Marquis Augustus's condition had become critical, and time was running out. If the Dragon Blood Bud could not reach the Marquis as soon as possible, he would very likely die from the poison.
When that happened, Jenny's two uncles would most likely seize control of the Augustus family!
This was something Jenny absolutely refused to let happen.
But asking her and Jamos to cross the Ghost Crying Territory? Ha! That would simply be walking to their deaths!
Therefore, when Leilin agreed, both Jenny and Jamos's eyes lit up with joy.
"Oh! Understood! Taking the Ghost Crying Territory, right? What an ugly name!" Wileen casually returned to the coachman's seat and cracked the whip.
As a country bumpkin, his only knowledge of the world was the town of Bert and the surrounding Crow Crying Wasteland. As for other places? Due to the limitations of transportation and the scarcity of information, he had absolutely no understanding of them.
In fact, this was his first time traveling any great distance!
With the neighing of the horses, the carriage carrying the four of them creaked as it slowly entered the region known as the Ghost Crying Territory.
Because the Ghost Crying Territory was a famously dangerous place that few people visited, the roads had long been abandoned, overgrown with weeds and shrubs. Wileen could barely make out the traces of the road from the depressions on either side.
As the carriage penetrated deeper, a layer of grey mist began to gradually manifest around them.
At first the grey fog was very thin, but it grew steadily thicker, until in the end they could only see the terrain within five meters of the carriage.
"L-Lord Leilin! The fog is too thick..." Wileen immediately slowed the carriage. At this level of visibility, driving at full speed would be suicide.
"I know!"
Leilin spread open his right hand, and a wisp of grey mist swirled constantly in his palm—scattering and then quickly coalescing again.
"It carries a trace of cold, yin energy, and it isn't composed of mere water vapor..."
Then he commanded, "Chip! Analyze the composition!"
"Beep! Task established, collecting materials, analysis commencing..." The Chip faithfully responded.
Instantly, a composition spectrum appeared before Leilin's eyes.
"The primary component of this mist is water, comprising approximately 98.2%, and contains trace amounts of inorganic salts, proteins, lysozyme..."
"Cross-referencing with the database. Determination: human biological tears! Probability: 99.99%."
The Chip gave a response that startled Leilin slightly, but then, at the corners of his eyes, a hint of amusement appeared.
"A mist made of tears? Interesting! I also detected a faint scent of spirits within it..."
"Lord Leilin, is something wrong?"
Jenny and Jamos looked at Leilin, worry in their eyes. The analysis and all those processes had been carried out through the Chip; to those outside, Leilin had simply paused for a moment before a faint smile appeared at the corner of his mouth.
The Ghost Crying Territory's fearsome reputation was built upon piles of white bones. If not for having Leilin, a full-fledged
Moreover, even with Leilin present, Jenny and Jamos had heightened their vigilance after entering the Ghost Crying Territory, not daring to relax for even a moment.
"Lord Leilin! The fog is too thick, I've lost the way..."
At that moment, the carriage came to a stop, and Wileen turned his head to speak, an apologetic look on his face.
"How… how can that be?" Jenny and Jamos exchanged a glance, then stepped out of the carriage. What they saw before them left them stunned.
Ahead of the carriage, the road had split into three forks, crooked like the branches of a dead tree, leading in different directions.
And a wooden signpost—already more than half broken, its surface covered in vines—stood silently by the roadside.
On the signpost, written in black lettering that had largely faded, were a sparse few place names, each with an arrow indicating the direction.
"The Weeping Lady's Cottage, the Wailing Monster's Playground, Jones's Bakery… What kind of bizarre place names are these?" Jenny's face was clearly marked with confusion. "Although I've never been here, I've seen the maps. There's only one road—there definitely aren't any other forks or anything like that…"
"It seems we've run into trouble!" Jamos sighed, though inwardly he felt a sense of relief.
Before, they had never known how the terror of the Ghost Crying Territory would manifest, which forced them to remain constantly on edge. But now that the trouble had actually appeared, they felt somewhat lighter.
At least, the opponent's puzzle had been laid out; what they needed to do was solve it!
"Hmph! A trivial trick!"
Leilin now stepped out as well, looking at the wooden signpost with a disdainful expression.
A flash of red light swept across the bottom of Leilin's pupils, and the surrounding scene instantly underwent a dramatic transformation.
The grey mist thinned in an instant, revealing trees of all manner of strange and grotesque shapes. And where the signpost had been, the wooden sign was crawling with tiny triangular-headed venomous snakes and toads, obscuring the original text.
"At this level, it's no different from a pixie ghost's pranks—using suggestion and mental influence to affect the senses of ordinary people or even apprentices. If this is all there is, then it's quite disappointing."
"Next, I'll guide the way, and you drive in the direction I point!" Leilin had Jenny and Jamos get back in the carriage, then took the seat beside the coachman himself.
"Yes, my lord!"
With Leilin sitting beside him, Wileen let out a long breath and immediately felt the tension ease considerably. "Which road do we take?"
"None of them. Take the far right—this way!"
Leilin cast a cold, mocking glance toward the three forks. At that moment, in Leilin's field of vision, the three branching paths had all disappeared, replaced by three enormous cave openings wreathed in thickets.
If the carriage were to enter such a place, it would only become more and more lost, deviating further from the main roads, and might even be trapped here to perish.
"But! That's solid rock! How are we supposed to pass through it?" Wileen scratched his head.
The direction Leilin had pointed was clearly toward the face of a massive boulder, its surface covered in green moss and such, looking utterly impregnable.
"Smack!" Before Wileen could finish speaking, a sharp blow landed on his head. "I told you to go, so go! Why all the chatter?"
Wileen let out a miserable cry, but years of training made him reflexively follow Leilin's instructions.
The carriage slowly began to move, heading straight toward the boulder that stood over ten meters tall.
"Hey, hey! We're only five meters away—shouldn't we stop?"
As he drove, Wileen kept questioning Leilin, but received no answers. Wileen could only grit his teeth and keep urging the horses forward.
"Three meters! One meter!" Wileen cried out repeatedly, and in the end simply squeezed his eyes shut.
Pop!
The lead horse's head made contact with the boulder, but the expected collision and screams never came.
Wileen opened his eyes in bewilderment, and what he saw was an eerie sight!
In front of the carriage, the heads of both horses had already passed entirely into the boulder. The scene looked as though the boulder had swallowed them whole.
The boulder's "swallowing" continued to move downward—from head, to neck, all the way along the horse's back and tail, and finally it was Wileen's turn at the front of the carriage.
"Ugh!" Wileen instinctively raised his right hand to shield himself, and then felt a sudden bright light flood his vision.
"Pop!" It felt as though he had passed through a layer of liquid. Wileen looked curiously at the scenery on both sides.
After passing through the boulder, the grey mist had largely dissipated. By the light of the torch and the remarkable physique of a Great Knight, Wileen was now able to see everything within dozens of meters.
The road was lined on both sides by a species of black birch tree, growing in remarkably neat rows, with a shaded lane running between them. The carriage was moving slowly along it, and the three-way fork from before had completely vanished.
"Could it be that we were all under some kind of strange illusion just now?" At this point, Jamos, a Third-rank Apprentice, was the first to react.
But Leilin did not answer his question. On the contrary, his expression instantly turned grave—far more solemn than when he had first seen the three-way fork.
"The direction is wrong! What I saw earlier was not this kind of scene!"
In his earlier observation, the real road Leilin had seen should have been a winding path bristling with thorns, not this neatly lined avenue of black birch trees.
"Could it be that even I was affected by an illusion?" Leilin's expression darkened.
The shock in his heart far exceeded what showed on his face. He was currently a Second-rank Warlock! Although his strength had been diminished, it was not something that spirits or the like could simply bewitch the senses of.
"Chip! Scan the surrounding terrain!"
Leilin immediately pressed his temple and issued the command, a faint blue luminescence flickering in his eyes.
"Beep! Command received! Scanning commencing!"
"Warning! Warning! Unknown interference detected, this scan has failed!
The Chip's feedback came through, and then its voice began to distort, sounding like a jammed tape or a poorly tuned radio, emitting a hissing, static noise.
The piercing sound grew louder and louder, until it became the high-pitched wailing of a woman.
"Woo… woo…"
This sound occupied Leilin's mind, making his head spin.
"Do you hear that? I think I hear a woman crying!"
And outside, Wileen murmured the same words, immediately receiving confirmation from Jenny and Jamos: "We hear it too!"
"Over there!" Jamos suddenly pointed toward the roadside.
Leilin looked in that direction. Beneath a rotting birch tree, a woman in a black dress was crouching on the ground, sobbing.
"That voice! That voice! It's Martha! I'm sure of it!"
The expression on Jamos's face was extremely strange. He immediately jumped down from the carriage and rushed to the woman's side.