Chapter 555: The Lost Land of Gold

The moment Muke finished reading the fairy tale, everyone's system panel popped up.

[System Alert: Congratulations on unlocking the main quest]

[This is the Land of Gold that is paying the price. Please find the key item Hourglass of Time, turn the pain of the Land of Gold into tears in the Hourglass, and when the Hourglass is filled with pain to the satisfaction of the gods, sacrifice it to the gods at the offering table, complete the transaction, reverse time, and turn the Land of Gold back to its original state.

"The Hourglass of Time?" Mu Sicheng asked with a quirked brow, "What is this?"

"It should be one of the props that can reverse time in this copy." Liu Jiayi replied, her brows frowning. Liu Jiayi replied, her brows furrowing lightly, "...... reversing time, the effect of this prop seems to be similar to that Golden Dawn captain's skill."

"Would it matter?"

"Skills are derived from the core of the player's desires, and props are gods, or systemic set pieces." Bai Liu rubbed his chin thoughtfully, "This is the first time I've seen a time prop and a time skill in a game, and if the two are somehow related, it would stand to reason that one's desires would be influenced by an already existing setting object to derive a similar item."

"Then by that inference, that captain of Golden Dawn, Georgia, maybe this country has some kind of close connection that we don't know about yet."

"If this is true, it could be a breakthrough, but it's also an advantage for them." Bai Liu spreads his hands, "They must be more familiar with the map than we are, for example, we don't know where to find this so-called Hourglass of Time now, but that Georgia captain most likely does."

"But we're not all clueless." Muke looked up, he turned the fairy tale book in his hand to the first few pages, "The Hourglass of Time is not explicitly mentioned in this fairy tale, but it is a drawn fairy tale book, and the illustrations here -"

Muke points to the somewhat childlike illustrations in the fairy tale book: "It's about the time when God made a deal with the kingdom of Gloren a thousand years ago, see? The thing that God handed to the king when the deal was set up."

"This should be the proof of their deal."

Bai Liu's eyes swept up and his eyes stopped at the hand of the god on the screen -

--In the hand of the -god is a finely crafted grey and black hourglass.

Meanwhile, at the other end.

"The Hourglass of Time?" Chrissy stared at the silent Georgia, "Captain, since you're familiar with this place, do you know what it is and where it's hidden?"

Georgia was quiet for a moment, and when she spoke again Chrissy could no longer detect traces of emotion, so calm that there was no trace of a ripple: "I know."

"It's just that place is a bit dangerous, so tell the rest of the team to get the mental bleach ready and come with me."

"Spiritual bleach?" Chrissy quickly trailed off, "Is that a very mentally polluted place?"

"Well, it's not just mental contamination, it's physical contamination as well." Georgia raised her eyes, "The Hourglass of Time is in the gold mines."

Unlike the one Bai Liu and the others had, Georgia's fairy tale book [The Golden Land of the Gods] did not end abruptly when the price was paid in a thousand years, nor did it say anything about the Hourglass of Time, but rather it described in detail The book does not end when the price is paid in a thousand years.

"Father." Young Georgia looked up and asked her father in disbelief, "Why is my fairy tale book different from the ones other people in the market are reading."

-- one might even say that it was a very different kind of fairy tale.

The fairy tales on the market for children to read are sweet and innocent, and God loves the world, but in the book of fairy tales that Georgia gets, God does not love the world, and is even a little scary, for the gods smile and say to the king, then I will come and collect the price of suffering from all your people, and you will make their tears fill this hourglass, or the suffering will never stop.

The king at the time agreed and asked God what kind of tears it would take to fill this hourglass.

The gods told the king that the hourglass could only be filled by tears shed in a single moment of pain that could be worth a thousand years of gold, and that the moment the tears fell into the hourglass, the hourglass reversed with time, the transaction was complete and the pain ceased.

Georgia wonders, "Does this hourglass really exist?"

The king was silent for a moment: "It exists, people just don't know about it."

"Why not let everyone know about it?" Georgia shook her head disapprovingly, "All the fairy tales people see talk about God giving gold and blessings because he loves the world, and they believe they are the ones favored by God to live so ......"

"Happiness, is it?" The king stroked Georgia's head with a sigh, "But what good would it do to tell them the truth, to tell them that there really is an hourglass that needs to be filled with pain and tears, except to make them less happy?"

Georgia was stunned.

"In everyone's mind, Gloren has always been a land of gold, isolated from the rest of the world." The king stood up propped up on the edge of his bed, he went to the window, bathed in the moonlight, looked out over the lush and peaceful land and sighed ruefully, "It was a fairytale land, everyone believed they lived in a fairytale, that they were favoured by the gods and that there would never be a moment of calamity."

"That's why fairy tale books sell so well in this country."

"Even the fairy tales here." The king looked back at Georgia, "all stopping at the moment when a thousand years have to pay the price."

"It's not that I deliberately kept people in the dark by cutting out the second half of the fairy tale to deceive them; the fairy tale book that was introduced nationally at the beginning was the one you're holding."

The king stretched his hands helplessly: "But the people fiercely resisted, they felt that fairy tales were not like that, that the Land of Gold would not be like that, that everyone should be hopeful and happy and live forever carefree in a fairy tale, so I cut out the second half and the fairy tale was pushed out."

"But it's just ......" Georgia shook his head very gently, his education had prevented him from saying anything critical of the popular outcry, but then he really didn't agree with it and frowned, "It's just ......"

"Just fooling yourself, aren't you?" The king laughed bitterly, "Sometimes I think there is nothing wrong with such self-deception, and I also deceive myself when I am happy, by lying to myself that the thousand years will really not come and that the gods will really favour our country forever."

"But that thousand years will really come." Georgia replied with certainty, "Just as the gold will come as promised, so will the pain."

The king looked at Georgia in bewilderment for a long time, then turned his head to hold the fence and lowered it to murmur, "...... Georgia, your lack of escape from pain makes me ashamed of myself."

"When I became king, when I was given the crown, I was also given an hourglass."

"Every king of Gloren is given a crown, but few know that with the succession of kingship comes an hourglass of time, which is said to have been passed down from generation to generation from the first kings."

"On the day I became king, my last one was already dying; he had been suffering from a long and painful illness and, on his deathbed, asked me to put the hourglass to his face and, struggling to squeeze down the tears, finally shed a single drop, which he watched expectantly and ecstatically as it dripped into the hourglass."

"He longed for the tear to fill the hourglass and end that millennial bargain, but unfortunately, the tear fell into the hourglass like a drop of water into the sea, without a sound."

"The last king died in agony and dismay, and before he died, he held his hand in his death grip and told me that the millennium was coming, and that it was our duty that the king must fill the hourglass before the gods came down to extract the suffering of the people."

"-[It is the king's failing in his duty never to let his subjects who have been brought up in fairy tales disbelieve them], so he told me."

The king turned his head, his eyes a little red and his lips quivering, "So on the night I lost your mother, I thought of this hourglass and I tried to fill it, but I shed tears all night and so many tears fell into this hourglass that it didn't even fill the gaps."

"I began to fear this hourglass, which even the tears shed by those who suffer from death and the loss of someone dear to them cannot bear to fill, and I do not know what other pain in this world can fill this hourglass."

"So I fled, and I cowardly hid this hourglass in the mines that gave birth to gold."

"After hiding the hourglass in the mines, I began to have nightmares often." A fleshly trepidation appeared on the king's face, "I would dream of that god."

"He smiled and told me that the 1,000-year appointment was coming and that he would descend upon the world, remove the shield and lower the gold production to collect our pain."

"Then let's remove the shields and reduce the gold production." The young Georgia displayed a calmness beyond reason, "We shouldn't have to trade the suffering of our citizens for this gold that doesn't belong to us, when we get over this, everything will be fine again."

"It won't get better!" The king shed tears, he became a little hysterical, his face was one of undisguised fear, "When there is no more gold, everything will be spoiled to the core!"

"We've been living a thousand years sleeping on gold, everyone is living in a fairy tale, no one can imagine what it would be like to not be able to dig for gold underground, by that time everyone would be starving and freezing to death!"

"I must find a way to fill the hourglass before the 1,000-year appointment comes." His father said with tears in his eyes.

Unfortunately, when the last moment came, the hourglass still wasn't filled.

Georgia lowered her eyes, "Go to the mine and look for the hourglass."

Meanwhile, at the other end.

The dust he inhaled caused Mu Sicheng to choke and cough several times, and he covered his mouth and nose as he brushed aside a building's notice board.

They are also running maps to gather information on the possible location of the Hourglass of Time.

The good news is that there was no enemy interference and they swept the map quickly, the bad news is that there was no enemy interference and they mostly went in the wrong direction.

But the map is so big that Mu Sicheng is a very fast mover, but even at full speed, he can't run to any side of the border for a while. With his headset, he runs forward while reporting information to the back, and he collects information and processes it at the back, so that the map can be scanned much faster.

"Saw a departmental bulletin board." Mu Sicheng choked and coughed louder and louder, "Ahem, filmed it and sent it to Muke, check it out."

Soon Muke's noisy voice came over Mu Sicheng's headset, "It's a bulletin board for the Gold Development Agency."

"The Gold Development Department?" Mu Sicheng questioned suspiciously, "What kind of peculiar department is that?"

"Not sure, but from the content of the announcement, it would appear to be the official department that manages the distribution and operation of gold." Muke explained calmly, "There were three announcements on this bulletin board."

"The first is the regrettable announcement that the country's 57 mining sites, seven of which are large, have seen a steady decline in gold mining for two years running, with the last six months even producing less than a tonne of gold in total to even keep the country running."

"The second announcement was to announce the recent suspension of the welfare policy of 600g of free gold per adult citizen per month."

"The last announcement is ......" Muke's voice became hesitant for a moment, "Hold on a moment, this one is smudged and I'm having a bit of trouble reading it."

Mu Sicheng hugged his chest and hmmed as he scanned the rest of his eyes to the last announcement on the noticeboard that he had wiped clean - it was actually understandable why Muke couldn't see this one, it was badly smudged and marked with red marker with lots of exclamation marks, dense and emotional looking.

"I've probably read the last announcement clearly." Muke's voice was still hesitant, "but I'm not sure I translated it correctly."

"The announcement specifically states that the heir to the throne of Gloren (i.e. the Grand Prince) insists on pursuing cooperation with the Heresy Authority, demanding that the Heresy Authority be stationed in the country of Gloren, sternly claiming that the gold produced in the mines is heretical, that it will have an adverse effect on people, that private mining is forbidden, that people should stay away from the mines, and that the mines are ready to be handed over to the Heresy Authority for to deal with it."

"The scribbled text on it would have been written on by an emotionally charged member of the public at the time."

"It's [Georgia traitors out of Gloren Nation! and [the Heretic's Bureau is here to steal our gold, get out of Gloren country! ."

"[How can gold production be declining?! Has the rest of the gold produced from the mine been hidden by the traitor Georgia, give us back the hidden gold!"]

"[Georgia go to hell!!!]. ."

After a few moments, Bai Liu's calm voice came over the headset, "Looks like we've figured out the most likely place to hide the hourglass."

" Mu Sicheng, get the mental bleach ready, note the time limit for skill use and go to the mine."