U-ri had his lunch ready and his luggage packed when he saw Hajime and Michio walking towards him. He took the pot off the fire and set it aside.
"What did you find?" U-ri asked as he stood up and waited for the two Tanzanies to walk towards him.
Hajime and Michio looked at U-ri, and Michio said, "We found a lot of eggs, but none of them were unique enough to be classified as a pure phoenix egg."
U-ri was startled. "That's impossible," U-ri said in disappointment. "We have found the correct Phoenix Chamber; therefore, the pure phoenix egg should be somewhere in this small valley."
Michio looked at U-ri and he asked, "Do you know what a pure phoenix egg looks like?"
U-ri looked at the two of them strangely and said, "What do you mean? Don't you know what it looks like? I thought you did."
Michio looked at Hajime, then at U-ri, and said, "We don't know."
U-ri looked at Hajime and Michio and asked dumbfoundingly, "I thought you two knew. I didn't paid attention to the details of the pure phoenix eggs. I was busy collecting medicine for our trip."
Hajime and Michio both shook their heads. Hajime said, "I just realized that no one has ever told us what a pure phoenix egg looks like. I think the pure phoenix egg we are looking for may not be an egg at all."
U-ri said, "What you said does make sense. Let's wait for Abrafo and Yul."
Michio said, "Although this lake looks small, if we just look for a special stone, this lake will no longer be small." He sighed. "It's too bad. I can't hold my breath for that long."
Hajime said, "Don't think too much. Although we can't hold our breath and dive underwater to help them search, we will search around the bank and within the range that our height allows."
U-ri smiled and said, "Hajime is right. Oh, they are here."
Hajime raised his head and saw the heads of Yul and Abrafo poking out of the water, swimming toward them.
Michio looked at Yul and Abrafo and muttered, "I wonder if they found anything."
Hajime asked, "Have you discovered anything?"
Abrafo shook his head, "No, we found nothing except beautiful round flat rocks at the bottom of the lake. And you?" He grabbed his clothes.
Hajime shook his head. "Michio and I didn't notice anything unusual except for a lot of white and gray color eggs." Hajime handed Yul his clothes.
Yul said, "Those are the typical colors." He grabbed his clothes from Hajime, walked behind a tree, and began to dress. "While Abrafo and I were taking a break, we asked ourselves if any of us knew what a pure phoenix egg looked like."
Abrafo and Yul stepped out from behind the tree. "Yeah, I think I failed. When we went in to look at the map, the soldiers only showed us the routes and how to get in and out of Scattered Forest safely, but they didn't mention the pure phoenix eggs."
Hajime said, "We realized this when we saw thousands of eggs lying around trees and bushes, and the eggs were just the normal colors."
Michio said, "Hajime thought that the pure phoenix egg might not be an egg at all, but something completely different."
U-ri said, "Lady Lai said that this pure phoenix egg can rejuvenate youth, but she did not describe to us what the phoenix egg looks like."
Hajime said, "I guess she herself didn't know what the egg looked like, and now I'm pretty sure those outside participants didn't even know what the egg looked like."
U-ri smiled and said, "The only way to be sure is..."
Michio looked at U-ri and said, "What?"
U-ri said, "Pick up an egg at random and tell them we are holding a pure phoenix egg. If they believe it, then they don't know what a pure phoenix egg looks like, but if they tell us that what we are holding in our hands is not a pure phoenix egg, then we are the only five who don't know what a pure phoenix egg looks like."
Michio lowered his head and said to U-ri, "Old man, why have you suddenly become scheming? Huh?"
U-ri said, "This is the only way to find out whether we are the only fools or whether everyone involved is also a fool."
Yul said, "What we have now concluded is that we are not actually looking for an egg, but we are looking for something different."
Abrafo frowned. "Uh... what exactly is a pure phoenix egg? Where and how do we get it? Where is the third key hidden?"
That night, the five Tanzanies stayed up all night. They know that tomorrow is the last day, and if they don't want to be poisoned, they must leave Scattered Forest.
Abrafo was so troubled by the situation that he jumped out of his hammock and sat down next to a small, roaring fire.
Yul looked at Abrafo, who was sitting opposite him. He asked, "Can't sleep?"
Abrafo frowned, "No shit... this task is too difficult and cannot be completed within ten days."
Yul said, "We have two days. Now we have to make a decision."
Hajime looked at Yul and asked, "What kind of decision are you referring to?"
Yul said, "We must find the key and the pure phoenix egg before sunset tomorrow. If we fail, we will either leave empty-handed and try again next year, or we will stay here for another year to search."
Hajime said, "Since we are already inside, what's the point of going out and trying again. I have decided that if we fail tomorrow, I will stay and continue searching."
Abrafo said, "I think Hajime has already made that decision for us. I would rather die than return empty-handed. I failed once and I will not fail a second time. As a captain and leader of this mission, I choose for us to stay."
U-ri walked towards the three people sitting around the small campfire and said, "We are staying. I believe that by staying in this valley for a whole year, we should be able to search every inch of the entire valley."
Michio, still lying in the hammock said, "I agree with U-ri."
As the five Tanzanies sat in silence, facing the reality that they were unlikely not going to complete this task in their timeline, suddenly various sounds rang out in the small valley. The "meow" sound that was originally like a cat's meow became increasingly clear.
"Where did the sound come from?" Abrafo stood up suddenly, searching for the unfamiliar sounds.
Michio jumped down from the hammock and grabbed the spear stuck in the ground.
As the other four Tanzanies searched the darkness to see who was making the new noise, U-ri looked up and saw hundreds of golden peacocks flying toward the small lake.
"The lake," U-ri said in shock, for he had never seen so many golden peacocks before. "There are a lot of them."
The four Tanzanies looked at the small lake. Many golden peacocks began to surround the lake and the voice of a woman began to hum. The five Tanzanies looked around, but the branches didn't move.
"Where is the humming coming from?" U-ri asked.
Now, the five Tanzanies standing in the darkness began to become worried and nervous. Back at their little bamboo hut, the humming only occurs when the wind blew, and the green tree's branches swayed. But now there is no wind in the middle of the night, the humming of a female voice continues, and the golden peacocks surrounded the lake begin their ritual dance.
As the peacocks begins to release the mist from its tail into the sky around the lake, a golden statue slowly emerges from the center of the lake. The massive statue was submerged only to her chest, and golden magical mist shimmered over her. When the mist falls into the lake, the stones in the lake glow.
Seeing the incredible scene in front of them, the five Tanzanies were so surprised that their jaws dropped. From where the five Tanzanies stood, they saw a red sphere shining in the night in the center of the statue's forehead.
The magic bag containing the two stones in Yul's chest flew out from Yul's inner robe. The magic bag opened, and the black and the green stones floated in the air.
"Our third key," Abrafo said excitedly, grabbing the sword.
U-ri said, "Wait, are we really going to take that key away during the peacocks' ritual?"
Yul said, "This may be our only chance."
U-ri said, "Fighting through those magical mists in the middle of the night and taking that stone from that unknown statue could be dangerous."
Abrafo looked at U-ri and asked, "So, what do you want us to do. If that statue goes back underwater, we will lose the chance to get the third key."
Michio asked, "What if we take down that stone and the giant golden state comes to life?"
Yul drew his sword and said, "This is a risk we must take."
"The key is right in front of us, and I won't let it slip through my fingers," Abrafo said. He looked at Yul. "Cover me."
Michio asked, "Are you going to swim there?"
Abrafo said, "I couldn't fly there. Hajime's eagle couldn't be summoned, so swimming there was my only option."
Hajime thought since he couldn't summon his eagle, what if he summoned a peacock? Since this is the land of the peacocks, it should be possible to mimic them, so Hajime picked up three feathers from the ground and threw them in front of Abrafo. The three blue feathers soon turned into three large peacocks flapping their wings in front of Abrafo.
Abrafo and Yul jumped on the peacock's back and flew straight to the golden statue in the middle of the lake.
Hajime looked at Michio and threw the two wolf figures on the ground. Hajime said, "Wait for us at the exit."
Michio nodded.
Hajime jumped on the third peacock and flew after Abrafo and Yul.
U-ri quickly grabbed their things and said, "Let's go back to the waterfall."
U-ri and Michio jumped onto the two wolves with their belongings on their backs and rode towards the waterfall in the dark, leaving Hajime, Yul and Abrafo behind as they knew their staying would not be of much help to their friends.