The Lost Land of Gold

The moment Mu Ke finished reading the fairy tale, everyone's system panel popped up:

[System Alert: Congratulations on unlocking the main quest]

[This is the Golden Land that is paying its price. Please find the key item, the Funnel of Time, and turn the pain of the Golden Land into tears bearing in the hourglass. When the hourglass has been loaded with pain that satisfies the gods, sacrifice it to the gods in front of the offering table, complete the transaction, reverse time, and change the Golden Land back to its original state].

"The Funnel of Time?" Mu Sicheng asked rhetorically, wrinkling his brows, "What is this?"

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

"Could it matter?"

"Skills are derived from the core of a player's desires, while props are gods, or rather the system's set objects." Bai Liu stroked his chin thoughtfully, "This is the first time I've seen time props and time skills in a game, if there is some kind of relationship between the two, it would be logical that a person's desires are affected by an already existing set object, thus deriving a similar item."

"Then by that extension, that captain of the Golden Dawn, Georgia, might have some kind of close connection to this country that we don't know about yet."

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

"We're not all clueless though." Mu Ke looked up, he turned the fairy tale book in his hand to the first few pages, "This fairy tale doesn't explicitly mention the Hourly Funnel, but it's a drawn fairy tale book, and the accompanying illustrations here-"

Mu Ke points to the somewhat childlike drawing style illustrations in the children's book, "It's about when God made a deal with the country of Gurolum 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 sight stopped on the hand of God on the screen-

--In -God's hand was a delicate gray-black hourglass.

Meanwhile, on the other end.

"The Funnel of Time?" Kris 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, then spoke again Kris had probed for no trace of emotion, so calm that there wasn't a ripple, "I know."

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

"Mental bleach?" Kris quickly followed up, "Is that a place with a lot of mental pollution?"

"Well, it's not just mental contamination, it's physical contamination too." Georgia looked up, "The sands of time funnel is in the gold mines."

After Georgia finished speaking, she lowered her eyes and looked at the fairy tale book in her hand-unlike the one Bai Liu and the others had gotten, the fairy tale book in Georgia's hand [The Golden Country of the Gods' Favorites] did not end abruptly at the payment of the price for a thousand years, nor did it say a word about the Sands of Time Funnel, but instead, it depicted in detail the then King Gurolum's dealings with the gods.

"Father." Young Georgia looked up and inquired of her father in disbelief, "Why is my fairy tale book different from what everyone else on the market reads."

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

The children on the market read sweet and innocent fairy tales where God loves the world, but in the book of fairy tales Georgia got, God does not love the world, and is even a little scary, because the gods smiled at the king and said, In that time, I will come to collect the price of pain from all your people, and you will fill this hourglass with their tears, or the pain will never stop.

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

God told the king to fill the hourglass only with tears shed in an instant of pain that could be worth a thousand years of gold, and the moment the tears fell into the hourglass, the hourglass was reversed along with time, the deal was done, and the pain was discontinued.

Georgia queried, "Does this hourglass really exist?"

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

"Why don't you let everyone know?" Georgia shook her head disapprovingly, "Everyone sees fairy tales 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 sighed as he stroked Georgia's head, "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, Gurolum has always been an isolated land of gold." The king propped himself up on the edge of his bed and stood up, he walked over to the window, bathed in the moonlight and looked out over the lush and peaceful land and sighed ruefully, "It's a fairytale land, everyone believes that they're living in a fairytale, that they're favored by the gods, that there's never going to be a moment when calamity strikes."

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

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

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

The king spread his hands helplessly, "But the populace rebelled fiercely, they felt that fairy tales weren't like that, and that the Land of Gold wouldn't be like that, and that everyone should be full of hope and joy, and live forever carefree, so I cut out the second half of the story, and the fairy tale was pushed out."

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

"It's just self-deception, isn't it?" The king smiled bitterly, "Sometimes I think there's nothing wrong with fooling myself like this, I also fool myself when I'm happy, and lie to myself that that thousand years really won't come, and that the gods really will favor our country forever."

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

The king stared at Georgia in bewilderment for a long time, then turned his head to hold the fence, lowered his head and murmured, "...... Georgia, your lack of avoidance of pain makes me ashamed of myself."

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

"Every king of Gurolum receives the crown, but few know that with the succession of kingship comes an hourglass, which, it is said, is the Funnel of Time passed down from one generation to the next by the first king."

"On the day I became king, my predecessor was dying; he had been afflicted with a long and painful illness, and on his deathbed, he asked me to put the hourglass to his face, and struggling to squeeze out the tears, he finally shed a single drop, which he watched with anticipation and ecstasy as it dripped into the hourglass."

"He longed for the tear to fill the hourglass and end that thousand-year deal, but unfortunately, the tear fell into the hourglass like a drop of water into the ocean, without a sound."

"The last king died in the midst of pain and dismay, and before he died, he took his hand in a 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 descended to extract the people's pain."

"-[It is the king's dereliction of duty never to let his people who have been brought up in fairy tales not believe in them], so he told me."

The king turned his head, his eyes a little red, 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 so many tears all night, so many tears fell into this hourglass, and it didn't even fill the cracks."

"I began to fear this hourglass, which even the tears shed by those who suffer from death and the loss of a loved one are not enough to fill it, and I do not know what other pain in the world can fill it."

"So I ran away, I cowardly hid this hourglass in the mine that gave birth to gold."

"After hiding the hourglass in the mine, I began to have nightmares often." The king's face appeared fleshed out with trepidation, "I would dream of that god."

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

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

"It won't get better!" The king burst into tears, he became a little hysterical, his face was one of undisguised horror, "When there is no more gold, everything will be spoiled for the worse!"

"We've been living for 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 gold out of the ground, and by that time, everyone would be starving and freezing to death!"

"I must find a way to fill the hourglass before the one thousand year appointment comes." His father said with tears in his eyes.

Unfortunately, the hourglass still hadn't been filled by the time the last minute came.

Georgia lowered her eyes, "Go find Hourglass in the mine."

Meanwhile, on the other end.

The inhaled dust causes Mu Sicheng to choke several times, and he covers his mouth and nose as he brushes away a building's bulletin board.

They're still running maps to gather information on the possible location of the Sands of Time funnel.

The good news is that there is no enemy interference and they sweep the map quickly, the bad news is that there is no enemy interference and they are mostly going in the wrong direction.

But this copy of the map is really too big, Mu Sicheng is considered to be moving extremely fast, but even if it is on full speed to sweep the map, for a moment can not run on any side of the border, he has a headset, while running forward to the rear to report the information, he collects the information the rear to deal with the information, so that the speed of the map sweeping will be much faster.

"Saw a department bulletin board." Mu Sicheng choked and coughed louder and louder, "Ahem, filmed it and transmitted it to Mu Ke, check it out."

Soon, Mu Ke's noisy voice came through Mu Sicheng's headset, "It's the bulletin board of the Gold Hair Administration."

"The Gold Distribution Organization?" Mu Sicheng asked in confusion, "What kind of strange department is this?"

"I'm not sure, but from the content of the announcements, it should be the official department that manages the issuance and operation of gold." Mu Ke explained calmly, "There are a total of three announcements on this bulletin board."

"The first one is to regretfully announce that the 57 mining sites in the country, seven big ones, have seen a continuous decline in gold mining for two consecutive years, and that in the last six months even less than one ton of gold was extracted in total, which can't even sustain the country's operation."

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

"The last announcement is ......" Mu Ke's voice became hesitant, "Just a moment please, this announcement is smudged and I can't see it a bit."

Mu Sicheng hugged his chest and hmmm'd as he swept his afterglow to the last announcement on that bulletin board he'd wiped clean - it was actually understandable why Mu Ke couldn't see this one, it was heavily scrawled, heavily exclaimed by the red marker, densely packed and looking emotionally charged.

"I probably got a good look at that last announcement." Mu Ke's voice remained hesitant, "But I'm not sure I translated it correctly."

"The specific content of the announcement is that the royal heir of Gurolun (i.e. for the Great Wang Zi) insisted on pushing for cooperation with the Heresy Handling Bureau, demanded that the Heresy Handling Bureau be stationed in the country of Gurolun, and sternly claimed that the gold produced in the mines was heretical and would have a negative impact on people, forbade the people to mine it privately, demanded that the people stay away from the mines, and was ready to hand the mines over to the Heresy Handling Bureau to deal with it that."

"Those scribbled words and text on it would have been written on by the emotional public at the time."

"It's the [Georgia Traitor Get out of the Gurolum Kingdom! , [The Heretic Handling Authority is here to steal our gold, get out of the Gurolonian State! ."

"[How did the gold production drop? Is the rest of the gold produced by the mine being hidden by the traitor Georgia, give us back the hidden gold!"]"

"[Georgia go fuck yourself! ."

After a moment's interval, Bai Liu's calm voice came out of the headset, "It seems we've figured out the most likely place to hide the hourglass."

"Mu Sicheng, prepare the mental bleach, pay attention to the time limit for skill usage, and go to the mine."