Chapter 176: Again?

Ethan heard voices coming from the city gate before he saw anyone.

The nonhumans entering Emberfall City moved far more slowly than they had back in the Ember Battlefield. The heavily armored ones had to lean on their companions, one Harpy had lost almost all the feathers along the edge of her wing, while the horned nonhuman leading the group kept glancing behind himself every few steps, as though afraid a hand made of lava would reach through the gate and drag him back.

The moment they saw the Flame Bone Dragon lying in the plaza, the entire group stopped.

“The dragon is still alive?” the horned nonhuman blurted out.

He looked at the cracks across its wings, then noticed Ruo Yan standing beside it and the Soul Threads connected to its core.

“It’s your puppet?”

Ethan stepped away from the wall of the core area and brushed the ash from his hands.

“Welcome to the third layer. I figured you’re already familiar with the dragon, so I won’t bother introducing it again.”

A silver-haired Dark Elf behind him tightened his grip on his weapon.

Six hours of facing the Volcanic Colossus had drained nearly all the crystals they had used to maintain their Magic Array, and several people who had followed them on the battlefield were nowhere to be seen.

The horned nonhuman looked at the Bone Dragon, then at Laira leaning against a stone pillar near the furnace, before forcing himself to calm down.

He clearly wanted to do something to Ethan, but the injuries covering his companions forced that thought to give way to reality.

The notification for the third-layer challenge appeared before them.

Several people immediately looked toward the Main Furnace after reading it, then at the burn marks still left across two of the circulation rings from the previous activation attempts.

The horned nonhuman quickly realized that Ethan’s group had already tried and failed.

His expression finally relaxed slightly.

“So you’re stuck here too.” He gave a hoarse laugh. “Looks like entering six hours early doesn’t mean you’ll get everything.”

“Correct.” Ethan nodded naturally. “That’s why I suggest you read the rules carefully before touching the furnace. It’s less forgiving than the Golem that was just chasing you.”

The horned nonhuman’s smile froze.

Laira turned her face toward the stone pillar, her shoulders trembling.

Ethan had no intention of wasting time arguing with them.

He already had a problem to solve.

Each team had three separate activation attempts, so the nonhumans could conduct their own challenge without directly consuming Ethan’s final attempt.

However, there was only one Main Furnace.

If one team damaged the shared channels, everyone could end up trapped here.

He told Ruo Yan to move the Bone Dragon to the edge of the plaza so its core could recover, then returned to the maintenance route with Laira.

The fire patterns beneath the ground had become fainter after two failed activations.

Ethan had to maintain the Eye of Truth for a long time before he could clearly see each section, and a dull ache gradually began building behind his eyes.

He did not attempt to look through the entire city.

The last time, he had only been able to locate the fire patterns while standing directly above the welds, and whenever he moved more than a street away, they disappeared back into the chaotic fire-element energy covering the area.

So he led Laira along the stone markers he had already placed and opened the maintenance covers positioned along the red-gold route one by one.

At the third cover, Laira lifted the metal plate and discovered an extremely deep ventilation shaft beneath it.

The hot air rising from below carried two distinctly different smells.

One smelled like clean metal freshly passed through fire.

The other was sharp and harsh, like stone being heated together with some kind of filthy liquid.

Ethan dropped a small fragment of material into the shaft.

Through the Eye of Truth, he watched it pass through the red-gold airflow before a murky gray current from a nearby branch pushed it off course.

“Should we destroy the gray branch?” Laira asked.

“Not yet. It’s bearing pressure for the main branch. If we break it directly, the dirty fire will flood into the clean channel.”

Ethan looked around the shaft.

“First we need to find somewhere we can seal it.”

The two of them searched a workshop beside the Main Furnace.

Inside, dozens of cooled casting molds lay scattered across the floor, while long tools covered in dust still hung from the walls.

Ethan found a stone slab showing a diagram of the channels, though almost all the labels had been scraped away.

Ruo Yan arrived later and, using her knowledge of puppet refinement, recognized a set of pressure locks that had been installed backward.

She removed one and placed it on the table.

The groove inside was completely blackened, clearly having allowed the gray flow through many times before.

“Installing it backward like this wasn’t an accident,” she said. “Whoever repaired the furnace wanted the dirty source channel to open first whenever the temperature rose.”

Ethan looked again at the ugly welds.

One mistake could be blamed on poor craftsmanship.

But when every mistake produced the same result, it was no longer a matter of skill.

He still did not know which side the person who repaired the furnace had belonged to, or whether they had done this to imprison something beneath the city, so he did not rush to a conclusion.

The Eye of Truth could show him the current structure and reactions, but the intentions of people from the past still had to be inferred from what was happening now.

Outside in the plaza, the nonhumans had split up to inspect the Main Furnace.

None of them asked Ethan how to clear the challenge, although several looked at him with expressions that suggested the question was physically painful to hold back.

The horned nonhuman discovered a secondary channel connected to the first circulation ring and immediately ordered his companions to feed crystals into it.

Fire-element energy lit up for a short distance, then died because the channel was clogged.

Several Rank B crystals turned to powder right before his eyes.

“Again?” A Beastkin with an injured leg stared at the pile of powder, sounding as though his own bones had just shattered. “We already used almost all our crystals on the Magic Array.”

“I can see that.”

The horned nonhuman ground his teeth and looked toward Ethan’s group opening the workshop.

“They found something.”

The silver-haired Dark Elf did not suggest charging over and stealing it.

He had already witnessed how Laira and the Bone Dragon fought, and he had no desire to start another battle while his own group was exhausted.

Instead, he pointed out a secondary pipe system running beneath the workshop area.

If they forced fire-element energy through that branch at the exact moment Ethan’s group activated the furnace, Ethan’s channels would become unstable.

During the confusion, the nonhumans could observe the furnace’s reaction and use their remaining two attempts to find the answer themselves.

The horned nonhuman hesitated for a moment before finally nodding.

Ethan noticed them touching the secondary pipes while he was removing another pressure lock.

The gray airflow beneath them suddenly accelerated, blowing ash from the channel into a small plume.

He raised his head toward the plaza just in time to see two nonhumans pulling their hands away from a maintenance cover.

They pretended to simply be passing by with such innocent expressions that even Laira laughed.

“Want me to go tell them to stop?” she asked.

“Let me confirm the pipeline first.”

Ethan lowered his head again.

“If they’ve helped me open something that was locked, I might save some effort.”

He placed the Fragment of the Lava Emperor’s Heart against the edge of the channel.

The crystal warmed, but the tiny flame inside did not pulse toward the gray current.

Instead, it pointed toward an extremely weak stream of fire-element energy deeper below, beneath even the layer of stone the nonhumans had just disturbed.

Ethan followed it with the Eye of Truth and finally saw a red-gold vein running horizontally beneath the Main Furnace.

It had originally been completely buried beneath gray residue, only becoming visible for an instant when the pressure inside the dirty branch changed.

He immediately marked the direction with a piece of metal, then walked three streets over to search for the other end.

At that distance, the heart fragment stopped reacting.

Ethan had to return to the point where he had first seen the vein, adjust his position, and move forward slowly section by section.

Laira followed him, alternating between lifting maintenance covers and moving stones for Ruo Yan.

After the fourth change of direction, she looked at the messy map Ethan had drawn across the ash-covered ground and asked, “Are you sure this thing is showing us the way? It looks more like it’s forcing us to clean the entire city.”

“If cleaning the city ends up being useful, don’t ask me to pay you for every cover you lift,” Ethan replied. “I can’t afford it.”

The moment Mumu heard the word “pay,” it poked its head out from Ruo Yan’s shoulder and stared intently at him.

Ruo Yan gently pushed it back down, unable to hide her smile.

The light atmosphere only lasted for a moment.

Back in the plaza, the horned nonhuman opened another valve, causing the gray current to flood into the beginning of the clean channel.

Several casting molds inside the workshop began shaking violently.

The Undead Mage, which was transporting materials, had to raise both hands and use deathly energy to hold them in place, looking exactly like a worker who had just been given another task right before the end of his shift.

Ethan stepped outside and looked directly at the horned nonhuman.

“You’re opening a shared pressure channel. If you keep going, your furnace will break too.”

“Afraid we’ll find the answer first?” the horned nonhuman sneered, though his gaze flickered toward the trembling secondary pipe.

“I’m afraid I’ll have to repair the furnace twice because someone keeps turning valves without knowing where they lead.”

Ethan pointed toward a crack that had just appeared in the ground.

“If you want to keep experimenting, stand right there. If anything happens, I’ll remember to inform your teammates.”

The horned nonhuman looked at the crack before finally stepping aside.

The silver-haired Dark Elf immediately signaled for the valve to be closed, but part of the gray current had already entered the channel.

Ethan did not waste time scolding them further.

He and Ruo Yan sealed the reversed pressure lock inside the workshop, while Laira held down the maintenance cover to stop the pressure from blasting it away.

When the airflow finally stabilized, the fine fire patterns beneath the ash suddenly became much brighter than before.

They ran along the edge of the workshop, curved around the headless statue, then descended beneath the furnace foundation.

The heart fragment in Ethan’s hand responded with three consecutive pulses.

He followed the fire patterns and realized that at one point beneath the Main Furnace, the red-gold flow remained completely intact.

It had not died.

It had merely been buried beneath the murky gray channel and layers of repairs.

Ethan suddenly understood why both previous activation attempts had failed.

The furnace had never lacked an energy source.

The correct source had simply never been opened.

Ethan put away the heart fragment and turned toward Ruo Yan and Laira.

“Found it.”

“The path to the heart fragment?” Laira immediately asked.

“I haven’t seen any fragment.”

Ethan looked down at the ground glowing within the Eye of Truth.

“But I can see the path it’s responding to.”

In the plaza, the horned nonhuman overheard half the sentence, and his expression immediately changed.

Ethan did not even bother looking back.

He merely pointed toward the ash beneath the furnace, the corner of his mouth curving upward.

“So the forge was never short on fire,” he said. “It’s been forced to swallow the wrong fire all this time.”