The middle-aged man looked Lin Ze over, and finally his eyes rested on the dark golden lines on the back of his hands that had not completely faded away.
"Sir, please come with me." He said and turned and left.
The door of the stone castle is very short, and after entering, you realize that the inside is much larger than it looks from the outside.
The houses are arranged in three circles around a circular square in the middle. There is a well in the center of the square, with a circle of words engraved on the edge of the well.
The middle-aged man led him to one of the houses in the innermost row and pushed the door open.
The furnishings in the room were simple, with a wooden table and three chairs, and an animal skin map hung on the wall, with dense markings drawn with charcoal on the map.
"Sit." The middle-aged man sat down behind the table.
"Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Colin, and this valley is called Whitewater Valley."
"Hello, Ke Mr. Lin, my name is Lin, what do you mean by Dragonborn just now?" Lin Ze asked again.
"The Dragon Clan generally doesn't let outsiders get close to it, let alone let people ride on its back, except...Dragonborn."
"I don't know what you mean, but I am a wizard who came from a far away place and got separated from my companions." Lin Ze said.
"Wizard?" Colin's expression did not change.
"We don't have wizards here, at least no one who claims to be a wizard." He pushed a pottery bowl on the table in front of Lin Ze. The bowl was filled with water.
"Whitewater Valley people never call themselves wizards, we call ourselves warlocks."
"Unlike wizards, our warlocks can tell the weather, manage livestock, and deal with animals..."
"..."
He is said to be a warlock, but it is more appropriate to call him a folk scholar.
Colin pushed the pottery bowl in front of Lin Ze.
"Drink some water first."
Lin Ze picked up the bowl and took a few sips. The water was sweet and had a refreshing taste unique to mountain springs.
Colin looked at him and tapped his fingers twice on the table.
"Dragonborn is the legend of Whitewater Valley. It has been passed down from generation to generation in the valley. When the dragon takes the initiative to carry a person to Whitewater Valley, that person has the ability to break the curse of the forest to the north of the valley."
"The curse of the woods? What curse?"
"Black Forest in the north was cursed by an evil devil five hundred years ago. Since then, the trees in the woods have begun to mutate, and any animals or people that have gone in have never come out again. We have tried setting fires to destroy the woods with flames, but every time we set fire, our own land will be ignited, and the woods have always remained intact."
Colin paused.
"If that's the case, then we can choose not to go to that forest, but over the past few hundred years, that forest has continued to expand, and now it is almost bordering our valley. It won't be long before it will annex our valley."
Lin Ze rubbed the edge of the table with his fingers. "Why are you sure I can solve it?"
"I'm not sure, but Prophecy was left behind by our ancestors, and that dragon was the first time anyone stood on its back." Colin said frankly.
"In that case, why don't you let the giant dragon help you deal with that forest?" Lin Ze asked, it shouldn't be a problem for the dragon's breath to destroy a forest, right?
"The dragon never obeys anyone's orders. It only does the right thing at the right time. We tribes have worshiped it for generations, but we can't drive it..." Colin said.
"But I'm not related to you, so why should I help you?" Lin Ze asked.
"Our ancestors left something for you and asked us to tell you that if you want to return to your hometown, then help us..."
Lin Ze's pupils shrank sharply and his mouth opened slightly.
Whitewater Valley's ancestor is so awesome?
Do you even know that you don't belong here?
"What?" Lin Ze asked immediately.
"With all due respect, we need you to help us resolve the curse before we can hand it over to you. Otherwise... you won't get it even if you kill all our people..."
Lin Ze narrowed his eyes slightly and activated "Legilimency" immediately, but found that the other party's mind was blank and could not read any useful information.
This...
What is going on?
He knew very well that the other party didn't know how to "Occlumency" at all. This situation seemed... brainless?
Impossible...
Or, there is something Sickle about the other party that can interfere with your own "Legilimency". This is the only possibility...
"Okay, but I can only try it. I can't 100% guarantee that I can solve this problem for you. Before that, I need you to tell me all the information about that forest."
"It's natural. I would like to thank you first for the more than 2,000 tribesmen in the valley." As he said this, Colin leaned over and knelt on the ground towards Lin Ze, mumbling something unknown.
Lin Ze waved his hand a little irritably and entrusted him with "Levitation Charm". He still resented others kneeling down to him, as if they wanted to send him away.
Colin stood up and called out the door, and then a young girl came in, holding a wooden plate with a few pancakes and a plate of pickles on it.
"Eat something first and take a break." Colin pushed the wooden plate in front of Lin Ze.
The pancakes are made from multigrain, with a charred brown color on the edges from the charcoal fire, and the pickled vegetables are some kind of mushrooms picked in the forest, rubbed with coarse salt and wild onions, and make a crunchy sound when chewed.
Lin Ze was indeed hungry, so he rolled up two pancakes without being polite and swallowed them in several mouthfuls. The saltiness and freshness of the pickles made him drink two bowls of water.
Colin waited for him to finish eating, then took off the animal skin map on the wall and spread it on the table.
"This forest extends from the foot of the northern mountain to the edge of the valley."
His finger traced down a winding line from the top of the map. "Five hundred years ago, it was only as big as a palm. At that time, people in the valley could go into the forest to pick fruits. Then it slowly grew outward, and now the farmland closest to us is less than half a mile away."
Lin Ze took a closer look. Black Forest on the map was drawn as a dense black dot with irregular edges, like a piece of slowly spreading ink.
"If you can't light it on fire, have you tried cutting it with a sharp weapon? You can't even use an ax to cut it, right?"
"We tried cutting down one tree and three trees grew. The more we cut down, the faster they grew. Then we didn't dare to move anymore."
Lin Ze rubbed his chin, thinking about various possibilities. He checked a lot of black Magical Creatures files on Ministry of Magic, and had seen a few cases of tree-type curses, but most of them had clear targets and carriers for the curse. Like this, where the whole forest came to life and expanded, it was not like a simple Charms, but more like some kind of parasitic or symbiotic relationship.
"Has anyone ever been in the deep woods?"
"Yes." Colin's expression darkened.
"When my father was young, he led a group of people in, including him, a total of eight people. He was the only one who ran out three days later. When he came out, he was covered in blood and kept mumbling words we couldn't understand. He died two days later."
"No one has been to the woods since then..."