eurekapd Chapter 37 Northward Journey
Chapter 37 Northward Journey
Before dawn, the gates of Camelot slowly rose with the clanging of chains.
Arthur stood outside the city gate, his deep blue star-patterned cloak fluttering in the north wind.
Behind him, Kay, Gawain, Tristan, and Lancelot each led a spare horse, with three days' worth of dry rations and spare quivers strapped to its back.
No one speaks.
The order to head north was given yesterday; any further words at this moment would be a waste of time.
Arthur took one last look at the window on the city wall that was lit by candlelight.
In Morgan Tower, the candlelight flickered twice, like some kind of silent farewell, before going out.
He turned his horse around.
"Set off."
Hooves shattered the pre-dawn frost as five riders and ten horses galloped northward.
On the first day, they traveled north along the ancient Roman road. The fields on both sides of the road had not yet turned green, and the withered yellow stubble trembled in the wind.
Occasionally, smoke would rise from farmhouses, but most villages were still shrouded in the darkness before dawn.
As Arthur rode on his horse, the Dragon Power River unfolded automatically, sensing everything along the way. The moisture in the soil was rising, a sign that spring was approaching.
The old oak trees by the roadside are awakening from their winter slumber, and the magic deep within their roots flows slowly and steadily to their branches like a small stream.
Everything is normal.
That's perfectly normal.
But a chill crept into his body.
This chill became increasingly clear and distinct on the northward journey.
It's like a whisper that was initially indistinct, but as you get closer, you can gradually make out the syllables.
The cold was different from the cold of winter, exactly as Morgan described.
That was the cold of "death".
The following evening, they crossed the Yorkshire boundary marker.
We're still a day's journey from Hadrian's Wall, but the air is already starting to change.
February in the North is cold, but this is different; it's a change that's more fundamental, belonging to the "land" itself.
Tristan was the first to notice.
He plucked the strings of his harp from horseback, then stopped.
"The pitch is off."
Kai turned and looked at him: "What?"
"Strings." Tristan raised the harp, his fingers gliding lightly across the strings. What should have been a smooth arpeggio produced several discordant noises.
"The humidity hasn't changed, the temperature hasn't changed, but the tension of the string has changed, it's like..."
He raised his head, his gaze passing over Kay and landing on Arthur.
"...It's like the air itself has become heavier."
Arthur did not turn around; his Dragonforce River was receiving the same signal.
The concentration of magical particles in the air was nearly twice as high as normal.
Moreover, these particles were not the "water" and "soil" commonly found in Britain, but something he had never perceived before.
Grayish-white.
In Long Tong's vision, the magical particles appeared as a very faint grayish-white.
It was like diluted fog, or like the ashes left after something had burned out.
"We'll camp here tonight," he said.
A campfire was lit in the twilight.
Kai distributed the dry rations to everyone, and Gawain used the residual heat of the Sun Sword to warm the frozen bread.
Tristan sat by the campfire, retuning his harp strings, while Lancelot leaned against a withered tree, his sword across his lap, his gaze fixed on the last rays of light that had sunk below the horizon in the north.
Arthur sat on the other side of the campfire, closed his eyes, and let the Dragon Power River fully unfold.
More than forty Longli River channels are like more than forty invisible rivers, extending outward from the heart and seeping into the land beneath our feet.
The range of perception is expanding: ten steps, twenty steps, fifty steps...
Every grain of sand, every root, and every drop of frozen groundwater in the soil is "touched" as the Longli River flows.
Then, he touched the thing.
At the edge of the perception range, about seventy steps away, there was a very faint, almost imperceptible fluctuation.
It is not magic, not life, not even "death" itself.
It was a vague, grayish-white color that existed between existence and non-existence:
"Door."
Arthur opened his eyes.
This word automatically emerged from Longli River's perception, as if the river itself was telling him the answer.
That thing was like a door, a half-open door leading to somewhere.
But what lies behind the door? His Dragon Power River Channel cannot probe into it.
It wasn't blocked by the door, but rather "diluted".
The moment Long Li approached the door, it was like water seeping into dry sand, quickly flowing away and dissipating until nothing could be sensed anymore.
"king."
Lancelot's voice came from across the campfire. He opened his eyes, still leaning against the withered tree, but his sword was already in his hand.
"You felt it."
This is not a question.
Arthur stood up. "Kay, Gawain, stay at the camp. Tristan, Lancelot, come with me."
The three walked about seventy paces north across the twilight-shrouded wilderness.
Arthur stopped in his tracks.
There is a rock in front of me.
A grayish-white stone, about half a person's height, stood alone in the wilderness.
Its surface is covered with weathered cracks, and its edges are rounded, making it look no different from any other boulder in the northern wilderness that has been eroded by wind and rain for thousands of years.
But Arthur's dragon eyes saw something different.
Inside the stone.
There was a grayish-white fog there.
The fog density gradually increases from the edge to the center, transitioning from an almost transparent pale gray to a solidified lead gray.
At the very center of the fog, beneath layers of lead-gray, lies a pure black core.
The kernel was extremely small, about the size of a thumbnail.
But it made the chill inside Arthur's body tremble violently.
It's like recognizing someone of the same kind.
Lancelot stepped forward and placed his palm on the surface of the stone.
His movements were very light, as if he didn't want to disturb anything. The swordsman's hands were rough and large, forming a strange contrast with the grayish-white stone.
The warmth of a living person versus the coldness of stone.
A moment later, he withdrew his hand.
It does not absorb sound.
Kai frowned: "What do you mean?"
"Stones absorb sound; all stones do." Lancelot tapped his fingers lightly on the hilt of his sword, producing a crisp metallic sound.
"Echoes tell you about a stone's density, internal fissures, and whether it has cavities, but this stone..."
He shook his head.
"The knocking sound only traveled back to the surface; inside... there was nothing, as if the sound had been swallowed up."
Tristan did not reach out to touch it; he simply stood in front of the stone, closed his eyes, and held his right hand half an inch above the stone's surface.
His fingers trembled slightly in the air, as if he were plucking an invisible string.
Then he opened his eyes.
"The magic is hidden on the surface," he said.
"The stones of Britain breathe; they absorb, store, and release magic."
But this stone is different; it has a... 'shell' on its surface. The moment magic touches the shell, it is pushed away."
Arthur walked to the front of the stone.
In Long Tong's vision, the gray mist flowed slowly inside the stone, forming vortexes around the pure black core.
The vortex rotates extremely slowly, so slowly that it is almost imperceptible, but it is indeed moving.
Moreover, the direction of the vortex is inward.
All the flow points to that black core, like a miniature, inverted vortex that draws everything into its center without ever overflowing.
"It's a door that's ajar," Arthur said.
His voice was soft in the twilight, but all three knights heard it clearly.
"The gray fog is suppressing what's behind the door, but there's more than one door."