The Lost Country was sailing at full speed.

In the pale glow cast by the Creation of the World, the translucent spirit sails puffed up without the wind, and the large and complex system of masts and cables creaked as if controlled by countless pairs of invisible hands, quickly and sensitively adjusting the angle, Duncan felt the hull under his feet swaying and tilting slightly, and pointed the bow of the ship in a certain direction in the infinite sea, and the sound of the small waves crashing against the hull of the ship was mixed with the "perception signal" transmitted by the Lost Country itself, softly echoing in the depths of his mind.

For some reason, at the moment when the ship turned around, he seemed to suddenly feel that the atmosphere on the ship had quietly changed, and it was clear that the scenery around him was still exactly the same, but ......

He seemed to hear the ship let out a soft sigh of satisfaction.

Duncan left the captain's quarters and walked to the deck, where he looked up in the night, at the bulging sails and the towering masts, and then reached out and tapped lightly on a railing passing by, and said thoughtfully, "Are you bored with aimless drifting, too?" ”

The Lost Country didn't speak, except for a slight creak from below deck, and a few nearby cables rattled and swirled like snakes, dangling beside Duncan.

“…… It's not cute, it's even a little scary," Duncan glanced at the cables, "That's how you scared Alice last time, didn't you?" ”

The cable shook in place twice and slipped away as fast as it could.

Duncan took a soft breath, ready to enjoy the refreshing night breeze on the sea, but suddenly, a distant "touch" suddenly appeared in his consciousness.

He didn't realize what it was at first, but then he realized that the touch came from the city-state of Plain.

In the city-state of Plan, Duncan, who was on the second floor of the antique shop, suddenly blinked, and then immediately looked in a certain direction—it was Nina's room next door.

In his vision, a dark green flame was beating rapidly through the room—but not Nina, but the mark that had remained on Shirley.

The cluster of flames sensed the growth of supernatural power, and sensed that the host's emotions were fluctuating abnormally.

What happened to Shirley?!

Duncan didn't hesitate, got up and rushed out of the room to the door of Nina's bedroom, he knocked lightly, but there was no movement inside.

He hesitated a little, but in the next second, he felt the mark left on Shirley's body beating again.

You can't think too much about it at this point—Duncan pushed Nina's door open.

Just like when she was a child, Nina always slept without locking the door.

The bedroom was dim, except for the faint light of the street lamp shining through the window to illuminate the outline of the things in the room, and Duncan did not see anything unusual as far as the eye could see.

Shirley and Nina were sleeping quietly on the bed, one head facing the end of the bed and the other lying on each other's belly.

…… The sleeping position is very artistic.

Duncan, of course, wasn't interested in paying attention to the sleeping position of the two girls, and he had already noticed Shirley's brow furrowed, and on her arm, which was usually used to summon dogs and live in symbiosis with chains, a small black line was slowly wandering.

Duncan frowned slightly, and then activated the sigil left on Shirley's body, trying to use the special properties of the spirit fire to find the source of the "erosion" in the room.

In his opinion, Shirley's current state, coupled with the warning of the sigil, was undoubtedly a sign that supernatural power was eroding.

A tiny green flame rose beside Shirley, a faint green flame illuminating the surroundings, but the flame flickered a few times before remaining in place.

There is no erosion in the room.

Duncan's brow furrowed, and he leaned closer to observe Shirley's tightly furrowed brow.

Because he was not sure how much the spirit fire would affect the living, he couldn't directly release a large area of fire to "scan" the entire room like he did in the factory, but even a little spark of spirit fire should be able to react to the strange supernatural power.

Erode...... Not in the real world? Spiritual? Or something else?

Duncan was thoughtful, and then, as if thinking of something, he got up and quietly exited the room, and when he closed the door and returned to his bedroom, he saw the pigeon spirit napping on the windowsill.

"Spirit walking."

In a series of "cooing" protests after Ay was woken up, Duncan once again entered the dark space filled with endless starlight, and then he calmed down, sensing the starlight around him as he had perceived the White Oak and Vanna before.

It wasn't difficult, because the mark was intentionally left by himself, far clearer and more stable than the "Mars" on Vanna's body, and Duncan locked on to the little starlight that belonged to Shirley almost instantly......

Shirley opened her eyes in the darkness to find herself sleeping on a small bed that was both familiar and unfamiliar.

She sat up in the dark, her mind dulled for a long time before she regained her consciousness a little, and she looked around in confusion, finally discerning the outline of something from the darkness.

Some familiar and distant memories gradually awakened, and after seeing the scene around her, Shirley's eyes finally widened.

In the next second, she suddenly jumped off the bed, and at the same time let out a series of extremely annoyed, even annoyed to the point of trembling, as if revealing fear and nervous curses: "Damn, damn, damn...... X！ TMD is this again, it's this again! I'm X! ”

A series of loud curses broke the silence in the darkness, but the curse was not Shirley's familiar voice, but a smaller, more immature, childish voice that existed only in her memory, she jumped to the ground, and saw that her hands and feet had become as thin and immature as she remembered, she was wearing a light pink pajamas, which were exactly the same as in her memory, and where the cuffs were torn, there was the familiar puppy that had been embroidered with an unfamiliar hand.

"Don't toss me XX! Don't toss me with XX! ”

Shirley roared in the dark room, she rushed to the closed door, punching and kicking to break the mottled plank, but the door did not move as if it were made of concrete, she banged her head and bit the handle of the door with her teeth, but it was completely meaningless, she could only use her small body to hit it one by one, in the impact let time pass, let the nearby window spill a little morning light, let the door come the last thing she wanted to hear in the early hours of the day.

She heard someone getting up in the next room, and heard footsteps, the sound of things being cleaned up.

She heard one of the footsteps approaching the door, a gentle, familiar voice whispering, "Shirley, Shirley?" Got up? Still angry? ”

Shirley's banging on the door suddenly stopped, as if she had been drained, she leaned against the wooden door, and pressed against the door with all her strength, she didn't want to listen, but she listened greedily to the movement outside the door.

"Shirley, my dad and I are going to buy you a cake, it's your birthday...... When we come back, you won't be angry, okay? ”

"Don't go......" Shirley suddenly made a voice, at first a small mutter, but soon the muttering turned into a shout, "Don't go...... Don't leave! Don't go! Don't go! ”

She finally cried out, even though she knew it was useless, and still shouted loudly: "Don't go! Don't go out! Don't go out, TMD! Don't go out! ”

However, time still passed by the next second, like a memory engraved in the mind that could not be turned back - the footsteps outside the door were far away.

The sound of picking up a tote bag, the distant and indistinct conversation of parents, the doorknob turning, opening the door, closing the door, the key turning in a circle, then half a circle.

Shirley slowly sat down in the darkness and began to count her heartbeat.

When my heart beat to the hundredth and twelfth hundredth, the exclamation of fire came from afar.

When my heart beat to the 1,600th beat, the pungent smell of smoke and choking smoke began to seep through the crack in the door.

By the time my heart beat to the hundredth thousand, the streets were filled with frenzied shouting, and blinding red light filled the windows, as if the entire city-state had been thrown into molten lava.

When my heart beat to the second thousandth, a heavy muffled sound came from the direction of the house—the door had been broken, as if some giant beast was walking in with heavy steps, approaching the locked room.

Then, at last, the door to the room collapsed—the wooden door that Shirley couldn't break open with all her strength, and now it was scattered like shredded paper.

A terrifying creature appeared, a giant pitch-black demon dog, a nightmare of bones, shadows, smoke, and scorching ashes, a demon from the shadows that was almost a behemoth for a six-year-old child, and now, its hollow, blood-colored eye sockets had captured the "living creatures" in the room.

Shirley calmly stared at the demon dog that appeared in front of her.

It's a ghostly hound—but not her dog yet.

It's not the dog who has a "heart", it's not the dog who will rummage through the trash can to find food to feed him, it's not the dog who will try to tell lame jokes to amuse himself, but in the end he only teaches himself a bunch of dirty words.

The Greyhound stepped into the room.

The sound of chewing flesh and bones rang out.

Shirley lay on the floor, feeling her limbs devoured by the demon dog, the sharp pain of eleven years of memories running through her mind, dull and numb, and she continued to count her heartbeats, counting when the dog would be her dog, and calculating how long she would stay here - a week, according to past experience? Or two weeks?

Her consciousness gradually drifted away, and even in this dark dream, those distant, dull and numb pains finally caught up, and in the increasingly blurred vision, she suddenly saw a figure appear on the bed not far away, in the shadows of the deepest darkness.

The figure didn't seem to appear out of nowhere, he seemed to have been there all along, from this dream, from every dream, and even—Shirley didn't know why she had this amazing idea—even from eleven years ago.

He was sitting there, but only now did she realize the existence of this figure for the first time, as if a long-standing fog had suddenly broken open, allowing her to peek into the existence behind it.

A faint green glow appeared out of nowhere, illuminating the figure's face, gloomy and majestic—Shirley had never seen this face before, but she felt an inexplicable sense of familiarity.

"No offense."

The gloomy and majestic figure spoke.

(It's time to push the book~ This time it's from an old Gou's "My Mysterious Office" The male protagonist runs the office as a detective during the day, and relies on his own power to manipulate other people's dreams at night to impersonate a great god through a similar way to a dream, and uses acting skills to play multiple roles to establish a network of influence behind the scenes, so as to help him explore a mysterious world created by humans after the fall of a god, and finally lead people all over the world to heaven together. ）

(End of chapter)