Ashes Of Deep Sea-Chapter 351 - 355 Disturbance in the Depths of the
Chapter 351: Chapter 355: Disturbance in the Depths of the Abandoned Waterway
Chapter 351 -355: Disturbance in the Depths of the Abandoned Waterway
Accompanied by that old yet resonant voice, Duncan heard a clinking and clanking noise from the cabin, as if someone had hastily risen and bumped into some clutter. Then came footsteps approaching, and a hunched figure with sparse white hair, wearing a dust-coated coat, and a deeply wrinkled face, appeared near the door.
The man known as “Old Ghost” stood in his warden’s hut, bent over, his murky gaze sweeping the outside. It wasn’t clear whether he actually saw the figures standing at the door before he hurriedly lowered his head and mumbled, “The Queen is here for inspection… I haven’t even prepared… The assistants are becoming less and less reliable, and those messengers too…”
“Old Ghost!” Nemo had to interrupt the old man’s ramblings with a loud shout, “The Queen isn’t here! The Queen isn’t coming back! There are guests today—a distinguished guest arranged by Captain Tyrian, so stop mumbling. They are here to see you.”
While speaking, Nemo turned to Duncan with an apologetic expression on his face, “Sorry—as you see, he’s a bit neurotic and often suddenly recalls things from decades ago. But don’t be fooled; whenever it comes to pipes and valves, he instantly becomes lucid.”
“Lucid? I’m lucid right now!” While they were talking, “Old Ghost” suddenly shifted his eyes, as if he had come to a realization. He looked at Duncan and the others, muttering under his breath, “Guests, to think that unfamiliar faces could enter here… Did you check for tokens, and the passphrase?”
“Checked, of course, everything has been checked,” Nemo swiftly replied, carefully glancing at Duncan, “These are all distinguished guests; just pretend…just pretend Captain Tyrian is here in person.”
“Oh, then come in, although there isn’t much to see here,” the Old Ghost muttered, making way to one side, “Just some antiquated trinkets, if you don’t mind.”
Fenna turned her head towards Morris, whose gaze remained fixed on the “Old Ghost.”
A moment later, Morris shook his head, his voice low, “It’s hard to judge—his mental state isn’t stable, and his memory is intermittent.”
Duncan heard Morris’s quiet report and maintained his expression, merely following behind the rambling old man as he stepped into the rest room of this derelict warden’s cabin.
The rest room was not large, lit brightly by a gas lamp. Just as expected, it was filled with various items. Besides the bed in the corner, one could see shelves nearly bent out of shape and boxes on the ground, stuffed full with all sorts of mechanical parts, spare valve kits, and work tools.
Even a skilled acrobat coming here would end up disabled leaving.
“Such a mess,” Alice couldn’t help but whisper under her breath as she looked at the chaotic scene in the room, “I really want to clean up…”
“Ah, a thousand apologies!” the Old Ghost, who had been moving around a pile of clutter, immediately turned around and bowed, “Your Majesty, I’ve neglected management recently, and this place is a bit chaotic…”
Alice was taken aback, “Ah?”
Duncan’s eyes also shifted slightly, but as he looked at the Old Ghost, about to say something, the old man suddenly seemed befuddled again, standing up while muttering to himself, “Strange, where did I put my water jug… How can guests arrive without even having water to drink…”
Duncan and the others exchanged glances.
“No need to look for your water jug, the guests just want to ask you about the situation,” Nemo spoke up, “about the current state of the second waterway, as well as your own condition. They’re here to investigate.”
“Investigation?” the Old Ghost immediately stopped, turning around with a particularly serious expression, “Does General Tyrian still need to investigate his own troops? Has there been a traitor? Is it in our district or the central city area? I did feel that they’ve been acting oddly recently…”
“No traitors, but there may be infiltrators under threat from some kind of Transcendent contamination,” Fenna stepped forward, nearly tripping over the clutter on the ground—this chaotic little cabin was quite a challenge for her height of one meter ninety, “Have you been in contact with people from other districts recently? Has anyone behaved abnormally?”
“Abnormal? It hasn’t gone that far, but the liaison from the central city area recently keeps saying there are gurgling noises in their abandoned pipelines, as if someone wants to activate the second waterway,” the Old Ghost waved his hand dismissively, “As for the condition of the second waterway, as you’ve seen, the things built during the Queen’s time are sturdy, but after being abandoned for so many years, there are many areas beneath that are inaccessible, and sometimes the underground river seeps into the rock crevices, bringing some strange noises, which is quite normal…”
The old man’s words would occasionally become sidetracked, and Duncan had no choice but to forcefully bring the conversation back on track, “The Central City District you spoke of… Is that the area where the Boiling Gold Mine is located?”
“Boiling Gold? Ah, yes, Boiling Gold, it’s all there—the cathedral is there, the Queen’s Palace is there, the mine is there, and that mine is incredibly deep, hundreds of meters deep,” the old soldier sat down on his bed, speaking and then suddenly slapped his leg, “Ah, that’s right, it must be noises coming from a level in the mine, the second aqueduct is quite close to it… I was saying, the liaison there is too on edge, babbling on and on…”
The old man began to mumble to himself again, but this time Duncan didn’t interrupt him—he had sunk into thought.
He recalled his initial arrival in Frost, remembered the first body he used here—an worker who had accidentally fallen to his death in the Boiling Gold Mine, falling to the very bottom level, only for the searchers to bring up a counterfeit made of “Prime Element.”
Now, the old soldier was mentioning a “liaison” hidden in the Central City District had heard strange noises coming from the pipes of the second aqueduct, sounds that seemed like something was surging inside—the second aqueduct of the Central City District was very close to a certain level of the Boiling Gold Mine.
Considering that both were relics from the Queen’s era half a century ago, Duncan even suspected that their relationship wasn’t simply “very close.”
Perhaps those pipes were interconnected!
He quickly noted down this clue, then asked, “Is there a way to go directly from here to the underground of the Central City District? How do you normally meet with the liaison?”
“From here? That won’t work, there’s a completely dark path in between that’s been contaminated, and the other paths have collapsed. You have to go overground, but now the overground is crawling with rebel minions, you have to be very careful…” The old soldier rambled on, but then he suddenly screamed out, “Queen’s Guard! The rebels are here, blow up the shaft!”
The old man suddenly stood up from the bed, looking around anxiously as if the rebels would attack this place in the next second, but then he stopped, his gaze falling on Alice.
“Oh, I’ve made a mistake, the Queen is safe and sound…”
Alice was immediately a bit flustered and hurriedly waved her hands, “I… I’m not the Queen…”
Duncan looked gravely at the old man who was standing next to the bed, but the latter seemed disoriented, only after a few seconds did he look at Alice with a somewhat vacant expression, “Miss, who are you?”
“The old ghost has really gone senile—not just because of the drug smoke from back in the days, it’s your eyesight that’s failing, too!” Just then, Nemo’s voice abruptly rang out, interrupting this bizarre moment. The informer Mr. Nemo nodded apologetically at Duncan, “I’m sorry. Although the old ghost tends to ramble, he seems particularly worse today. He might just be too excited having seen outsiders for the first time in a while, and it’s made him jumble up old memories.”
“…It’s okay.” Duncan said indifferently, his gaze slowly retracting from the old man.
He wasn’t particularly concerned whether the old man had really seen a trace of the Frost Queen in Alice disguised beneath her façade—Was it a brief moment of lucidity in his muddled mind? Had he seen through the disguise? Or was it just a simple memory confusion? None of these mattered.
If this crazed old man had truly caught a glimpse of the Frost Queen’s phantom in Alice, and it brought him a moment’s peace, then that was a good thing.
And just then, as if suddenly remembering something, Nemo frowned, “Strange, why hasn’t Crow returned by now?”
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“Crow? He went to check the northern corridor,” the old soldier waved his hand casually, “That guy is a slowpoke, he’s never returned without wandering around for a long time first.”
But Nemo’s furrowed brows did not relax at all, “…That’s not right, even if he dawdles, he should have returned by now. The lights there are often faulty, his lantern couldn’t last this long… Old ghost, when did he leave?”
“Two or three hours?” The old soldier thought for a moment and seemed to become more serious, “Now that you mention it, it does seem he has been away for quite some time.”
“I’ve got a bad feeling, Crow has been in the waterways for too long,” Nemo said with a newly serious tone, and looked up at Duncan and the others, “I need to go look for him.”
