The door to the cabin was tightly closed, and it was quiet inside, without a sound.
Linghu Lan felt a sudden tightness in her chest for no apparent reason.
The captain of the guard breathed a sigh of relief; once they obtained the fire boots, the truth would be revealed.
He knocked on the door.
No one answered.
Linghu Lan's heart stirred, and she gently pushed open the door. She glanced into the room and was disappointed, utterly disappointed.
I should have known it would end like this.
The wooden house was empty.
All the furniture was covered in dust.
The seven dwarfs' pristine white sheets had turned yellow and worn. The table, chairs, cups, plates, and forks were a mess, with many broken pieces scattered on the floor, indicating that the house had been uninhabited for a long time.
"What's going on? Isn't this the house of the seven dwarfs, or have they already left?"
Linghu Lan went inside and left her footprints in the dusty room. She looked at the wall where the fire boots used to hang, but they were no longer there.
She was late.
No, or rather, she simply didn't know when the right time to come was.
The crowd surged in.
"Dear witch, can you tell me what has happened here?"
“Times have changed!” Linghu Lan said softly.
"Time has changed? What does that mean?"
"When I first came here, the dwarves told me that a prince from a neighboring country had taken Snow White away. The second time I came, the dwarves said they didn't know Snow White. The third time I came, the dwarves were gone. But the time I spent leaving and returning here was no more than a week. The time span for the dwarves in the forest is decades. Do you understand now? The time of the dwarves in the Dark Forest is different from that in the real world."
The guard's eyes widened as he listened to all this in disbelief. "You mean to say that the dwarves' time is constantly changing, while the outside world's time is normal? My God! This is truly... forgive me, I really don't know how to describe it."
Linghu Lan searched silently again, but found nothing.
"So, where have those dwarfs gone now?"
"I think he must be... dead???" Linghu Lan tilted her head and thought for a while!
"..."
How long do dwarves live?
"About sixty to eighty years? Actually, I don't know. We rarely see dwarves. We occasionally see them in circuses, but we don't know if they are gnomes or dwarves. Dwarves, like elves, are only found in legends. However, I think they certainly don't live as long as elves, definitely not more than one hundred and forty-four years old. In the storybooks I used to read, the longest-lived dwarf and the longest-lived human were about the same age!"
"Hmm! I'm afraid he really is dead."
"So what should we do?"
Linghu Lan stood up, walked out of the wooden house, and looked at the road on her right.
She had already traversed the left and middle roads, meeting the King and Queen of Snow White's Kingdom, as well as Prince Red Flame and the Little Mermaid. Now, only the kingdom on the far right remained untraveled. The dwarves said that it was a vast sea, and one had to travel by boat to reach that kingdom.
She thought for a moment and asked, "Do you have money?"
"what you up to?"
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