67: Chapter 67 Both sides felt they had hit the jackpot.

Xie Feng was squatting by the ground stove in the corner of the main hall, leaning his back against the mildly warm residual heat of the stove wall, placing his blind staff horizontally across his knees to rest for a while.

Mo Tang and Qiao Song were tidying up the testing boards over at the forging table, while Elder Qin and Elder Han were still making final Seal closure confirmations at the dome entrance.

The Third Princess had already led the Imperial Guards back to the side hall first, and before leaving, she even shoved a token into Xie Feng's hand, saying it was a credential.

Something in his sleeve shook.

Xie Feng thought it was his own illusion, and then the statue of Tsathoggua shook again.

A real, physical vibration—a live toad squatting in his cuff suddenly twitched its hind leg.

"No, are you people ever going to finish?"

Xie Feng reached his hand into his sleeve. The moment his fingertips touched the surface of the statue, an extremely fine and freezing fluctuation of mana darted out from deep within the statue, traveled up his fingers, and was intercepted by the mana in his Meridians at his wrist.

The silver threads did not repel this fluctuation; instead, as if recognizing something, two silver threads actively probed out from the Meridians, tangled with the fluctuation emitted by the statue, and tied an extremely fine and tiny silvery-white knot on the inner side of Xie Feng's wrist joint.

A sentence directly exploded in Xie Feng's mind, every single word crystal clear: "Kid. Come to the west slope of the mine. The staff body is ready."

Master Huo, it was Master Huo's voice.

Xie Feng froze in place entirely.

Magical sound transmission—wait, no, I remember this thing isn't in the cthulhu mythos manual, and speaking of Spells like voice transmission into the ear, Master Huo shouldn't really know them, right?

Triggered by mana, could this bloody thing be a human contact Spell!?

This was clearly a human contact Spell, a Spell-like ability used by the Mi-go race in the cthulhu mythos system for long-distance communication.

Why would it appear on Master Huo? Master Huo, what on earth are you anyway?

"Xie Feng?" Tu Ziguan leaned closer, "Did you just twitch a moment ago?"

"My brain is twitching a bit right now!"

Xie Feng pulled his hand out of his sleeve. The statue was still shaking, trembling so slightly that his cuff was vibrating.

He pressed his hand onto his blind staff, raised his head, and no abnormality could be heard in his voice: "I'm going to the mine."

"Now? Didn't we just withdraw from the outer perimeter of the mine..."

"Master Huo is over there, he said the staff body has been found." Xie Feng stood up and propped his blind staff against the ground.

"No, how do you know?"

"Hehe, the wise man has his own clever plans."

The west slope of the mine was not far from the City Defense Mansion. Xie Feng went out through the eastern side door, his Spiritual Qi redistributed across his six Meridians. The magic activated by the statue was still jumping around wildly in his body, and the fluctuation of that human contact Spell lingered deep inside his skull, humming all the way.

When he walked to the foot of the west slope, the morning light was cutting obliquely from the top of the city wall, pulling the shadows of those crooked-necked pine trees at the top of the slope very long.

The slag piles on the slope were still there, and a few shovels leaned against them.

As soon as Xie Feng saw the appearance of those people, he instantly felt utterly speechless, finally understanding why Master Huo was able to forge the statue of the God of Toads into a staff.

Aren't these Voormis?!

All the information about Voormis in Xie Feng's mind flipped out simultaneously: a servant race in the cthulhu mythos system, generally worshiping Aphoom-Zhah or Tsathoggua, living in underground caves long before the birth of human civilization—true believers of the God of Toads who had lived from ancient times down to the present.

"I brought it to you." Master Huo's mouth moved; the Voormis' mouth structure made his voice when speaking human language deeper and more muffled than when he was a blacksmith, and the old woman Voormis pushed the grayish-blue Ore in her arms forward.

Xie Feng took out the statue. The toad was shaking violently in his palm, and the breathing undulations deep within its material were no longer a leisurely pace of one by one, but urgent, scorching, like a living creature desperate to break free from his palm after seeing its own kind.

"Master Huo, you don't look like the Master Huo from my hometown."

"What do you mean?"

"Never mind. Besides, what on earth are you guys trying to do? And how on earth did you hide yourselves? The Gorgoroth Form-Distortion Spell?"

This time it was Master Huo's turn to be shocked. How could this person look both smart and foolish?

Carrying the statue of the God of Toads yet failing to recognize them, and yet now instantly seeing through the magic they had used to hide for decades? What on earth was wrong with this person?

"Kid, we are the people of the gods. We are here for our god's revelation. Now the Seal cannot hold up, whether it's the city or the mine, it will be destroyed sooner or later. The God of Toads has descended its final revelation, so we plan to leave." Master Huo's toes lightly tapped twice on the handle of his iron hammer.

"Before leaving, we must take back the statue. That is our clan's sacred object and the last remaining trace left by our god in the present world. Now that the Seal is stable and we are leaving, the statue must be taken away." Master Huo stepped forward, his brown fur swaying slightly in the morning wind.

"I helped you forge the staff. The statue belongs to us, and the staff belongs to you. Where you go in the future is none of our concern. Are you willing to go through with this trade?"

Master Huo actually didn't dare to guarantee it, because the statue of the God of Toads was such a precious item. He didn't think Xie Feng would hand it over easily, so he had already prepared to bleed heavily.

Xie Feng agreed a hundred percent!

As for losses—stop joking around. If he didn't have all these messy marks and things on his body, he would have happily lived a Xiuxian life long ago. The fewer there were, the better!

"Great! Take it, take it! Can you take all of it?"

"Huh? What do you mean?"

"Sigh... Forget it, having one less is better than having one more!" Xie Feng very readily pulled the statue out from his bosom.

This time, it was Master Huo and the people around him who were somewhat surprised. What on earth was wrong with this person? To obtain such a sacred object, they thought they would have to waste a lot of words and pay a price to exchange for it, but how come this person acted as if they were desperately trying to give it away for free?

Xie Feng thought to himself.

Awesome, one less Great Old One, one more weapon, this business made a killing.

Then he realized something was a bit off. Tsathoggua and Cthugha didn't really get along, and Master Huo said Ranhuo City was going to be destroyed. Are you kidding me? They had just come up from below; the Seal couldn't have been reinforced for nothing, right?

Xie Feng had originally held the statue up in front of Master Huo, but his movement suddenly paused, and he pulled the statue back.

Master Huo's words spun in his head again. The God of Toads had descended its final revelation, saying both the city and the mine would be destroyed. But they had just climbed up from the dome, and even Elder Han admitted that the raw material Spiritual Qi had returned to normal. With the Seal stabilized, how could the city still be destroyed?

Unless the destruction Master Huo spoke of had nothing to do with the Seal. Or rather, the destruction wasn't caused by the things below awakening, but rather the Voormis themselves doing something before they left.

Xie Feng's fingers slowly rubbed against the base of the statue. The Voormis had received Tsathoggua's revelation at a certain time node. When the Seal was loose, they didn't leave; when the Seal was stable, they instead wanted to leave?