As always, Alice had always trusted the captain's words unconditionally—she didn't even wonder why Duncan suddenly had to use the key again, and happily agreed.

But Duncan explained to the doll very seriously: "I'm going to enter the 'Alice Mansion' again to confirm some conjectures about the 'Old World'."

Alice nodded, although she didn't really understand what the captain meant by "the old world", she knew that it was a very serious matter.

She had already had a good experience, and this time she quickly found a comfortable place to sit down, and then turned to reveal the keyhole in her back.

"Actually, I talked to Nina about asking her to help me change the back of my clothes and see if I could make a hole in the keyhole," the doll said happily as she waited for the captain to wind her up, "but she was worried about sand and dust in my keyhole...... I think she's worried too much, and I'm not going to roll on the ground, so how can the keyhole get into the sand?"

"It's better to block it," Duncan said casually, "No one knows if this delicate structure will be fragile, and I don't know how to fix it if something breaks down."

"Miss Lucrecia may fix it, Luni is the one she repaired...... But you're right, it's better to be careful, Lunee's head has been repaired for a long time

The silver-haired puppet chattered about it like a normal person

Something that sounds too weird and evil to others, Duncan couldn't help but have a faint smile on his face when he heard it, and then he shook his head with a smile, picked up the strange brass key, and took it carefully into Alice's keyhole like last time.

The familiar click sounded, the key began to turn on its own, Duncan calmed slightly, and the next second, he felt the light and shadow in front of him change, and his perception was rapidly orienting and reshaping.

A moment later, he opened his eyes in the darkness, adjusting to the changes in his five senses after the change of environment, and after the scene before him quickly stabilized, the eerie "garden" shrouded in a cartoon sky appeared before him again.

The silver-haired gothic doll, identical to Alice, still leans quietly against the pillar in the center of the garden, sleeping among the vines and thorns, and the drawing board in the doll's hand remains the same as before, unchanged in position and form.

Duncan blinked, and did not move rashly for the first time, but cautiously checked the situation around him, and compared it with the scene in his memory.

Half a minute later, he confirmed that there was nothing unusual around him, and that everything remained the same as when he left - he even had the feeling that time in the "mansion" had stopped while he was away, and it wasn't until he returned that time began to move around again.

..... This is most likely not a delusion.

Duncan recalled what the strange "headless butler" had told him about the special rules of time in Alice's Mansion, and thought to himself.

After a moment of thought, he raised his head and looked up at the "sky" above the garden.

The last time he was here, he had been so absorbed by the strange and strange scenes of the mansion that he had so many questions that he had scattered his limited energy so that he didn't look too closely at the weird cartoon graffiti, even though the sky of the garden caught his attention.

And this time, he looked at it very seriously.

Clouds drawn by children's crayons float against a pale blue sky, exaggerated lines of "sunlight" pass through the clouds, and the "sun" painted with golden yellow paint releases light and heat to maintain the vitality of the garden, as seen last time.

It is still full of "childlike fun", and it is still full of weirdness in "childlike fun". Duncan's eyes narrowed slightly.

He carefully observed the golden sun, and this time, he finally noticed a detail that he had overlooked before—

Around that round of "Graffiti Sun", there is no rune ring structure!

"No wonder..... No wonder last time

When I look at it, I feel that something is wrong, but I can't tell ......."

Duncan muttered, his face changing slightly, and he finally confirmed where the greatest sense of dissonance in the sky in this strange graffiti came from: it was a normal sun, and although the brushstrokes were abstract and rudimentary, it was undoubtedly the "sun" he was familiar with!

But it was precisely because I was too familiar with it that I didn't notice this obvious "anomaly" when I took a quick look last time - if a "native" like Morris or Vanna came over, I am afraid that something would be wrong at first sight.

Duncan's eyebrows furrowed slightly, and after confirming that the sky was a "normal sun", the secret hidden in this "Alice Mansion" seemed to be quietly opening up to him.

In the infinite sea, the "sun" is an artificial celestial body with a double rune ring, this is the world's recognized common sense, from the beginning of the deep sea era, to the present 10,000 years has not changed the "fact", no one in the world knows what the "real sun" looks like, even those solar cultists who claim to believe in the true sun god, when they preach, they depict only a twisted and terrifying creature of the ancient gods-

So who would have left this "normal sun" or "primordial sun" in Alice's Mansion?

The doll "Alice" was "born" after the Frost Queen Ray Nora fell into the deep sea, so why is the appearance of the "sun" before the Great Annihilation recorded in the depths of the Alice Mansion connected to her?

And if we take into account the speculation of the Great Annihilation in the "World Convergence Theory", the Deep Sea Age was formed by the accumulation and remodeling of countless debris of the old world, then the "primordial sun" recorded in Alice's Mansion ..... Which old world should it belong to?

Does it represent a star from some old world? Or is it just an abstract symbol?

For some reason, Duncan's mind at this moment was the chubby pigeon.

He frowned, shook his head, and reassembled the intricate information in his mind again and again, and suddenly, another clue came to his mind—

The birth of Alice.

Her image is indeed copied from the Frost Queen Rey Nora, but her original corpse is also an erroneous copy of Alice's Guillotine - it turns out that for the "shaper" of Anomaly 099, the source and process of replication itself does not matter, whether it is a great human or a hard piece of wood, it is only the initial "material", what really matters is the "shaper" himself.

It was the "false copy" of the Shadow Lord that created Anomaly 099.

So can we think that this so-called "Alice Mansion" is actually the "creation" of the erroneous copy of the Netherworld Lord - and by extension, even if it is the erroneous copy of the Netherworld Lord, it should also retain a lot of information about the "ontology", so some of the "things" in this Alice Mansion may be directly sourced from the "ancient god" stranded in the secluded sea?

Duncan looked up and took a closer look at the abstract sun, and the clouds and sunlight around it.

... Are these graffiti-like images a part of the "memory" that the Dark Lord inadvertently leaked, or some kind of "message" that was consciously conveyed to the outside world?

The more Duncan thought about it, the more likely it became, because one thing was certain:

The true appearance of the "Primordial Sun" only existed in the time node before the Great Annihilation, and the secret of this Alice Mansion should also be traced back to that time node, and judging from the information currently available..... Only the four gods, as well as the mysterious and strange "ancient gods" in the depths of the world, may have a certain understanding of the world before the Great Annihilation.

Duncan's heart moved, he lowered his head and saw the sketchpad in the puppet's hand.

After a moment's hesitation, he bent down, carefully bypassing the surrounding thorns, slowly pulling the sketchpad out of the puppet's hand.

The front of the panel still depicts the strange swirls, twisted stars, and ominous dark red glow, while on the border on the back of the panel, the familiar text is still inscribed on it:

「..... The messenger brought news from afar, and the chosen clan picked up the lost ancient stars and forged them into a crown of blessing—the end of the third long night."

The chosen clan picks up the lost ancient stars and forges them into a crown of blessings.

Duncan's gaze lingered on this sentence for a long time.

This is a description of the process by which the Ancient Cretan clan, led by the "Creeping King", built Vision 001 and lifted it into the sky.

When he first entered the garden and saw the words, he couldn't understand what they meant.

But now, he suddenly realized.

He thought of the ten-meter-diameter "moon" - a "part" that had fallen from the rune ring of Vision 001.

The runic ring that binds the sun can be seen as a glorious "crown".

And the "moon" that is distorted and compressed by an unknown force.... Naturally, it also fits the description of "Lost Ancient Stars".

A slight sound suddenly came from the depths of the garden, awakening Duncan from his deep muse.

He jerked his head up and looked in the direction the voice was coming from.

There were only lush vegetation, and between the lush bushes and the shade of the dwarf trees, there was a dim shadow.

But Duncan was sure that he had "heard" something just now.

This is the deepest part of Alice's Mansion, and according to the headless butler, even the high-ranking servants of the Mansion are not qualified to step into this place at will, only the hostess Alice and the being called the "Gardener" will enter here, but the "Gardener" seems to have ceased to exist a long time ago.

Intruders? Or is the "gardener" back?

Duncan slowly frowned, slipped the sketchpad back into the puppet's arms, and cautiously walked towards the lush bush.

"Whoa...... Babbling ......"

A slight sound came again from somewhere in the shadows.

Suddenly, out of the corner of his eye, he caught something—

A shadow, like a slippery and eerie tentacle, is creeping through the darkness at the edge of the garden!