The base of the "model" is growing.
As Zhou Ming-Duncan's thinking spreads, the structure representing the underground world of Puland City-State is emerging in his mind little by little, and these parts that appear in his cognition are now transformed into this "collection" corresponding new part.
It was a rough, rocky disc-like thing that grew out at a speed visible to the naked eye, and covered the entire underground part of the city-state of Pland, and then began to gradually extend, showing more bizarre details - thousands of Years of sedimentary layers, growths like tiny spikes, and... weird protrusions that wind between the sedimentary layers.
It feels like the rough skin of some kind of echinoderm, or the ugly outer layer left behind by rocks etched in strong acid.
Eventually, this growth process stops.
The bottom of the "model" representing the city-state of Purander now has a disk-like base.
However, Zhou Ming frowned.
He could feel... his consciousness spreading in the city-state of Pulande had not stopped, but continued to extend "below"!
In the darkness, in the coldness, in the transcendent perception beyond the ordinary five senses and six consciousnesses, he felt that his spirit continued to penetrate and flow downward like mercury sinking into the soil. He clearly felt that his " "My eyes" passed over the thick cement, soil and rocks, past some kind of extremely dense "shell" that was neither gold nor stone, and sank into the cold sea water, and then continued downward, continued downward!
In just the blink of an eye, he felt that he had sunk into a dark deep sea, crossed the 850-meter-thick base, and quickly extended along some invisible but existing "pathway"!
And how much does it extend after that? One hundred meters? Two hundred meters?
Zhou Ming couldn't be sure. He only knew that his perception was still spreading downwards. It was obvious that he had left the scope of the Puland city-state. It was obvious that there were no new structures in the "collection" in his hands, but his thinking was still there. Flowing along some invisible "medium"!
His first reaction was of course nervousness, and he subconsciously wanted to control the tendency of his mind to "fall" toward the deep sea, but before he had time to react, this constant "fall" suddenly stopped.
As if he suddenly hit some invisible "limit" or reached the end of the "medium", his perception finally stayed in the deep water at a certain depth below the city-state, and stabilized at this position.
Zhou Ming felt his heart pounding. It was a sudden fall, but he was suddenly caught by the rope in the middle of the fall. It took him nearly half a minute to calm down and control his breathing and heartbeat.
After regaining his composure, he slowly held up the Plande model in front of him and observed the thick layer of "rock disk" spreading out from under its base.
The structure is rough and ugly, but overall it is quite regular. At the bottom is a rugged fracture surface, which gives people the feeling... as if it was broken off somewhere, or "generated from top to bottom" ” was disturbed during the process, resulting in an ugly break.
The internal structure of this disk is completely chaotic, difficult to sense and difficult to pry into.
But Zhou Ming's attention was not on the disc base, but on the midair below the base.
A part of his extended "consciousness" is now hovering at that location.
Zhou Ming closed his eyes slightly.
The next second, the perception from afar was instantly strengthened.
He felt like he was in a dark, cold deep sea, with immeasurable seawater surrounding him layer by layer. This sense of oppression was so real that even his consciousness seemed to be suppressed and restrained in some way. He tried to When you open your "eyes" in this darkness, you can only see endless nothingness.
But gradually, some tiny glimmers of light seemed to appear in the void.
Is that some kind of plankton in the deep sea? Some kind of school of glowing fish? Or something else?
Zhou Ming struggled to identify it for a long time before he realized... that was the bottom of Pulande.
He was "looking up" at Plande, and saw the bottom of the rough disk base. In the extreme darkness, the base had some small luminous structures.
But I couldn't see what it was at all... The information that could be conveyed by pure conscious perception, separated by such a long distance and thick sea water, was too vague.
Then Zhou Ming slowly adapted and tried to direct his attention in another direction: deeper under the sea.
He only felt an endless emptiness and endless darkness.
There seems to be nothing in the deep sea.
But after a while, he suddenly felt something vaguely.
Something extremely huge and lifeless, perhaps even as huge as Plande, was sleeping in that boundless darkness.
Zhou Ming couldn't see it or hear it. The extreme darkness and silence hid all the details of that huge existence. However, he could be sure that something existed there, dormant in deathly silence, as if it had existed since ancient times.
After an unknown amount of time, Zhou Ming returned without success.
In the end, he failed to "see" what was in the deep sea directly below Plande.
But he was vaguely aware of one thing -
That huge structure hidden directly under the city-state is probably the reason why Frost Queen Leigh Nora insisted on advancing the Abyss Plan half a century ago!
There are them under Hanshuang, there are them under Purande, they are under other city-states... I'm afraid there are them too!
Zhou Ming breathed a sigh of relief, stood up, picked up Pulande's city-state model, and slowly came to the shelf at the end of the room.
Now this model has an extra "base", but it can still fit into the storage compartment on the shelf - as if there was enough space reserved for the model and the compartment from the beginning.
But before putting the model in, Zhou Ming's eyes fell under the base again, and he couldn't help but have a trace of doubt in his heart.
His consciousness can spread in the city-state, but in the deep sea, his consciousness obviously exceeds the physical boundaries of the city-state model... Its bottom structure stopped abruptly after 850 meters, but after that his consciousness continued again It extended downward for one or two hundred meters... How did it extend for the next one or two hundred meters? What is the invisible medium?
Zhou Ming slowly put the model back into the shelf.
…
The sun rose into the sky again as usual.
In the small open space in front of the antique shop in the lower town of Prand, Duncan watched Nina ride her bicycle happily in a circle, then rode back and forth on the street, and finally stopped steadily in front of him.
"Uncle! I'm already very skilled!"
Nina put one foot on the ground, with an expression of excitement and pride on her face.
A smile appeared on Duncan's face: "Yes, I am indeed quite skilled in riding - but your car stopped on my foot."
Nina quickly looked down and moved the wheel away in a panic: "Ah! I'm sorry!"
"It's okay." Duncan smiled and waved his hand, then breathed a sigh of relief and looked up at the street in the sun.
Everything in the city-state remains as before.
Under the sunlit streets, the deep darkness and huge shadows seemed to be from another world, and did not affect people's daily lives at all.
But ever since he completed his exploration of "below" Pland, he could not help but think of the cold, dark deep sea and the huge structures he sensed in the deep sea.
This made him distracted all the time.
He even couldn't help but wonder, was the Frost Queen half a century ago like this? Had she also glimpsed the secrets in the deep sea in some way...even more than she could?
"Uncle, are you distracted again?"
Nina's voice suddenly came from the side, interrupting Duncan's random thoughts.
"Are you okay? You've been distracted since morning."
"I'm fine," Duncan quickly waved his hand, then looked up at the end of the street, as if to change the subject, "But then again, Alice hasn't come back yet."
"She just left not long ago," Nina said casually, "And you don't have to worry so much, right? You just went to buy a newspaper, and you didn't have to travel halfway across the city. You shouldn't be able to lose it, right?"
"I'm really not sure," Duncan sighed. "This is the first time she's really going out alone - even though it's just to the newsstand at the corner of the street."
"I think it's okay," Nina thought for a while and said with certainty, "I rehearsed with her many times before setting off, including how to explain to people what I wanted to buy, how to give change, and how to say thank you when I took the things. ...She learned it all."
"Well, I hope," Duncan sighed, "mainly because she got beaten up with a pan every time she went to the galley to get a plate at the beginning of the ship."
Nina was stunned: "I don't think these two things can be generalized..."
As he spoke, Alice's figure appeared in the sight of the uncle and nephew.
Miss Doll was holding a newspaper in her arms, with a bright smile on her face. She was trotting towards this side with her neck straightened out, shouting as she ran: "Mr. Duncan! I bought the newspaper!"
Nina laughed: "Look, I just said Miss Alice must be fine!"
Duncan was shocked when he saw Alice running towards her. He rushed up to meet her and reminded loudly: "Don't run! Slow down!"
He said what he was afraid of, and while he was talking like that, he watched Alice fall down less than five meters away from his eyes, and fell to the ground.
However, the next second, the doll climbed up like a normal person, patted its skirt, picked up the newspaper that fell on the ground, and came to Duncan with a smile: "Newspaper!"
Duncan did not take the newspaper immediately, but looked at the doll lady with her head still in disbelief. After a while, he muttered: "...After falling like this, why didn't the head fall off?"
Alice continued to maintain her confident posture with her neck straightened out, with a bright smile on her face: "I found a good way to reinforce it!"
Duncan looked at the doll suspiciously: "A good idea?"
Alice: "I put glue on it!"
Duncan: "...?!"
After being stunned for two or three seconds, he couldn't help but ask: "Who taught you this?"
"Shirley!"
(Due to the day of silence, tomorrow’s update has been moved to today.)
(End of chapter)
