Chapter 172 - Botanical Ice Garden

"Is that them? If so then let's go on with the trip already," Venedette said after sensing two people walking in front of the house.

"Can you go check on them, Von?" Venedette added when she noticed no one was listening to her.

But since the elders were too busy impressing Von with their stories, Venedette just decided to go out and greet Gem and Fily on her own.

"Where's Lei?" she asked and changed her annoyed expression to worried as soon as she saw Gem's vulnerable state.

"Why did you go there with your 1 resistance?!" she said and asked Fily to help her bring Gem inside the house where there was a heater to warm her up.

"Lei's still carving our ice from the lake," Fily said after a while which made the elder who heard her panic.

"What did you say? You're carving the frozen lake?!" he repeated with a much higher volume which allowed the rest inside the room to hear what Fily just said.

"Uhuh, is that not allowed-?" Fily said and was surprised when all of them just suddenly stood up from their seats and started running towards the lake without even having any idea where Lei was..

"Is that not allowed?" Fily asked again to the only elder who didn't freak out after hearing what she just said.

"No. The frozen lake is a sacred place for us and no one dared to touch it until now," he said while watching his fellow elders run around the frozen lake's surface, looking for Lei.

"But there were kids ice skating just there yesterday! How is it so different from carving a small piece of ice cube from it?!" Fily said, still couldn't believe the bizarre rule that was implied in the whole lake of Iyuba.

It's not like they could still manage the other end of the lake if someone else decided to carve ice cubes from it!

"We like to preserve much of what was left to us, you will understand once we start with this tour. But in the meantime, since you have not heard all of the rules of Edelweiss yet, we will have no choice but to let you off this time, for as long as you will give us back the cube that you took from the lake."

"B-But!" Fily insisted and even pretended to hide something behind her.

"Come on now, young miss," the elder said with a much more convincing tone which made Fily finally give up the fake ice cube from her left hand that she got from the refrigerator as an emergency precaution earlier that day.

'I just hope Lei remembers the ice cube that I gave him earlier and not mistook it for the one that he took from the lake!' Fily whished to herself before leaving the elder's presence and proceeding to Gem's side.

Not long after, the elders all came back with Von and Lei in between them, and since Von had the better bond with the elders, he was quick to strike a deal with them just to let Lei off of their punishment.

"Lei, did you?" Fily ran to him and whispered while standing beside him nervously.

"No," Lei said with a betrayed expression and even acted like he wouldn't give the ice cube to Fily before finally giving it to her with an eye roll.

"Ah, thank goodness," Fily said after confirming the ice cube and if it was really the one from the lake based on the flowers inside it and went back to Gem.

The two boys then followed after her after seeing Venedette talking to the elders about their sudden misconduct towards Edelweiss.

And since it was just a minor offense, the elders decided to let them off with a simple warning for as long as they wouldn't do it again.

"What did I tell you?" Venedette scolded them after all the elders had already gone ahead of them to the start of their itinerary as if she had been having the most stressful day of her life the longer she stayed with these kids in Edelweiss.

"Don't you try doing something else without my permission while we go on this tour alright? We're going to visit all the most important places in Edelweiss and I can't have you carving something else again, even if it seems irrelevant. Just stay close to me and stop doing anything aside from listening to the elders, understood?"

"Fine,"

"Okay,"

"Sure."

"Okay," the four of them responded which satisfied Venedette enough to let them go.

"The first place in our itinerary is the Edelweiss botanical garden," Venedette said and almost lost her patience once again when she saw that no one was walking behind her again.

And as it turned out, the children were already bouncing off the white golf cart that Elder Song told them to use on this tour today due to the long distances that they would have to travel.

"Let's go," Venedette said to the driver of the first cart where Gem and Fily were seated properly on the backseat at.

Behind them was another golf cart with the driver and Elder song on the front seats and the two boys at the back. After them, there were more golf carts where the other elders were riding in a convoy with Venedette's carts.

Since Edler Song was the one in charge of telling them the story of the places on the way, Von decided it would be better for him to ride the same cart as him to satisfy his hunger for stories, and with the old school public announcement system on each of the carts, even Venedette and the girls in her cart were also able to hear Elder Song's stories very well.

"You all know of this legendary flower that survived the harsh threats of the Great Doom, right?"

"Yes!" Von answered enthusiastically to Elder Song's question.

"Well, we are now on our way to see the very beautiful, and huge flower that serves as one of the biggest pride and symbol of our humble village. Can you guess what kind of flower that is?" Elder Song said, happy that for the first time that he did this tour, there was someone, especially a kid, that was very enthusiastic about his stories.

"Isn't that very obvious already? Of couse it's the Edelweiss flower! What else could it be?" Von answered.

"That's almost right, but there are a lot of Edelweiss variations that our ancestors had made, so to be more specific, you'll have to call it 'the Gigantic Ice Edelweiss', repeat after me, 'the Gigantic Ice Edelweiss."

"The Gigantic Ice Edelweiss," Von repeated as they approach the corner that completely made his jaw drop wide open from the surprising sight.

"Is that a real flower!?" he said and looked back at Elder Song who only nodded with a smile that said he was expecting this kind of reaction from Von already.

And as soon as Von got the confirmation from Elder Song, he immediately flew out of the cart himself to get a better view of the whole Ice Garden where the huge Edelweiss flower that was completely made of ice was displayed on the face of the mountain like just like a huge ice carving in display.

"How is that a real flower?!" Von exclaimed in awe while observing the huge ice flower from a distance.

And the more that Von stared at it, the more he could notice the patterns on the ice petals that made it more convincing for him to believe that it was a real flower after all.

"This lived for more than a thousand years already?!" he exclaimed again while being drawn to the flower.

And when he was almost at least a meter's length away from it, a whistle from the elders woke him up to his senses and moved away from it immediately before he could do something that will earn them another one of the Elder's punishments.

"There are more variations of Edelweiss flowers here but they weren't as big and as icy as this one," Elder Song said, mentioning the little snowlike flowers beside the main flower. Some of them were as blue as the Iyuba lake at night and there were also some that looked as dangerous as the hail storm.

"They sure loved making the flower look like snow or ice, huh?" Fily remarked after seeing several more of the white and blue Edelweiss flowers.

What was admirable was that these flowers had been here in the same face of the mountain for as old as their grandparents and none of them had died ever since.

"This way please," Edler Song said, leading them inside a metal door that seemed to be the way to their creator's lab.

Since the name of the place was Botanical Garden, it wouldn't be weird for their lab to also be in the garden as what Fily was speculating.

And indeed she was right, Elder Song really did welcome them inside the active lab where his people were continuing the creator's experiments on the Edelweiss flowers.

There was even a piece of the withered petal from the gigantic Ice Edelweiss which seemed too healthy to be even considered as withered, but because they already branded it withered, then it must be withered already, Fily thought.

"This is cool!" Von said to Elder Song who looked like he had been growing uncomfortable with Von's clinginess already.

"This is just the start of our tour, young man," Elder song said and smiled at him while leading them to another door.