I was therefore curious to the southern pier, and by chance, a fleet of black galleons was quietly anchored in the calm waters. I have to say, Evans missed one thing that didn't remind me, and that was that these sailboats still had an unprecedented stench. When the south wind blows from the sea, it brings the smell of these sailboats to the harbor, and the smell of the south wind is so disgusting that it is impossible to describe in words.

Almost immediately, I picked up the Turtle Breath and quickly moved away from the bay. I booked a room in a hotel in the city, had a good meal, and then went to a seaman's bar in an unobtrusive way, hoping to get some useful information.

Frankly, it was very difficult to get to the caravans and sailors in Dilas Lin's pub – especially since I was obviously too young. The few sailors sitting on the edge of the bar noticed me and made rude jokes, even mockery, many of which I did not understand, and for this reason I did not expect any meaningful answer from a polite inquiry.

Luckily, my keen sense allowed me to eavesdrop on a lot of news. Most of them were more inclined to talk about the black galleys, but the whispers were not hidden in my mind. No one had ever seen the merchants come out of the black galleons to buy food—any other fleet would be replenished when they docked—and they had only taken the gold and the puddy black slaves from Pag they had bought.

In fact, if anyone could get the rubies from the black galleys from somewhere else, Dilas-Lynn would never tolerate these unclean black galleys landing on the docks, and the seamen's bars would not welcome these strangely behaved merchants, but no one knew what kind of ore could be mined in the Dream Land of the Earth to produce such magnificent gems.

In another bar, I met the feared merchants, all with unusually wide mouths, and the way they wrapped their headscarves, which strangely protruded two small packets on their foreheads. The shoes they wore were the shortest, strangest they had ever seen—like the foot-wraps of the old society, but their bodies were strong and powerful, and they walked as if they had been artificially mutilated with their feet.

That's all I had that night. I went back to my hotel and went to bed, then woke up in my real-world dorm room, and that was it on October 26th. Ichibantong and I first went to the research institute to do the necessary inspection and research work, and then we went crazy with Mikoto Misaka and Saki Nishio, who came later, and [DATA EXPUNGED] really didn't care about secrecy, so the matter of collecting information in the dream world was delayed until the 27th.

When I came to a seaman's pub again, I secretly heard that the merchants who had come on black sailboats had left. It's a good thing, at least I can safely visit the Dilas-Lynn's large and small, exotic marinas. I stayed in the city for four more days, and was delighted to find that the explorers and bards who had traveled far and wide were more willing to treat me with a friendly attitude than the rude sailors.

I tried to inquire about three things: Randolph Carter's glorious city of marble walls and silver fountains in the setting sun, but I didn't get any information about them, and I was disappointed to find that most of the people here dismissed it as a country fantat, at most referring to the uncommon blue-purple plants.

However, I did hear a couple of pretty good stories about the third thing, Inkanok or the cold plains near Central Asia. Legend has it that a very old squint-eyed merchant traveled to the cold, inhospitable plateau to trade with horrible stone villages in the middle of the barren snow and ice - a place that no normal human would want to visit.

It is said that at night, one can still see evil fires radiating from the plateau in the distance - legend has it that there were once daring adventurers who touched that side at night and lost their minds in exchange for descriptions such as "red fire and indistinct tambourine sounds", but no one knew the truth of these information, and no one dared to verify them.

The last story involves the squint-eyed businessman. He is also rumored to have been associated with an indescribable high priest - a priest with a yellow silk mask covering his face, who lived alone in a very, very old stone monastery, and some say that he had seen some kind of winged creature that appeared to be a hybrid pass over the monastery.

These intriguing tales may well imply some key information, but unfortunately they do not mention the exact location of the cold plains or give directions to get there. While the plateau is theoretically located in the northern part of the world, and it is possible to reach the cold plains by sailing all the way north, there is no doubt that no captain in this southern port city would be willing to carry a passenger there—and certainly I would not venture out to explore the passages that connect the worlds of waking and dreaming.

In addition to this, other messages from the bard also caught my attention. They mention a city called Selephais, located in the valley of Os Nalgai, located behind the hills of Tanalia. The glittering towers of light in the city, the graceful galleys anchored in the blue waves, the elegant bronze statues on the marble city walls, and the ginkgo trees swaying in the sea breeze on the Ajan Mountain are sung by the poets' subdued voices.

What surprised me even more was that there was no concept of time in Oss Nalgai, where people were immortal and youthful—as the owner of the unexplained ability of "time shifting", this strange phenomenon gave me a faint anticipation of the city, where I might find some special opportunity or explore the mysteries of time.

So, in the early morning of the next morning, corresponding to the actual 1st of November, when the tide turned, I boarded a three-masted galleon bound for Selephais and set sail away from Dilas Lynn. In the cool sea breeze, the first rays of morning light pierced through the mist and shone on the sparse and strange towers, and the gloomy basalt city looked like an ancient beast on the verge of awakening.

Even though the ship may have some mysterious power that I am not aware of, at least in terms of comfort – especially in terms of entertainment – it is far from being comparable to a real-life luxury cruise ship. With nothing else to do, I made good use of my free time on the ship, compiling my notes and other notes, and occasionally going out to the deck to see the scenery when the wind was nice. Occasionally, I would have a short chat with the captain and hear him talk about things like the mysterious sculptures in the Engranik Mountains, and how he sold and bought to make money from one coastal city to another.

Over the next two days, the elegant, sturdy and reliable sailing ship continued to sail east. Steep rock walls plunge vertically into deep water, topped by lush vegetation, and in those gentler places, historic fishing villages are often seen, with red brick roofs and chimneys towering over the old piers that only appear in dreams, like some kind of gastropod shellfish clinging to the shore.

But on the third day, the sailboat suddenly made a sharp turn and headed southeast. The currents in this direction are much sharper, and the land quickly disappears from our view.

"There are a lot of reefs in the shallow waters of this area, and what's worse is that the undercurrents are so strong that we have to avoid them at any time. When I asked the captain about this, he told me, and then, as if he had considered it for a moment, before he continued, "Although if you go south, you will pass a sunken city...... It is said that there are certain 'living shadows'...... It's all just rumors, and there are clichés that some ships are missing. ”

As he spoke, he pulled out an old notepad from his pocket, the yellowed one, and pulled out a piece of film from inside. With my insightful eye for yin and yang, I could faintly distinguish the stone walls and broken pillars of algae in the blurry picture, as well as the dome of a huge building.

That night, after finishing my notes and shellfish specimens from yesterday's fishing, I lay on my bed in the cabin, dazed and ready to sleep. Suddenly, I saw the blue-golden sky and the three suns, the magical land where everything had three shadows......! I seemed to be floating in the air, with nothing under my feet to draw on, and turning naturally became a problem.

Still, after a brief moment of distraction, I tried to turn my neck and move my gaze to the other side—the familiar and unfamiliar being, with three burning eyes, its indescribable body as if it had melted into darkness against the backdrop of a huge black triangle that almost took over half of the sky, and at its core was a twisted abyss that even darkness would swallow up.

Time seems to have stopped flowing forever...... I felt terrified, but the nerve impulses that had stalled due to the stillness of time did not give me any chance to act, and in fact I had almost no chance to think. I seemed to be falling towards the empty and dark abyss, and I didn't seem to move at all...... Reference...... My stubborn intellect whispered, but the only remaining whispers (I think it's a little strange to write this, shouldn't dreams and reason be mutually repulsive) faded into the endless abyss.

I don't know how long it took, but a violent shaking woke me up from my nightmare. I barely opened my hazy eyes, and the first thing I saw seemed to be a dimly lit cabin, blurry, and the second was a dormitory slightly illuminated by the morning light. I woke up.

On the night of November 4th, I almost couldn't wait to enter the dream world and woke up in the cabin. There was a commotion outside, and I walked out to find that the sun had passed its highest point and was beginning to set in the west. The captain standing on deck spotted me keenly, and came over and patted me on the shoulder, then stroked his beard.

"Did you sleep well? Nothing, right?"

I replied in the affirmative, saying that there was nothing wrong with my body, but that my addiction to books and naturalism had disrupted my routine. So the captain told me to follow him to the guardrail.

"It's strange that the city is completely gone, and it's still there the last time I passed through here. ”

I leaned against the railing and looked down, and the water was exceptionally clear in the sunlight – even chillingly. I could see the bottom of the sea, which was said to be tens of meters deep, covered with white and fine sand, and the surface formed by the sand was almost completely flat, and there was no sign of any animals.

The conversation with the captain yesterday is still in my ears, and the pictures on the film are involuntarily in my mind. There were no stone walls, no columns, no lost monumental temples, and even the wide avenues in front of the temples and the hills that rose from the seabed were gone. Only the clean, monochromatic sand reveals their presence in an eerily calm way.