Deep Sea Embers

Duncan’s brow furrowed slightly over the thought and his current predicament.

He had made it to this side of the door and personally observed the situation. Moreover, he had scoured the entire ship without encountering anything unusual.

So, what was the entity impersonating him from this side when he was peering through the door from the bottom of the ship?

Duncan’s brow creased as he turned to survey the vacant, dimly lit cabin as if attempting to locate the imposter that had masqueraded as “Zhou Ming” here. He recalled giving the other side a sword then, but if this were truly subspace, a mere sword shouldn’t have sufficed to vanquish the foe. There should have been some residual traces.

Yet, there was none – not a single trace.

After an exhaustive search, Duncan started to question his initial assessment.

Perhaps what he had seen through the gap had been a mere illusion conjured by subspace, an illusion solely visible to him at the time, which was consistent with the notion that “subspace reflects the mind.”

Nonetheless, it didn’t explain why the illusion had left his own mind unscathed, even dissolving with ease.

Duncan gently shook his head, setting aside his perplexities for the time being, but he couldn’t help marveling at the enigma that was this weird shadowy world.

His focus shifted back to the door.

On this side, it was slightly ajar, leaning towards the door frame, while in the real dimension, at the ship’s bottom, it was outwardly open with a gap. The two were aligned perfectly, meaning he had found the portal connecting the two.

A faint smile graced Duncan’s face as he grasped the door handle.

Then, with a gentle tug, he shut the door.

Remarkably effortless – he didn’t forget how unyielding this door behaved when he had attempted to close it from the other side with Alice as company. Despite their efforts, they couldn’t budge it even slightly. Yet, on this side, all it took was a gentle pull.

With a soft click, the door sealed shut. Duncan silently gazed at the closed door, and after a few seconds, his expression briefly tensed before gradually relaxing again. His heart, however, lagged behind, suddenly pounding a half beat later.

During the brief two seconds it took to shut the door, Duncan had cleared his mind, not dwelling on the consequences of being trapped and unable to return. Instead, he only allowed himself a strong sense of the door’s danger and acted without hesitation. Once the door was completely closed, he released the suppressed emotions and took a deep breath.

This place might have indeed been an “exit” connecting to the real world, but he couldn’t actually push the door open!

Despite the lack of concrete evidence, a powerful intuition told Duncan that returning to reality wouldn’t be as simple as pushing the door open from this side. This was temptation, a trap. He had already faced a similar temptation in the real-world dimension at the ship’s bottom, but this time it was more concealed and unexpected.

Duncan gazed intently at the door and then used the sword in his hand, ablaze with otherworldly flames, to swipe across the door panel. The eerie green fire surged and almost instantly engulfed the entire door. However, after a burst of intense burning, the door remained standing, seemingly unscathed.

This caused a furrow across his face.

Confronted with something that clearly belonged to the supernatural realm, the otherworldly flames failed for the first time. However, it wasn’t because the door was too resilient because he didn’t sense any resistance from the feedback of the flames.

In fact, he couldn’t even perceive the door’s existence.

It was like the ship; the door didn’t exist!

Nonetheless, the door couldn’t be non-existent. Even if the ship genuinely “didn’t exist,” the door had to exist because it could exert such a complex influence as “enticing oneself to open the door.” This thing definitely existed here!

Duncan strove to organize his thoughts as his mind brimmed with immense confusion. He first inspected the door and the entire cabin once more but found no clues to answer his questions. As time passed, he reluctantly decided to abandon his search for now.

He couldn’t squander all his time in this peculiar place. Since the ship’s bottom “exit” harbored significant hidden danger, he needed to seek alternative escape routes.

As he pondered, an idea struck Duncan.

He immediately pivoted and made his way towards the stairs leading to the upper cabin, swiftly navigating the dark, vacant cargo hold and the crew cabins above. Finally, he traversed the shadowy wooden door connecting the upper deck to the cabin and emerged on the open deck.

The weathered, ancient ship continued to drift in the chaotic darkness reminiscent of outer space, occasionally surrounded by light and shadow turbulence. These disturbances sometimes cast enormous, terrifying shadows of broken fragments that floated by slowly, at varying distances. Some fragments resembled shattered land, others twisted creatures, and some were utterly unidentifiable, merely piles of formless, colorless “accumulations” that were horrifying to witness.

Yet, Duncan’s focus was not on these colossal floating objects. Instead, he strode across the empty deck, making a beeline for the captain’s cabin door.

The door to the captain’s cabin stood there silently, just as it had been when he left.

Duncan’s gaze shifted upward, and on the door frame, in the faint light, he could discern several familiar words—The Door of the Lost.

As he had anticipated, the unique marking on the door remained!

Collecting himself, Duncan placed his hand on the doorknob.

Of everything on this ship, this door held the most significance for him because it was this very door that first brought him to this profound and mysterious world.

Duncan applied gentle pressure to the doorknob, pushing the door inward. Accompanied by the soft sound of the door hinge turning, the “Door of the Lost” opened easily, just as he remembered. On the other side of the door lay the dense fog he knew all too well.

After a brief hesitation, Duncan stepped forward.

The sensation of passing through the thick fog engulfed him, followed by momentary weightlessness and disorientation. But soon, these feelings subsided, and Zhou Ming slowly opened his eyes.

He hadn’t returned to the single apartment he had occupied for so long. Instead, he found himself in complete darkness.

Glancing down, Zhou Ming saw his familiar human form. Then swinging around, he spotted the door he had just passed through, silently standing in the dark, still open.

As he surveyed his surroundings, he saw only boundless darkness, an absolute, pure blackness, as though everything had ceased to exist, as if the universe had been eradicated.

Zhou Ming quickly deduced the new experience: on the “ancient and decrepit Vanished,” opening the Door of the Lost did not transport him back to his familiar single apartment but led him to a strange, pitch-black space.

This extreme darkness could induce immense anxiety or even fear in most people. Zhou Ming knew this, yet for some reason, he felt no resistance standing there. On the contrary, he experienced an inexplicable sense of relaxation and relief.

He couldn’t understand why he felt such an unsettling calm, but rationally, he knew something was amiss with his state. This clash between reason and sensation made him more cautious, and he attempted to take a step forward.

Although it was pitch black here and seemingly devoid of anything, the solid ground lay beneath his feet – when he stepped, he felt it.

Zhou Ming gazed down at where he had stepped, and at that moment, he suddenly noticed ripples forming beneath his feet, as if colors other than darkness were emerging in this pitch-black place – the ripples disclosed some familiar text.

“His age?”

“About thirty-five.”

These two lines of text appeared as a question and answer.

Zhou Ming’s eyes shifted slightly, and then he tentatively took another step forward. As expected, when he stepped, new ripples surfaced from the darkness, still in Earth text and still in a question-and-answer format:

“His occupation?”

“A high school teacher, teaches language, and loves to read in his spare time.”

Zhou Ming felt his heart race. He subconsciously changed direction and took another step into the darkness.

“His height?”

“About 1.8 meters – not very muscular, but very healthy.”

Zhou Ming halted and silently watched the ripples beneath his feet expand. The gray Earth text became clearer in the ripples, then faded and dissipated as the ripples spread.

After an indeterminate amount of time, he took a deep breath and slowly, yet resolutely, stepped forward once more.

The text rippled and emerged from his footstep:

“What does he look like?”

“Like this.”

Abruptly, a light emerged in the darkness, and something seemed to manifest within the illumination. Zhou Ming saw a figure materialize before him, a figure that was his exact duplicate!

His heartbeat nearly faltered, and he reflexively stepped back. This backward movement made him recognize that the figure was actually his reflection in a mirror.

He glanced down at the fresh ripples that appeared as a result of his half-step back and saw the text materializing within them:

“What’s his name?”

“Zhou Ming.”