Chapter 356 – Movements in the Depths of Abandoned Waterways

Chapter 356 – Movement in the Depths of the Abandoned Waterway

Accompanied by the old but booming voice, Duncan heard a dinging sound coming from the hut, as if someone had risen in a hurry and bumped into clutter, followed by the sound of footsteps approaching, and a hunched old man with sparse white hair, a gray coat, and a wrinkled face appeared near the door of the room.

This person called “Old Ghost” stood in his own administrator’s hut, bent over, his slightly cloudy gaze swept outside, and it was not known if he had seen the figures of the several people standing outside the door, and then hurriedly lowered his head and mumbled: “The Queen came to inspect… …I didn’t even properly prepare for it …… Those assistants are getting more and more unreliable, as well as the person who passed the order ……”

“Old devil!” Nemo had to interrupt the old man’s chanting with a loud voice, “The Queen isn’t coming! The Queen isn’t coming back! There are guests today-guests arranged by Captain Tirian, stop chanting, they’ve come to see you.”

While speaking, Nemo turned his head, and said to Duncan with an apologetic face, “I’m sorry – as you can see, he’s a bit jumpy, and often suddenly remembers things from decades ago. But don’t look at it like that, when it comes to dealing with pipes and valves, he’ll snap out of it in no time.”

“Sober? I’m sober!” While he was talking, the old man’s eyes suddenly rolled back in his head, and he looked at Duncan and the others, muttering under his breath, “Guests, I can’t believe that there are still unfamiliar faces coming in here. …… Did you check for tokens, and passwords.”

“Checked, of course all checked,” Nemo immediately said, at the same time carefully glanced at Duncan, “These are all honored guests, you take …… you take it as Captain Tirion himself. ”

“Oh, come on in then, though I ain’t got much to look at here,” the old geezer muttered, stepping aside, “It’s all just some old gadgets, if you don’t mind.”

Vanna turned her head to Maurice, who kept his gaze fixed on the Old Ghost.

After a moment, Maurice shook his head, his voice low: “It’s not easy to tell – he’s not in his right mind, and his memories are sporadic.”

Duncan heard Maurice’s soft report, his face unchanged, just following the rambling old man as he stepped into the abandoned administrator’s lounge.

The lounge was not large, lit brightly by a single gas lamp, and as expected it was filled with all sorts of things, with the exception of a bed in the corner, and as far as the eye could see there were shelves that had been bent out of shape and crates on the floor, filled to the brim with all sorts of mechanical parts, spare valve kits, and tools for the job.

Even a skillful acrobat would have to go out with a tenth-degree disability.

“What a mess,” Alice couldn’t help but mutter in a small voice as she looked at the chaotic scene in the room, “I wish I could clean it up ……”

“Ah, a million apologies!” The old ghost who was walking inside a pile of clutter immediately turned around, bending down and bowing, “Your Majesty, I’ve been neglecting my management lately, and this place is a bit chaotic ……”

Alice froze, “Huh?”

Duncan’s eyes also instantly changed slightly, but just as he looked at the old ghost, wanting to say something, the old man suddenly went into a trance, getting up while muttering to himself, “Strange, where did I put my kettle ……How can a guest come and not be able to even drink water? ……”

Duncan several people looked at each other.

“There’s no need to look for your kettle, a few of the guests are just asking you for some information,” that’s when Nemo spoke up, “about the current state of the second waterway, and yourself, they’re here to investigate.”

“Investigate?” The old ghost paused and turned around with an extraordinarily serious expression, “General Tirian still needs to investigate his troops? Could it be that a traitor has appeared? Is it in our area? Or is it over in the center city? I just feel like they’ve been god-awful lately ……”

“There are no traitors, but there may be other lurkers who are being threatened by some kind of transcendental contamination,” Vanna stepped forward at this point, only to nearly trip over the clutter on the floor again – the chaotic hut was a real challenge for her five-foot-nine frame, and “You’ve been in contact with people in other areas lately? Anyone acting out of the ordinary?”

“Anomalies? Not to this extent, but the central city side of the connector recently always said that there is a gurgling sound in their side of the abandoned pipe, as if someone wants to activate the second waterway,” the old ghost waved his hand, “the situation of the second waterway, you have all watched, the Queen that time to build things is strong, but after all, abandoned! After so many years, there are quite a few areas down there that can’t be approached, and sometimes the underground river will penetrate into the crevices of the rocks, and it’s not unusual for it to bring in some strange noises. ……”

What the old man said would run off course from time to time, and Duncan had to speak up to bring the topic back hard, “Is the center of the city …… you’re talking about the area where the Boiling Gold Mine is located?”

“Boiling gold? Ah, yes, Boiling Gold, it’s all there – the Cathedral is there, the Queen’s Palace is there, the mine is there, that mine can be deep, it has to be hundreds of meters deep,” the old ghost sat down on his own bed, and suddenly tapped his leg as he spoke, “Ah, yes, it should be Which layer of the mine came from the sound, the second waterway over there is quite close to the mine …… I told you, the connector over there is too nervous, godly ……” The old man started talking to himself again, but this time Duncan didn’t interrupt out of the blue – he was already lost in thought.

He recalled his initial arrival in the Frost, and the first body he had used here – a worker who had lost his footing in a boiling gold mine, fallen to the bottom of the mine, and was eventually brought up by the searchers as a fake, made of “primordial” material. The first body used was that of a worker who fell down a boiling gold mine shaft and was brought up by the searchers as a fake made of “primitives.

Now, the old ghost mentioned that the “connector” lurking in the center of the city had heard strange noises coming from the pipes of the second waterway, which sounded as if something was surging inside – the second waterway in the center of the city and a certain layer of the boiling gold mine were very close to each other.

Considering that they are both “antiques” left over from the Queen’s era half a century ago, Duncan even suspects that the two are not just “close” to each other.

Maybe the pipes were interconnected!

He quickly wrote down this clue, and then asked: “Is there a way to go underground from here to the center of the city? How do you and the connectors usually meet?”

“From here? That won’t work, there’s a road in the center that’s all black, it’s been contaminated for a long time, and all the other roads have collapsed, so we have to go above ground, but the ground is full of rebel minions right now, so we have to be very careful ……” the old ghost recited, but then all of a sudden shouted out, “Queen’s Guard! The rebels are coming, blow up the shaft!”

The old man suddenly stood up from his bed and looked around nervously, as if the rebels were going to attack the place in the next second, but suddenly he stopped again and his eyes fell on Alice.

“Oh, I was mistaken, the Queen is safe and sound ……”

Alice was a bit flustered and hurriedly waved her hand, “I …… am not the queen ah ……”

Duncan’s gaze was deep, looking at the old man standing next to the bed, but the latter was in a trance, and only after a few seconds did he look at Alice with some dullness, “Girl, who are you?”

“Old ghost you’re really senile – it’s not even just a matter of smoking too much poisonous smoke back then, it’s your eyes that are all out of whack!” Just then, Nemo’s voice suddenly rang out, interrupting this weird moment, this informant gentleman nodded to Duncan with an apology, “Sorry, although the old ghost is usually a bit of a god, but today it looks extra serious, he probably hasn’t dealt with outsiders for too long, and when he got a bit excited to see you guys, he remembered everything back then in a confusing way. ”

“…… It’s okay.” Duncan said lightly, his gaze slowly retracting from the old man.

He didn’t really care if the old man actually saw the Frost Queen in the disguised Alice or not – was it a brief moment of clarity in a muddled mind? Was it seeing through the disguise? Or was it simply a confused memory? It didn’t matter.

If this crazy old man really saw a little bit of the Frost Queen’s phantom from Alice and felt a moment of peace in his heart because of it, that would also be a good thing.

And right at this moment, Nemo again seemed to suddenly remember something and frowned, “Strange, why hasn’t the crow returned at this time?”

“Raven? He’s gone to check the northern corridor,” the old ghost waved his hand, “That guy is a dilly-dallyer, which time doesn’t he have to hang around outside for half a day before coming back.”

Nemo’s tightly locked brows but did not stretch out at all, “…… not right, even if it is again dillydallying, he should be back at this time, the lights over there are often malfunctioning, his lifting lamps can’t last for so long …… old ghost, when did he leave? When did he leave?”

“Two or three hours?” The old ghost thought about it and seemed to be a bit serious as well, “In that case, it seems to have really left for quite a long time.”

“I’ve got a bit of a bad feeling that Raven’s been deep in the waterways for too long,” Nemo’s tone finally got a bit graver and looked up at Duncan’s group, “I’m going to have to go look for him.”

(End of chapter)