The moment Mu Ke finished reading the fairy tale, everyone's system panel popped up:

[System prompt: Congratulations on unlocking the main quest]

[This is a country of gold that is paying a price. Please find the key item, the hourglass of time, and turn the pain of the country of gold into tears and put them in the hourglass. When the hourglass is filled with pain that satisfies the gods, offer it to the gods in front of the altar, complete the transaction, reverse time, and return the country of gold to its original state.]

"Hourglass of Time?" Mu Sicheng frowned and asked, "What is this?"

"It should be an item in this dungeon that can reverse time." Liu Jiayi answered, her brows slightly furrowed, "...Reversing time, the effect of this item is similar to the skill of the Golden Dawn Captain."

"Will it matter?"

"Skills are derived from the core of the player's desire, and props are gods, or system settings." Bai Liu touched his chin thoughtfully, "This is the first time I have seen time props and time skills in a game. If there is a certain relationship between the two, it should be that people's desires are affected by existing settings, thus deriving similar items."

"According to this inference, the captain of Golden Dawn, Georgia, may have some close connection with this country that we don't know about yet."

"If this speculation is true, it may be a breakthrough, but it is also their advantage." Bai Liu spread his hands, "They must be more familiar with this map than we are. For example, we don't know where to find the so-called hourglass of time, but Captain Georgia probably knows it."

"But we are not completely clueless." Mu Ke raised his head and turned the fairy tale book in his hand to the first few pages. "Although this fairy tale does not explicitly mention the hourglass, this is a illustrated fairy tale book, and the illustrations here--"

Mu Ke pointed to some child-like illustrations in the fairy tale book and said, "It talks about the time when the gods made a deal with the ancient country of Loren a thousand years ago. Did you see it? When the deal was made, the gods gave something to the king."

“This should be the proof of their transaction.”

Bai Liu's eyes swept across the screen, and his gaze stopped at the hand of the god on the screen.

——In God’s hand, there is an exquisite gray-black hourglass.

Meanwhile, on the other side.

"Hourglass of Time?" Chris looked at Georgia who was silent. "Captain, since you are familiar with this place, do you know what this thing is and where it is hidden?"

Georgia was silent for a moment, and when she spoke again, Chris could no longer detect any trace of emotion in her. She was so calm that there was not a trace of emotion in her voice: "I know."

"It's just that the place is a bit dangerous. Tell the other team members to prepare mental bleach and come with me."

"Mental bleach?" Chris quickly asked, "Is that a place with heavy mental pollution?"

"Well, it's not just mental pollution, the physical pollution is also serious." Georgia raised her eyes, "The hourglass of time is in the gold mining area."

After Georgia finished speaking, she lowered her eyes to look at the fairy tale book in her hand. Unlike the one Bai Liu and the others had, the fairy tale book "The Golden Kingdom of the Gods' Favorites" in Georgia's hand did not end abruptly when the price was paid in a thousand years, nor did it mention the hourglass of time. Instead, it described in detail the process of the transaction between the King of Guloren and the gods at that time.

"Father." Young Georgia looked up and asked her father in confusion, "Why are my fairy tales different from those of others on the market?"

——You can even say that it is a completely different fairy tale.

The fairy tales that children read on the market are sweet and innocent, and God loves the world. But in the fairy tale book that Georgia got, God does not love the world. It is even a little scary, because God smiled and said to the king, "When the time comes, I will come to collect the price of pain from all your people. You must let their tears fill this hourglass, otherwise the pain will never stop."

The king agreed and asked God what kind of tears would be needed to fill the hourglass.

God told the king that only by shedding tears of pain worth a thousand years of gold in an instant could the hourglass be filled. The moment the tears fell into the hourglass, the hourglass and time would reverse, the transaction would be completed, and the pain would stop.

Georgia asked doubtfully, "Does this hourglass really exist?"

The king was silent for a while: "It exists, but no one knows about it."

"Why don't you let everyone know?" Georgia shook her head in disapproval. "Everyone has read fairy tales saying that God gives gold and blessings to people because he loves them. They believe that they are favored by God, so they live such a good life..."

"Happiness?" The king sighed and touched Georgia's head. "But what good is it to tell them the truth, to tell them that there really is an hourglass that needs to be filled with pain and tears, except to make them less happy?"

Georgia was stunned.

"In everyone's mind, Guloren has always been a golden country isolated from the world." The king stood up by the bed, walked to the window, bathed in the moonlight, looked at the lush and peaceful land, and sighed, "This is a fairy tale country. Everyone believes that they live in a fairy tale, that they are blessed by God, and that there will never be a disaster."

“That’s why fairy tales are so popular in this country.”

"Even the fairy tales here." The king turned around and looked at Georgia, "will stop at the moment when the price of a thousand years has to be paid."

"It's not that I deliberately kept it a secret from everyone. I deleted the second half of the fairy tale to deceive them. The fairy tale book promoted nationwide at the beginning was the one in your hand."

The king threw up his hands helplessly: "But the people resisted fiercely. They felt that fairy tales were not like this, and the Kingdom of Gold would not be like this either. Everyone should be full of hope and happiness, and live in fairy tales without worries forever. So I deleted the second half, and this fairy tale was able to be promoted."

"But this is just..." Georgia shook his head lightly. His education prevented him from criticizing the public's call, but he really disagreed, so he frowned and said, "It's just..."

"You are just deceiving yourself, right?" The king smiled bitterly. "Sometimes I think there is nothing wrong with deceiving yourself like this. I will also deceive myself when I am happy, deceiving myself that the thousand years will never come and that the gods will really favor our country forever."

"But the thousand years will come," Georgia answered firmly, "just as gold will come as promised, so will pain."

The king stared at Georgia in amazement for a long while, then turned his head and leaned on the fence, lowering his head and muttering to himself: "...Georgia, your refusal to escape from pain makes me miserable."

"When I became king, when I got the crown, I also got an hourglass."

"Every king of Guloren will receive a crown, but few people know that along with the king's status, there will also be an hourglass. It is said that this is the hourglass of time passed down from generation to generation by the first king."

"On the day I became king, my predecessor was about to die. He had been suffering from illness for a long time and was in great pain. When he was dying, he asked me to put an hourglass on his face and tried hard to squeeze out a tear. Finally, a tear fell. He looked at the tear dripping into the hourglass with anticipation and ecstasy."

"He hoped that this tear could fill the hourglass and end the thousand-year deal, but unfortunately, the tear fell into the hourglass like a drop of water falling into the sea, without a sound."

"The previous king died in pain and astonishment. Before he died, he held his hand tightly and told me that the thousand years were coming. Before the gods came to extract the suffering of the people, the king must fill the hourglass. This is our duty."

"——[Never let your subjects who grew up with fairy tales stop believing in fairy tales. This is a king's dereliction of duty], that's what he told me."

The king turned his head, his eyes were red and his lips were trembling: "So on the night when I lost your mother, I thought of this hourglass. I tried to fill it up, but I cried all night, so many tears fell into this hourglass, and even the gaps were not filled up."

"I began to fear that this hourglass could not even hold the tears shed by those who suffered death and the loss of their loved ones. I don't know what other pain in this world could fill this hourglass."

"So I ran away. I cowardly hid the hourglass in the mine where gold was born."

"After I hid the hourglass in the mine, I started having nightmares." The king's face showed visible fear. "I dreamed about that god."

"He smiled and told me that the covenant of a thousand years was coming, and he would descend into this world, remove the protective shield, reduce the production of gold, and take away our suffering."

"Then let's remove the shield and reduce the gold production." Young Georgia showed an unusual calmness. "We shouldn't use the suffering of our people to exchange for gold that doesn't belong to us. Once we get through this period, everything will be fine again."

"It won't get better!" The king burst into tears. He became a little hysterical, with fear that could not be concealed on his face. "When there is no gold, everything will be ruined!"

"We have lived on gold for a thousand years. We are all living in a fairy tale. No one can imagine what it would be like if there is no gold to be dug out from the ground. By that time, we will all starve to death or freeze to death!"

"I must find a way to fill the hourglass before the one thousand year deadline," his father said with tears in his eyes.

Unfortunately, when the last moment came, the hourglass was still not full.

Georgia lowered her eyes and said, "Let's go to the mining area and look for the hourglass."

Meanwhile, on the other side.

The dust he inhaled made Mu Sicheng cough several times. He covered his mouth and nose and wiped away the bulletin board of a building.

They are still running around the map collecting information, looking for the possible location of the Hourglass of Time.

The good news is that there is no enemy interference and they scan the map very quickly. The bad news is that there is no enemy interference and they are probably going in the wrong direction.

But the map of this dungeon is really too big. Mu Sicheng can be considered to have an extremely fast movement speed, but even if he scans the map at full speed, he cannot reach the border of any side in a short time. He wears a headset and reports information to the back while running forward. He collects the information and then processes it, so the scanning speed can be much faster.

"I saw a department bulletin board." Mu Sicheng's coughing became louder and louder. "Ahem, I took a picture of it and sent it to Mu Ke. You guys can take a look."

Soon, Mu Ke's noisy voice came through Mu Sicheng's earphones: "It's the notice board of the Gold Distribution Bureau."

"Gold Issuing Bureau?" Mu Sicheng asked in confusion, "What kind of strange department is this?"

"I'm not sure, but judging from the content of the announcement, it should be the official department that manages the issuance and operation of gold." Mu Ke explained calmly, "There are a total of three announcements on this billboard."

"The first is that we regretfully announce that the gold production of seven of the country's 57 mines has been declining for two consecutive years. In the past six months, the total amount of gold produced has even been less than one ton, which is not even enough to sustain the country's operations."

"The second announcement is to announce the recent suspension of the welfare policy that allows every adult citizen to receive 600g of gold for free every month."

"The last announcement is..." Mu Ke's voice became hesitant, "Please wait a moment, this announcement has been smeared, I can't see it clearly."

Mu Sicheng crossed his arms and hummed, his eyes glancing at the last notice on the bulletin board that he had wiped clean - in fact, it was understandable why Mu Ke couldn't see this one clearly, as this notice was severely scribbled on, with many exclamation marks made with red marker, so densely packed, it looked very emotional.

"I roughly understood the last announcement." Mu Ke's voice was still hesitant, "but I'm not sure if my translation is correct."

"The specific content of the announcement is that the heir to the royal family of Guloren (the eldest prince) insists on promoting cooperation with the Bureau of Heresy and requires the Bureau to be stationed in Guloren. He also sternly claims that the gold produced in the mining area is heresy and will have a negative impact on people. He prohibits people from privately mining and requires people to stay away from the mining area. He is preparing to hand over the mining area to the Bureau of Heresy for handling."

"The words scribbled on it were probably written by the excited people at that time."

"It's [Georgia traitors, get out of Ancient Lorenzo!], [The Bureau of Heresy is here to steal our gold, get out of Ancient Lorenzo!]."

"【How can the gold production be reduced?! The remaining gold produced in the mining area has been hidden by the traitorous thief Georgia. Return the hidden gold to us!】"

"[Georgia, die!!]"

After a while, Bai Liu's calm voice came from the headset: "It seems that we already know the most likely place to hide the hourglass."

"Mu Sicheng, prepare the mental bleach, pay attention to the time limit of skill usage, and go to the mining area."