At the edge of the small town located in the main drive sequence residential area, stood a large mansion—It featured Gothic towering spires and dark exterior walls, with solemn spire windows neatly arranged on the high walls on the building's wings. Its architectural style easily brought to mind Marin's "embassy" located at the Boundary Land border, but this one was noticeably larger, with a more ancient atmosphere enveloping the entire structure.
Early in the morning, Yu Sheng and a few others were brought by the Captain and Alice to this building. At this moment, Erin was sitting in Hu Li's arms, the Little Puppet straining her neck to look at the massive mansion before her, exclaiming in awe: "Wow—this is bigger than Marin's house!"
"Is this Alice's Mansion?" Hu Li asked curiously, "The one Erin keeps talking about, the prototype of the most special gathering place in the Garden Network?"
"It's the one," the Captain replied with a smile, "It was originally connected to Subspace, and during the reshaping of the New World, I transferred it to the reality dimension. We created the first batch of Alice Puppets here, and up to now, most of the Alice Puppets are born from here."
Erin blinked, her face filled with inexplicable excitement: "Was I also born from here?"
The one who answered her was Alice standing next to the Captain, her face showing a hint of pride: "Of course, you were the first one we created."
"Then why don't I have any impression?" Erin scratched her head, "I feel like I've always been on the Lost Home since I can remember... Although I don't remember most things clearly, I should have some impression, right?"
"Your state was extremely unstable at the time of your birth," Alice said gently, "We had to first seal off a part of your Mind and slowly adjust it after bringing you aboard the ship—also, back then, this 'Border Ark' wasn't established yet, and Alice's Mansion was operating independently on a deep-space route, which wasn't suitable for living, so we never brought you over."
"Oh..." The Little Puppet acknowledged, somewhat understanding, then asked curiously, "By the way, why was I unstable then... Ah, I know, it's definitely because I was a prototype and the parameters were set too high. Plus, the super-powerful combat features were added to handle the Dark Angel, and the drive couldn't keep up, right? Yeah, I get it, that's how it always goes on TV..."
Then Yu Sheng noticed the Captain and Alice visibly becoming awkward, Alice seemed to want to say something but was interrupted by a cough from the Captain: "Ahem, that's about right, the parameters were set too high..."
Erin immediately became smug on the spot.
Then the group followed the Captain into the splendid huge mansion, with Alice, the Puppet Progenitor, leading the way.
Yu Sheng intentionally lagged two steps behind, seeing the Captain also falling back, and then whispered quietly, "Tell me the truth, was it because you were inexperienced back then?"
"What else could it be," the Captain whispered back, "Alice and I had no experience, Alice insisted on writing the drive for the newly born Puppets herself, and after writing it, the code just ran off..."
Yu Sheng had no immediate reaction to the first half, but was stunned at the last sentence, thinking he misheard, "Huh? Running code sounds pretty successful..."
"Not running as in functioning, but literally ran off," the Captain mumbled, "Ran incredibly fast, scurrying across the ceiling, took Alice and me three days to finally catch it and stuff it back into the shell… This process may have slightly damaged the Mind model, hence her tendency to act impulsively from a young age..."
Yu Sheng was greatly shocked right then, pondering intensely for half a minute but unable to imagine the newly written Mind code escaping the Puppet's body and scurrying across the ceiling. In the end, he could only sigh at how peculiar these Ancient Saints were... Erin was even more peculiar—could the origin of her free-roaming soul be here?
Yu Sheng shook his head, setting aside the scrambled thoughts for now, then curiously observing his surroundings.
Upon entering the mansion, first came a long and spacious hall. On both sides were towering and orderly pillars, with solemn and mysterious red curtains hanging from the ceiling down the pillars to the floor, along with thick carpets stretching from the door all the way up the stairs at the end of the hall.
Yu Sheng also saw many tinplate Attendants in black uniforms and spring-loaded maids in maid attire bustling in the hall, occasionally casting curious glances toward visitors.
"It used to be even gloomier here, with many Ghosts from the Old World imprisoned in this building," the Captain mentioned offhandedly, "After releasing them, I rebuilt this place and replaced all the staff with Magic Mannequins made by Lucy—oh, I mean Lucrecia, my daughter."
As they spoke, they had passed through the long front hall and followed the corridor deeper into the mansion, stepping into a lush garden after passing through a door inlaid with stained glass.
An eye-catching "tree" stood at the garden's center, exhibiting a peculiar form—the tree split into two from the middle, half being covered with dense foliage while the other half was formed of intertwined cables and tubes, with the entire canopy occasionally flickering, as though both structures were switching in real-time.
Erin slightly widened her eyes upon entering: "Ah... this looks familiar, I seem to remember a little of it!"
"This is the garden of the mansion," the Captain laughed, "The place where you were born."
Erin listened in amazement, her eyes glittering: "That's right, that's right, I do remember being born in the garden, but my sisters always say I was wrong..."
Alice smiled at the side, reaching out to take the Little Puppet from Hu Li's arms, and then carefully placed her beside the big tree.
"Stay here, don't move around. We're now going to check your mental state and that special encrypted data structure."
Erin made an "oh" sound, then sat down obediently beside the trunk, and then suddenly remembered something, looking a bit anxious: "Ah, do we need to connect the data cable? The keyhole on my back was covered by Yu Sheng..."
Before she finished speaking, Yu Sheng broke out in a cold sweat, quickly raising his head to meet the subtle looks from the Captain and Alice at the same time, suddenly feeling awkward and not knowing what to say: "There's some misunderstanding here... her body was damaged when she perished together with the Omen Goddess, and when I took her back to fix her, I didn't have a blueprint..."
The Captain listened with a subtle expression, God knows what he was thinking, and finally just sighed: "Never mind, as long as she can run... after all, wireless can also connect."
Then the strange "Alice Tree" began to operate — a magnificent stream of light appeared in its crown, a slightly faint flow of light surrounded Erin, and the entire garden began to resonate with a strange and pleasing low hum.
Yu Sheng quickly grabbed Freyia, who was about to pounce on the crown: "Don't cause trouble, don't pounce on anything that glows."
Freyia looked aggrieved, reluctantly nodding.
"Honestly, I really didn't expect the 'phototaxis' of the Dark Angel to manifest in this form," the Captain mused, stroking his chin, "... what's the principle behind this?"
"Captain, the location is set."
Alice's voice came from the side, interrupting the Captain's monologue, instantly drawing everyone's attention.
The next second, Yu Sheng saw the entire garden silently disintegrate before his eyes, and an endless void space descended in an instant. Countless rapidly changing streams of light appeared in the darkness in front of everyone — those steams outlined Erin's mental model, and at the center of the countless streams of light was a red cube structure wrapped in layers of barriers.
"... Is this the encrypted data?" Yu Sheng instinctively took two steps forward, looking at the red cube floating in the void, "Are the blueprint and data of the calibrator all in here?"
He turned around and saw the little blonde puppet sitting quietly with closed eyes in the darkness, seemingly peaceful.
However, Erin's chatter came from all directions: "Wow... it really is the Alice Tree from home! It's stronger than Marin's! What are all these? Are these my wondrous intellects running around? I think I've seen this cube before... oh, right, I saw it in the data Marin sent over... and can't the external network be connected here? Is it only local? What is this interface? Can it connect to the Garden Network of the internal universe? Oh, I know I shouldn't move randomly, reckless hands will cause trouble, I'm not stupid... really can't move? Which interface can play games, there won't be no games, right... how about TV dramas? Animations? Variety shows?"
Yu Sheng listened to her chatter coming from all around, his head buzzing on the spot, even Luna couldn't help but speak up: "Can you, shut her mic off?"
The Captain, who was at the red cube, just pulling out a dizzying data panel for inspection, turned around and said: "You better think about it, it's easy to mute it now, but when we get back to the real world, you never know how much noise she'll make."
Luna immediately fell silent — of course, what she was thinking in her heart wasn't clear.
Yu Sheng curiously watched the Captain's operation over there, speaking with some anticipation: "How is it? Can the encryption be unlocked? We previously found someone in charge of an Alice's Cottage at Boundary Land to help decode it, but it was said to be too complex for conventional methods."
"... It seems that it's not just the problem of complex data structures," the Captain slightly frowned, "if it were just complex data structures, it can be brute-forced with the computation power of the Alice Tree, but this thing... seems incomplete."
Yu Sheng's eyes widened: "Incomplete?"
"... Simply put, the core layer of the encryption structure requires a specific authorization structure to be completed in order to start decoding, and this authorization structure is missing."
Yu Sheng instinctively exchanged a glance with Hu Li (the first Smart General of the travel agency), who frowned thoughtfully: "Does that mean something was missing when the Omen Goddess saved the data back then? Or did the data get corrupted over time?"
The Captain didn't speak for a long time, until after a long frown of thinking, he suddenly broke the silence: "I don't think it's either."
Yu Sheng and Hu Li spoke in unison: "What do you mean?"
"I think that child might have wanted to leave a way out for her friends in the last moments," the Captain slowly said, pointing to the cube that seemed to be constantly reorganizing inside, "it requires a specific Dark Angel to complete its core."