Inside the Temporary Camp, the smell of blood and the bitter scent of herbs had yet to dissipate.
Mixed with the deathly silence after the battle, it pressed down on everyone, making it hard to breathe.
Ella lay on the camp bed, breathing steadily, deeply asleep.
Barret sat at her bedside, silently keeping watch.
At the other end of the tent, Elaine and Fiona were speaking in low voices, occasionally casting complicated glances over.
Finally, Elaine broke the silence.
The elderly man, with white hair and beard and a refined air, stood up and walked slowly to Lin En, performing a formal Kingdom salute.
“Master Lin En,”
His voice carried a trace of exhaustion, but more than that, an unprecedented sincerity.
“Please accept my deepest gratitude. Thank you for saving us in our time of crisis. And once again, I apologize for our previous offense. Your strength… far exceeded my imagination.”
Lin En looked at him calmly, saying nothing.
“The Thorn Guard,”
Elaine no longer hid anything, his tone heavy.
“Are the most secret protectors of the Royal Family. We came here under the secret order of His Majesty the King. Please forgive our earlier concealment, as this involves the highest state secrets.”
As he finished speaking, he retrieved a small obsidian box from his waist pouch, barely larger than his palm.
The surface of the box was inscribed with intricate silver arrays, radiating a powerful sealing aura, as if a world-devouring beast was trapped within.
“This is the real reason for our journey.”
Elaine placed the box flat on the table, carefully undoing one of the seals.
Even through a fleeting crack, a withered breath, as if life itself was being drained away, leaked out. Lin En’s pupils contracted sharply.
“This is a piece of human tissue, a sample infected by Wither Fever.”
Elaine resealed the box, his voice suppressed to the extreme.
“The foundation of the Kingdom, our future monarch, Crown Prince Astran… was infected by this years ago. If it cannot be cured, I fear his life is in grave danger.
Our only hope is to find the Hall of Life, a place that has long disappeared into the river of history, and seek a miracle of healing.”
“Wither Fever…”
The moment these three words left Elaine’s lips, the tranquil aura around Lin En shattered instantly.
A cold killing intent erupted from within him, chilling the temperature of the tent by several degrees. Elaine and Fiona’s faces changed, instinctively gripping their sword hilts, eyes filled with shock.
They had never witnessed such pure and terrifying hatred—not towards a person, but towards a concept, an existence, a hatred etched into the very bone.
“Rapid loss of vitality, skin turning gray, hair roots whitening, and finally, the body dissolving into dust during sleep?”
Lin En’s voice was hoarse and icy, each word squeezed out from between clenched teeth.
Elaine nodded with difficulty.
“The symptoms… are exactly the same. Master, why…?”
“My mother,”
Lin En closed his eyes.
When he opened them again, only endless frost remained in his gaze.
“She also suffered from this disease.”
A deathly silence filled the tent.
Elaine and Fiona exchanged looks, seeing the horror in each other’s eyes.
“But… how could this be?”
Fiona couldn’t help but speak.
“His Highness the Crown Prince has always been in the Royal Capital, and your mother… where is she?”
“Southern Territory, Oak Town.”
Fiona gazed at Lin En’s cold profile, her heart overwhelmed with complex emotions.
This mysterious powerhouse bore such a heavy burden as well.
It gave her an inexplicable confidence about the journey ahead.
The place name sent Elaine deep into thought.
One at the heart of the prosperous Kingdom, one at the remote southern border, separated by a thousand miles with no connection.
This only reinforced his earlier suspicions.
“It seems my guess was not wrong.”
Elaine sighed, walking to the table and unfurling a massive Military Map made of tanned monster hide.
He extended his hand, lighting up two points on the map with faint magic—one at the Royal Capital, one at Oak Town.
“Look,”
He illuminated the locations of the Royal Capital and Oak Town with magic, then lit dozens more scattered points, like sparse stars in the night sky across the Kingdom.
“These are all places where Wither Fever cases have been recorded in recent years. Their distribution is completely random.”
Elaine spread his hands, his tone filled with helplessness.
“This is the dilemma we face. It’s like a god’s indiscriminate punishment—you never know where it will fall next. The Kingdom’s greatest mages and scholars have studied it for years, yet no conclusions could be drawn.”
He paused, pain and memory flickering in his clouded eyes, as if seeing countless fallen companions.
“You asked how long the Kingdom has fought this Secret War,”
He gestured to his guards, and the skilled Alchemical Apprentices tending the wounded.
“Since the Crown Prince’s illness, this is not the first time the Thorn Guard have entered the Endless Forest. For years, we have sent countless teams, clinging to the hope of finding the Hall of Life. Each time, we faced unimaginable obstacles.”
He looked at Lin En, his gaze especially heavy.
“We’ve encountered the Forest’s Wrath, and those Corrupted Beasts tainted by sinister power. Some of our comrades wounded by their claws developed symptoms almost identical to Wither Fever, their vitality stripped away.”
“To counter this, my Alchemical Workshop spent immense resources to develop the Life Elixir. Our standardized treatment procedures were forged through countless failures and the lives of our companions. Each one is a lesson paid in blood.”
Fiona’s eyes dimmed as well—clearly, she too was a survivor of this Secret War.
Elaine smiled bitterly, self-mockery etched into his expression.
“We even once believed these infected beasts were the origin of Wither Fever. But we were wrong. Within the Kingdom, civilians far from any forest continued to fall ill at random. These glowing points on the map were like a cruel joke, reminding us that what we’d found was not the true source.”
He tapped heavily on the scattered points on the map, despair deepening in his voice.
He looked up at Lin En solemnly.
“If we still cannot find a cure, His Highness the Crown Prince may… So, our only hope now is to entrust everything to finding the Hall of Life and pray for a miracle.”
A long silence fell over the tent.
Elaine had laid bare the Kingdom’s desperate struggle—a Secret War that had raged for years without hope of victory.
Yet Lin En’s gaze remained fixed on the chaotic map.
The randomness and confusion seen by Elaine and the entire Kingdom appeared as something else entirely to him.
Elaine’s conclusion—the verdict of the world’s greatest minds—seemed unbearably fragile in his eyes.
Random?
Without pattern?
No!
In his world, randomness was often just the name given to patterns yet unseen.
He was silent for a long time.
The air in the tent felt so heavy it might solidify.
Just as Elaine thought he too was sinking into despair, Lin En suddenly spoke.
“Master Elaine, I need the precise year of onset for every case.”
This request stunned both Elaine and Fiona.
Year?
What use could that be?
Over the years, the Kingdom’s top scholars had analyzed geography, professions, bloodlines, even astrology—but never once considered time as a key variable.
“Year…?”
Elaine frowned, puzzled.
“Yes, the exact year of each case.”
Lin En’s tone brooked no argument.
Looking into Lin En’s eyes, as if they could see through everything, Elaine felt a strange instinct rise within him.
Perhaps, hidden behind this seemingly absurd request, lay the key they had always overlooked.
“As you wish.”
Elaine’s expression turned grave.
He retrieved a box of obsidian and mithril etched with Royal prohibition runes from his personal pouch.
Opening the lid, a Sub-Crystal emitting a strange fluctuation lay on velvet.
“This is a Sub-Crystal of the Soulbinding Resonance Crystal,”
Elaine’s voice was low, laced with solemnity.
“It was forged through the combined efforts of the Kingdom’s top Alchemical Workshops, including my own, at great cost. The Mother Crystal remains in the Royal Capital, while Sub-Crystals are entrusted to high-level field commanders for the most urgent intelligence transmissions.”
He carefully picked up one of the crystalline Sub-Crystals, continuing.
“Its communication is nearly instantaneous, able to ignore all magical and physical barriers. But the cost is high—each activation consumes tremendous mental energy and renders the Sub-Crystal inert, a lifeless stone. I have three Sub-Crystals here, the last pair of Soulbinding Resonance Crystals, kept for emergencies.”
Fiona’s breath caught.
She knew how valuable this was.
Not just rare, but a lifeline—a last-resort signal to the Royal Capital in direst need.
Now, for Lin En’s theory, Elaine was about to gamble one of these trump cards.
It was a bet not only on the squad’s fate, but also on his absolute trust in Lin En.
Elaine hesitated no longer.
He closed his eyes, gripping the Sub-Crystal tightly as a torrent of spiritual power flooded into it.
“Wmm—”
The crystal burst with blinding light, an invisible wave instantly spanning mountains and seas.
Elaine’s body trembled, sweat beading on his forehead.
His voice accelerated, racing against the drain of magic as he rapidly relayed the information flooding his mind.
“Iron Barrel Fort, Western Defense Army Dwarven Blacksmith, six years ago.”
“East Sea Watch Tide Village, Human fisherman, five years ago.”
“Northland Wind Breath Town, Half-Elf mine surveyor, six years ago.”
As Elaine listed the place names and years, Lin En walked to the map.
He didn’t erase the points, but extended a finger, gathering a precise, faint magic at his fingertip.
Whenever Elaine reported a “six years ago” case, Lin En tinged the point with a dull gray.
Cases from “five years ago” or “four years ago” were colored yellow.
“Three years ago” and “two years ago” became vivid orange.
Finally, cases reported within the last year—including his mother’s—were marked in a blood-red hue.
Throughout, Lin En remained silent, his movements exact and calm, like a scholar performing a precise experiment.
Elaine and Fiona held their breath, watching in confusion, unable to grasp the meaning behind this “coloring game.”
When the last red point appeared, Lin En stepped back.
In that instant, Elaine and Fiona both inhaled sharply.
Their pupils shrank, expressions morphing from confusion to shock, and then to overwhelming disbelief.
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