The cries of seagulls came from the mast riggings of sailboats near the dock in the distance, and from the houses built along the seaside.
“Mmm… ” Yin Bo leisurely enjoyed the faint rays of light breaking through the pre-dawn darkness.
He gazed out the window at the seaborad area, seeing the deep blue, gentle waves far in the distance.
On the sea horizon, much farther than what could be seen on Earth, were small black dots no larger than ants. One or two ships were slowly disappearing from sight.
Thump! Thump!
The sound of knuckles rapping against the door rang out.
Amidst the sound of footsteps, Yin Bo walked past the foot of the bed and pulled the brown wooden door open a crack, but without removing the iron chain locked securely behind it.
“Who is it? Oh, it’s you.“
A crispsmacklanded on the door, bracing it as Yin Bo tried to close it again.
Outside stood a round-faced, round-headed man with his hair slicked back, shiny and greased, wearing a light blue shirt and a black fitted vest. On the corridor, he stood with one leg straight and the other bent casually, leaning on the first, his toe tapping the floor as he smiled at Yin Bo. Behind him followed a lackey about the same height as Yin Bo.
“Made up your mind? Hurry up and exchange your Radiance catalogs with us.“
“I…” Yin Bo gritted his teeth at the door, a troubled expression spreading over the half of his face he had poked out.
“If I sell all these matters to you, the Radiance experiences I get will just be things like fishing, hunting, and ship repairs, right? The distributors won’t lower the price?“
“Need you ask that? But what use do you have for that extra one or two layers of Moonlight right now? It’s not like we aren’t compensating you.“
The other party was specifically targeting someone like him—someone who had dealings with only a few distributors.
Yin Bo thought it over, his demeanor still betraying a slight feeling that this wasn’t quite right, but the deal wasn’t really a loss either, since the number of Radiance wouldn’t change.
“But ten Silver Coins for one copy of a Radiance reading—that’s too little.“
“Ten is too little? Ha! Ha! Hahaha!” The slick-haired man laughed:
“If our Velveth Council hadn’t invited you to trade, could you have sold those Lumens to the Moon People at such a high price? “
Catching the tone of that remark, Yin Bo thought of the Radiance he possessed and scoffed,
“Then forget it. I’ll keep my Radiance for myself. I’m not interested in your business of repairing ships and running errands. “
Thump!
The slender man behind the man in the trench coat also braced a hand against the door that was about to close. He withdrew his hand, clasped both hands before him, and said with a slightly hunched back:
“Mr. Yin Bo, you should be well aware of how many years our Fellowship of Lumina Reckoning has cultivated in this country. Take that magnificent statue at the city gate, for instance. Without our Fellowship, it might never have existed. “
“At the very least, it wouldn’t have existed for this long, ” the slick-haired man added, his palm still pressed against the door.
“So you don’t need to worry about our credibility or our strength here, ” the lackey chimed in, forcing a smile as he watched.
Yin Bo’s face fell.
Of course, he knew exactly what statue the thin man was referring to; it was already a landmark in this area. Given how meddlesome the Fogfolk could be, the fact that it still stood blatantly at the city gate was indeed a strange thing.
Yin Bo let out a sigh and said:
“It’s not that I look down on your mundane Radiance experiences. It’s just that I still need my own and want to keep it. ” With that, he moved to close the door.
“The latest the world-ending day foretold in the prophecy is tomorrow. Are you planning to keep it and wait for it to give birth to some sort of offspring or something? “
“At least I can use my own cataloguing to rent some reading from the Floom People on the lands for the last two days—learning about the calamities that happened on the previous continent and how people responded to them. “
At this point, Yin Bo, who had once witnessed a colorful radiance bloom, spoke with a surge of inner pride:
“Maybe I might even be able to give birth to a ‘Crowd of Heroes Radiance.’ “
“What did you say? ” The man in the trench coat, standing on the relatively clean hallway, paused in his tone. “You… are you perhaps harboring a world-saving plan or something? “
“You people… “
“Hahahahaha! “
The greasy-haired man, propping the door open with one hand, slowly turned his head and exchanged a knowing grin with his accomplice beside him, then turned back and lifted his chin:
“You puny little Yin Bo. How laughable. You don’t even have a single Bloodline Circuit, yet you dare to dream of a ‘Crowd of Heroes Radiance’? That’s seriously overestimating yourself. “
Fuming with anger, Yin Bo shoved the hand holding the door, pushing the man’s arm away, and then slammed the inn door shut with a loud bang.
……
Returning to his bedside, Yin Bo sat down and let out a deep breath of frustration.
He hadn’t managed to catch up with the “main force “—never mind that, but now even Ma Shuo was impossible to contact. He had no idea if the biologist of the Emerald Youth Commune, whom Ma Shuo insisted on protecting, had managed to escape the disaster alive.
He had heard that these days, there were little to no living souls left inside the entire Grand Duchy of Herzen-Horáczburg.
“Sigh… Should I really board the ship today? “
Yin Bo turned his gaze toward the window, where the sky was gradually lighting up with a sluggish dawn.
If Ma Shuo were to arrive now, at this very moment—would there still be time left to secure a ticket? _”
He frowned, thinking about the three ferry tickets he had kept hidden on his person for the past two days. Because he had arrived too late, the boarding slots available were all for ships departing from noon today onward. The extra ticket was meant for anyone who might have arrived even later and wanted to buy a spot right away.
For a “Fog Folk ” who once bore witness to the birth of the Radiance, buying a ferry ticket wasn’t exactly a difficult task.
But he couldn’t afford too many more than this. Any additional tickets beyond that point would come at an astronomical price.
“Guess I’ll brush my teeth first. “
He got up, took the blue-green enameled iron mug from the small table by the wall, walked over to the small white porcelain sink outside the bathroom, turned on the faucet, and while letting the water run, squeezed a generous amount of toothpaste—one rich in sea salt—onto his toothbrush.
After freshening up, Yin Bo spat out the mouthful of water, which carried a faint, slightly salty taste. Shaking the excess water off his hands, he walked over to the bedside, about to pick up his jacket.
Suddenly, he heard a cacophony of shouts coming from the docks.
……
His eyes flickered, and he quickly stepped over to the window.
What he saw was a large, hundred-meter-long sailing ship near the dock not far from this inn. Beneath it, from the seawater, dense, long, steel-cable-like silvery-black vines were emerging.
They looked somewhat like a sparser, leafless creeping vine, gradually climbing upward from below, visibly engulfing the great sailing ship.
“It’s a Devil. “
People on the dock screamed and turned, running into the city.
“Demon of the apocalypse! “
At this moment, one could see the difference between the natives and the “Fogfolk. “
Some figures moved with greater speed, quickly breaking away from the panicked crowd.
More vines extended from below the sea, surging like a tide toward the golden sandy beaches and the bustling docks.
“Run! “
Echoing shouts came from the hallway outside the door.
Yin Bo felt a dizzying rush of blood to his head, turned, grabbed his luggage, and dashed for the door. When he yanked it open, the corridor was already noisy with people streaming out. Some were still fastening their belts or hurriedly pulling on jackets.
Amid their shouts, Yin Bo dashed for the stairwell, truly feeling for the first time what it meant to fear for his life.
Any thoughts about ‘Glory Light’ or the like were now useless. Then he saw the trench coat man who had fallen and was rolling at the mouth of the stairs, along with the panicked, slick-haired man beside him.
“Run! ” Yin Bo shouted.
The man burst out an English curse, then the trench coat man got up, limping as he followed them downstairs. The first floor was even more crowded; people were packed into the hall and piled up wherever there was space.
“Isn’t this the Seawater Tributary zone! “
A panicked voice shouted from the crowd. Then someone used a stool to smash a window and, padding the frame with his clothes, jumped out.
As the crowd jostled their way out and left, a voice shouted:
“Do you all smell that? The scent of blood coming from the sea is so strong! “
Several heads turned to look. Taking advantage of the brighter sunlight, some people saw with fear in their hearts that the color of the seawater in this near-shore area was different from usual.
“Those schools of fish… Have they all had their lives devoured by the demon of the apocalypse?! “
Boom…
A large ship covered in iron vines tilted sideways and collapsed into the sea amid the waves.
……
Heiwen Zike Taerke? No—Cheng Yunze, who had walked out of the World Ark headquarters, squinted as he looked at the scattered, chaotic ground in the distance amid the gusts of wind sweeping across the land.
The area a few hundred meters away looked as if it had been plowed by chaos, scattered with loose soil. Only a few buildings on the outskirts remained standing, half of their structures still intact.
“So cold! “
Li Aimin, who had followed Cheng Yunze out, shivered and rubbed his arms, followed by Ruan Wenxiong, who poked his head out cautiously from the doorway.
Then Ruan Wenxiong’s eyes widened as he saw the buildings ahead, almost completely reduced to rubble, and among them, Sword Thirteen, who was seriously probing the ground to see if there was any hidden residual blood contamination.
“That is… “
Ruan Wenxiong shrank his shoulders in the wind and looked up. At the horizon, beneath the gloomy clouds, waves of powerful winds swept across the city, bringing waves of cold and chilling air.
“Why is it so cold on land? Or has the temperature dropped? “
The two people nearby also looked up at the sky. A soldier army man who had just arrived, with some campfire ash on his coat, said in a deep voice from the bottom of the steps:
“Yeah, the temperature has dropped. In previous years, a cold wave would only occasionally appear two months earlier, but this year it actually comes at this time too… “
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