Chapter 174: Mining Disaster (1)

Everly, Misha, and a third companion spent two days playing in the Winton people’s village. At the villagers’ enthusiastic invitation, they even experienced a real-life escape room game—without any actual props.

It really was just as outsiders had praised it: extremely fun and worth replaying many times.

On the third day, Everly and Misha said goodbye to the villagers and, though reluctant to leave, set off on their journey and flew back to university.

College students are the most frequently portrayed group of victims in American horror films. Perhaps because of this, after entering university, Everly clearly felt that horror-movie-like incidents were occurring around her much more often.

Indeed, just over a single summer break, at least eight college students within Misha’s circle of friends alone had gone missing or died for various reasons. Expanding the scope to the entire university, the number was likely even higher.

The only somewhat comforting news was that Orff had made it back to school alive.

Last semester, Everly had assigned him the task of investigating the Barnes and Blade families. After returning to school, Orff spent an entire semester scratching his head in front of his computer, finding nothing at all—this was hardly surprising. After all, those events dated back to the 1940s and 1950s, when computers might not even have existed. Many records were paper-based or passed down orally, so searching online alone was unlikely to yield results.

So, in order not to disappoint Everly and also to impress Misha, Orff made a special trip to Dalifer State during the summer break to investigate the Barnes family.

After the semester began, the three met once at Misha’s pizza shop. A slightly nervous Orff reported his current findings to Everly.

The investigation into the Blade family, to which Orff’s great-grandfather belonged, was relatively easy. The family was quite wealthy and considered a prominent local aristocratic clan in Mokan City. Even today, their descendants remain active in both business and politics.

Orff had spent a bit of money to buy off a drunken friend of a dissolute young heir from the Blade family. Through that contact, he had the friend casually inquire, only to discover that the Blade family’s spoiled heir had no idea what the “Fountain of Youth” was, and their family did not possess any ancestral poem at all.

With that, it could basically be confirmed that the poem about the Fountain of Youth had been passed down from Everly’s great-grandmother.

Unlike the Blade family, however, the Barnes family was much more difficult to trace.

A poor household from the 1940s—whether they still existed today, or even remained in the same city—was entirely uncertain.

Orff had once tried hacking into the city’s Department of Motor Vehicles database of driver’s license holders, as well as the voter registration records of the election commission. However, the search results showed that in the past twenty years, no one with the surname Barnes had held a driver’s license or registered to vote in the city.

Any records prior to that were all paper documents that had never been digitized, so he could not access them.

After more than a month of wandering around Mokan City like a headless fly, Orff finally had a moment of inspiration and decided to hire a private investigator.

Local private investigators often operate in both legal and illegal circles, with connections spanning police, gangs, and all kinds of people from different walks of life in the city. Orff hadn’t expected much at first, but not long after paying the deposit, he received a reply from the investigator—he had found them!

“After my great-grandmother ran away from home back then, the Barnes family went downhill. Poverty and illness clung to them like a curse. The person the investigator found for me is the only remaining member of the Barnes family—Cody Barnes. He has uremia, is burdened with both illness and poverty, and is currently barely surviving in a slum, living in a run-down house and relying on a small amount of rental income.”

“Does he know how to recite that poem?”

“Cody does know that poem, but he can’t recite it anymore—after so much time, he’s forgotten it…”

“I asked him whether he knew where the poem came from, and he said he didn’t. However, Cody mentioned that the family still kept an old handwritten manuscript. The writing in it is completely unreadable, and it might contain clues related to the poem.”

Hearing this, Everly couldn’t help but lean forward slightly and ask, somewhat urgently, “What about that manuscript? Did you see it?”

Orff shook his head.

“No. He said it was stored in some clutter in his attic and hadn’t been touched for many years. He needed time to look for it and told me to prepare enough money and come back another day to collect it.”

“But when I went back at the agreed time, Cody told me that a group of people had come to him recently. They were very aggressive and seemed dangerous. They also offered more money than I did, so he sold the manuscript to them instead.”

“He sold it?!” Everly blurted out.

“Yes. I don’t know if those people were also after the Fountain of Youth, but in any case, it was a complete misfortune—the manuscript was taken. And since he couldn’t read the text and didn’t remember what was written inside, Cody couldn’t provide any details about it either…”

“I’m really sorry. I should have been more forceful back then and insisted on having him retrieve the manuscript on the spot,” Orff said apologetically, hanging his head in frustration.

Hearing this, Everly felt deeply annoyed, but she couldn’t bring herself to blame him too harshly. After all, Orff had already invested a great deal of time and effort into the investigation.

Fortunately, things hadn’t gone completely wrong yet.

“The people who approached Cody were very mysterious. I hacked into some security cameras installed outside shops along their route and found that they were very cautious about surveillance—they deliberately avoided camera coverage whenever possible. When they bought the manuscript from Cody, they also used cash. So I couldn’t track their identities that way.

However, after my repeated insistence, Cody still provided me with one clue.”

As he spoke, Orff reached into his pocket and pulled out a small notebook. He opened it, then carefully took out a yellowed sheet of paper from between its pages.

The paper looked like a torn corner from some larger notebook. It was yellowed with age, its edges brittle and crumbling as if it would disintegrate with a touch. It clearly had been around for many years.

The sheet was small, and there wasn’t much text on it. The words were written in blue-black ink, and it seemed to have been soaked in water at some point—the writing had blurred badly. Only fragments of the first line could be vaguely made out, including letters like “P,” “o,” and “c,” while the second line showed something like “H,” “s,” and “p”…

“Cody told me this piece of paper fell out of the manuscript after it had deteriorated with age. After those people bought the manuscript, he went back to the storage room to clean up and accidentally swept this page out from under the shelf where he had found it. He thought it was useless, and since he was the one who broke his promise, he gave it to me.”

“This won’t work at all… I can’t make anything out of it,” Misha said after tilting her head and staring at it for a long time, her lips gradually puckering in frustration.

Even though it wasn’t Orff’s fault, he still lowered his head in embarrassment.

Everly, however, remained relatively composed.

“This is the only clue we have about the manuscript’s contents… Let’s try to decipher it later,” she said.

“I’m sorry… I really am useless…” Orff muttered painfully, covering his face with one hand.

“No, no, you’ve already done really well,” Misha said quickly, emotionally intelligent as always, reaching out to pat his shoulder in comfort.

The photo—or rather, the fragment Orff had obtained—was truly almost impossible to read with the naked eye.

Fortunately, Everly had a grandfather who was a retired detective.

In police investigations, one often encounters all kinds of situations. Ink blurred by water and rendered unreadable was one of the most minor problems. Everly herself didn’t have the skill to restore it—but that didn’t mean Old John couldn’t do it.

She took a high-resolution photo and sent it to her grandfather, asking for his opinion. Old John studied it for about ten minutes before calling her back, saying the text could be reconstructed—but it would take some time.

“The paper is thin and brittle, with yellowed edges. It looks like papyrus from an earlier era, and the ink is blue-black—likely iron gall ink. Both materials have long been phased out of the market, so I’ll need to find the closest modern equivalents to run experiments. I’ll have to reconstruct what those blurred letters originally were, and that’s not a quick process…”

“It’s fine, no rush. I’ll leave it to you, Grandpa.”

After hanging up, Everly thought it over for a long while and decided to pause the investigation for now.

Originally, she had planned to ask Orff to help find contact information for professors in history and geography, then email them to inquire whether they had ever heard of the term “Pavuka • Oris • Ananino.”

Everly suspected it might refer to the name of an island. If that were the case, professors specializing in American history or geography might recognize it.

But now, with the possibility that another group was also searching for the Fountain of Youth, caution was the better choice. Her investigation needed to be less conspicuous.

For the moment, there was no urgent time pressure. Everly decided to wait for updates from Old John and adjust her plans accordingly depending on the results.

During the waiting period, she even considered giving up.

But after Buddy’s departure, the Fountain of Youth—something that could grant eternal youth—had become an obsession for her. She didn’t want to experience the pain of loss again. Even if she ultimately failed to obtain it, at least she would have tried, and could face herself without regret.

So, in the days that followed, Everly forced herself to suppress her anxiety, turning her focus back to her studies, attending classes while waiting for Old John’s response.

While she waited and waited, no good news came—but she did receive a piece of bad news first.

At the end of October, a major mining disaster occurred at a lithium mine operated by the McMurkin Company in southeastern Micano, killing eight miners in a single incident.

Although McMurkin Mining publicly stated that the accident was simply caused by unstable geological conditions leading to a tunnel collapse, and later compensated the victims’ families generously—earning their acceptance—Everly had heard from unofficial channels that the disaster was not that simple.

“…You know, aside from fortune-telling, my shop occasionally takes on jobs like exorcisms or spiritual readings. Before the mining accident happened, one of the miners who later died came to my shop after work. He looked absolutely terrified and told me that while he and his teammates were mining underground, they had repeatedly seen strange human-like shadows and heard bizarre whispering voices.”

At first, the sound was distant. But over time, it grew closer… and closer… until it seemed to be right behind them.

Yet every time the miners turned around to look, they only saw the pitch-black depths of the tunnel…

“That miner thought he had encountered something supernatural, so he came to me for help,” Rebecca said in a low, mysterious voice over the phone.

Everly tightened her grip on her phone. “And then?”

“Then I used an old method from an Emara witch doctor to read his condition. Through the drifting smoke, I saw a massive shadow—a terrifying, ancient presence long forgotten. A shroud of death was already hanging over him. That man didn’t have much time left. I advised him to leave the mine and never return. I told him that something terrible was happening there—and only by leaving could he survive.”

“But he still went back.”

Rebecca let out a sigh. “Yes. Because his wife was pregnant and about to give birth soon. It was the end of the month—if he finished the month, he wouldn’t just receive his full salary, he would also get a substantial performance bonus. So despite my warning, he gritted his teeth and returned to the mine.”

And then, on that very day, the mining disaster occurred—and that miner lost his life…