Chapter 422 – Sailing Toward the Abyss
Chapter 422 Sailing Toward the Abyss
“The key left behind by the Queen?”
Agatha’s expression changed instantly, staring into Consul Winston’s eyes.
However, the latter acted even more surprised than her, and Winston’s eyes were filled with dismay, “You don’t know? Then how did you get in this place?”
Agatha’s expression became serious, as she realized that the situation seemed to be different from what she had expected – when she noticed that she was able to “enter” the stone wall, she had thought that Consul Winston, who had entered this place first, was an existence just like her own, but now But now, it seems that this Mr. Consul is using other means.
He held more secrets than she had expected.
“I have my own way,” Agatha spoke slowly, an unconscious pressure in her tone, “You just mentioned ‘the key left by the Queen’, what exactly is that? ”
Winston looked suspiciously at the Gatekeeper in front of him, but after a moment’s hesitation, he sighed in relief and reached into his breast pocket.
“Just as well, there’s not much need to keep it a secret any longer, now that it’s come to this anyway.”
He fished something small out of his pocket, a brass key with an ornate pattern, its handle resembling a horizontal “8”, or the infinity symbol in mathematics, and its head, instead of having the usual toothed structure of an ordinary key, a round bar with a groove.
Agatha curiously surveyed the object in the other’s hand, and suddenly felt that it did not look like a key for opening a door, but …… very much like the kind of thing that winds up a mannequin or other clockwork mechanism.
“A clockwork key?” She subconsciously spoke, “Are you saying that this is something left behind by Queen Rae Nora? Why would it be in your hands as a consul?”
“The consuls have passed it down from generation to generation, this key is a gift that the Queen left to the rebels, as well as a …… curse,” Winston pulled the corners of his mouth, revealing a bitter and even hidden fearful bitter smile, “From the moment the first consul received the key, the shadow behind the Frost City State has loomed over our heads, Lady Gatekeeper.”
Agatha didn’t interrupt the rambling, as if raving, recitation of this middle-aged man who already looked weak, she patiently waited for the other party to finish before speaking with a calm expression, “You actually know the true situation of the Boiling Gold Mineshafts, don’t you.”
“If you’re referring to the boiling gold mines showing signs of depletion back in the Queen’s time …… Yes, I know,” Winston sighed softly and said matter-of-factly, “I’m sorry, I knew from the beginning that the door you found was going on, but I thought there was still time, time to get things back on track before things got worse, in which case what you found would have been nothing more than an abandoned mine tunnel, and Frost …… would still be the same prosperous Frost.”
“I need an explanation, Consul,” Agatha said with a serious expression and a somewhat icy tone, “the boiling gold shafts dried up in the Queen’s time, so what exactly is it that we’ve been digging up and shipping out for the past few decades? And what is the connection between the City State’s vision today, the actions of those cultists, and the depletion of the mines?”
“Boiling gold, it’s still boiling gold, Ms. Gatekeeper, what we dig up is boiling gold, and what we ship out is still boiling gold, a thousand times over, literally,” Winston looked up with an expression on his face that he didn’t know if it was a cry or a laugh, “It’s not some contamination, we’ve tested it, and we’ve tested it in the Queen’s time, too. If something looks like Boiling Gold, works like Boiling Gold, produces effects and leaves products no different from normal Boiling Gold – then there is no doubt that it should be Boiling Gold.”
“Those are really Boiling Gold?!” Agatha’s eyes snapped open, an answer that was especially hard for her to imagine, “But the mines dried up decades ago, and the ore that appears in the mine shafts today ……”
“That’s what’s so scary and bizarre, isn’t it?” Winston smiled bitterly, “The veins dry up, but soon new ore fills up certain unattended corners, as if there’s a false ‘Frost City-State’ parallel to the real world that’s pumping a steady stream of ore into the real world, or… …Once the mines went down to a certain depth underground, we’ve been mining minerals from a mirror world, and the phantom-like things that defy common sense …… after they’ve been mined turn out to be real, no matter how you test them.”
Agatha listened to all of this with a cold face, these incredible truths hitting her mind which was already muddled from time to time these days, but in the end she kept her composure and spoke softly, “Mirror Frost – Mr. Consul, you’re right, there is indeed a Mirror Frost , the mists that envelop the city-state today, as well as the fakes that keep appearing in the mists, are all running out of that mirror city, this mirror city-state is gradually eroding and replacing our real world.”
Winston’s expression changed slightly, then he was silent for more than ten seconds before he finally let out a long sigh, “Ah, it seems that this is the price of all that boiling gold.”
“The price? You’re being too glib in uttering that word – you and I aren’t the only ones who are bearing the cost today, there’s an entire city-state full of people, the vast majority of whom don’t even know what’s going on ……”
“But the vast majority of them are suffering from all that the Boiling Gold trade has brought – in this city of extreme cold, it is the Boiling Gold that has kept the entire city warmly housed and well-fed, and allowed us to maintain a level of relative abundance even after the Sea Cliffs collapsed, Lady Gatekeeper. ”
Winston paused for a few seconds as he spoke, then waved his hand. “As you should know, I’ve never been extravagant, I don’t own property, I don’t keep personal money – I don’t even have heirs. Nothing I do, ma’am, is for personal gain.”
Agatha gazed into the Consul’s eyes, yet from the depths of those eyes, she saw nothing more than exhaustion.
“Do none of them have a choice? ……”
She whispered as if to herself.
“It’s that none of them had a choice,” Winston shook his head, “I know what you mean, this path today, this cost today, was not chosen by the citizens of the city-state – but it wasn’t chosen by me either, and no one had any other path to take.
“The City-State is only so big, there is no second Frost on the Boundless Sea to give us a foothold, we need to eat, we need fuel, we need houses and clean fresh water, we need Boiling Gold – even if it comes from the weird Shadow World. Without boiling gold, it would only take one winter for a quarter of the city-state to die, and the rest of us would drift back to the dark city-state days before the great industrialization in a few years and continue to lose a quarter or more of our population ……
“Ms. Gatekeeper, take a break, you’re tired enough as am I. Perhaps we should now accept the fact that the City-State is a steam locomotive heading into the abyss, with everyone sitting on board, and that the only difference between the protectors of the City-State and the common people is that the common people are blindfolded in their eyes to eat and drink and live, while we …… just have our eyes open.”
Agatha, however, paid no attention to this self-defeating statement of Winston’s, she just stood in the darkness without saying a word, feeling the unbearable cold once again coming from all around her, feeling the blood in her veins gradually cooling down.
Then she broke the silence, “Someone has made other choices.”
“…… Yes, there was one, the Frostbite used to call her ‘The Queen,’ and the history books call her ‘The Mad Queen,’ “Winston laughed, but he didn’t know if he was laughing at the Queen or at himself, “A great mortal, who even tried to fight against this sea, against its deepest horrors.”
“The Subterranean Abyss Project ……” Agatha said softly, all the clues she had grasped in the past finally came together a little bit in her mind, turning into a clear vein, “So, the Subterranean Abyss Project is not just a mere program of exploration in the information records exploration program …… The Queen is trying to uncover the secrets of the depths of the city-state?!”
“We don’t know why she thought that the boiling gold that kept appearing in the mines had something to do with the ‘deep sea’, but it’s clear that she was looking in the right direction – the loss of control of the Subterranean Program and the horrible fate that she faced later on proved precisely that she had touched the true source, and there is nothing more ironic about our world than that,” Winston shifted his position by the stump, tilting his head back and looking up at the endless chaos and creeping shadows above him, speaking nonchalantly, “Truth points to madness, and madness points to failure, and with every step you take towards your goal, you’re marching towards the abyss.
Winston sighed.
“She wanted to find out the truth about the boiling gold mines, she wanted to solve the hidden dangers behind the city state, she wanted to use her wisdom and power to fight the sea itself …… which is good, but it turns out that she just consumed her own destiny in advance.”
“So you ‘successors’ decided not to follow her old path – you pretended to be blindfolded like everyone else and rushed off into the abyss with this car, and the queen who ever tried to slam on the brakes or change the track was eventually characterized in the history books as a madman under subspace compulsion.”
“An old Frost motto – the dead must give way to the living,” Winston slowly rolled his eyes and gazed into Agatha’s, “A once great ruler, if the characterization of her was such that the Frost was quickly restored to a place of stability after turmoil smooth, then I’m sure she wouldn’t mind.”
Agatha wanted to say something, but in the end nothing came out.
After a long time, she could only gently shake her head.
“How did that key …… get into the hands of the first consul?”
(End of chapter)