Chapter 451

Chapter 451: History in the Mist and Mist in the History

The group moved forward in the dark. The ghostly flame became a glowing path, tracing the marks of their way deeper into the cave. The light of the consecrated lantern and the spirit flame shone on the road ahead so they could just barely see what surrounded them.

Along the way, what Duncan’s group saw most often was Boiling Gold.

High-purity Boiling Gold made up every part of the cave’s terrain. Layer upon layer of dense rock formed a strong shell, and a huge amount of loose ore lay scattered across the pit floor, impossible to count.

These ores were the base of modern industry, the lifeblood of Frostholm. Yet seeing them here only made the atmosphere grow more and more strange.

But Duncan did not care much about that strangeness. He was a practical man. Elder Gods or no Elder Gods came second. If Boiling Gold could be used, then it was good. Even if this Boiling Gold really was a “product” of the Abyssal Lord, he did not mind using it.

In fact, if he were the city-state’s Governor, the only thing he would be thinking about right now would be how feasible it was to open a branch mine in the Abyssal Deep, in the Deep Sea, and how to draw up a plan for sustainable mining on the Abyssal Lord.

But he did not say any of this out loud.

For an ordinary person like Agatha, that kind of development idea might be a bit extreme.

Duncan’s mind turned with all sorts of thoughts, but then a hazy patch of Shadows at the edge of his sight made him suddenly stop.

The others stopped as well. Morris seemed to see something too. He raised the consecrated lantern to light the area and said: “There seems to be something ahead.”

In the limited glow from the consecrated lantern and the spirit flame, a huge mass of Shadows slowly appeared in the endless darkness. It looked like a pillar standing in the distance, or the trunk of a towering tree. Its upper half spread out in a vague way, as if some branching structure reached up into the dark.

Even though she could not see it clearly, the dim outline alone let Agatha feel its enormous size. It was like a giant column that could hold up a whole mountain. Even across a great distance, it gave off a heavy sense of pressure.

Vanna tightened her grip on her greatsword and warned everyone: “Move forward carefully.”

The group continued on through the dark. As they drew closer, that vague patch of Shadows slowly became clearer before them.

A huge “pillar”, like the tower of the Cathedral, stood in the center of the Great Hollow. In the lantern light, it showed itself in a breathtaking way.

“Eye of Wisdom…”

Morris gasped without thinking, and the consecrated lantern in his hand even shook. He stared at the pillar. Its black surface was uneven and rough, like the tentacle of some Deep Sea creature grown countless times larger. Its lower half was buried deep in the ground, surrounded by wrinkled, broken rock, as if it had grown from the seawater under the city and stabbed straight through the island’s base. Its upper half ran up into the endless darkness overhead and split into faint branches there, like a strange giant tree that had twisted and grown in this unknown deep, then quietly died.

It was so massive that the lantern’s glow could not possibly light the whole pillar. It was hard even to light a small part of its front. Morris could see only the patch of rough surface where the lantern light reached. The larger, hazier structures were picked out by the dim green flame spreading around them. As for the parts even the green flame could not reach… there he could only rely on his imagination, trying to make sense of the very blurred Shadows.

Even the usually careless doll girl felt deeply shaken by the sight.

Alice tilted her head back, then grabbed her head with both hands and pulled hard. With a soft pop, she pulled her head off. She lifted her own head high and tried her best to look up, but still could not see clearly, so she tossed her head upward a few times. After throwing it several times, she finally felt for it and pressed it back onto her neck, then kept staring up in a daze. “Wow…”

Vanna turned to look at Alice. “…Wow.”

“What is this thing?” Morris’s full attention was on the pillar, both grand and terrifying. He could not help taking a couple of steps forward and carefully touching its pitted surface. The cold, rough feel under his fingers was like rock. “It feels like stone, but it looks like some kind of…”

“Some huge limb,” Duncan said. He tilted his head back to look up at the upper half of the pillar. After a few seconds he spoke softly. “It seems to be what’s holding up the whole cave.”

“So this is the real reason the cave hasn’t collapsed…” Morris murmured. He leaned close to the pillar and studied its surface by the lantern’s glow. “Judging from the lines, this also looks a bit like Boiling Gold ore, but it’s not quite like any ore the books describe… It seems mixed with impurities.”

“If we guess boldly, maybe this is a piece of the Abyssal Lord’s limb,” Duncan said casually. “It stretched into the city and was burned into stone here.”

The scene fell silent for a moment. Several seconds passed before Vanna finally twitched the corner of her mouth and broke the silence. “That sounds a bit scary…”

“Scary, but very likely. I only added ‘maybe’ for your sake,” Duncan said, shaking his head. “Don’t forget, my flame once spread here. Things were chaotic back then, so I didn’t have time to sense everything in detail, but I remember… whatever was here was very hard to burn.”

As he spoke, he stepped forward and reached out to touch the pillar’s rough, rock-like surface.

On the other side, Agatha also felt her way toward the “pillar”.

In her “vision”, everything was still shaking under the interference of some resonant force. This empty cave became, in her eyes, a strange place full of chaotic ripples. Yet even in that endless interference, she could clearly “see” the “pillar” before her.

A faint pull drove her closer.

Agatha carefully reached out and stroked the pillar. Her fingers moved over the cold surface as if she were flipping through a book carved from stone, reading the memories left inside the rock.

Some depressions caught her attention.

She traced them, drawing their shapes in her mind. She placed her palm in one of the hollows and found that each of her fingers fit into it perfectly.

It was a handprint.

After a brief shock, she reached out with her other hand. Guided by a sudden, baseless instinct in her mind, she groped around and found another handprint.

It felt as if a trace of fine ash still remained inside the print.

Agatha suddenly froze. She instinctively wanted to turn her head and tell Duncan what she had found. But in the next second, countless tangled lights and shadows rose all at once in her dark, chaotic vision.

Memories rose in her heart. Thin but real emotions were mixed among them. Countless pieces of information flooded into her mind. It was as if those messages had been sleeping in Agatha’s head from the very start, as if they were her own experiences. At the moment she touched those two handprints, they suddenly woke up inside her!

A search in the dark… A meeting with Governor Winston’s echo… The true nature of the Abyssal Trench Project… The preparations made by each generation of Governor… The power of the Elder Gods invading the city, the thoughts of the Elder Gods drifting between illusion and the Mortal Realm, and…

This was a replica.

“Ah—”

Agatha gave a small cry. Her foot slipped, and she almost fell.

A hand reached out from the side and caught her in time. Duncan’s voice sounded in the darkness. “What’s wrong?”

Agatha blinked in a daze, then finally came back to herself. At once she became aware of the fragments that had appeared in her mind. She quickly stood steady and spoke fast: “I touched some memories… They were left by ‘her’!”

“Left by ‘her’?” Duncan frowned, understanding at once what she meant. “That replicant? Her memories remained here?”

“Yes. Listen, it’s important—she met Governor Winston here and learned the truth about the Abyssal Trench Project…”

Agatha spoke so fast it was as if she was afraid she would forget those fragments of memory in the next second. She almost did not pause as she poured out everything she had just seen and heard. She did not care whether the others had time to react. From the Governor’s last words to the source of Frostholm’s Queen’s obsession back then, and in the end, the strongest thought of all—the most stubborn idea “she” had left behind before vanishing.

The key message “she” wanted to pass on—the “Elder God” invading the city-state of Frostholm was a replica.

It was the replica of the Abyssal Lord.

Everyone fell silent. No matter how strange or terrifying Agatha’s tale sounded, no one interrupted her.

Only when Agatha said the last word did the scene fall quiet for another ten seconds or so. Morris was the first to break the silence.

“…History in the mist, and mist in the history…”

The Old Scholar could not help sighing.

Beside him, Duncan’s gaze had already fallen on the great “pillar”.

His eyes were more serious than they had ever been.