Deep Sea Embers.

Chapter 812 The End of the Sandstorm
History books say that the "mad poet" Pullman, who lived hundreds of years ago, was a man who touched upon a forbidden truth and luckily survived. Legends also record that this mad poet often fell into dreams, and said that he had traveled through time and space in his dreams and visited all kinds of bizarre areas.

This mad poet has left behind countless chapters that have amazed future generations. He was a man of great literary talent. Even in the early days of his career, those elegant and profound poems conquered even the most demanding critics in the city-state. However, at the end of his short life, the poems he left behind began to gradually change - the words increasingly described strange and bizarre things, and were filled with disturbing metaphors and the madman's almost prophetic nonsense. He kept chattering about wanting to tell the world something that did not exist in the real world and was even close to blasphemy, and thus became a madman who was regretted and feared.

Those who once admired him left him, those who once praised him gradually viewed him as a dangerous element, and church administrators tried to contact him but could not find any substantial, polluting, or blasphemous information in the writings he left behind.

The final fate of this talented but insane poet is another mystery in the eyes of the world - people say that he was imprisoned by the church and finally died quietly in a mental hospital on an isolated island. Some people swear that he has survived and even lived until a certain winter in 1842. These people insist that they saw the poet in that year: he was standing on the famous sea cliff of Frost, exactly the same as the portrait left in the book, with paper and pen in his hand to record poems.

A "caretaker" who claimed to have taken care of Pullman in the last few years of the "mad poet's" life and witnessed the poor man's final end wrote in his autobiography:
Pullman eventually lost himself in his bizarre dreams - the poet traveled in each of his dreams, and drew experience from his dreams to transform them into his gorgeous and strange poems. He finally sank into a dream so far away that he did not want to wake up. On a sunny morning, the poet disappeared in his bed, leaving only a short poem on the bedside table.

Vanna walked forward to the place where the crazy man last disappeared, bent down and picked up the crumpled paper roll and pencil head before they were blown away by the wind.

She frowned, looking a little confused, and then she opened the paper and looked at the sentence written on it in a daze -

"...I saw that the sun had retreated, and in the night, everything fell into silence...The ship came from the sky, and the stars were like a curtain, granting the world an eternal sleep...In silence, in stillness, in sleep, fall asleep, the dead embrace the dead world..."

Sand was blowing in the wind, and pieces of paper were rustling. Suddenly, Vanna heard a voice next to her ear. It was the voice of the crazy man who had just disappeared. However, only the voice came, and his figure was not visible around: "Look, look, do you see it? The scene I saw... is so beautiful, the curtain rises from the end of the sea, reflecting the whole world..."

Fanna looked in the direction where the sound came from. There was only swirling dust there, being carried around in circles by the disorderly wind. Her brows were tightly furrowed, and her voice was slightly hoarse: "Are you trapped here too?"

The voice ignored her question and just kept mumbling to itself, saying something unclear. After a while, his voice became clear again.

"I have been chased, they chased me like a vicious dog that smelled blood... I fell into all kinds of places, and in every dream, there was always a crack for me to hide. Hey, I was finally tired, and it didn't matter if they caught up with me... So I was bitten by the vicious dog called truth, and then I saw things far away, and then I came here..."

Fanna frowned as she listened to the other person's seemingly crazy mumbling. She realized that communicating with him seemed to be a bit difficult, but she couldn't help but ask again: "Do you know how to leave here?"

"No, no, no, you can't leave, my friend..." the voice said immediately, but then it started to speak incoherently, "...I'm in the basement. Those people in robes said this is a safe place. The iron cage can lock up my spirit and prevent it from escaping from my body in my dreams. The brazier can scare away the shadows that gather around me because of the smell, so that I won't be eaten clean by something while I sleep..."

A series of vague noises were mixed in the wind and sand. The voice was blurred for a few seconds, and suddenly became clear again: "...Hey, you know, you know, many years later...I was already dead at that time, and many years later, a girl was also locked in a similar cage, but the technology was much more mature at that time, and she walked out of the basement alive...

"Oh, poor girl, I saw her crowned, and I saw her head chopped off by those who crowned her... I am hesitating whether to write this incident into my poem... No, no, still no, the robed man asked me not to write the things I saw in my dreams into poems, they said that this would make me establish more and more connections with things outside the real dimension, which is not good... There is not much I can write, I have to save these precious sentences for more important things...

"Listen! Someone is knocking on the bars and there's the jingling of keys... Jingle, jingle, jingle... The guards are here, they have to make sure I'm still in the cage..."

Just at this moment, the wind and sand blew up, and Fanna heard the familiar "ding ding ding" sound again.

And the crazy voice was still mumbling to itself: "But am I there? They will see me lying quietly in the bed, but I am not there, not in that skin, I am here, in this place full of ashes... What are you doing here?
"You should go, you don't belong here, your road is still ahead... Give me my poems, and my pencil, they are mine, they should not be held in the hands of others... They will drag you deeper..."

Fanna subconsciously let go of the paper and pen in her hands, but saw that they turned into yellow sand in the wind in the blink of an eye, swirling and disappearing into the air.

"Which way should I go?" She asked the voice in confusion, "I can't remember where I came from, and I don't know where to go... How can I leave this city?"

“Where? Nowhere,” the voice said. It seemed to be moving away quickly. The voice became increasingly blurred and fainter. “This place is infinite… He locked himself in a closed dream. I just saw that outside the city is the desert, and outside the desert is the city. I can’t walk out. The further I walk out, the more I sink… But I should go, I should go. Ahaha, I wake up again…”

The voice finally disappeared completely, disappearing in the increasingly chaotic wind and sand.

Vanna stood there in a daze. In the vast night, countless lights illuminated this forgotten and abandoned city. Her figure seemed to gradually merge with the lights. In the light, she saw the shadows of carriages and horses vaguely emerging on the broken road, and bright shop windows appeared on the collapsed buildings. The sound of music came from afar, gradually covering the sound of the whistling cold wind - and the stinging pain from the small wounds on her arms was turning into a gentle touch.

She slowly closed her eyes, as if she was about to fall asleep in this prosperous and warm world.

But the next second, her eyes suddenly opened again.

Invisibly, it was as if something was broken, and her will suddenly woke up in this slow but irresistible sinking. The phantoms that emerged in the lights disappeared, and then she felt the biting cold wind in the desert at night blowing across her cheeks, and bursts of sharp pain came from the countless tiny wounds on her arms.

But she smiled - pain is a good thing, pain is real.

She didn't belong here. Even though she couldn't remember her name or where she came from, she knew she had to remember one thing: she didn't belong here.

Only in this way can you avoid being "dissolved" here.

And in this moment of clarity, Vanna also realized another thing: she must find her own "anchor point".

She had to figure out who she was and where she came from as soon as possible.

She seemed to have gradually recalled some things and understood the nature of this endless desert. She realized that she seemed to be trapped in a strange world dominated by "forgetfulness", and the only way to leave here was to fight against "forgetfulness".

She no longer walked blindly "outside the city". After knowing the "infinity" of this city, she realized that simply breaking out would not really leave here. There must be other ways to leave here.

She stopped at the crossroads where the lights were illusory, and let the wind and sand erode her body. She let her mind gradually calm down, and used thinking and perception to try to find a way out.

She remembered the information she had seen and heard in the wind and sand - the texts, conversations, and relics that seemed to correspond to various "times" and "events". Those things seemed to be various "anchor points" in this forgotten desert.

She should also have her own anchor, something to prove that she once existed somewhere, existed in someone's memory, existed... in the world.

She half closed her eyes, and after an unknown amount of time, a slight throbbing finally emerged in her heart.

In this endless desert, she finally found a ripple related to herself——

Vanna suddenly opened her eyes and saw a piece of torn paper flying past her.

She grabbed it suddenly and read the words on the paper:

"…The Border Exploration Fleet is once again carrying out a 'cross-border' operation. The Lost Homeland and the Brilliant Star have crossed the six-mile boundary… heading to the end of the world to search…"

At the same time, she heard a familiar voice talking in her ear again. The voice was intermittent, as if it was a vague moment in history.

"…Any special news?"

"…A briefing from the Deep Sea Church…"

"They will be fine. Don't worry so much, Heidi..."

"Because of that powerful captain?"

"Because your father..."

"Father, and Vanna, they are doing a great thing..."

Vanna suddenly opened her eyes wide, as if her heart had learned to beat again. In her sudden awakening as if she were reborn, she remembered her name, and -

"Lost Hometown...Captain?"

She looked at the paper in her hand and muttered to herself.

Then, a wisp of green flame appeared at the edge of her vision, and a familiar and majestic voice appeared behind her almost immediately:
"I'm here."

(End of this chapter)