Chapter 090: Setting Out on the Journey

As the first ray of sunlight appeared on the horizon, darkness slowly withdrew from White League City. Beneath the guidance of the rising sun, the city’s people began another busy day, and no one would ever know what had truly happened the night before.

The innkeeper opened the door as he always did and began the day’s work. Yet today, three figures were missing from the inn.

The waiter kept glancing outside, searching for the two unusual guests. To his disappointment, their silhouettes never appeared. He walked to the place where the woman often sat and set down two cups of water, as though she might suddenly appear before him.

Perhaps in all his life he would never again meet a guest like her, so transcendent and detached that even a single glance felt like a blasphemy.

But the waiter was not fond of the black-clad man beside her. His presence was terrifying; every time he looked at him, a chill rose from the bottom of his heart.

What a strange pair they made. The woman was warm as spring, the man cold as winter. And yet, when they appeared together, there was nothing strange about them at all, as if they had always belonged side by side, bound by an indescribable harmony.

The waiter shifted his gaze to the place where the innkeeper usually stood, only to find that the owner was gone too. The man who had never once left the inn had vanished after leaving him a single instruction to take charge of everything for the time being. He had no idea where the owner had gone.

The waiter did not know that he would never see those three strange people again. He would never again see the woman or the dark man, and as for the innkeeper, he was even less likely to encounter him.

In White League City, more than three people had disappeared. There was also a death no one could explain, and an entire courtyard that should have stood within the city but whose traces had been hidden away by the woman.

The people walking under the sunlight would never know that in one night, White League City had suffered too many changes, too many upheavals. If one added the mysterious underground world that had emerged in the White League Mountains, the city might very well have become another Capital of the Dead.

But possibility would always remain only possibility. The woman’s arrival had saved the people of the city. In the darkness of night she resolved each crisis, and unseen she rescued countless lives. All of it was buried beneath the thick veil of night, hidden in darkness and sealed within the scrolls of history.

She never cared for such things. She already felt that her fate had fused deeply with this land.

When morning came once more, she had already left White League City and set out again, facing the wind.

The afternoon sun was always especially fierce, pouring down its energy without restraint. Walking upon the earth felt as though fire were burning beneath one’s feet. Only beside the forest, or by a stream, could one enjoy a rare breath of coolness.

Few people traveled the road anymore. Under such blazing skies, every step was a trial. But there are always exceptions.

She was one of them, though she was not alone. Beside her walked another figure, naturally Li Tian.

After leaving White League City, Li Tian had not returned to the underworld. Instead, he chose to travel with her. Along the way, they took on the appearance of ordinary humans, and the sight reminded her of when she had once journeyed with Niaoniao into the underworld. It had been a long time since she had seen Niaoniao, and she wondered how it was faring. She still missed Niaoniao’s human form very much.

She quietly studied Li Tian beside her. Though he had transformed into the most ordinary human man, the aura around him could never truly be concealed.

Even if he was not the Underworld King, his appearance alone placed him among the finest of humankind. A man so handsome and commanding was very easy to draw attention to himself.

Did Li Tian attract the notice of others? The answer was unquestionably yes. Did anyone dare meet his gaze? Of course not. Even without knowing his true identity, one look from Li Tian was enough to make everyone instantly bow their proud heads, as though they had seen the sovereign of the mortal realm. They did not dare look at him directly, yet they could not ignore his presence.

As for her, she was treated in a different way. She did not exude a sharp, intimidating force, but rather a warmth and vitality that made anyone who saw her feel as if they were looking at hope itself.

Such a pair naturally drew the attention of all who passed.

All along the road, they used no power at all, completing everything with truly human strength. Having governed the mortal realm for so many years, she was, for the first time, experiencing an ordinary human life. To her, it was both familiar and strange.

When they came to a great tree, she suggested that they rest for a while, and Li Tian nodded.

The shade beneath the tree was especially precious under the afternoon sun. Beside it, the stream murmured gently, bringing with it a welcome coolness.

She and Li Tian sat side by side beneath the tree, gazing into the distance and listening to the soft sound of flowing water.

Her eyes drifted toward the far edge of the sky, toward that endless vault above. She recalled all that she had seen along the way. The truth was a mixture of joy and sorrow.

Some small towns had not suffered the kind of catastrophic ruin that had turned Capital of the Dead into a city of the dead, but the survivors were still only a few. Most had not lived to see the arrival of warmth.

Passing the densely arranged tombstones outside the cities and looking upon the passing of so many lives, her heart was not merely saddened; it was as if it were bleeding. It felt as though her blood had been drained away. With every death, it was as though a knife had been driven into her chest, and now she was pierced through with wounds everywhere.

What consoled her was that those who had wrested themselves from the brink of death instead seemed to possess even more vigorous life. They did not wallow in self-pity; instead, they did everything they could to save what remained of their lives.

Seeing this, she felt a trace of comfort. After all, only by relying on human strength could humanity truly stand on its own.

After humans first appeared, the gods had stripped away nearly all powers related to the divine. Even the earthbound deities had not interfered much in the development of mankind.

Yet now, even if humans exhausted all their strength, they still seemed so fragile before disaster, so terribly vulnerable. She could not interfere too much in the course of human development, but neither could she simply allow things to continue as they were. If anything happened to her, or if another disaster struck, large-scale death and destruction would still be unavoidable.

Different cities, similar fates. She had passed through countless small towns, and the thing she saw most often outside their gates was tombstones. Beyond the wilderness there were also countless corpses that could not be buried, left to be slowly consumed as food for beasts.

She could not bury every body. All the gods of the Earth Goddess Shrine were busy now, with no strength to spare. She could only hope that human beings would come here and bury the bones of their own kind.

Sitting beneath the tree, she enjoyed the rare coolness of the afternoon, yet her heart could never truly be at peace. She kept telling herself to forget these things for the time being, but each time she saw them, she could not restrain the pain within her heart. She could not devote all her energy to the dead, because those who had become spirits were not as worthy of attention as the lives that still survived.

Moreover, she always felt that some invisible force was obstructing her actions. She could not determine the source of that power.

The missing innkeeper had left no trace behind. Where, exactly, had those vanished spirits been taken?

Li Tian was also thinking quietly. The casualties in the mortal realm had exceeded his expectations, yet the number of spirits was suspiciously low. His ability to sense the dead far surpassed hers, and although she had not noticed the discrepancy, he had. If those spirits had not been taken to the underworld, then where had they gone?

Within White League City, some spirits had already vanished under strange circumstances, and there was also that innkeeper who had disappeared without a trace. Li Tian felt that things were not so simple. What he had seen while traveling with her had convinced him of that. Such disappearances were happening everywhere.

Although he had promised her that they would build a city of reincarnation, only a minority of spirits could actually be reborn. Most could not escape the fate of entering the underworld.

But now spirits were vanishing. Who had taken them, and for what purpose? What impact would such a thing have upon the underworld? Li Tian had not returned there for a long time. Perhaps it was time for him to go back.

At the moment, the one who seemed most at ease was the Underworld Butterfly. She watched it flutter before her. It, too, had changed greatly. In the beginning, the Underworld Butterfly had hated sunlight, instinctively recoiling from it. Perhaps after enduring the cold darkness of the underworld, it found light unbearable. It was much like her own discomfort when she had first entered the underworld. Yet what made the mortal realm different from the underworld was that the threat posed by humans was far less than that posed by spirits.

In the underworld, one had to remain constantly vigilant for hidden barriers or concealed danger. Here, none of that needed to be considered at all.

At times she wondered whether she should use her power to cast more barriers over this land and protect the safety of these people, but after thinking it through, she abandoned the idea.

If she relied solely on her own strength, then even with barriers in place, she could not fully protect humankind. Human power was far too small. And if those barriers were ever exploited by ill-intentioned people, then the very protections she created would become terrible shackles laid upon humanity. They would be unable to break through them, and their fate might become even more tragic.

The only way was for humans to grow stronger on their own. Only then would her barriers have meaning.

She was quiet, Li Tian was silent, and neither disturbed the other’s thoughts. Between them there was a rare harmony. After meeting again in White League City, they had deliberately forgotten their identities. At this moment they were nothing more than travelers resting in the shade of a tree.