Volume One: The World of the Hell-Level Lord Chapter 54: The Forbidden Land of the Elves

Watching the scene before him, Chen Gu felt that his suspicions were very likely correct. This was probably the ancestral land of the elves.

He leapt down from the carriage and strode quickly toward the edge of the pool. There must surely be some way here to deal with the undead.

But Chen Gu had only taken two steps when he stopped abruptly. He looked up to his left, where two corpses hung upside-down.

One was a female elf, already shriveled and withered. Her face had dried up into a tight knot; the only reason it was obvious she was female was that she still wore a somewhat neat skirt.

The other was a similarly desiccated owl.

Both bodies hung like wind-dried bacon, swaying rhythmically whenever the wind blew.

This sight made Chen Gu hesitate. His gaze fixed on their legs, trying to see what had suspended them there.

At the same time, he furtively pressed a cloth to his mouth and nose, wary of encountering something akin to the dreamlike ancient tree once more.

When he finally saw their condition clearly, Chen Gu was stunned.

Their legs had actually been nailed to the branches, pinned there with arrowheads as green as jade.

This indicated that a battle must have once occurred here. After the fighting ended, these two were nailed to the branches.

Of course, Chen Gu couldn’t be certain—he had never witnessed elven methods of warfare. And so much time had passed that it was impossible to deduce much from what traces remained.

After pondering for a moment, Chen Gu pointed at the straw murderers behind him.

“Take that thing down.”

Two straw murderers hurried forward, their sickles flashing—not at the arrows, but severing the branch itself with a single stroke. The other stood below, ready to catch whatever fell. As the branch dropped, he reached out to support it and dragged the corpse of the female elf before Chen Gu.

At that moment, Chen Gu was studying the map, calculating certain details.

“Judging from the carriage’s speed, we’ve been traveling a straight road the entire way. If I haven’t miscalculated, we’ve covered nearly thirteen hundred kilometers. So our current location should be here.”

He marked a spot on the map, then finally looked up at the corpse before him.

“Search her. See if there’s anything on her that can prove her identity.”

He then turned his attention back to the map, comparing the local terrain. He was eager to know what lay beyond this place—where one might emerge if they left from here. If the Elven Queen had indeed escaped this way, where would she have gone next?

Having witnessed the vastness of the Holy City, Chen Gu was determined to find the Elven Queen—even if only her corpse. With that, he would have a reason to take control of the Holy City. With such a great city in his hands, dealing with the Black Fortress would become much smoother.

As Chen Gu traced and speculated on the map, a voice suddenly sounded.

“Could you have them be a bit gentler?”

Startled, Chen Gu drew his longsword and faced the direction of the voice. He noticed that the straw murderer searching the body had already readied his sickle, and, to his shock, the shriveled female corpse had opened her eyes.

“An undead?”

“Er… I suppose so. But don’t be nervous. Here, I’m not affected by the undead plague—though, of course, once I leave this forest, I can’t guarantee that. Are you here looking for Yursin?”

“Yursin? Who is that?”

Chen Gu did not lower his weapon just because the other claimed to be a harmless undead; on the contrary, he kept his sword at the ready, circling warily.

“Oh, I see. You’re not an elf. Yursin is the name of the Elven Queen. But she should be dead—she died in the undead plague centuries ago.”

“And who are you?”

Chen Gu fixed his gaze on the elven corpse—no, now she should be called an undead.

“Yursin’s First Guardian—Mishunas.”

Chen Gu was briefly taken aback. That name sounded familiar.

“What, you’ve heard of my family?”

Then it came to him—when they had entered the underwater palace, they had used the name Mishunas.

“Yes, I’ve heard of it.”

“That’s good. If you know our family name, you’ll know that we have always been the Queen’s guardians. From the day a new Queen is chosen, our family and two others assign someone to follow her at all times.

We protect the Queen until her death, at which point our duty transfers to the next Queen, while the previous Queen’s guardians remain forever in the Bright Palace.”

Bright Palace? Chen Gu didn’t ask what or where that was—he assumed it was the name of the underwater palace.

Seeing Chen Gu raise no questions, Mishunas took him for someone familiar with elven customs and continued without explaining minor details.

“Each time a new Queen ascends, we come here together once. The Queen strengthens her power, changes the location of the secret passage, and stores the new map beneath the last Queen’s coffin.

This passage is the Queen’s escape route in times of danger, and the place where she can wield her full power.

When the undead plague struck, the Queen ordered the city sealed and fled here. The three of us entered the Sacred Lake to protect her, slaying many companions who had already become undead.

But in fighting our way out for the Queen, we were also tainted by undead power. The other two vanished upon entering the Sacred Lake, while I, less affected, reached the Bright Palace and opened the underground passage.

None of us expected to encounter here the true culprit who brought the undead plague into this world—Sinisara.”

“Wait—who is Sinisara?”

“The previous—no, the one before last—Elven Queen, the Protector of Unicorns.”

Mishunas glanced at Chen Gu, then continued her account.

Chen Gu, however, understood: Sinisara must be the empty coffin in the underwater palace—the fourth Elven Queen.

“Sinisara, because of certain events, became an undead. It was she who led the undead plague into this world.

Yet here, she suppressed the undead power controlling her, revealed the truth to Yursin, and explained that the undead appeared because she had opened a passage in the far northern border of the continent.

As long as that passage is sealed, the undead will lose reinforcement and eventually fade away.”

At these words, Chen Gu’s expression changed.

So this was the true cause of the hellish difficulty. Defeating the Black Fortress was not enough—he would also have to face the undead reinforcements.

Mishunas, unaware of Chen Gu’s thoughts, continued.

“Sinisara hoped Yursin would kill her while she still had some sanity left. Yursin agreed.”