The Secret Cult Chronicles of the Decaying Lake Manor

Chapter 111 In the Mist (7) The Night Watchman's Steadfastness

George opened his eyes.

The coldness and darkness of the real world rushed towards me.

He was standing behind the bushes, maintaining his previous crouching posture.

Kelly, Bates, and Elliott's faces were inches apart, and their expressions were all similar—warning, doubtful, and uneasy.

"George?" Kelly spoke first, her voice low. "What did you just do?"

She paused, seemingly considering her words.

"That snowy owl vanished instantly, and then, on a mystical level, you probably 'disappeared' from my perception for a fleeting moment."

Bates didn't speak, but carefully examined George with his eyes, as if to confirm his authenticity.

George shifted his shoulders slightly.

He looked around and found that everything was normal; it seemed that only a few seconds had passed.

"I'm fine," George said. "You can test me—ask me things only we know."

"How much did you pay me, bakery?" Bates asked directly.

"One pound, or twelve pounds if you mean the bookstore."

Seeing Bates nod, Miss Moore asked, "What was the last thing I said when we parted under the tower's light?"

"...You wished me a future as clear as the moonlight." George quickly remembered his reply.

The three looked at Elliott, who simply gave a simple smile.

"I won't ask anymore. I believe he is the young master."

Everyone breathed a sigh of relief. Miss Moore glanced at Bates, who asked knowingly, "George, what do you think of your state just now...?"

Suddenly, a bright flash of light came from afar, followed by a muffled explosion that was slightly distorted by the mist.

The sound wasn't loud, but it was still clearly audible in the quiet, misty night.

All questions were interrupted.

Everyone immediately turned towards the direction of the fire.

George noticed that the shadowy giant mantises lurking in the fog also seemed to be disturbed.

Their activity patterns became briefly disordered, and their numbers appeared to have decreased somewhat.

"The Night Watchmen are fighting back?" Miss Moore seemed a little surprised, but quickly realized.

"I knew that the homes of the Highgarden nobles always had strange and unusual methods of self-defense."

George took a deep breath, took the golden sun amulet from Elliott, and infused it with spirituality.

Golden light spread through the thick fog, illuminating a ten-yard radius.

"Let's go," he said. "Prepare for battle."

Miss Moore also took out her gemstone pendant, fiddled with it for a bit, and it emitted a faint reddish glow.

The four people made their way forward by the light, and as they approached the hut, they saw several large, charred pits on the ground.

The remains of strange insects, still burning, lay scattered around the edge of the pit. The air was filled with the pungent smell of burning gunpowder, and a more complex odor mixed with the burning of metal.

Bates crouched down and poked at a black rock at the edge of the pit with the tip of his sword.

"This isn't ordinary gunpowder—someone planted a pyrometallurgical bomb—it must be a directional explosion." He looked up at the hut. "Very professional, no less than what the army uses."

Before the words were finished, the firelight blazed up again in the fog.

This time there were three flashes in succession, followed by three rapid explosions, coming from three different directions and almost simultaneously.

In the fog, the shadows of several arthropods vanished without a trace after the explosion.

Sharp hisses rose and fell, and the long, segmented limbs seemed to begin to disperse.

"Let's go!" George ordered.

The four rushed toward the cabin, with George estimating the distance as he went.

Fifty meters, then forty meters away, another flash of light appeared, far brighter than before, and the sound seemed to hammer everyone's ears.

Immediately afterwards, a loud whooshing sound cut through the fog, like a heavy object spinning at high speed cutting through the air.

"Get down!" Bates roared.

The four men, using their momentum, simultaneously fell to the ground.

After a tooth-grinding hammering and tearing sound, a mantis monster flew five meters above their heads.

Its body had been blown in half at the waist, and black blood was sprayed into the air like rain.

The monster's forequarters slammed into the ice ten yards away with a dull thud, its long legs twitched a few times, and then it lay still.

The group lay prone in the snow, their ears ringing.

"What is that?" Elliott asked breathlessly.

"Cannons." Bates stood up, brushing the snow off his clothes. "At least six-pound cannons, maybe double that—you can feel how powerful that is even in the fog."

Just then, voices came from the direction of the cabin, sounding blurry and distant in the fog.

"Who's there? Answer now, or we'll open fire!"

His voice was rough, with a heavy York accent.

George stood up, raising the amulet to make the golden light even more pronounced: "It's me, George de la Poul, I'm here to see old Hanmo, the island's guardian! Don't fire!"

After a few seconds of silence, a figure carrying a lantern in his left hand walked briskly from the direction of the hut.

The old man was wearing a thick fur coat and a modified windproof hat that covered most of his face, with two hunting dogs following at his feet.

In his right hand he held a strangely shaped, thick-barreled musket, the barrel of which was twice as thick as that of an ordinary hunting rifle, and it seemed to have been specially modified.

"Young master?" The night watchman put down his lantern after seeing George, and a look of relief finally appeared on his serious face.

"Thank the glorious Lord, I thought you were those monsters."

He waved: "Come in quickly, don't stay outside—it's too chaotic here."

The group followed, and as the fog ahead gradually thinned, the outline of the Night Watchman's Hut became clear.

George saw more.

The cabin itself seemed intact, but the doors and windows were tightly closed, with only a faint light seeping through the cracks.

What is most eye-catching is a group of five people surrounding a cannon on a relatively flat open space behind the hut.

It was a weapon with a steampunk style: the cannon body was made of brass and cast iron, covered with complex gears, valves and steam pipes, and the muzzle was an exaggerated cone shape.

The breech features a circular, graduated dial with fine copper wire wound around it.

Five people—four men dressed in black and one dressed as a servant—were nervously operating a device at the breech of the cannon, steam hissing as it spewed from the pipes.

This explains everything: those silent flashes of light, those sudden explosions, and the power to destroy monsters at close range.

This is not an ordinary cannon, but some kind of special weapon that incorporates alchemy or mechanical technology.

It seems that the source of those fires and the reason why the Night's Watch survived have been found.

Old Man Mo then spoke up: "Young Master, and everyone else. As you've all seen, we saved our lives thanks to the emergency measures the Viscount left here..."

'

He walked past the artillery crew and shouted to them, "Hold the line!" After receiving a chorus of support, he led the four men behind him into the house where the Night Watch lived.

Ignoring the gardener and the others inside who stood up in surprise and bowed upon seeing George and his party enter, Old Man Mo invited George and the others to sit down.

Then he looked sharply at George.

"Did the Viscount bring any instructions?"