"Here is the entrance."
After a short rest, Knight Byron, who had regained some strength, led Gawain and his party to the woods near Goring's Mill, and found the entrance and exit of the tunnel under a raised soil slope. Between the rocks and tree roots at the base of the slope, and the outside has been covered by overgrown vines and fallen leaves, if it wasn't for the guidance of Knight Byron, anyone passing by here would subconsciously ignore it.
When Byron left the tunnel, he destroyed part of the plants covering the entrance of the cave. Although he did some re-covering work after that, he could still see the traces of people coming in and out. Pittman squatted down in front of the cave entrance, observed the situation inside, and judged: "This should not be an exit. It may be that the earthquake or the roots of the giant tree opened the cracks in the ground, and this cave was connected to the tunnel below. stand up."
While talking, the old man said casually with a smile: "There are really many things buried underground in the south."
Gao Wen suddenly felt that there was something in the old boy's words: "You included me too!"
Pittman laughed twice, and then took out a small magic spar from his arms. He injected a little magic power to make it emit a bright and constant light, and then threw it into the hole and made a gesture of "you go first": "This It's time for you to go out."
Gawain shrugged, stopped Philip Knight who wanted to go down first, and jumped down first.
He felt that he was stepping on a layer of soft and damp rotten leaves and rotten branches, surrounded by a narrow space of earth and stone, and the light from the magic spar that fell on the ground illuminated the surroundings, allowing him to see the situation deeper : In front of it is a winding and downward-sloping ramp, with no traces of artificial processing, but more like what the old druid said, it is connected to a deeper artificial tunnel due to natural factors.
He picked up the magic spar, shook it twice to signal the safety below, and then took the lead to walk forward.
After a while, Amber's breath followed. The half-elf thief obviously felt at home after entering this kind of underground space. While happily turning the precious dagger in her hand, she looked around curiously: "This place has been extending downward."
"If it's really the 'combat tunnels' that were dug back then, then they must be very deep," Gao Wen said casually, "after all, there are often demon tides leaking from the surface, if you don't dig deeper, people who take refuge in the tunnels People are vulnerable."
The sloping downward passage continued for a short period, and the surrounding area began to become wide and dry. Gawain noticed that the soil and natural gravel on both sides of the passage were gradually decreasing, replaced by artificially processed support beams, stone bricks, and soil. The solid wall treated by elemental spells, and the ground became straight as it continued to move forward, and it no longer continued to slope downward.
Looking at the surrounding scene, Gao Wen's brows gradually frowned.
And Amber also noticed the abnormality immediately. She stopped fiddling with the dagger, ran to a nearby wall, carefully observed the material of the latter and the patterns on the wall, and then ran back to the high school in surprise. Next to the tattoo: "No... 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 southern border that I presided over to build back then." Gawain held up the magic spar, illuminating the surrounding walls and ground, "No wonder... when Knight Byron mentioned that there is an underground passage under the town of Tanzania I'm just wondering, because there was no development plan in this area back then, and no one should have developed it for a long time after my death... Who would build tunnels here... "
Amber frowned: "If you look carefully, it looks a bit like the ruins in the Dark Mountains?"
Gao Wen finally realized suddenly, and 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 very surprised. He looked around carefully, wondering: "Really...it looks very similar. I was so dazed by the curse that I didn't see it at all!"
"The underground facilities left over from the Xinghuo era actually exist here..." Gao Wen's heart fluctuated for a while, "So the ruins in the Dark Mountains are just part of a large group of ruins? Or..."
A bolder idea came to his mind: Could it be that the fortress buried in the dark mountains is connected with the underground passage in this place? !
These ancient passages crossed 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 formed a complete stretch? !
However, the bold guesses in Gawain's mind did not last long. He quickly shook his head and thought that these ideas were unlikely: Even if the Gondor Empire was extremely powerful back then, its productivity was limited. It is far away, with mountains and rivers in the middle and other intricate terrains. How easy is it to build a facility group of this scale underground
Although to be honest, if the Gondor Empire is really determined to recklessly penetrate this land, it is not impossible to use the power of the whole country to establish such an "underground city-state" underground near the Dark Mountains, but Gawain really can't figure out what is going on here. What is worthy of their crazy investment, and it is still a secret project to invest so much, the people in Gondor and the people of later generations are completely unaware of it...
Could it be... is it related to the human experiments mentioned by Nicholas Dan, and the so-called "sinisterness"
"Hey, hey, what are you thinking about?" Gawain's thoughts were interrupted by a voice suddenly ringing in his ear. When he came back to his senses, he saw Amber shaking vigorously in front of his eyes, and the face of the half-elf lady was also close. Come over, "Are you distracted on this occasion?"
"No, it's nothing." Gawain quickly collected his thoughts and temporarily put aside those speculations: now is really not the time to think about them. "Judging from the location, we should have reached the bottom of the riverbed of the Baishui River."
"Really?" Amber looked up in disbelief, the "stone" vault above was dry and solid, without the slightest drop of water, and could not hear the sound of the river flowing, "My God...then this place It's really deep enough, how did those people manage to open such a tunnel under the river bed..."
"I'm more curious about how he can accurately judge the position in this situation." Pittman secretly glanced at Gao Wen, muttering.
Hu Po's ears twitched, and she opened her mouth and said, "You don't have to ask, they have been buried in the ground for more than 700 years, and they are professional... Oh, it hurts!"
Gawain twisted Amber's ear, and then ignored the guy, signaling Byron Knight to continue leading the way.
At the same time, he looked at the composition of the team he brought, and suddenly felt a little cold in his heart.
An elf thief who is the shame of all things, a druid who is good at cooking soup and selling fake medicines, and an old fritter knight who can say that he is so righteous when he runs away. There are a total of five members in the team, and three of them have the wrong style of painting. From this point of view, in addition to his ability to stabilize morale with a Chinese face, the serious and silent Philip Cavalier who followed beside him may be the only remaining conscience of the entire Cecil Action Team...
He was thinking about it when he saw Knight Philip suddenly turned his head and asked Byron seriously: "By the way, Byron, is the 'just retreat' you mentioned earlier a knight skill that I don't know?"
Everyone: "..."
Gao Wen sighed in his heart: It's rare to be a good guy, but he turned out to be a passive fan...
As we got closer and closer to Tanzania Town, everyone gradually stopped chatting.
According to the cheating memory map and terrain pre-reading ability, Gao Wen can always roughly judge his current location. He found that this long underground passage is not straight, and there are many detours and forks in the middle. Ignore those collapsed or wrong ones. After the route, he found that he had walked a small half circle around the east of Tanzan Town.
It is located directly below the Tanzanian Mine.
I have already mentioned the terrain of Tanzania Town before: it is backed by the huge Tanzania Mine on the east side, and the two tributaries of the White Water River are on the west side. The whole town is roughly triangular in shape, and the castle of Viscount Andrew is located in the east of the town. Connecting the flat part of the Tanzania Mine foundation, in fact, the main building materials of the castle itself were quarried from the mine: the mine not only produced iron ore and various crystal ores, but also produced high-quality stone materials , It is not unreasonable that the Leslie family who owns this land has enviable wealth.
At this moment, Gawain was walking in the ancient tunnel directly below the mine, and the first thought that came to his mind was: Does that Viscount Andrew know about the existence of these underground relics
...He probably didn't know it, because the iron ore and crystal ore in the Tanzanian mine are not deep veins, but are located in the mountain, and there is no need to dig deep underground to dig the mine. Digging deep under the circumstances is not just for fun, no one would do such a thankless thing. And if Viscount Andrew really dug up this ancient ruin... Then there won't be any rumors from the outside world.
As the largest population gathering place and business travel center in the vicinity, Tanzan Town is not a place where secrets can be kept. This place is different from the dark mountains where birds don't shit.
The terrain ahead began to rise.
The air became humid, and the skin felt an obvious blowing of the air, and there was a faint sound coming from the front, all signs indicated that the exit was approaching.
Not long after that, they walked out of the tunnel and saw the place where Knight Byron fell down: here is an open and steep cave, with a pool formed by groundwater seepage at the bottom of the cave, and the exit of the tunnel is located On the edge of the pool, it is said to be an exit, but it is actually a cracked rock crack. Obviously this is not a normal entrance, but it is cracked like this due to factors such as geological changes.
The real entrance and exit of the tunnel is still unknown, and most of them have collapsed.
Seeing that there were no serious water-soluble wind erosion marks on the rock crevices beside the pool, Gao Wen couldn't help but turned his head and asked Philip, "Has there been any earthquakes in this area in recent years?"
"No," Knight Philip shook his head, then frowned and thought again, "but I heard from people who lived in Tanzan Town that they occasionally heard strange howling noises coming from the underground of the mine. It was said that it was caused by the undead slave laborers who died in the mine, but that Viscount Andrew had checked with psychics and wizards several times, but he did not find the source of the strange noise."
"Is that so..." Gawain said noncommittally, then looked up to the top of the cave.
There are vines growing wildly there, and you can see the huge roots of trees spreading from the side. Presumably that hole was once covered and hidden, and now it has just been punched out: Knight Byron's luck is really good, He should really thank Goddess of Fate for his survival.
If there is such a god in this world.
"From here, you can see the east wall of the castle," Byron said, "but this hole is almost straight, and it's full of soft soil. It's not easy to go up."
"It's up to the professionals now!" Pittman stepped forward at this time, the little old man smiled, and then took out a tender green branch from his arms, and he waved the branch as if waving a magic wand. One rune after another was continuously drawn in the air, and the branch itself seemed to lose its vitality, and quickly changed from vibrant green to withered and shriveled.
A rustling sound came from above, and the cluster of vines around the hole was catalyzed and pulled by the druid's spell, and quickly grew and hung down! 8)