Kiki was surprised, she didn't understand how she could see this, and she didn't know what this place was. Lots of question marks surrounded her, making her feel lost again.

"Who are you? Why are you here? ”

Suddenly, someone behind her asked a question, and Kiki came back to her senses and turned her head to look. If you don't look at it, you will be a little startled, and the person who comes is an old man with white hair and long beard. The old man was a small man, a dwarf among mermaids, so almost all of his body except his face was obscured by a long beard.

"Hmmm! Hello grandpa, my name is Kiki. I'm a little confused right now, and I can't remember how I got here. Where is this? ”

Although the old dwarf looked a little old, his eyes were bright and seemed to be very energetic. He was in no hurry to speak, and after a few seconds of silence he stopped thinking:

"You don't belong in this place, you have to go back."

"Who are you and what is this place? How do I find my way back? ”

"I'm old and I can't remember my name, but it doesn't matter."

The old man spoke very slowly, and perhaps recalled the pronunciation of each word when he said something: "It is not easy to describe what this place is, you can temporarily call it the gap between another dimensional space." ”

"What......" Kiki couldn't understand, she suspected that the old man was paranoid.

"What, you don't believe me? Think I'm paranoid? The old man suddenly asked, "Do you think you saw and heard anything just now?" ”

Kiki was taken aback, she was very human, and she could sense what she was thinking. An indescribable feeling welled up in her heart, and she didn't know what to say for a moment. But she sensed a hint in the old man's eyes, and following it, she looked back again at the site where the Nautilus Fortress had been built.

Oh my God, there is no construction site, it is a dark mountain crack, and there are so many singing mermaids and sailors gone, only a dead ruin. Not to mention that there is a fortress under construction, everything is a void.

How could this be, Kiki's mind went blank. She rubbed her eyes, but couldn't say a word. When she looked around again, all but the sea, which was still deep, had turned into a dull silence, and she felt no trace of life.

"I'm sorry grandpa, I was so rude just now." Kiki was at a loss: "Maybe I'm doing paranoia myself." Misperceive the world. ”

"Kid, I understand, you want to go home." The old man's tightly knit eyebrows stretched: "A person dares to admit that he has paranoia, and usually this person is still saved. Don't be discouraged, you'll be back soon. ”

"Excuse me, grandpa, what's going on?" Kiki asked again.

"Don't worry, come with me, we'll talk as we go." The old man turned and began to swim, heading towards the dark ruins at the foot of the peak. Seeing Kiki following him, he continued:

"I know what you have in mind about the Nautilus, but I actually built the Nautilus Fortress."

"However, I heard that the people who built the Nautilus Fortress have ......"

"Yes, I've been dead for years, but it's the flesh that dies. The body has been dead for hundreds of years, and I have to admit that it can scare a lot of people. ”

Kiki felt a chill in her heart, could it be that she was also dead?

"Don't worry kid, you're not dead, you can go back as long as the time comes. Maybe you're wondering what I am? In the world's parlance, I call them ghosts or the undead, right? ”

"If so, then what am I?"

"What are you? I don't know how to describe it. The old man smiled lightly, still speaking slowly: "I'll describe what I am first, and then help you understand what you are, maybe you'll understand." ”

The two of them still swam on the quiet bottom of the sea, swimming towards the dark ruins that made people feel a little strange about the magnetic field. There was always a feeling of a yin wind blowing that made Kiki's body tremble.

"Everything in the world is bathed in a magnetic field, and everything has its own magnetic field. The secret of the magnetic field is a very complex science, and the magnetic field has many functions. Little girl, I ask you, can you write? ”

"Absolutely."

"Well, if you have a piece of paper that asks you to write a sentence or draw a picture, and then show it to others, they will know what is on the paper, do you agree?"

"Agreed, because someone else saw it."

"Well, if you show it to a blind man. The blind can't see it, right? ”

"Yes, theoretically, it does."

"Okay, let's take this as an example. If I were to describe that piece of paper as a magnetic field, I would be the words or messages on that paper. It's like a pit knocked out by a stone on a flat beach, and even if the pit bounces open, the pit still appears and exists in the form of traces. ”

Kiki still didn't quite understand, and the old man's words were still esoteric.

"My explanation for myself is that a piece of consciousness from the physical body recorded by the magnetic field of the Nautilus Fortress, and under certain conditions, if this magnetic field can be deciphered or sensed, it can read memories of my past, sometimes in the form of visions of seeing me. Many people don't know that this magnetic field is unintentionally interpreted by themselves, and they mistakenly think that they have seen a ghost. In fact, it is the result of the interpretation of information that the magnetic field of his brain resonates with the magnetic field of the environment in which he lives. In the process of interpretation, the brain will still process the information into more understandable images, so the people or ghosts and ghosts in the images are still alive. Despite the fact that he is dead. ”

"I seem to understand a little bit of that."

"So I'm just a conscious body, a living memory locked in a magnetic field that you've interpreted. It's like the text on the page you see when you open a book. It's just that you'll read more than anyone else. ”

"Why, I'm reading more?"

"If I'm not mistaken, you must have been struck by lightning before you came here, right?"

"Hmmm! It seems like I remember a little bit, and I do have a little impression, it was scary. ”

"When lightning struck, a spatial rift was torn open in that space, and you also fell into that rift and came here."

Before the two of them knew it, they came to a corner of the ruins, and a gray-white nautilus-shell-like structure as large as a house appeared and was crushed under a pile of rubble. At the screw was a door, the panel of which had been shattered and cracked. The old man pulled out a bronze seal with a nautilus on it and stamped it on a mechanism on the door, and Kiki understood that it was using a key to unlock the door, and the door creaked open.

The old man led the way and swam inside, with Kiki following behind. Soon came to a large table, on which lay a stiff old man. He had a tragic face and a terrible death, and his tail was missing. This scene frightened Kiki back again and again, because the lying corpse looked the same as the old man who brought him.