Prison on the Sea Surface 682: 201.
Prison on the Sea Surface Dark waves continuously lashed against the cliff’s base rocks, day and night.
The mist from the deep sea never dissipated.
The sea breeze brushed over the cliff top, otherwise, why would Annie sway so gently?
“Look, there are tree buds.”
Anna stood under the Annie Tree, the gray and withered branches on the recliner pushing out clusters of yellow-green sprouts.
“Annie’s fondness for you is about to surpass mine,” Anna muttered softly as she caressed the trunk.
“You two came back two days late…
Did something happen?” Raimy asked from not far away.
She felt that Anna seemed to have changed, not quite the same as before.
“Indeed, there was an incident,” Lu Li looked towards the children frolicking around Amber and Aidanvoya, who welcomed the arrival of new residents more than anyone else.
“This is Aidanvoya, Tesla’s wife, and she may live here for quite a while,” Lu Li introduced to Raimy and Jimmy.
As for Annie, he had already told Aidanvoya about the siblings and the children on the road.
It meant that the third wooden hut in Elm Forest needed to be built.
“Leave it to me and my sister.” Jimmy, who had regained much strength from hunting with Anna, volunteered eagerly.
The siblings, who had built two huts, could be considered craftsmen by now.
Amber wasn’t interested in the huts; it favored open grounds and Elm Forest, and…
It even indulged the children in climbing on its body to frolic on its back.
Anna reminded it not to get close to the trees in the forest or to harm them as she entered the refuge with a carriage full of books and food.
After storing the food in the cellar, Anna began to ponder where to place half a carriage’s worth of books—the space in the refuge was clearly insufficient.
With the refuge now down to limited free space after setting down a single bed and a table with chairs, the books Anna brought would need several bookshelves to fit.
“For now, put them in the cave,” Lu Li said.
But they couldn’t stay for too long…
Fragile books couldn’t withstand the dampness and decay.
The refuge perhaps needed to be expanded.
The original intention of the refuge was to let him, Lu Li, eke out a miserable existence after the apocalypse, but Anna and the residents of Elm Forest together built a defense called safety.
This did not align with the initial plan.
“We don’t have that much Deep Sea Stone,” Anna said, as if she knew what Lu Li was thinking.
“There’s a place with a lot,” Lu Li said, where they even extravagantly used Deep Sea Stones as building materials, just as they did.
And it was right at Elm Forest’s doorstep, at the Ruins of Belfast.
The only issue was whether they should release the ghosts imprisoned in the prison in order to obtain Deep Sea Stones, even though Belfast was already bad enough.
“I’ll look for the prison’s location when I go hunting later,” Anna said,
Lu Li didn’t refuse, but he reminded Anna that she could observe but should not explore or approach.
He still remembered what Tesla had said, that the warden of the prison was an evil spirit.
Regardless of its relationship with humans, it was clear its relationship with its own kind was not good.
Outside the cave, the sound of hammering planks for construction rang out.
Anna lit the hearth that had cooled for several days, and the ashes that were dug out were taken outside by Lu Li to be scattered.
Amber lay at the entrance of the cave, the children like its own offspring, snuggling up and falling asleep in Amber’s curled-up embrace after tiring of their play.
Not far away, Jimmy’s monstrous figure was building a new hut next to the siblings’ cottage, while Raimy worked on the shelves for those books.
When Lu Li returned to the cave, he saw the flower pot placed by the entrance by Raimy, the tender shoots had stopped growing, as if frozen in the moment Lu Li had left the forest.
The drooping yellowish shoots indicated that they were about to die.
Lu Li picked up the pot and placed it on the desk, alongside the one he had brought from Arlen Kingdom.
This pot, which had brought Lu Li and Anna together, had rightfully been brought back to the cliff top.
Perhaps by tomorrow morning, one would be able to see fresh sprouts piercing through the soil, adorned with dewdrops.
Soon, Raimy entered the cave with a roughly made bookshelf, with tree bark still adhering to it that hadn’t been peeled off, but it was sufficient as a makeshift shelf.
Anna placed the books on the shelf one by one, and after filling it up, she placed the remaining few on the desk in the shelter.
Whether or not anyone would peruse them, the few books indeed gave the shelter an atmosphere like that of a room.
Next was something Lu Li had been planning to do: visiting the “neighbors,” the elm trees.
The gift was simple—it was Lu Li himself.
It might sound a bit odd, but the current Lu Li was welcomed like fertilizer by the trees.
Wherever he passed and stayed, the elm trees permeated with despair and sorrow began to gradually alter their mood.
Lu Li and Anna walked around the perimeter of the cliff top.