Deep Sea Embers

Chapter 567 Foreign Objects and Cleaners

It was a small bag of garbage—a black garbage bag with a tight knot at the mouth, and a small, scratched opening on the side of the bag, and a crushed paper cup could be seen in the opening.

Duncan stared blankly at the small bag of familiar garbage, and for a while there were only confusion and endless questions in his mind—he had indeed guessed that the "big hole" inside Alice's mansion might change one day , when he heard the headless butler mention the "foreign body invasion" just now, he also guessed what kind of weird and indescribable things would enter this mansion, but the situation in front of him...he really didn't think about it.

That bag of garbage was thrown by him—not long ago, when he vaguely realized that the barrier between himself and his hometown might have become a natural barrier, after he carefully cleaned his bachelor apartment, he sorted it out. He picked up the bag of garbage and threw it into the black mist outside the door.

It now appears inside the "Great Hollow" in Alice's Mansion, in the form of an "Invading Foreign Object".

With complicated and delicate moods, Duncan stepped forward and walked towards the "invasion item".

The huge void left by the disappearance of the room at the end of the corridor is like a strange and terrifying abyss. The ground and walls at the edge of the void are fragmented, like twisted sharp teeth. The black bag is at the end of the broken ground. Frankly speaking... Duncan even I thought this scene was a little funny.

However, the servants in the mansion were extremely nervous. After seeing Duncan walking forward, the terrifying headless butler even exclaimed a little out of composure: "Guests! Don't go near there! It's dangerous!"

"Dangerous?" Duncan didn't know what expression to make. He glanced back at the butler, the corner of his mouth twitching, "It's just a quiet pile of...waste."

However, the steward and servants still stood at least ten meters away as if they were facing the enemy, and the buzzing whispers were full of panic and fear. Even though they were all headless, Duncan seemed to feel their bewilderment and confusion, The eyes that want to spy but keep avoiding because of fear.

It was as if... what they were looking at was not a harmless black bag, but something scarier, more indescribable.

"Guest...guest..." the headless butler suddenly spoke, his voice was low and trembling, "don't be fooled by appearances, now slowly keep a distance from it, move towards me, be careful, don't wake up this Growing shadows..."

Growing shadows?

Duncan frowned slightly for a moment, as if confirming the "guess" that flashed through his mind just now—what the servants saw was something else?

He turned his head and looked at the black bag on the edge of the broken ground.

At a certain moment, he saw that black plastic bag suddenly... "flashing".

It’s like a poorly connected monitor screen, or something like a veil suddenly covering the surface of the thing. Duncan saw the thing flickering instantly, and in the extremely short change of light and shadow, it seemed... to become something else what.

Duncan watched it silently, as if expecting more changes in it - and then there was a second flicker.

This time, he captured the flashing image.

He saw a group of expanding and contracting shadows covering the floor not far away. The edges of the shadows trembled and trembled like countless sharp thorns spreading out. A black substance was surging and spreading out from the center of the shadows. Countless eyes, and countless mouthpieces.

However, as long as he looked carefully, the thing would immediately turn into a pile of ordinary "waste" again, and the strange picture he saw in a trance seemed to be just an illusion that stayed in the shallow layer of his brain.

Duncan watched this scene silently, and his speculations gradually subsided. After an unknown period of time, he suddenly turned his head and said to the "housekeeper", "Has there been a 'foreign body invasion' here before?"

His voice was inexplicably hoarse.

"Occasionally," the butler hurriedly replied, "The mansion is closed, but for some reason, there are always 'external' things connected here, and they... often cause a lot of trouble."

"Bringing a lot of trouble?" Duncan frowned.

"Yes... Foreign objects do not belong to the mansion. They are like diseases here. The intruding substances will cause some parts of the mansion to decay or distort, and it often takes a long time to recover..."

Duncan listened quietly, and after thinking for a moment, he asked, "Then how do you deal with these foreign objects?"

"The mansion will 'digest' them on its own," the housekeeper replied, "You just need to wait patiently by the side. The cleaners should appear in a while, and they should be able to properly deal with the intruding foreign objects."

"Cleaner?" Duncan said with doubts in his tone.

"It's the part of the mansion, the oldest part, that removes the destructive 'entity' from the mansion, and then the mansion slowly returns to what it was before the foreign body invaded... ah, there it is, guest , you see—"

The butler suddenly raised his arm and pointed to the ground not far away.

A mass of mud-like thing appeared there at some point, slowly wriggling and spreading.

The "silt" is dark in color, but has a metallic texture. Its surface seems to be mixed with countless crystal particles. With the slow wriggling, it continuously refracts light spots like starlight—it wriggling Moving, spreading, slowly approaching the invading "foreign body" as if consciously.

A part of its edge deformed, forming an extended structure like a tentacle arm. It used this structure to touch forward and tested it, and then slowly "covered" itself on the "growing shadow".

Duncan didn't interrupt the process, he just stared at the scene, not letting go of any details.

The group of "waste" itself is of no value to him. The key is why the waste appears here, the strange phenomenon just observed, and the secrets hidden in the mansion.

For him, when he saw that small bag of garbage appearing in the mansion, he already had the key information.

Swallowing quietly, the "soft creature" called "cleaner" quickly completely covered the small bag of garbage, and in Duncan's perception, he could faintly feel...something disappeared in the bag The body of the "soft creature" with metallic texture and fine light spots.

The surrounding servants seemed to finally breathe a sigh of relief.

However, in the next second, Duncan saw the group of "soft-bodied creatures" that had completed swallowing suddenly and slowly turned "about", its edges were shrinking and undulating, and it looked like a raised structure on the head had stabilized at this moment. Steadily pointing this way.

The corridor instantly fell into tension and dead silence, and all the servants tensed up and fell silent.

The Scavenger wriggled over, approaching like a mass of living sludge as Duncan watched.

Neither kindness nor hostility was felt.

Duncan's nerves gradually tensed up, and faint green flames were already flowing between his fingers. He was vigilant against this thing called "cleaner", and was already thinking quickly about how he should try his best if the opponent launched an attack. Get rid of this group of "silt" without destroying this "Alice's Mansion" and leave this place.

However, the clearer just stopped about two meters in front of him.

This group of "silt" stopped in front of Duncan, and the surrounding soft structure gradually gathered up. It seemed to be observing something cautiously. I don't know if it was an illusion...

Duncan even thought he saw confused emotions in a "slime" like a slime.

It's sane, and it's trying to observe and understand the intruder -- but it can't.

It seems that the existence of uninvited guests has surpassed some kind of "logic" built into the mansion.

After a while, the Cleaner seemed to end some kind of "infinite loop". It abruptly shifted its attention to Duncan, turned around as if nothing had happened, and slowly squirmed towards a dark corner not far away. .

Duncan blinked, looked at this scene in confusion, and turned his head to look at the butler after a long time: "What does this mean? This 'cleaner' doesn't welcome me?"

"This... I haven't encountered it before," the housekeeper's voice was a little confused, "It's the first time I've seen the cleaners have these extra activities after cleaning. Normally, after finishing the work, Will never stay longer…”

Duncan frowned, and didn't ask any more questions, but turned and walked towards the edge of the broken corridor, to the place where the cleaners performed the "cleanup task" just now.

That small bag of "garbage" has completely disappeared. After a strange and mysterious change, it was decomposed and swallowed by a strange and mysterious force, and there is no trace left.

But how did it get here?

Duncan stood on a broken floor tile at the edge of the corridor, poking his head out to look out into the endless darkness.

For a moment, he even felt that he was about to see his "hut" in the darkness—it might be floating not far away, wrapped in a cloud of mist, like... Those countless other fragments of the old world.

However, he saw nothing, there was only boundless darkness at the end of the corridor, and the large void inside Alice's mansion seemed to lead nowhere.

The emotional impulse made him almost step out to find the so-called answer in the darkness, but at the last moment, the power of reason pulled him back.

He instinctively sensed the risk from the endless darkness, and his intuition told him——now was not the time, and he could not return safely from that darkness.

"guest?"

The headless butler's voice came from behind, interrupting Duncan's wild thoughts.

Duncan exhaled lightly, took a step back, and returned to the relatively stable corridor.

"It's time for me to go," he said softly. "Take me back to the garden."

In the real world, Duncan blinked suddenly - his senses returned quickly and he was fully awake within two seconds.

Alice was still sitting obediently in front of him.

In the real world, only a moment has passed.

Chapter 569/856
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Deep Sea EmbersCh.569/856 [66.47%]