Chapter 40 — The Ancient Ruins

In fact, the ancient ruins—or relic site—in Gao Yang's memory was not far from where the company had made camp. It lay on the northern side of the Dark Mountains, most of it buried within the mountain massif, with only a portion of its structure exposed among the cliffs. In theory, one had only to look up at the Dark Mountains in the distance to glimpse part of the ancient site amid the rock faces several hundred meters above the ground.

Yet the long passage of ages had worn away all trace of civilization; sprawling vines and mountain vegetation covered the cliffs, layer upon layer concealing the ruins, and combined with the site's own collapse and the accumulation of earth and stone in the mountains, those structures exposed outside the massif were now very difficult to observe. Standing at the camp and gazing toward the mountain, even a hunter with the keenest eyesight would have trouble spotting, at first glance, anything unusual among those rocks and vines.

Once the matters of the camp were settled, Gao Cenxing and the other three set out into the mountains. A mere ten years would not change the lay of the land; with the satellite view from a decade ago in his mind, together with the route he remembered, Gao Cenxing found the mountain path without difficulty.

Amber looked rather worried. "I say... you're going into the Dark Mountains to dig up treasure, and there are only four of us. Doesn't this team strike you as a bit dicey?"

Gao Yang glanced at the half-elf. "And what would you suggest?"

Amber gestured broadly. "At the very least, a few hundred men to guard the way, a dozen master-level rangers and druids to hold the line, knights opening the road up front, mages anchoring the rear, and a grandmaster thief as formidable as myself to handle the lock-picking—isn't that the standard configuration for treasure-hunting in the mountains?"

"Standard configuration my foot!" Gao Yang had thought the fellow might actually have something insightful to say, but it was all nonsense. "What treasure-hunting company is outfitted like a regular army! And you make it sound so easy—go on, organize a company like that for me!"

"Fine, I exaggerate a little, but this is the Dark Mountains! The Dark Mountains!" Amber waved his arms theatrically. "In the legends, there's a demon lord living every eight hundred meters! And you're taking three people in—one of whom can only cast fireballs..."

"Would you believe I can knock you flat without a single fireball!" Rebecca flared up at once, hoisting her staff and pointing it at Amber. "Let me show you just how formidable the women of the Cecil family are!"

Gao Yang held back his great-great-granddaughter—plus one generation—and gave Amber a helpless look. "You'll die of that mouth of yours one day. And where did you hear that a demon lord lives every eight hundred meters in the Dark Mountains? That's just ignorant villagers scaring children. If there really were that many demon lords, they'd have overrun Ansul long ago."

As he spoke, he lifted his head and looked at the winding mountain path ahead.

"The Dark Mountains are indeed a dangerous place, but people have exaggerated that danger far beyond reason. In the days of the Gondor Empire, this range was merely one of the ordinary northern mountains, known together with the High Ridge Mountains of the southern continent as Loren's two great mountain systems, north and south. The Dark Mountains were not dark at all back then—rather, because of their rich produce and their many kinds of ore, they had the name of the 'Gilded Mountains.' It was only later, when the magic tide erupted, that the Dark Mountains happened to stand directly in the path of the elemental storm's fiercest assault. The entire southern face was eroded by the elements and became the dreaded Black Forest, and only then did the range gradually come to be called the Dark Mountains."

Gao Dai recounted what he knew—part of it from the memories in his mind, and part from knowledge he had recently crammed into his head.

"The Black Forest on the far side is genuinely dangerous, but it lies on the southern slope, and this range is a natural barrier that all but seals off the miasma seeping through the Great Wall from the Gondor Wastes. The vast majority of the mutated monsters living in the Black Forest depend on chaotic magical energy to survive, so they will not leave the forest at all—much less cross the ridge into this northern region, which for them is suffocating. The northern side of the Dark Mountains is in fact quite safe."

The route Gao Yang had chosen was not heavily overgrown, yet here and there trees jutted across the path and vines crept in from the roadside to block the way. These plants, stubbornly thriving within the Dark Mountains, were more or less affected by the waste's influence—that faint trace of the "elemental wind" (what Viscount Andrew called the unclean wind), drifting north each year on the air currents. Under the influence of those chaotic elemental forces, the plants looked twisted and unnaturally thick, carrying a rather sinister and fearsome air.

But Gao Yang knew very well that apart from looking a little frightening, these things posed no threat at all; they were merely somewhat "sturdier" plants. Those noble sons who wandered about the forests north of the Dark Mountains and then went home boasting that they had weathered the trials of the Black Forest were all exaggerating the dangers of this land—they had no idea what the real Black Forest was like.

The reason he could be certain that the contamination on the northern side of the Dark Mountains had receded was not the memories in his mind or the intelligence he had gathered, but that satellite view from ten years ago.

One had only to compare the satellite view with the records in his memory to easily conclude that this place was already a safe zone.

"People's fear of this place stems from only two things. The first is fear of the Gondor Wastes. Although the sentinel towers and the Great Wall built by the elves sealed off most of the Wastes, that magical barrier can only block seventy or eighty percent of the chaotic magical energy; the corruption that seeps out of the Gondor Wastes every year is the greatest threat to the border regions of the four nations. Even now that the aftershocks of the magic tide have subsided, the fear and pressure accumulated over generations by the border folk will not dissipate so quickly—the horror tales of these borderlands have circulated for seven hundred years and have long since become almost a part of traditional culture," Gao Cen said as he hacked at the plants blocking the way. "The second... is fear of the unknown."

"The unknown?" Amber asked, frowning.

"Exactly. The unknown. How many years has it been since the Kingdom of Ansul halted its southern expansion?"

Rebecca answered: "If you count from the signing of the order halting expansion, over two hundred years. If you count from the dismantling of all the expansion settlements, one hundred years."

"Exactly—a hundred years at the very least. For a full century this place has been designated forbidden ground. Apart from those 'adventurers' who go home and brag to everyone, no one dares come near, and so no one knows what it is actually like. They can only learn about this place from the horror stories passed down through generations and the tall tales spun by adventurers—how could they not be afraid?"

Having listened to Gao Yang's long lecture, Amber finally breathed a sigh of relief. "Phew... so by that account, the horror stories about the Dark Mountains are all made up, and we're actually quite safe here?"

Gao Yang thought for a moment, then suddenly put on a terrifying expression and leaned close to the half-elf lady. "Actually, I lied to you. This place is gloomy, dangerous, chaotic, and horrible—and there's a demon lord living every eight hundred meters."

Amber: "...Eeeek!!"