtain a gun permit, so this was unquestionably an illegally possessed weapon—out of caution, the original owner of this body had left the gun in the room instead of bringing it to the meeting. He probably used it to protect his store normally, but now the gun belonged to the captain.
Of course, Duncan knew that it was just a common gun, let alone comparing it with the “anomalies” aboard Homeloss; even the seemingly outdated flintlock he had on the ship might possess a special power that surpassed this revolver. But he was a practical man; he knew that his actions in the Plunder City-State were not like those on board the ship, for his current body was made of flesh and blood, and many places in this city were decidedly unsafe.
After all, he couldn’t let the pigeon “pigeon” people every time there was an incident—Ai Yi’s movements were too noticeable and could easily draw unwanted attention from the church forces in the city.
Just then, a faint noise suddenly caught Duncan’s attention.
He heard the sound of keys rubbing from the direction of the front door of the shop on the first floor, followed by the noise of the door opening and hurried footsteps.
Duncan quickly secured the revolver close to him, and only then did he notice that it was already broad daylight outside the window—he had been busy in the antique store all night, and the pigeon, Ai Yi, suddenly started peeping on his shoulder, “You have a new message!”
“Be quiet,” Duncan immediately glanced at the pigeon while briskly heading towards the doorway, speaking quickly, “You stay in the room and wait for my command. Also, do not speak if there are strangers present.”
Ai Yi immediately flapped its wings and flew toward a nearby cabinet, “Aye captain!”
Duncan promptly left the room, and just as he reached the staircase, he heard that the hurried footsteps had already climbed the steps, followed by a young and urgent girl’s voice calling out from below, “Uncle Duncan? Have you come back?”
The next second, a girl dressed in a brown long skirt and a white shirt, with dark brown long hair, entered Duncan’s line of sight.
The girl appeared to be only seventeen or eighteen, slim and petite, with her hair seemingly damp with the morning dew. Her features weren’t particularly striking but had the youthful beauty befitting her age. She widened her eyes in surprise and delight as she looked at Duncan standing at the top of the stairs on the second floor.
Duncan, however, did not respond. He just stood silently on the second floor, bathed in the sunlight streaming in from a narrow window behind the staircase, casting his figure in silhouette, hiding his expression in the haziness. He watched the girl for several seconds before finally speaking slowly, “What did you just call me?”
“Duncan… Uncle?” There was a moment of surprise on the girl’s face, followed by a slight tension. She held onto the handrail of the staircase beside her, cautiously peering up as if trying to discern the expression of the middle-aged man upstairs through the backlight, “Is something wrong? Have you… have you been drinking again? You haven’t been home for days… I noticed the light on downstairs just now…”
The girl’s expression and voice both caught Duncan’s eye and ear; she clearly did not know (or had never considered) how to hide her emotional responses.
According to the memories he had absorbed, this girl should be the “niece” of the original owner of this body, and his only relative.
Duncan vaguely realized that the girl did not think there was anything wrong with what she said, unaware that the “Duncan Uncle” she spoke of was a misnomer from the very beginning.
Where was the problem? Why would this girl, who theoretically should have no knowledge of his secret, so naturally utter the name “Duncan”?
A torrent of conjectures whirled through his mind; at the same time, Duncan found fragments of memories related to this girl—a child with deep brown hair, the last person the original owner of this body had some lingering affection for in this world.
“Nina,” Duncan’s expression did not change, his tone neutral, as the storm of thoughts in his mind did not come through, “Did you stay at school yesterday?”
“I’ve been staying at school these past few days,” the girl downstairs replied promptly, “I thought you would, as usual, stay out at least a week, so after tidying up the house, I went to stay with a classmate… Mrs. White, who manages the dormitory, agreed. I came back in a hurry today because I realized I had left a book at home… Are you okay? You feel… off…”
“I’m fine, just a bit groggy from sleep just now.”
Duncan responded with ease, then began to walk toward the first floor, harboring an extremely far-fetched hypothesis in his mind that he now had to confirm.
He passed by Nina on the stairs, the young girl on the staircase moving aside while curiously looking into Duncan’s eyes, and it was only when he was almost down to the first floor that she suddenly asked, “Uncle Duncan, will you be going out again later? Will you… be staying at home for a few more days?”
“… It depends,” Duncan did not look back, as he was still unsure whether the expression on his face was natural enough. He merely answered his “niece’s” question in the way he remembered he should, “I’ll just check the door. If there’s nothing going on, I’ll be home these next few days.”
“Ah, okay, then I’ll go shopping later. We’re running low on groceries at home…”
The girl spoke briskly, hurrying up the stairs with quick footsteps, her tone carrying a certain lightness.
Duncan had already reached the shop’s doorway. He took a deep breath and pushed open the door.
He turned around, looked up at the sign hanging above the shop’s entrance. The old, dirty sign clearly displayed the letters: Duncan’s Antiques.
The first few letters looked as old as the rest, with no signs of recent alteration, as if it had always been that way.
Duncan frowned slightly, slowly approaching the display window alongside. Leaning forward, he looked at his face reflected in the dirty glass.
It was indeed a stranger’s face, not belonging to the stern and gloomy captain of the Ghost Ship, but a middle-aged man with a scruffy beard, sunken eyes, showing signs of weariness—the face of Ron, the Heretic who had breathed his last in the sewers.
Duncan slowly straightened up, hearing the City-State gradually coming alive around him. The crisp sound of bells clinking at doors of shops opening in the morning, the sound of bicycle bells, and the voices of pedestrians filled the street. Someone walked past the antiques shop, seemingly a neighbor living next door. A greeting reached Duncan’s ears:
“Good morning, Mr. Duncan—have you seen today’s newspaper? The Deep Sea Church appears to have taken down a large Heretic hub. That’s quite the news!”