America: The Cremator

Suron turned to Dania: "When Lucas left the tavern, did he leave anything behind?"

Dania immediately realized what was happening, turned to Sergei behind her, and ordered, "Go to the underground storeroom and find the locker that Lucas left behind."

"I remember someone took all his personal belongings inside."

Ten minutes later, a dusty, worn-out sports bag was delivered to the room on the second floor.

Sulong unzipped the jacket, revealing a pair of badly worn red boxing gloves and several moldy undershirts.

In the innermost part of the bag, he touched something hard.

It was a roughly made wooden picture frame, its edges smoothed and rounded from frequent handling.

In the photo, Lucas is wearing a sharp suit and holding a little girl with pigtails who is smiling brightly.

Back then, Lucas's eyes were full of tenderness and hope, a stark contrast to the useless man he is now.

Sulong took the photo and walked to Lucas's bedside.

At that moment, Lucas was talking to himself incessantly in the corner, his voice fragmented and incoherent.

Su Long didn't speak, but simply placed the photo frame quietly in front of Lucas's line of sight.

At first, Lucas did not react.

But when his gaze inadvertently swept across the smiling face of the little girl in the photo, his body suddenly froze.

A sudden, intense emotion welled up in his cloudy eyes.

"...Amy?"

Lucas let out a mournful cry, then lunged forward, his hands trembling as he picked up the photo frame.

He first burst into maniacal laughter, tears streaming down his filthy cheeks. Suddenly, he pressed the photo frame tightly against his chest, making a choking sound as if trying to suppress his sobs.

But the urge to cry was so strong that he couldn't suppress it, and he coughed violently.

With a cough, a sob escaped his throat, turning into a mournful wail that resembled a scream, a pitiful wailing that seemed to cut at Su Long's eardrums inch by inch.

After a long while, Lucas's crying gradually subsided.

He slowly raised his head, his chapped lips moving, his voice dry and hoarse: "Where is this?"

Su Long pulled up a chair and sat down, introducing the place as "The Direwolf Tavern in the North Side of Seattle, the territory of the Yurievich family."

"I was the one who brought you out of that forest in Cedar Ridge; you were in very poor condition at the time."

Lucas turned his head, his gaze lingering for a moment on the clean sheets and the snow-white walls before returning to Suron.

Those eyes, which once dominated the heavyweight arena, were now filled with heavy weariness.

"Thank you."

He uttered those two words, his voice still hoarse, but with a newfound composure born of clear thinking.

"No need to thank me right away; helping you is also helping myself."

Su Long stood up and gestured to the tavern waiter waiting outside the door.

"Go take a hot shower and change into clean clothes. The doctor has prepared high-calorie liquid food next door."

"Your body can't handle a high-intensity conversation right now. Let's talk about the well after you've eaten."

Lucas did not refuse. With the help of the waiter, he stood up, straightened his back, and slowly walked out of the room.

Su Long walked out of the room, went to the window at the end of the corridor, and dialed Elena's number.

"How's it going with Stella's situation?"

Elena's slightly rapid breathing could be heard from the other end of the phone, along with the faint sounds of instruments operating in the background.

"It's all taken care of. The situation was more complicated than I expected. I'm getting ready to go back to the villa."

"Don't go back yet, come straight to the Ice Wolf Tavern."

Su Long lowered his voice, his tone serious.

"Lucas Crown is awake; he's the only one who's come out of that well alive so far."

Elena was silent for two seconds on the other end of the line, then hung up the phone.

Half an hour later.

Lucas returned to the room.

He shaved off his messy beard and trimmed his hair, revealing a angular face.

Although his cheeks were sunken and his body was extremely thin, the imposing aura of a top athlete had begun to return.

He was wearing a large black sweatshirt, sitting on the sofa, looking at Su Long.

"Where are my daughter's photos?"

Su Long took the wooden photo frame out of his pocket and handed it over.

Lucas took the picture frame, his large hand gently brushing against the edge of it.

He carefully placed the photo inside the pocket of his sweatshirt, moving it very slowly.

"When Amy was homeless, she lost everything she owned. This may be the last photo of her in this world."

Just then, the door was pushed open.

Dania and Elena entered the room one after the other.

Su Long's eyelids twitched involuntarily as he watched the two women appear in the small room at the same time.

He had only agreed to investigate the strange well for the sake of mithril coins, but unexpectedly, the two women ended up together.

Dania pulled up a chair, sat down gracefully, and casually smoothed her long golden hair.

Elena leaned against the door, arms crossed, scrutinizing Lucas with sharp eyes.

Surong pointed to Dania and introduced her, "Lucas, let me introduce you. This is Dania, the eldest daughter of the Yurievich family."

He then introduced Elena: "This is Elena, the captain of the 'Black' task force of the Seattle Odds and Ends Bureau."

Su Long broke the delicate silence in the room.

"Now that everyone's here, let's talk about your daughter and that well."

Lucas raised his head, his gaze sweeping across the three faces before finally settling on a point in the void.

"It was a weekend, and Amy said she wanted to go cycling, on the paths in the Cedar Ridge community."

"She was usually very well-behaved and never rode out of my sight, but that day... she never came back."

Lucas's voice trembled slightly as he clenched his fists tightly.

"I searched along her cycling route for three whole days, checking every trash can and every bush."

"Finally, I realized that all the clues pointed to that church."

"Amy's mother was a devout believer, and Amy has a natural affinity for the church."

"I found Amy's bicycle at a nearby junkyard; it was a pink children's bicycle."

"The owner of the junkyard told me that it was sold to him by church clergy under the guise of 'disposing of junk'."

Upon hearing this, Elena frowned and quickly began writing something on her tablet.

"I went to see Reverend Samuel, and he seemed very sorry and even took me to search the entire chapel."

Lucas sneered, his eyes turning unusually cold.

"But he didn't take me to the backyard, nor did he tell me that there was a man-eating well there."

"Later, I bribed a homeless man who often did odd jobs at the church, and that's how I found out about the well."

Su Long leaned forward and pressed, "So, you just went straight down the well?"

Lucas nodded, a deep sense of fear appearing in his eyes.

"I sneaked into the backyard late at night and climbed down without thinking, but the bottom of the well was not the mud pit or puddle I had imagined."

"It was a huge, waterlogged dungeon."

The temperature in the room seemed to drop a few degrees as Lucas spoke.

Lucas took a deep breath, as if reliving that nightmarish night.

"The well walls were slippery, and covered with sticky, hairy moss."

"When I went down to a depth of about ten meters, the originally cold well water suddenly disappeared, as if it had been instantly sucked out by some huge suction force."

"I landed on the cold, damp stone floor, and the surrounding space suddenly opened up."

"The place was enormous, like a flooded underground hall, or... a huge prison."

Lucas gestured, his eyes revealing an incomprehensible sense of absurdity.

"Rusty iron chains hung from the stone pillars, and rotten planks and unidentified bone fragments floated in the water."

"The air was filled with the stench of dead fish and old corpses, so strong that it was hard to breathe."

Elena stopped recording, looked up, and asked, "What did you see down there? Did you see the people who went missing before?"

Lucas shook his head, his lips twitching slightly.

"I didn't see any living people, but I saw...that thing."