William didn't expect to be here for the second time so soon.

It may be that after the torture of Cheng Yue, it is finally time to run. Soon after the separation, he met a local villager who claimed to be willing to lead the way.

In the consideration of not wanting to be delayed by Kraft's attitude, the anxiety of not being allowed to enter the treasury may have other reasons, but I couldn't think of so many for a while. As if his feet were moving on their own, he stepped over the rocks again, lit a torch at the entrance of the mine, and went straight into it.

By the time he realized that he was a little too anxious, he had once again reached the end of the mining area, and the slightly slender old man walked in front of him.

With the torch flickering in his hand, William paused, delicately pondering whether what he had done was unreasonable, but found nothing. The sailors behind him stopped and waited for the captain's command.

Hearing the footsteps stop, the old man turned his thin neck with protruding bone thorns, twisted half of his body, and aimed a small spot in the cloudy eyeballs in the sunken and shriveled eye sockets at them. The ribbed barrel-shaped chest stretched out the loose garment, and a deep depression that was indistinguishable from that of other elderly men in the locality, and the loose skin on the front of the neck sank, inexplicably reminded William of the broken sail being entangled in the broken mast by a strong wind.

In terms of age and physical condition, this old man should not have and is not able to continue working, and he is not very familiar with this new mine that has only been used for a few years. However, a surprising force sustained the seemingly crumbling body, and it climbed the mountain path that was difficult for young sailors to climb, taking every step accurately in the cave of light and shadow.

"What's wrong? Can't afford two silver coins? His voice was shrill, like a sharp pickaxe cutting across the surface of a mineral crystal, and his tooth-aching tone seemed sarcastic, or maybe it was just his throat being eroded by dust in his hard breathing.

This feeling was very uncomfortable for William, and the age of the guide made it hard for him to believe that he had worked here, but he had never tripped over a single piece of uneven ground along the way, which was only an experience for an old man with yellow eyes.

"Did you really mine here? I've heard that this mine has only been in use for a few years. ”

"Nope." The rickety old man opened his mouth, and his mouth, which had few teeth left, looked hollow, and when William and the others felt fooled, he continued the second half of his sentence, "Because I didn't come for those stones, but I promise to know it better than anyone else, including below." ”

His wrinkled hand raised the torch, the half-extinguished burning material loosened and fell, and the spark swam in the carbon black float, "Come on, I know where you want to go, where those people won't take you." ”

The light of the under-materialized torch faded, but the old man had no intention of replacing it, and walked past the deepest trace of humanity here, a small groove where the torch was placed, and marched to a deeper, more primitive part, as if he did not care about the person behind him.

Several people looked at each other, following him before he walked away.

The sound of footsteps echoed through the crimson tunnels, and the slope steepened as they went deeper into the mountain, to the point where it was necessary to pay attention to the steady footing so as not to lose the balance. And the old man walked on the ground here, and his speed never slowed down.

As William and the sailors struggled to keep up with him, few people had the strength to notice that the reds were fading away rather than deepening with depth. When the second torch was lit, it dawned on them that the descent had already taken longer than the time from the foot of the mountain to the mouth of the cave, and they left the stratum where the red iron was distributed, and walked in the cooled passage.

Not only red, but also the tiresome dust that has been with them everywhere for many days is also fading. Gray, white, dry rock squeezed in from outside the cave walls, discharging the main colors that dominated the ravines and low mountains.

The old man lowered the crude torch, and the flames on it were completely extinguished, and the entwined incendiary material was gone, leaving only the bare stick.

He didn't prepare a second one from the start, and after it was extinguished, he continued to walk straight forward, and William followed closely behind, trying to help him light the way ahead, and soon found that he didn't need it at all.

The rickety figure stood outside the circle of light, half of his body reaching into the darkness, but his steps were more steady than those lit by torches, and every step was grounded. It was as if there were stairs laid for him in the mine, going down step by step, keeping a distance just enough to see and at any time to be lost, and if you took a step slower, you would be out of sight.

It may be that the clothes on his body are a little thin, and when the gray and white begin to sink into the cave walls, William feels a soaking cold. It's not that it's moisture, it's that this coldness can't be blocked by clothing like ice water, and the wetness seems to be an accomplice to the transformation of the cloth into a low temperature, sucking the heat away from the body one by one.

The journey of a torch allowed them to leave the southern hills and come to .

They couldn't tell where it was, even though the Iceberg had reached many ports between the center of the kingdom and the ice fields, this kind of cave had never been seen in William's eyes, it belonged to this place, it belonged to the southern hills covered with heavy dust and yellow rock, and the heterochromatic gray-white rock formations were more barren than barren.

It first appeared in the form of mold, like when checking the food reserves in the cargo hold, I touched a cabinet door that had not been locked last time, and white spots on hard biscuits and bacon grew on the tip of the needle. The inexperienced sloppy sailor would simply close the cabinet, and the veteran crew knew that when they found the first cluster, it meant that the depths below the surface were completely different.

Down, that gray flooded out, crowding out the yellow rocks underfoot, on the sides, and overhead, for more acreage. It is not like iron ore integrated into the mountain and disseminated, but oil-water stratification, with clear boundaries.

A sense of déjà vu flooded back, and William traced the strangest and stranger parts of his not-so-distant memories of the very similar scene they had just experienced last night—walking along a long, dark road, standing in front of the alien rocks that divided the yellow and white. But he didn't have much time to stop and think, the old man didn't have any intention of stopping to rest, and William could hear his chest tugging like bellows, a deep gasp.

The steps were carried faster and faster, walking on the yellow and white ground, the transition was unusually short, and it felt like it was only a short moment before being left behind, completely entering the gray and white rock formations.

William pinched his nose and felt himself getting smaller, following the cavity through the strange-smelling skin, looking for intact flesh at the bottom, only to fall into a long white mold, where there was nothing he wanted, producing a certain mixture of dry and spoiled texture, like a loose gray skeleton that had been exposed to the sun for many days, with a dusty surface and a faint strip of creature drilling into it, opening a cavity for access.

He wandered, and in the urgency of following, William did not understand how he had such a rich association, which originated from the memory, the heterochromatic rocks up and down at the end of the mountain road, which had a certain symbolic nature, on a particular occasion. Clarity, guiding thinking in that direction, the gray-white part has a long link of non-snake and non-insect strips coiled, communicating the two poles of dust and gray.

"Old Gory! You're old Gori! William shouted ahead.

At the edge of the halo, the old and thin face turned gloomily, the toothless jaw opened, the fire illuminated the mouth and the bottomless cavern behind him, and the ischemic mucous membranes were as gray as the rock walls. The sound of a horn echoed from his throat, or from the depths of the cavern, somewhere white, hollow, and vibrated by the rock walls and cold currents that came out of nowhere, approaching and amplifying to the point of unsettling to the point of unsettling, shaking down gravel and dust, and extinguishing torches.

The vibrations were long, winding, coming from some kind of behemoth that lined up the rock formations.

(End of chapter)