Chapter 175: Twice is painful enough

Ethan did not immediately go searching for the fire-patterned path beneath the ground.

In front of him, the left wing joint of the Flame Bone Dragon that Ruo Yan had just reinforced had cracked even further, while the fire core inside its chest had visibly weakened. If they kept forcing it to serve as the energy source for the Main Furnace, then by the time they discovered the real cause of the problem, they might be left with nothing more than a very beautiful dragon skeleton to display in the city.

Ruo Yan placed a hand on the bone near its core and closed her eyes, sensing its condition through the Soul Threads.

“It hasn’t lost its ability to fight, but the fire drained by the furnace won’t return immediately. We need to let the core stabilize first.”

“Then let it rest.” Ethan looked at the Undead Mage standing beside the dragon’s leg. “You can take a break from supplying fire today too.”

The blue flames inside the puppet’s eye sockets immediately brightened.

It had just raised a hand to brush the ash from its cloak when Ethan continued, “Help Ruo Yan move the materials over here.”

Its hand froze in midair.

Laira burst out laughing beside them, while Ruo Yan turned her face away as though she were extremely busy examining the crack.

Mumu crawled onto the puppet’s shoulder and gently patted its hood with one tentacle.

That consolation lasted only until it discovered a small fire-element crystal hidden beneath the cloak, at which point the tentacle immediately changed direction.

The Undead Mage lowered its head to look at it.

Mumu obediently pulled its tentacle back.

Ethan left the two of them to negotiate with their eyes and returned to the channel that had just ruptured.

He had no intention of using the second activation attempt before figuring out where the gray flow was entering the furnace from.

Decomposition allowed him to separate the damaged, scorched metal piece by piece, while the Eye of Truth revealed the structural layers hidden beneath.

The Purefire Main Furnace had originally been designed to filter impure fire-element energy before sending it into the three circulation rings. Its energy source was supposed to flow upward from beneath the foundation, while the feeding port was only meant to provide the initial flame that awakened the system.

They had just supplied fire from above, which caused whatever was trapped beneath the foundation to be sucked upward by the reverse flow.

“We used the Bone Dragon to wake the furnace, but the furnace ended up sucking mud from the bottom as well,” Ethan explained to Ruo Yan, pointing toward a narrow channel that had just been exposed. “The problem is that I still don’t know where that mud is coming from. If the main source channel is completely broken, we’ll have to replace a huge portion of the furnace.”

Ruo Yan studied the overlapping layers of metal.

“This place has been repaired many times. Welds from different craftsmen overlap each other, and some sections use materials from completely different systems. If we take everything apart just to inspect it, the three activation attempts might be less frightening than the amount of work required to repair the furnace.”

Laira listened to the two of them for a while before finally pointing toward the cliff behind the workshop.

“If the source is under the ground, why don’t I smash the floor open and take a look?”

Ethan turned to her.

He knew Laira could do it.

The problem was that the foundation of the city was directly connected to both the furnace body and the sealed gate behind it.

A sufficiently powerful punch might help them see the fire source, while also turning the entire Main Furnace into a pile of rubble.

After Ethan explained that, Laira looked slightly disappointed, but still lowered the fist she had already clenched.

It took them quite a while to open the maintenance path running around the base of the furnace.

The Undead Mage used deathly energy to drag rocks out of the way, Ruo Yan sorted the metal fragments that were still usable, while Ethan inspected the structure and used Decomposition on anything that had already decayed.

Every time they cleared another section, the Eye of Truth revealed a little more of the fine fire patterns beneath the ground.

They were not part of the ordinary circulation channels.

In some places, the fire patterns passed through the inner walls of the workshop.

In others, they ran beneath a headless blacksmith statue before disappearing behind the stone wall blocking the entrance to the core area.

What caught Ethan’s attention was that every place where the patterns appeared was located beside some kind of structural flaw.

Ruo Yan could only see poor welds and misaligned channels, but through the Eye of Truth, those flaws connected into a continuous path.

It was as though someone had deliberately hidden directions inside the mistakes of the furnace.

The heart fragment in Ethan’s hand only reacted when he stood near one of those sections of fire patterns, then became silent again once he stepped away.

“What are you looking at?” Ruo Yan asked when she noticed him lingering beside the headless statue longer than usual.

“A path that might lead to the old fire source.”

Ethan showed her the weld.

“Do you see anything unusual about it?”

Ruo Yan inspected it very carefully before finally shaking her head.

“I see two types of metal that should never have been welded together. If this is some kind of secret marker, whoever made it had terrible taste.”

“I also hope it’s just a bad weld.”

Ethan could not transmit what the Eye of Truth showed him to her.

He marked the places he had already found with pieces of stone so that he would not lose the route, then continued following them.

Eventually, the fire patterns led him to the wall sealing off the core area, where the three circulation channels merged into one.

There, the glowing lines no longer continued forward and instead vanished beneath an abnormally thick layer of metal.

Ethan tried to decompose the outer edge and immediately felt resistance from the rules of the Main Furnace.

If he forced his way through while the furnace was inactive, he would have to destroy the protective layer around the core area as well.

The System might consider that an act of damaging the challenge itself.

“If we want to see inside, we’ll have to run the furnace again.”

Ethan withdrew his hand.

“But this time, we can’t let it drain the Bone Dragon’s fire for too long.”

Ruo Yan looked down at her palm.

The Soul Threads connected to the dragon’s core were still trembling slightly.

She clearly did not like the idea.

“I can let it supply a short burst of flame while keeping an escape route open. If the furnace starts pulling backward again, you have to cut it immediately.”

“I’ll stand right at the suction point.”

Ethan looked at her.

“This second attempt is only to diagnose the problem. We’re not trying to clear the round.”

Ruo Yan finally nodded.

She still had enough materials to keep the Bone Dragon functioning after one short test, but not enough to rebuild its core if whatever lay beneath the furnace drained all of its fire-element energy.

Laira was assigned to hold the feeding port open, while Mumu was responsible for protecting the weakest wing joint and stabilizing Ruo Yan’s Soul Threads.

When it heard that it had to buff several places at once, Mumu stared at Ethan for a very long time before rolling toward its position like a soldier being pushed onto the front line.

The second activation attempt began when the sky over Emberfall City had shifted from bright red to dark crimson.

There was no obvious sun in this place, but the fiery cracks along the cliffs dimmed according to the ruins’ internal cycle.

Ethan stood beside the wall of the core area, one hand pressed against the weld while the other held the Fragment of the Lava Emperor’s Heart.

The furnace accepted the Bone Dragon’s flame.

The three circulation rings lit up one after another.

Ethan immediately pushed the Eye of Truth to its limit, causing the energy pathways to appear before him like taut strings.

The fire source remained clean throughout the first ring.

By the second ring, several gray strands began seeping in from deep below.

When the third ring started rotating, the thick metal layer inside the core wall suddenly became transparent beneath the flowing heat.

Behind it were two overlapping source channels.

One was red-gold and had been completely buried.

The other was murky gray and still open.

The fire-element energy from the Bone Dragon was being sucked down through the second channel, corrupted, then sent back upward.

The heart fragment in Ethan’s hand became scorching hot.

Its flame rhythm pointed toward the red-gold channel, while the furnace was currently running through the gray one.

Ethan was just about to tell Ruo Yan to cut the supply when the gray channel suddenly expanded and pulled directly against the Bone Dragon’s core.

The dragon jerked its head upward, its claws carving deep grooves across the plaza.

Mumu, which was covering the right wing joint, immediately split its body into two layers.

One layer strengthened the stability of Ruo Yan’s Soul Threads, while the other blocked the heat flowing backward.

Within a moment, the golden glow covering its body had already dimmed.

“Ethan!”

Ruo Yan tightened both hands.

“If we keep going, I’ll lose its core.”

Ethan had already seen enough.

He used Decomposition to sever the piece of material connecting the suction channel to the feeding port while shouting for Laira to open the furnace door.

Laira gritted her teeth and pulled against the door as it tried to close on its own, using so much strength that the hinges made cracking sounds.

The Bone Dragon’s stream of fire finally separated from the furnace.

It staggered several steps backward before lowering itself onto the plaza.

The flames inside its eye sockets were weaker than before, but its core remained intact.

The furnace bell rang for the second time.

[Second activation failed.]

[Remaining attempts: 1.]

Ruo Yan moved the Bone Dragon farther away from the Main Furnace before approaching Ethan.

Seeing that he was still staring intently at the core wall, she asked quietly, “Did you find it?”

“There are two source channels. We’ve been using the contaminated one.”

Ethan showed her the heart fragment, which had already cooled slightly, and explained how it had reacted.

“The other one was buried beneath layers of repairs. I don’t know where it leads yet, but this fragment recognizes the rhythm of its fire.”

Ruo Yan looked at the crystal, her expression gradually changing.

“You think this place is connected to the Lava Emperor?”

“I think at the very least, someone used the same kind of fire patterns when building it.”

Ethan put the heart fragment away.

“If there really is another heart fragment beneath us, I still can’t say for certain. We need to open the original source channel first.”

In the distance, near the entrance to the city, a flash of teleportation light appeared in the sky.

The nonhumans’ six-hour challenge on the battlefield had finally ended.

Ethan raised his head toward the light, then looked back at the notification showing that they had only one activation attempt remaining.

Mumu crawled onto his shoulder, so exhausted that its entire body had flattened.

Ruo Yan was trying to stabilize the Bone Dragon, while Laira was already staring toward the gate with obvious interest.

“Our guests are here,” Laira said. “Do I need to go welcome them?”

Ethan looked at the ugly welds concealing the red-gold fire channel, then at the trail of fire patterns that only he could clearly see.

“Let them come in on their own,” he replied. “I still need to find out who turned this furnace into a trap.”