Ashes Of Deep Sea

Chapter 227: Chapter 231 Reliable Messenger Perley

Ai Yi flapped energetically into the shop, perched on the handrail of the stairs with her chest puffed out and an air of arrogance, as her mung bean eyes darted here and there.

The brightly-feathered parrot that had followed her in also swept into the shop, settling on the counter beside Duncan’s hand, striding and hopping about as if completely at home without any restraint.

Duncan stared in astonishment at this unexpected visitor when the parrot also lifted its head, looking unabashed at Duncan. After a while, it suddenly flapped its wings, emitting a loud and grating sound, “Ah! Polly!”

“You’re called Polly?” Duncan asked curiously, with no real expectation of a response from the parrot. After all, a parrot’s speech is just mimicry. To his surprise, the bird actually nodded its head upon hearing his question, waving its wings, “Polly! It’s Polly!”

Duncan’s expression became wooden for a moment, then he turned to look at Ai Yi, who was loftily surveying the ground floor from the stair’s handrail, “Where did you find this… ‘friend’?”

“Friends come from afar,” Ai Yi immediately flapped her wings, one eye on Duncan, the other eye flicking uncertainly towards the window, “Since they’ve come!”

Nina immediately asked with curiosity, “What does that mean?”

Having learned the secret of Duncan and the Homeloss, Nina knew about Ai Yi’s ability to speak. She had been quite surprised at first but had since calmed down—however, like everyone else, she found it difficult to make sense of the pigeon’s random utterances.

“Perhaps it means she doesn’t know where the parrot came from either,” Duncan used his imagination to translate for Ai Yi and turned his head to look at the parrot and pigeon in succession, finally unable to restrain himself, “Ai Yi… I don’t object to you making friends, but are you aware that you’re different species? At least find another pigeon…”

“The sea embraces all streams, tolerance is greatness,” the pigeon chanted zealously, head cocked, eyes staring blankly, “Tolerance is greatness!”

Duncan: “…”

He often pondered life and doubted himself during his conversations with Ai Yi, wondering if he really was communicating with this bird spirit on the same wavelength.

This feeling of somehow misaligning yet magically communicating was truly exceptional.

By this time, Sherry, A Dog, and Alice had also been drawn over by the commotion, all three crowding around the counter to observe the fearless parrot. Alice, curious, reached out to poke the parrot’s wing, which simply hopped aside to avoid her touch, then cocked its head in a staring contest with the doll.

“What’s this?” Alice inquired, looking towards Duncan with curiosity, “It looks completely different from Ai Yi.”

Sherry immediately responded, “Of course, it’s different; that’s a parrot, and Ai Yi is a pigeon.”

“What’s a parrot?” Alice asked, the very soul of curiosity, “Is it edible?”

“No,” Sherry shook her head and then countered the doll, “Why are you always concerned about this when you don’t need to eat?”

“I’m responsible for cooking for the ship… for Mr. Duncan!”

There was a cacophony of voices around the counter, but Duncan did not join in. Instead, he thoughtfully watched the self-proclaimed “Polly,” feeling a nagging sense of familiarity with the bird, as if he had just seen it somewhere not long ago.

“Where are you from? Why have you come here?” he suddenly asked.

In the exchange just now, he had sensed that the parrot had the ability to communicate with humans—clearly indicating an unusual origin.

The parrot turned its head, tilted its brain, and pondered, “Polly! Go, deliver message!”

“Deliver a message?” Duncan was momentarily stunned, his expression growing serious, “What message? Who to?”

The parrot seemed to think, recalling something before opening its beak to speak. However, before it could say anything more, Ai Yi suddenly fluttered over, shouting at the top of her lungs, “Get some fries!”

The parrot got a fright, “Ah! Polly!”

“Get some fries!” The pigeon landed in front of the parrot, nodding seriously, “Get some fries.”

“Polly?” “Get some fries!”

The two birds communicated like this, forcing Duncan to interrupt from the side, “Stop—Ai Yi, be quiet. Polly, what message are you supposed to deliver, and to whom?”

The parrot seemed stunned, hesitating while rocking back and forth for several seconds before reluctantly responding, “Get some fries.”

Duncan: “…”

He suddenly realized something, whatever message the parrot had previously wanted to convey, it clearly had forgotten all about it by now…

Then, the parrot Polly seemed to dredge up some useful information from the remnants of its memory. It suddenly jumped up, flapping its wings vigorously, “Tell the captain, tell the captain! Tell… get some fries!”

Soon after, the large parrot started shouting “get some fries,” and with wings beating, it flew straight towards the door. Before the others could react, it had already burst through the door, soared into the sky, and accelerated towards the Upper City District of the Plunder City-State.

Nina wanted to stop the parrot but was too late. She could only watch regretfully as its figure flew farther and farther away, then turned her head muttering, “Ah, it flew off.”

Duncan didn’t respond—his expression became serious immediately after hearing Polly shouting “tell the captain,” and he began to recall why he felt vaguely familiar with this parrot.

He had indeed seen this bird—when Homeloss and Sea Mist overlapped on their courses, in one of the cabins on Sea Mist!

“Ai Yi, chase after that parrot.”

“…That’s more or less the situation.”

In a secluded meeting room within the grand cathedral of Plunder City-State, Valentin, the old Pontiff dressed in civilian clothes, said to Tyrion sitting across from him on the sofa by the coffee table.

“Homeloss last took the Sun Shard, thwarting the arrival of the Crawling Sun and neutralizing the impact of historical contamination on the City-State—although we still can’t be sure… your father’s intentions.”

Tyrion’s expression was somewhat subtle, and somewhat stiff.

He couldn’t remember how many years it had been since he was last thrown into such a state of mental paralysis by astonishment—he understood every word the old Bishop said, but even in his most outlandish dreams, he had never considered such things happening!

“Homeloss really just left like that? It seems as though it only came to save the day,” said the renowned “pirate captain” unbelievably, “It took the Sun Shard… and then? That’s it? It didn’t do anything else?”

Valentin and Fenna beside him exchanged a look, both wearing expressions of helplessness and hesitation.

At this point, it was truly hard to tell Tyrion to his face, “Your dad just robbed half the city of its fries.”

“…No, that’s it,” after much hesitation, the old Bishop still couldn’t bring himself to mention it, he shook his head with a sigh “I know you’re confused—Mr. Tyrion, we’re just as confused as you are, and if even you don’t know what your father intended, then we are even more clueless.”

“My father ceased to be my father a century ago,” Tyrion slowly shook his head and said solemnly, “That’s just a counterfeit, cobbled together with crude methods after being ripped apart by Subspace, an empty shell with no humanity inside…”

Tyrion suddenly stopped mid-sentence, and for some reason, he recalled those few seconds when Homeloss and Sea Mist passed each other, the indifferent and distant words he had heard—

“I’m busy.”

The great pirate suddenly felt a bit of hesitation.

Inside that shell on Homeloss… was there really no humanity? The voice that spoke to him back then and the aura he felt from that figure… was it really just the chaotic echo of Subspace?

As Tyrion was lost in thought, the voice of the young Judge came from across, interrupting his reverie, “The question of whether Captain Duncan possesses ‘humanity’ is exactly what we’re about to discuss.”

“Hm?” Tyrion looked at Fenna with confusion, “What do you mean?”

“In fact…” Fenna hesitated, then exchanged glances with Bishop Valentin before nodding slightly, “We’ve had more than one communication with your father recently.”

Matters concerning Homeloss were classified information, and so were the conversations with Captain Duncan; these details shouldn’t have been revealed, but Tyrion’s unique status made these problems no longer relevant.

“Communication? You and my father?!” Tyrion was indeed shocked, almost standing up from the sofa, “This isn’t some awful joke?”

“Please remain calm, this is a very serious issue—no one would joke about such matters after the City-State nearly perished,” Fenna looked at Tyrion calmly, then paused slightly, “Strictly speaking, I’ve had a few communications with your father, and based on my observations… ‘Captain Duncan’ doesn’t seem to match the descriptions in the files anymore.”

Tyrion noticed her grave demeanor, calmed down quickly, and his expression became especially serious, “Judge, how did you establish communication? Why would he reach out to you? And… what did he say?”

“It was initially an accident… no, thinking about it now, it might’ve been an intentional arrangement by your father,” Fenna collected her thoughts, speaking while recalling, “I touched the ‘fire’ he left behind and established contact through it. As for why he chose me… unfortunately, no one knows…”

Fenna concealed the details about being marked and the “contamination that couldn’t be cleansed,” vaguely summing up the process as “established contact,” and then told the details of her several communications with Captain Duncan to the “pirate captain” before her.

This man, theoretically, knew Duncan Ebnomal best.