"Can it be confirmed that the child died on the spot?" Uchiha Madara asked.
The man nodded. Seemingly unwilling to recall the past, he continued, "The child's mother refused to believe he had died just like that. She kept thinking our child was only asleep and left him lying on the bed at home."
"It wasn't until several days later, when the child's body gradually began to give off a foul smell, that his mother accepted reality," the man said.
"There were three people in your family?" Uchiha Madara asked. "Where is the child's mother now?"
"She left." The man lowered his head. "After I sent the child away, his mother went mad. Every night, she said she wanted to find him. In the end, she left while I was out hunting. When I returned home, there was nothing but an empty house."
"Where did you send the child?" Uchiha Madara seized on the crucial point. Corpses could not walk, so the place where this man had buried the little boy's body was where the Magic Stone might be.
"Into Mirror Lake," the man said. "Our ancestors had a tradition. When someone died, their body had to be sent into the lake. If fish and shrimp ate the body, then that person would be reborn into wealth and prosperity in their next life."
"Mirror Lake?" Belaque said. "Are there no other lakes nearby? There's nothing in Mirror Lake. How could anything have eaten the body?"
"Mirror Lake is the largest lake in the area. It has an extremely rich variety of creatures. The remains of our ancestors, generation after generation, were all laid to rest in Mirror Lake," the man said.
"I don't know what it was like before, but there truly isn't a single trace of life in Mirror