Chapter 698 The Man Behind It All

A dome had surrounded the entire town, preventing anyone from leaving and trapping anyone who entered for too long. That alone was disturbing enough, but Liam couldn’t stop thinking about something else. If an entire town had effectively vanished from the outside world for fifteen years, someone should have noticed. Fifteen years was not a short period of time. People had families outside this place. They had friends, relatives, acquaintances, merchants they traded with, people they had met throughout their lives. A town simply disappearing should have created questions. Someone should have come looking. Someone should have wondered why letters stopped arriving, why travelers stopped returning, why familiar faces suddenly vanished from the roads. Yet according to Voss, nobody had come to rescue them. Liam slowly turned toward him.

"When did this start? When did it start that people couldn’t leave?"

Voss rubbed his chin thoughtfully, his eyes drifting toward the cave floor as he searched through memories that had been buried beneath years of survival.

"It all started fifteen years ago," he finally said. "Fifteen years. That’s how long we’ve been trapped here."

His voice carried a strange mixture of resignation and pride.

"For fifteen years, we’ve learned how to grow our own crops. We’ve learned how to survive without relying on anyone from outside. We’ve learned how to make our own tools, repair our own houses, hunt what we can hunt, and stretch whatever resources we have for as long as possible. Children were born here who have never seen another town. Some people have died here without ever seeing the outside world again. We’ve had to learn how to live while being completely cut off from everyone else."

Liam’s eyes widened slightly.

Fifteen years.

The number kept repeating inside his mind. He had seen the village himself. The houses were modest, the roads poorly maintained, and the people lived cautiously, almost as though every day was simply another day they needed to survive. But knowing the reason behind it made the entire place feel different.

This wasn’t simply an isolated settlement that had chosen to live quietly.

These people had been imprisoned.

Liam looked toward the cave entrance, his thoughts moving rapidly.

"How can an entire town suddenly stop making contact with the outside world and nobody come looking for them?" he asked. "You must have relatives outside. Friends. People who knew you existed. Someone should have noticed."

He paused, his gaze sharpening.

"Fifteen years is long enough for people to realize something is wrong."

Voss sighed heavily and nodded.

"Some did come."

Liam’s eyes immediately returned to him.

"Some?"

Voss nodded.

"People came looking for their families. Others came because they were curious. Some heard rumors that something strange had happened here. A few came because someone they knew disappeared after entering the area."

He paused and looked down at his hands.

"But they never left either."

Liam’s expression darkened.

"They got trapped."

"Exactly."

Voss’s voice became quieter.

"So I guess, from the outside world’s perspective, it probably looks like anyone who tries to find us simply goes missing."

He gave a bitter little smile.

"A person hears that their brother disappeared while traveling here, so they come looking for him. Then they disappear too. Someone else hears that both of them disappeared and comes looking for them. Then they disappear as well. Eventually people stop coming."

Liam slowly nodded.

"That would explain why we rarely see new people anymore."

Voss nodded.

"Exactly. In the beginning, we still saw outsiders occasionally. Over time, that became less and less common. Eventually, most people learned to stay away from this place, even if they didn’t understand why."

Liam stared at the cave wall for several seconds. His mind was already moving beyond what Voss had told him. A dome capable of trapping an entire region wasn’t something that simply appeared without a cause. There had to be an origin. There had to be a source. There had to be someone or something responsible for maintaining it. And if the dome had appeared fifteen years ago, then whatever had caused it had probably been connected to the events happening around that same time.

Liam finally looked back at Voss.

"Alright. Now I want to know why a dome would suddenly cover an entire town without being provoked. I want to know Elder Eldric’s involvement. And most importantly..."

His expression became colder.

"I want to know who that fire person is, and I want to know why it kills people."

Voss nodded slowly.

"Then I suppose you need to know what happened before the dome appeared."

Liam remained silent, allowing him to continue.

Voss shifted on the rock, leaning forward with his elbows resting on his knees. His gaze became distant as he began remembering events that had happened long before Liam and Irina arrived.

"Twenty years ago, a rumor started spreading that there was a treasure hidden underneath our village."

Irina’s eyes narrowed slightly.

"A treasure?"

Voss nodded.

"That’s what people said. At first, nobody took it seriously. It was just a ridiculous rumor. Why would there be some incredible treasure underneath our village? Look at this place."

He gestured toward the cave entrance, almost as though he could somehow point through the mountain toward the village beyond it.

"We weren’t rich. We weren’t important. We didn’t have some ancient sect sitting beneath our feet. We were farmers, hunters, craftsmen, merchants, ordinary people trying to live ordinary lives. There was nothing about this town that suggested it was hiding something valuable."

He paused before adding, "But rumors don’t need to make sense before people start believing them."

Liam remained quiet.

Voss continued.

"At first, only a few people came. Then more started coming. Eventually, cultivators began arriving from places we’d never even heard of. Some were strong enough to fly. Others could destroy houses with a single attack. Some carried strange weapons and magical artifacts. They all came searching for the same thing."

"The treasure," Liam said.

"The treasure," Voss confirmed.

"For five years, this town knew no peace."

His expression tightened as the memories resurfaced.

"They searched everything. The ground beneath our houses. The mountains. The fields. Forests. Old buildings. Graves. Even people’s homes. They would tear apart walls because they thought someone had hidden a clue inside. They would dig holes in the middle of farmland because they believed the treasure might be buried beneath the soil. They searched people’s belongings, questioned elders, threatened families, and sometimes fought among themselves when they thought someone else had found something."

Irina’s eyes hardened.

"And the villagers couldn’t stop them?"

Voss shook his head.

"How could we? What could ordinary villagers do against cultivators who could fly through the sky?"

His voice carried bitterness.

"We could scream. We could beg. We could hide. We could rebuild whatever they destroyed after they left. But we couldn’t make them stop. Every time one group left, another arrived. The rumor kept growing because every cultivator who came assumed the previous ones must have missed something."

Liam slowly exhaled.

"So the rumor became self-sustaining."

Voss looked at him.

"Exactly. The more people searched, the more convinced everyone became that there had to be something here. Otherwise, why would so many powerful people come?"

He shook his head.

"It didn’t matter that nobody found anything. Failure only convinced them that someone else had hidden the evidence better."

Voss’s voice became quieter.

"Then everything changed fifteen years ago."

Liam’s eyes sharpened.

"The dome."

Voss nodded.

"The dome."

He looked down for a moment before continuing.

"Two extremely powerful cultivators came to the town."

Irina’s expression became serious.

"How powerful?"

Voss shook his head.

"I don’t know. I was only about seven years old."

He gave a faint, almost embarrassed smile.

"Back then, I didn’t understand cultivation levels or techniques. I only knew that when they appeared, every adult around me became terrified."

Liam could imagine it. A seven-year-old boy watching two beings of overwhelming power descend upon an ordinary village. He probably wouldn’t have understood what was happening. He would only have understood the fear on the faces of the adults around him.

Voss continued.

"They weren’t like the other cultivators. The others came looking for the treasure and left when they failed. These two didn’t care about searching anymore. They fought."

"Over the treasure?" Liam asked.

Voss shook his head.

"Not exactly. At least, that’s not how it sounded to me."

He closed his eyes briefly, remembering.

"I remember hearing them arguing. I don’t remember every word, but I remember enough. They were fighting over who would control this town."

Liam frowned.

"Control the town?"

"Yes."

Voss opened his eyes.

"I don’t know why. Maybe they had discovered something the others hadn’t. Maybe they knew the truth about the treasure. Maybe they wanted whatever was hidden beneath us for themselves. I was too young to understand."

He paused.

"But they fought."

His voice dropped.

"And when they did, half the town was destroyed."

Irina’s eyes widened slightly.

Voss continued speaking, and the longer he talked, the more the history of Elaris began to sound less like the story of a cursed village and more like the aftermath of a catastrophe that had been deliberately misunderstood.

"Buildings collapsed. Fields were destroyed. Roads were torn apart. People died simply because they were standing in the wrong place. I remember my parents grabbing me and running. I remember people screaming. I remember looking up and seeing things in the sky that I didn’t understand."

He swallowed.

"I remember thinking that the sky itself was breaking."

Liam remained silent.

There was nothing he could say that would make a seven-year-old child’s memories of such an event any less horrifying.

"And eventually," Voss continued, "one of them fell."

Liam’s gaze sharpened.

"One died?"

Voss nodded.

"Yes."

Liam sighed quietly and looked toward the ground.

"Wow. These people have really gone through a lot of pain."

Irina remained silent beside him, her expression thoughtful.

Liam rubbed his chin before looking back at Voss.

"As for the the other cultivator..."

He paused.

"I’m guessing they left, right?"

Voss slowly shook his head.

"No."

Liam’s eyes narrowed.

Voss looked directly at him.

"One died."

He paused.

"One survived."

The cave suddenly seemed quieter.

Liam waited.

Voss’s expression hardened as he finally revealed the part of the story that connected the past to the present.

"And the one who survived..."

He looked at Liam.

"Was none other than Eldric."