Chapter 126 — What on Earth Lies Buried Beneath This Land
Blade of Dawn · Page 2 of 4
The architectural style and materials of this underground passage were very close to that colossal ruin in the Dark Mountains!
Sir Byron was astonished as well. He examined his surroundings carefully, his voice uncertain: "It really does... it really does look similar. The curse had my head in such a fog back then that I never noticed at all!"
"Underground works left from the Spark Era, and they exist here too..." Gao Yang's heart surged. "So the ruin in the Dark Mountains is only part of some larger complex of ruins? Or else..."
A bolder notion surfaced in his mind: could the fortress buried in the Dark Mountains and the tunnels here be one continuous whole?!
Could these ancient passages span the vast lands north of the mountains, cross the Whitewater River and the forested country north of the range, forming an unbroken network?!
The bold conjecture did not last long, however. Gao Yang soon shook his head and judged the idea unlikely: even if the Gondor Empire of old had been supremely powerful, its productive capacity was still finite. From the Dark Mountains to here was a great distance, with tangled terrain—mountains, rivers, and more—in between. How could anyone build an underground complex of such scale with any ease?
To be sure, if the Gondor Empire had truly set its mind to bludgeoning its way through this land, pouring the whole nation's strength into raising an "underground city-state" beneath the earth near the Dark Mountains was not strictly impossible. But Gao Yang simply could not fathom what here could have been worth such frantic investment—and investment in a secret project besides, one of which the Gondor populace and all later generations knew nothing at all...
Could it be... connected to those human experiments Nicholas mentioned, to the so-called "godspawn"?
"Hey, hey, hey, what are you thinking about?" Gao Yang's deliberations were cut short by a voice at his ear. Coming back to himself, he found Amber waving her clawed hand vigorously before his eyes, the half-elf's face thrust close. "You pick a time like this to space out?"
"No, it's nothing," Gao Yang said, quickly reining in his thoughts and setting the conjectures aside for now. This was truly no time to dwell on them. "Judging by our position, we should be directly beneath the bed of the Whitewater River by now."
"Really?" Amber looked up in disbelief. The "stone" vault overhead was dry and solid, not a drop seeping through, nor the faintest sound of flowing water to be heard. "My God... then this place really is deep. How did anyone manage to drive a tunnel under a riverbed..."
"What I'd like to know is how he still judges our position so accurately in a situation like this," Pi Yun muttered, stealing a glance at Gao Cen.
Amber's ears twitched, and the words came out before she could stop them: "Isn't it obvious? The man's been buried underground for over seven hundred years—he's a professional... Ouch, ow, ow!"
Gao Yang gave Amber's ear a twist by way of punctuation, then ignored her and signaled Sir Byron to keep leading the way.
At the same time, looking over the composition of the party he was leading, he felt a sudden chill in his heart.
An elf thief, the shame of all creation; a druid skilled at brewing soup, peddling wares, and selling fake medicine; a wily old knight who could make running away sound downright righteous. Of the five in the party, three had their styles badly out of joint. By that reckoning, aside from himself, whose square-jawed face could steady morale, Sir Philip—plodding along beside him, grave and silent, clearing the way—was probably the only conscience left in the entire Cecil operations team...
As he mused on this, Sir Philip suddenly turned his head and asked Byron with the utmost seriousness: "By the way, Byron, that 'righteous retreat' you mentioned before—is that a knight skill I don't know about?"
Everyone: "..."