TTGOL CH86

Unable to locate the Secret Lake after a long search, the group didn’t dare advance rashly and decided to rest before moving on.

Hei Meng and Hei Si skillfully lit a campfire. The firelight slightly dispelled the fog, and everyone sat in a circle on the ground. Tang Cuo naturally sat next to Kelt. Watching his profile as he focused on roasting jerky, Tang Cuo suddenly asked, “Have you read The Elven Sonnets and Secret Tales of the Lake?”

“Hmm?” Kelt thought about it carefully. “I’ve read some of the sonnets, but I’m not exactly cut out to be an artist. As for Secret Tales of the Lake, I haven’t read it. Is it related to the Secret Lake?”

Tang Cuo had seen these two books in the library of the Magic School in the Kingdom Hidden in the Moonlight. He had only skimmed them at the time. The Elven Sonnets was undoubtedly a collection of hymns praising elves, while Secret Tales of the Lake was about a human living in a wooden cabin by a lake.

It was a journal, full of trivial details, and Tang Cuo couldn’t remember much of it. The only thing he remembered clearly was the author’s pen name: L.

Thinking back on it carefully, the unnamed, mysterious lake described in the journal sounded very much like the Secret Lake of the Elven Forest. The keyword was: fog.

A fog-filled forest and a mysterious lake. The person would arrive around the time late summer was passing and autumn was approaching, living alone in the lakeside cabin for a few days to half a month.

And the current season was exactly late summer and early autumn.

Even if the elves concealed the incident at the Secret Lake, they had no reason to lie about whether outsiders had entered it. With only a few people in a thousand years, those individuals definitely weren’t ordinary. Who could “L” be?

Tang Cuo looked around and simply feigned curiosity, asking, “Elder Evans just said that besides us, only three outsiders have visited the Secret Lake in the past millennium. Do you guys know who they are?”

“Actually, I’m a bit curious too.” Dorn nodded kindly at Tang Cuo. “Since we’re all here, we should know something about this place.”

The man with monolids scoffed, “Heh, isn’t it a bit late for you to be learning about this now?”

Dorn frowned, wanting to say something, but kept his mouth shut, seemingly wary of the people from the Little Windmill Branch.

A Druid sitting opposite Tang Cuo spoke up at the right moment. “Although we Druids are on good terms with the elves, we’ve never heard of any ancestor from our tribe coming here. But I once heard someone mention that among humans, His Grace the Duke of the White Knight family from the Kingdom of Hundred Flowers seemed to have visited the Secret Lake.”

Tang Cuo: “White Knight?”

Hei Meng: “Aside from the royal family, they are the most powerful noble family in the Kingdom of Hundred Flowers, the sharpest sword in the realm. They have produced three queens for the royal family. The White Knights, also known as the Queens of Flowers, use a white rose as their family crest.”

Hei Si: “According to unreliable records, the White Knight family also carries elven blood.”

Hei Meng: “It makes perfect sense for His Grace the Duke to visit the Secret Lake.”

Hei Si: “But we don’t know which Duke it was.”

Tang Cuo voiced his question about the “White Knight,” but he wasn’t completely ignorant. The very second he heard the term, he thought of the instance Lin Yandong had once described—the July Rose Incident.

He had clearly stated that Theodore’s older brother, Edwin, was the Duke of the Kingdom of Hundred Flowers’s White Knight family. In other words, it was Theodore’s ancestor, a certain Duke, who had visited the Secret Lake.

At this thought, Tang Cuo’s hand, which had been resting on his sword hilt, subconsciously rubbed against it. He asked again, “What about the other two?”

The Druid shook his head, the two from the Black Mountain Agency also shook their heads, and the scattered adventurers knew even less.

Hic.

A sudden alcohol-laced hiccup caught everyone’s attention. The dwarf, Hamur, raised his eyes—which were always somewhat clouded by booze—and said, “Don’t you Ivy Alliance folks even know your own history? The one from Popolo Island has been here.”

The man with monolid eyes asked, “Who?”

Hamur: “The most powerful one, of course.”

The man with monolid eyes‘s companion quickly asked, “His Excellency Sir Roger Reeds?”

“Of course not him,” Hamur rolled his eyes. “When I say the most powerful, I mean the most powerful. Anyway, it’s not someone named Rogerid!”

As for the exact name, the great dwarven craftsman couldn’t remember.

Everyone from the Ivy Alliance immediately put on a thoughtful expression. A moment later, Hei Meng and Hei Si had a flash of inspiration and said a name in perfect unison, “The Founder, Augustine.”

The man with monolid eyes: “Is Augustine even still alive? He hasn’t appeared in over a hundred years.”

Kelt frowned. “No matter your status, His Excellency Augustine is the founder of the Ivy Alliance. You should learn some respect.”

“Which of my words lacked respect? Kelt, and in what capacity are you speaking to me? I am—” The man with monolid eyes sneered, causing the Black brothers to frown as well.

The other two from the Little Windmill hurriedly pulled their companion back. “Hawke, that’s enough.”

Only then did Hawke reluctantly shut his mouth.

Hei Meng shot him a mild warning glance and said, “His Excellency Augustine is the eternal guiding light of our Ivy Alliance. No one should make baseless speculations about him.”

Hei Si, meanwhile, looked at the dwarf Hamur, hoping to get confirmation from him. Unfortunately, Hamur was clutching his wine bottle, having actually fallen asleep drunk.

Tang Cuo’s attention, however, was mostly on Kelt. Kelt had barely spoken earlier, only acting righteous and strict regarding the matter of Augustine. Tang Cuo had originally suspected his identity, but this move made him even more suspicious while also leaving him somewhat puzzled.

Right at that moment, an adventurer suddenly stood up in pleasant surprise and pointed behind Tang Cuo. “Look there! The fog has cleared a bit. Is that a lake?!”

Everyone looked over in unison.

Dorn even climbed a tree to get a better vantage point, bringing good news to everyone. “It really is a lake! We’ll reach it if we walk just a little further!”

The adventurer who spotted it first and his companion were thrilled. “So it was right nearby. If only we had walked a bit further earlier. We waited so long for nothing.”

“Yeah, but there’s plenty of time to go now. Without further ado, let’s head out immediately.”

“Let’s go!”

With the Secret Lake right before their eyes, no one wanted to fall behind, and they all dashed toward the shore. Tang Cuo moved quickly too, grabbing Hamur by the back of his collar and tossing him onto Kelt’s back. “Watch him.”

As his words fell, Tang Cuo had already leaped several steps ahead. Kelt, looking like a common laborer carrying the dwarf on his back, fell to the very rear, unable to rebel against the dictator’s hegemony.

By the lake, the lingering fog finally dissipated slightly, allowing everyone to catch a glimpse of the Secret Lake. It was a massive, pitch-black lake with jagged rocks along its shore. From deep within the hidden fog, a faint creaking sound could be heard.

“What is that sound?”

Visibility was still poor. Out of caution, everyone decided to move as a group to avoid being separated. Following the sound along the lakeshore, a colossal black behemoth soon came into view.

Hei Meng: “This is—”

Hei Si: “The Dwarven Black Iron Furnace!”

Upon the misty, vast expanse of the lake, a giant black furnace stood tall. Below the furnace, a complex web of metal supports extended all the way to the lakebed. Countless gears, big and small, hundreds of them densely packed together, kept the furnace running. Acting like waterwheels, they drew water from the lake and poured it into the furnace.

White mist billowed up from the furnace, spreading across the entire lake and subsequently the entire forest.

The creaking sound everyone had heard earlier was the sound of these gears turning.

“And over there—is that an Alchemical Colossus standing in the lake?!” Hawke said, unable to contain his excitement as he ran over. He practically fell to his knees by the shore, staring in disbelief at the iron giant that had its upper half protruding from the water. His mouth hung wide open for a long time.

His companions didn’t bother correcting his loss of composure, because this was truly too astonishing.

The Black Iron Furnace, the Alchemical Colossus—these were things that only existed in dwarven legends. Although modern dwarves still possessed top-tier forging techniques, their past glory had long faded.

Hei brothers instinctively looked at Hamur. But this incredibly carefree dwarf was currently sound asleep on Kelt’s back, drooling, impossible to wake up no matter how much they tried.

Dorn didn’t know much about dwarven affairs. Glancing at Kelt and Hamur, he proactively approached Tang Cuo and said, “It seems the third outsider to visit the Secret Lake was likely an ancestor of the dwarves. What do you think?”

Tang Cuo: “Maybe.”

Dorn looked back at the Black Iron Furnace, which was still continuously spewing fog. “The incident at the Secret Lake must stem from this furnace. Something went wrong with it, causing the fog over the lake to grow thicker and thicker.”

Hei Meng: “What you say makes sense.”

Hei Si: “But it’s definitely not the whole truth.”

The brothers continued finishing each other’s sentences with perfect chemistry. The two Druids also walked over and said, “It is very strange for a dwarven Black Iron Furnace to be inside the elves’ Secret Lake.”

It was indeed very strange.

Tang Cuo frowned slightly as he looked at the furnace continuously emitting fog. It was logical that a malfunction in the furnace caused the Secret Lake to be shrouded in thick fog, but it didn’t make sense rationally. Elves were a race that worshipped the God of Nature; why would they place these artificially forged objects at their birthplace?

Looking around, there was no wooden cabin by the lake either. Had it been torn down? Was it on the other side of the lake where Tang Cuo hadn’t reached yet? Or did the book not record the Secret Lake at all?

“Ahhhh—!” A scream interrupted Tang Cuo’s thoughts, accompanied by the splash of someone falling into the water.

Tang Cuo’s heart chilled, and he rushed over, but only a few strands of hair were faintly visible on the lake’s surface.

The water was like boiling, scalding hot water, bubbling and frothing. The person who fell in hadn’t thrashed for long before sinking, and finally, even the hair disappeared.

“Sam!”

“Sam!”

His companion shouted repeatedly but didn’t dare jump in to save him. The accident happened so fast that some people hadn’t even reacted yet, standing frozen by the lake.

In the blink of an eye, the lake’s surface had returned to a calm state, as if nothing had ever happened.

“God, this isn’t lake water, this is man-eating magma!” one person said, stepping back in fear, not daring to stand near the edge anymore.

“We should leave immediately. As long as we report the situation here truthfully to the elves, they won’t make things difficult for us, right? Who said there was no danger? Someone just died!”

“The dwarf, this damn dwarf, why hasn’t he woken up yet?”

“These belong to the dwarves. Maybe he’s the one behind all this!”

For a moment, chaotic chatter filled the air.

Tang Cuo’s expression remained calm. Out of the corner of his eye, he kept tabs on Kelt, but couldn’t spot any clues on his face either. That guy named Sam had wanted to get closer to the Alchemical Colossus and jumped into the lake on his own accord. For now, there was no obvious foul play.

Dorn suggested turning back. Although he hadn’t come with Sam, they were all adventurers, and it was hard not to feel a sense of shared grief.

The three from the Little Windmill Harbour immediately voiced their opposition. “We finally made it to the Secret Lake, and we haven’t even investigated it properly. How can we go back? Besides, that guy Sam died because of his own greed. It has nothing to do with us.”

“You!” Sam’s companion glared, eyes wide with anger.

Dorn held him back. With a dark face, he looked at Tang Cuo and Hei brothers. “What do you all say?”

Unexpectedly, the usually calm and composed Hei brothers leaned toward staying and continuing the investigation. Tang Cuo didn’t speak, his gaze sweeping over the group.

One thing was certain. The Little Windmill Harbour was thousands of miles away from the Elven Forest. To appear here so coincidentally, and to refuse to leave now—they definitely had ulterior motives.

“It’s not that we don’t want to leave, it’s that we definitely can’t get out right now,” Tang Cuo said. He walked over to Hamur and shoved him hard, but Hamur still didn’t wake up.

This sleep was far too deep.

A dwarf who wouldn’t wake from his drunken stupor, the Black Iron Furnace, the Alchemical Colossus, the missing wooden cabin, and the bizarre lake—it all seemed to point to an inconceivable hypothesis.

Meanwhile, Jin Cheng was still at the bottom of the cliff looking up at the sky—how to get back up after coming down was a problem.

Rewinding to last night.

Jin Cheng had jumped off the cliff right before the Elven Guard spotted him. With his abilities, jumping off a cliff was a piece of cake. He lost more than half his health bar upon hitting the bottom, but a potion fixed that right up.

The bottom of the cliff was littered with jagged rocks, devoid of a single blade of grass.

Jin Cheng pulled out a handkerchief, wiped the blood from a scrape on his hand, and strolled along, calling out the name mentioned in his quest. He walked with a leisurely pace; anyone watching would think he was on a day trip to the bottom of a cliff.

“McKeown?”

“Where are you hiding?”

“Squeak if you hear me.”

“Squeak!”

“Yo.”

Jin Cheng hadn’t expected the other party to actually squeak. The sound came from right under his foot. Looking down, it was a very large, very fat rat.

It must have become a spirit.

“McKeown?”

“Squeak, squeak, squeak!”

The rat squirmed frantically because Jin Cheng had stepped on its tail. Jin Cheng simply grabbed its tail and hoisted it upside down, examining it closely. “If you’re about to tell me you’re McKeown, I’ll chop you up.”

The rat immediately trembled in fear, its tiny beady eyes welling up with tears.

Jin Cheng was amused. The system was a genius. Telling him to jump off a cliff to save a rat? Was this the Rat King or One-Ear?

Wait, no.

Tugging at the rat’s ear, Jin Cheng suddenly detected a trace of magical aura. Had this unlucky bastard been hit with a transfiguration spell? Its left leg was bloody and looked broken—highly likely from falling from above.

“Are you human? Squeak if you are.”

“Squeak!!!”

Receiving a positive answer, Jin Cheng stroked his chin and thought carefully. In this Western Fantasy world, who or what race was best at shapeshifting?

Druids?