Chapter 126 What is buried in this land?

"This is the entrance."

After a short rest and regaining a few percent of his strength, Knight Byron led Gawain and his party to the woods near Goring's Mill, and reached a ridge. I found the tunnel entrance and exit under the slope of the soil - the entrance was not big, hidden between the stones and tree roots at the base of the slope, and the outside was already covered by overgrown vines and fallen leaves, if it hadn't been for the guidance of Knight Byron. , I’m afraid anyone passing by here will subconsciously ignore it.

When Byron left the tunnel, he destroyed some of the plants covering the cave entrance. Although he did some re-covering work after that, traces of someone coming in and out could still be seen. Pitman squatted down in front of the cave entrance, observed the situation inside and judged: "This should not have been an exit originally. It was probably an earthquake or the roots of the giant tree that opened the crack in the ground, connecting this cave to the tunnel below. Get up."

As he spoke, the old man said casually with a smile: "There are really a lot of things buried underground in the south."

Gawain suddenly felt that this old boy. There was something in the words: "You include me, right?"

Pitman laughed dryly twice, then took out a small magic crystal from his arms, and injected a little magic power into it to make it emit bright and constant light. ray of light, and then threw it into the hole, and made a "you go first" gesture to Gawain: "This is the time for you to take action."

Gawain shrugged and said Knight Philip, who was the first to go down, stopped him and jumped down first.

He felt that he was stepping on a layer of soft and moist rotten leaves and branches, surrounded by a narrow space of earth and rocks, and the light emitted by the magic crystal falling on the ground illuminated the surroundings, making him You can see the situation deeper: ahead is a winding and downward-sloping slope. There is no trace of human processing, but more like what the old Druid said, it is a deeper artificial tunnel caused by natural factors. connected.

He picked up the magic crystal, shook it twice to signal that it was safe, and then took the lead to move forward.

After a while, Amber's breath followed, and the half-elf thief was obviously at ease after entering this underground space. She happily turned the precious dagger in her hand while looking around curiously: "This place has always been It's extending downwards."

"If these 'combat tunnels' were dug back then, they must be very deep," Gawain said casually, "After all, there is always the aura of demonic tides on the surface. If it leaks out, if the tunnel is not dug deeper, the people taking refuge in the tunnel will be easily harmed."

The downward sloping tunnel continued for a short period, and the surrounding area began to become wider and dry, Gawain noticed. The soil and natural gravel on both sides of the passage are gradually decreasing, replaced by artificially processed support beams, stone bricks, and solid walls treated with earth element spells. As they continue forward, the ground becomes flat and no longer Continue to tilt downward.

Looking at the surrounding scene, Gawain’s brows gradually furrowed.stand up.

Amber also immediately discovered something unusual. She stopped playing with the dagger and ran to a nearby wall to carefully observe the material of the latter and the patterns on the wall. Then He ran back to Gawain in confusion: "That's not right... the style of this place is different from the tunnels we walked through when we ran out of your tomb..."

"That's right... , it’s different, these are not the underground fortifications in the south that I presided over the construction of back then." Gawain raised the magic crystal and illuminated the surrounding walls and ground, "No wonder... When Knight Byron mentioned that there were underground passages under Tanzanian Town, I It’s strange, because there was no development plan for this area back then, and no one should have developed it for a long time even after my death... Who would build a tunnel here..."

Amber frowned Eyebrow: "If you look carefully, it looks a bit like the ruins in the Dark Mountains?"

Gawain finally realized where the vague sense of familiarity in his memory came from.

The architectural style and materials of this underground passage are very close to the giant ruins in the Dark Mountains!

Knight Byron himself was also greatly surprised. He looked around carefully and wondered: "Really...it does look very similar. My brain was so dizzy due to the curse at the time, but it turned out to be completely I didn't see it!"

"The underground facilities left over from the Spark Era are actually here..." Gao Wen's heart was filled with ups and downs, "So the ruins in the Dark Mountains are just a group of large ruins. Part of it? Or..."

An even bolder thought came to his mind: Could it be that the fortress buried in the dark mountains is connected to the underground passage here? !

These ancient passages spanned a large area of ​​land on the north side of the mountain range, crossed the Baishui River and the forest area in the north of the mountain, and were completely continuous? !

However, the bold speculation in Gawain's mind did not last long. He quickly shook his head and believed that these ideas were unlikely: Even if the Gondor Empire was extremely powerful back then, its productivity was limited. Not only is it a long distance from the Dark Mountains to here, but there are also intricate terrains such as mountains and rivers in between. How easy is it to build a facility of this size underground?

Although to be honest, if the Gondor Empire is really determined to break through this land, it is not impossible to use the strength of the whole country to establish such an "underground city-state" underground near the Dark Mountains, but Gawain really couldn't figure out what there was here that was worthy of their crazy investment, and it was still a secret project that invested so much. The people in Gondor and the people of later generations were completely unaware of it...

Could it be... Are those human experiments mentioned to Nicholas Egg related to the so-called "gods"?

"Hey, hey, what are you thinking about?" Gawain's thoughts were interrupted by a sudden sound in his ears. When he came back to his senses, he saw Amber shaking her claws in front of his eyes. The half-elf lady also came close to her face, "This kind of situationAre you distracted? "

"No, it's nothing," Gawain quickly gathered his thoughts and put aside all those speculations for the time being: now is really not the time to think about them, "Judging from the location, we should have arrived at Baishui River. Right below the river bed. "

"Really? " Amber looked up in disbelief. The "stone" vault above was dry and stable. There was no dripping water, and she couldn't hear the slightest sound of the river flowing. "My God... then this place is really big enough. Deep, how could those people open such a tunnel under the river bed..."

"I am more curious about how he can accurately judge the location under such circumstances. "Pitman secretly looked at Gawain and muttered.

Amber's ears twitched and she opened her mouth: "There's no need to ask, he has been buried underground for more than seven hundred years, so he is a professional... Oh, it hurts! ”

Gawain easily twisted Amber’s ears, then stopped talking to the guy, and motioned to Knight Byron to continue leading the way.

At the same time, he looked at the composition of the team he led. , suddenly felt a little cold in my heart——

An elf thief who is the shame of all things, a druid who is good at making soups and selling counterfeit medicines, an old fritter who can talk about running away so righteously Knights, among the five people in the team, three of them have the wrong style of painting. It seems that in addition to his ability to stabilize morale with his Chinese character face, Knight Philip, who is leading the way with a serious and silent face next to him, is probably the only one in the entire Cecil Action Team. I have saved my conscience...

While he was thinking about it, he saw Knight Philip suddenly turned his head and asked Byron seriously: "By the way, Byron, what you said before is the 'just retreat'" Is it a knight skill that I don't know about? "

Everyone: "..."

Gao Wen sighed in his heart: It is rare for him to be a good young man, but in the end he is still a passive flatterer...

Following Getting closer and closer to Tanzan Town, everyone gradually stopped chatting.

Based on the cheating memory map and terrain pre-reading ability, Gawain can always roughly judge his current location. He discovered that this long underground passage was not straight, with many detours and forks in the middle. After ignoring the collapse or wrong routes, he found that he had walked a small circle around the eastern part of Tanzan Town.

This is located just below the Tanzan Mine

The topography of Tanzan Town has been mentioned before: it is backed by the huge Tanzan Mine on the east side and the Baishui River on the west side. With two tributaries, the entire town is roughly triangular, and Viscount Andrew's castle is located in the east of the town, connected to the gentle part of the Tanzanite mine. In fact, the main building materials of the castle itself were quarried from the mine: This mine not only produces iron ore and various crystal minerals, but also high-quality stone. It is not unreasonable for the Leslie family who owns this land to have enviable wealth.

At this moment. , Gawain was walking in the ancient tunnel located directly under the mine, and the first thought that came to his mind was: who AnDoes Viscount Drew know about the existence of these underground ruins?

... He probably doesn't know, because the iron ore and crystal ore in the Tanzanite mine are not deep veins, but are located in the mountain. There is no need to dig deep underground to dig the mine tunnel. With this With the productivity of the times, digging deep underground unnecessarily is no joke. No one would do such a thankless thing. And if Viscount Andrew really digs out this ancient ruins... then there won't be any news from the outside world.

As the largest population gathering place and business travel center in the vicinity, Tanzanian Town is not a place where secrets can be kept - it is different from the dark mountains where birds can't shit.

The terrain ahead began to rise.

The air became humid, and there was an obvious airflow on the skin. There were faint sounds coming from the front. There were various signs that the exit was near.

Not long after, they walked out of the tunnel and saw the spot where Knight Byron fell: it was an open and steep cave with underground water seeping out at the bottom. The exit of the tunnel is located on the edge of the water pool. It is said to be an exit, but it is actually a cracked rock crack - obviously this is not a normal entrance, but is cracked like this due to geological changes and other factors.

I don’t know where the real tunnel entrance is, and most of it has collapsed.

Seeing that there were no serious traces of water-soluble wind erosion in the rock crevices beside the pool, Gawain couldn't help but turned around and asked Philip: "Have there been any earthquakes in this area in recent years?"

"No," Knight Philip shook his head, and then frowned and thought, "But I heard people who have lived in Tanzania Town say that they occasionally hear strange howling sounds coming from the underground of the mine. The locals It was said that it was caused by the undead slave workers who died in the mine, but Viscount Andrew had checked with psychics and wizards several times, but could not find the source of the strange noise."

"Is that so... ..." Gawain said noncommittally, and then looked up at the top of the cave.

There are vines growing all over the place, and huge roots of trees can be seen spreading out from the side. Presumably, the hole was once covered and hidden, and now a big hole has been made: Byron Knight His luck is really good. He should really thank the goddess of fate for surviving.

If there is such a god in this world.

“You can see the east wall of the castle from here,” Byron said. “But the entrance to the cave is almost straight and is filled with soft soil. It is not easy to go up.”

A rustling sound came from above, and the sound around the cave entranceThe surrounding vines were catalyzed and pulled by the Druid's spells, growing rapidly and hanging down!