The mont of farewell arrived.
On the platform of Munich Central Station, Klaus and Gretchen ca to see them off.
"Once you reach Freiburg, go to the 'Black Forest Cuckoo' clock shop in the southern part of the city." Klaus remained terse and military in his manner. "The owner is the Association's most reliable local contact. He will provide you with all necessary logistical support."
Gretchen solemnly handed the precision instrunt case into Lin Jie's hands.
"This is the improved 'Ether Spectrum Analyzer.' I hope it will help you 'translate' the 'musical score' left by Mr. Karl. I look forward to your good news."
Accompanied by the long, mournful sound of a steam whistle, the train bound for the southwestern frontier of the German Empire slowly began to move.
The three mbers of the Iron Triangle bid farewell to this Bavarian capital that had brought them both battle and friendship, embarking on a "roots-seeking" journey filled with the unknown and an air of sorrow.
The train traveled through the picturesque countryside of southern Germany.
The scenery outside the window transitioned from the majestic snowscapes of the Alps to rolling hills and vast, dense forests like a green ocean.
This was the Black Forest.
In Goethe's poetry, it held a rich romanticism;
in the Brothers Grimm's fairy tales, it was inhabited by witches and spirits—a land of legend, contradictory and mysterious.
When they arrived at their destination, the ancient university town of Freiburg, known as the "Capital of the Black Forest," a sense of peaceful tranquility different from Oberamrgau washed over them.
Oberamrgau was a stage whose exterior was wrapped in a fairytale sugar coating, but whose interior was rotten with sin and ignorance;
Freiburg resembled an old scholar, learned and serene, living in seclusion at the forest's edge.
A grand cathedral stood at the city's center.
Countless streams paved with cobblestones andered through the ancient streets and alleys;
everything seed peaceful and tiless.
However, Lin Jie dared not relax in his heart.
The brighter the place, the deeper the shadows it often casts.
Following the address provided by Klaus, they quickly found the clock shop nad "Black Forest Cuckoo" on a quiet old street in the southern part of the city.
The shopfront was not large, its display window filled with various exquisitely crafted cuckoo clocks.
When they pushed open the wooden door with its copper bell, a clear ringing sound enveloped them, accompanied by the simultaneous "tick-tock" of hundreds of clocks within the room.
An elderly man with graying hair, wearing a single magnifying lens and a traditional watchmaker's apron, sat behind a workbench piled high with precision parts, intently repairing the movent of a pocket watch.
He seed deaf to the arrival of guests, until Lin Jie stepped forward and gently placed a silver Mark engraved with the Association's emblem on his workbench.
The old man's hands, repairing the movent, paused for a mont.
He slowly raised his head, removed the magnifying lens from his face, revealing a pair of sowhat cloudy yet exceptionally calm gray eyes.
He did not speak words of welco, nor did he confirm their identities.
He simply silently retrieved a dusty, aged manila folder from a shelf behind him, stacked high with ancient archive boxes.
He placed the folder on the counter and then pushed it toward Lin Jie.
Lin Jie and Julian exchanged a glance, both seeing gravity in the other's eyes.
This contact was even more taciturn than they had imagined.
Lin Jie slowly opened the folder, which exuded a musty odor.
Inside the folder were not the detailed UMA report on the "Swamp Tree Fiend" they had expected, nor an analysis chart of the inner world forces in the Black Forest region.
It was completely empty.
There was only a single thin, yellowed, and curling black-and-white photograph.
The photo showed a cute little girl with flaxen braids, even younger than depicted in Karl's diary.
She wore a simple dress, her face showing curiosity toward the cara.
In her hand, she tightly clutched a crude wooden bird toy.
The bottom right corner of the photo was annotated in elegant German pencil script with a na and a date.
"Lina von Stein, photographed August 1866."
The back of the photo also bore a blurred, red stamp from the local Freiburg police station.
Though the writing on the stamp was difficult to decipher, several keywords branded themselves painfully into Lin Jie's sight.
"Missing Child."
"Case File Sealed."
The silent clockmaker handed over this folder, thin as paper yet heavy as a lead ingot.
He then returned to his workbench, imrsing himself once more in the microscopic world of precision gears and hairsprings.
He offered no additional explanation, nor did he answer Julian's probing questions.
His deanor was like that of a dutiful cuckoo clock, chanically completing its predetermined task of chiming at the appointed ti.
Lin Jie and the other two left the oppressive atmosphere of the clock shop, taking with them the photo of Lina, shrouded in mystery.
The afternoon sun in Freiburg was warm and gentle, the streets echoing with the cheerful conversations of students and the sound of flowing streams.
But this peaceful, serene atmosphere could not dispel the heavy shadow cast by the yellowed photograph over the three n's hearts.
"Missing child, case file sealed..." Julian muttered these words repeatedly as they walked.
His keen nose for historical truth had already caught the scent of sothing ominous.
"This is too strange. According to normal procedure, even a decades-old missing child case, without a body found or conclusive evidence, would only be listed as an 'unsolved case' by the police, not described with a term like 'sealed.'"
His footsteps halted, his eyes flashing with rational light.
"The word 'sealed' is typically used in only two situations. First, when the perpetrator has been caught and the case is solved. But that clearly doesn't match the facts."
"Second," he paused, "is when so higher-level authority intervenes, forcibly halting the investigation and erasing it from public view."
William stated a direct and plausible answer.
"The Association."
Indeed.
The "higher-level authority" capable of making a local police station in the German Empire handle an ordinary missing child case in such an abnormal manner could be none other than I.A.R.C.
"But why?" Julian's face showed confusion. "Why would the Association cover up the truth of Lina's death?"
"Karl's diary clearly states that he was saved by a 'mysterious ntor' from the Association. Logically, the Association should be the rescuer, not the concealer. There must be a secret here we don't know."
Lin Jie did not participate in their discussion.
His gaze remained fixed on the latest edition of the Black Forest region survey map purchased from a local Freiburg bookstore.
Simultaneously, his other hand gently stroked the illustrated map sketchbook drawn by Karl himself during his youth, taken from the leather case.
One was a scientific map representing the advanced surveying technology of the late 19th century, marked with contour lines, latitude and longitude, and precise scales.
The other was an artistic map drawn by a genius boy with inspiration and intuition, marked with subjective, spiritual landmarks like "Stream of Sorrow," "Whispering Oak," and "Fairy's Ring of Stones."
One was a map belonging to the surface world.
The other was a key to the inner world.
"We've encountered the first and biggest problem." Lin Jie finally spoke, his voice pulling William and Julian back from their speculation about the Association's motives.
He spread the two maps side by side on a bench by the roadside.
"We cannot effectively superimpose these two maps."
The facts were as he said.
On the military map, the Black Forest was a vast and complex geographical maze composed of countless similar mountains, valleys, and dense woods.
On Karl's sketchbook, those fantastical landmarks found no corresponding physical entities in the real world.
How could an ordinary stream be defined as "sorrowful"?
In a vast oak forest, which tree was the one that "whispered"?
They held two keys to unlock the truth.
But they could not find the single "keyhole" that could combine these two keys.
"We can't conduct a carpet search like headless flies across these thousands of square kiloters of forest." Lin Jie's brow furrowed.
"That would not only exhaust our ti and supplies but might also lead to us being consud by other unknown dangers in the forest before we even find the 'Swamp Tree Fiend.'"
This seed like an unsolvable deadlock;
they were only one step away from the truth, but that step spanned two completely different worlds.
"Perhaps..." William, who had been silently observing the abstract map drawing, slowly spoke, "Perhaps we don't need to 'see' with our eyes."
His words were profound.
Julian looked at him, puzzled, while a flash of insight struck Lin Jie's mind.
He instantly understood William's aning.
Conventional vision belonged to the surface world, and to interpret a map of the inner world required a way of seeing that could perceive the inner world.
William offered no further explanation. He retrieved [Zulu's Gaze] from his chest.
He placed the telescope, which resembled a primitive ritual mask, before his eyes.
In that instant, the world presented before William underwent a fundantal and dramatic transformation.
Freiburg's peaceful, serene streets vanished;
the warm sunlight lost its color.
In its place was an energy dinsion composed of fluctuating spiritual light bands and emotional particles, dazzling yet chaotic, reminiscent of Van Gogh's painting "The Starry Night."
He saw beneath the cathedral, a warm, holy spiritual force field gathered from centuries of prayer and faith, shining like a golden sun.
He saw deep within the university library, an energy vortex ford from the sedintation of knowledge, as deep and rational as a blue nebula.
This was the world as he saw it.
The true landscape of the inner world, inaccessible to ordinary mortals.
Then, he slowly turned his gaze, capable of piercing through appearances, toward the abstract drawing spread on the bench by Lin Jie.
A miracle occurred.
On that map composed of ordinary pencil and drawing paper, physically unremarkable.
William "saw" a faint yet clear energy halo.
This halo was ford from the residual emotions Karl poured into it while drawing—emotions mixed with sorrow, remorse, and a resolve for revenge.
And the originally aningless spiritual landmarks on the map, within the vision of [Zulu's Gaze], transford into emotional coordinate points flashing with different colors and frequencies.
"Stream of Sorrow" emitted a cold, pale blue light like tears.
"Whispering Oak" was shrouded in an elusive dark green mist like a secret.
William felt his breathing involuntarily quicken.
He realized that this German Cartographer he had never t, decades ago, with a talent and intuition he could not comprehend, had seen a landscape completely identical to the one he saw through [Zulu's Gaze].
Two completely different thods.
One, an innate gift.
The other, a bloody and cursed trophy taken from an enemy's skull.
But at this mont, they converged;
they saw the sa "real" world.
"I... can see it. I can see what he drew. They... they are right there."
He raised his head and turned toward the distant Black Forest.
In the vision of [Zulu's Gaze], that forest was no longer a collection of trees and mountains.
It was a vast ocean of energy filled with countless points of bright and dark emotional light.
And at the edge of this energy ocean, he saw a winding, flowing stream. Above it hovered a layer of pale blue light completely identical to the coordinate point on the map.
"Follow ."
William only said these three words.
He then gathered all the maps, took the lead, and strode toward the unknown forest.
Lin Jie and Julian exchanged a glance, both seeing admiration in the other's eyes.
Led by William, this human "spiritual navigation device," the team's entry into the Black Forest proceeded with unexpectedly smooth ease.
They no longer needed to struggle to identify those identical forest paths.
They no longer needed to worry about getting lost in this vast natural maze.
William simply followed those emotional signposts, marked decades ago by Karl's footsteps and sorrow, visible only to him, step by step advancing deeper into the cursed swamp.
They easily bypassed a seemingly flat swamp area that actually concealed deadly traps below, because William could see the emotional echoes of that area, filled with the fear-stricken, pale white light left by countless animals before their deaths.
They also accurately found an abandoned hunter's path concealed by dense bushes, because William could see above the path, a relatively safe, faint warm-colored halo lingering from past human activity.
They were retracing Karl's escape route from years ago.
Only this ti, their direction was reversed.
They were avengers, and also pallbearers.
They walked through the forest for an unknown length of ti. When the surrounding light grew dim due to the canopy's cover and the air beca damp, William suddenly stopped.
He removed [Zulu's Gaze] from his face, restoring his perception of the physical world.
"We're here." He said hoarsely. "'Fairy Marsh' is just ahead."
And at that very mont.
A faint, intermittent sound of a little girl crying abruptly drifted over from the depths of the forest ahead, shrouded in thick fog.
The crying conveyed sorrow, loneliness, and endless grievance, like a lost child searching for the way ho.
"Wah... wah... wah... Brother... where are you..."
William's body instantly tensed. His battle-hardened nerves already sensed a dangerous aura of a UMA's prelude to predation from the crying.
He instinctively raised his lever-action rifle, shielding Lin Jie and Julian behind him.
But Lin Jie's reaction was completely opposite to his.
Just as the crying reached his ears, the Hearing Bone on the hilt of [Serene Heart] at his waist only ward slightly.
A non-aggressive Zen-like force field enveloped his mind.
Lin Jie's brow furrowed.
He raised his hand, signaling William not to act impulsively.
Then, in a tone of confusion and uncertainty, he whispered:
"That's strange..."
"There's no malice in this crying."
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