Chapter 1 In the Deserted City

In the empty, desolate city, Vanna proceeded cautiously. An invisible companion walked beside her, happily introducing her to this bustling, lively, and wonderful place.

This was the most prosperous city on the entire "continent." Almost everyone knew it, and most either lived here or at least passed through it on their journeys. The guards here were dutiful, the residents friendly and generous. It was a place where all the world's fresh and interesting goods converged, along with all the world's fresh and interesting ideas and stories.

"Everyone loves it here, and you will too," the cheerful voice said beside Vanna. "Just stay for a few days, and you'll understand its appeal!"

Vanna listened distractedly to the enthusiastic guide beside her, her mind occupied with some rather peculiar but practical thoughts.

She was wondering if she, who could not see any "people" in this city but occasionally heard voices nearby, appeared to the residents (assuming they truly existed) as a blind woman wielding a greatsword. Would such a dangerous, armed individual walking around with her eyes closed, swaggering about… would the invisible residents really not react at all?

She also thought about her noisy guide—judging from the voice, a young girl. Since she couldn't see or even touch her, it was difficult to "tour" the place based on her directions. So Vanna had been exploring among these ruins based on her own judgment, basically ignoring whether her "companion" was following or keeping up. But the "guide小姐" didn't seem to find anything strange about this.

She simply followed along naturally, no matter which direction Vanna suddenly took. Her voice remained at a consistent distance, communicating with Vanna smoothly and naturally, as if this was the tour route she had planned for her "new friend" all along.

Vanna stopped near an intersection, silently sorting out her thoughts.

What kind of existence was she, this "stranger," to the residents of this invisible city and the unseen companion beside her?

The moment this question arose, an even stronger sense of disorientation suddenly struck her. Vanna suddenly felt a blankness in her mind, as if… she had forgotten something important.

She looked up in confusion at the unfamiliar and desolate ruins, vaguely remembering that she had noticed something "unreasonable" before, but now that sense of unreasonableness had vanished.

"Would you like some fruit?" a voice suddenly came from the roadside nearby, interrupting Vanna's thoughts. The voice sounded like a gentle old woman. "They were just delivered to the city this morning, fresh and thirst-quenching. You must have been traveling for a long time?"

Vanna looked in the direction of the voice and saw a pile of wooden planks and stones half-buried in the yellow sand. A blurry shadow was sitting in the ruins, reaching out to her like a peddler selling goods—a swirl of yellow sand slipped from the shadow's hand, and there was only sand on the planks in front of ta.

Vanna blinked, and the shadow disappeared in an instant.

She stood alone at the crossroads, with only the hollow sound of the wind in her ears. After a while, she realized that even the voice of the "invisible companion" had disappeared, and hadn't been heard for a long time.

Vanna turned her head, looking in the direction where she had last sensed the other's presence, and tentatively asked, "Are you still there?"

She received no response.

Some dust was stirred up by the wind, rustling down from a ruined wall nearby. A vague and intermittent familiar sound came from the wind and sand—ding, ding-ding…

Vanna shifted the greatsword to her left hand and used her right hand to trace a familiar symbol on her chest—she didn't remember the meaning of the symbol, but her body performed the action naturally. It seemed to be a habit she had developed long ago, some kind of… blessing.

Then, cautiously gripping the greatsword, she walked deeper into the city.

She walked for a long time in the ruins. The wide and complex roads of the city seemed endless. Everywhere, buildings and small paths were buried in yellow sand. Even buried in the sand, the broken and collapsed buildings still faintly revealed something of their former exquisite appearance.

Vanna suddenly thought—perhaps this really was the most bustling and prosperous city in the world. Countless people must have lived in this great city, and countless busy merchant caravans must have traveled through it, supplying it with goods and stories from all over the world.

But that was before it was abandoned.

Why was such a prosperous city abandoned? And when was it abandoned? And more importantly… why had she come here?

Vanna walked through a fork in the road, continuing forward with these recurring questions. Just as she was passing a building, she suddenly stopped.

A strange sound came from the wind, and then a piece of paper flew out of the sand, spinning past her eyes. She could vaguely see words on the paper.

Paper? Could paper really have survived in this windy desert?

Vanna's heart stirred, and her body reacted before she could even think—she grabbed the piece of paper that flew past her and looked at its contents in astonishment.

It was actually a fragment of a newspaper. The remaining upper part still showed some words related to the newspaper's masthead, and the lower part was filled with many worn and eroded characters. Vanna carefully identified them for a long time before finding a relatively complete sentence:

“…Pland suffered a major fire. The fire spread from the upper city to the lower city. Many factories and blocks were damaged in the fire. The number of residents killed or injured…”

Vanna stared blankly at the words on the paper that seemed to have been weathered by the years, a sense of confusion washing over her. After a long time, she asked herself:

What is Pland?

The next second, she saw the fragment of the newspaper in her hand silently turn into yellow sand, scattering into the air.

Vanna stood there for a moment, patted the remaining sand off her hands, and slowly walked forward.

After walking forward for a long time, she suddenly stopped again in front of a building.

In the floating dust, the appearance of that building seemed very abrupt. It seemed to have suddenly emerged from the sand, standing somewhat discordantly among the surrounding piles of broken and collapsed building remains, like a giant beast, silently watching Vanna.

It was a small church with multiple spires. For a church, it wasn't grand in scale, but it seemed particularly solemn.

It had obviously been abandoned as well. Its outer walls were mottled and cracked, its doors and windows broken and scattered, and its roof tiles had fallen off, making it look long deserted. But compared to the surrounding ruins that had completely collapsed into piles of rubble and were buried in sand, it at least maintained the integrity of its main structure—and what caught Vanna's attention was that there was actually a small flower bed in front of the church.

The flower bed was also damaged, containing only some long-dead plants, but incredibly, there wasn't a single grain of sand in the flower bed. Even in this place of endless yellow sand and constant gales, the flower bed seemed clean.

It was as if someone was still constantly taking care of the broken flower bed and the withered plants inside.

Vanna paused in front of the flower bed for a while, looked up at the dilapidated little church, and after a brief hesitation, stepped forward.

The moment she crossed the church's door, she felt something change—the eternal heat of the desert seemed to be instantly cut off and transported to another world, and the next second, she saw bright lights before her.

The interior of the church, which looked like it had been abandoned for countless years from the outside, was clean and tidy. The doors, windows, and roof were intact, and bright lights illuminated the entire main hall. Rows of empty wooden benches were neatly arranged in the hall, and at the end of the benches was a high pulpit—the light shone down from above the wooden pulpit, bathing it in a soft glow.

Vanna frowned, vaguely feeling that this place was familiar.

She had seen it, or at least heard someone mention it.

But she couldn't remember, she couldn't even remember what kind of life she had lived before stepping into this boundless desert.

She gripped her greatsword tightly, walked down the aisle in the middle of the hall, and after checking the surrounding environment, she finally stopped in front of a bench.

She had been trekking for too long, she felt she needed to sit down and rest, even if only for a few minutes.

She sat down on the bench, the old chair creaking slightly. She breathed a long sigh, feeling that her joints, like this old chair, were creaking under the strain after being filled with sand.

Then, she suddenly heard a faint breathing sound.

Someone was sitting beside her.

Vanna turned her head abruptly.

It was a young nun wearing a black church robe, looking about Vanna's age—she was sitting quietly beside her, her head bowed, as if she were praying piously.

A person! A visible, tangible person?!

Vanna had almost forgotten when she had last seen "another person." In all her memories, she seemed to have been trekking in this endless journey. Besides the sand, she was accompanied only by strange voices. She had even begun to think that this was the way the world was originally, and that she was the only "human" in the world, but now… she saw a person!

Her excitement was difficult to suppress, and at the same time, a subtle sense of confusion and familiarity emerged in her heart. Vanna subconsciously opened her mouth: "You are..."

"You have lingered here for too long, sister," the young nun in prayer suddenly raised her head, interrupting Vanna. She looked at the latter with a calm gaze, "Ashes are easily assimilated by ashes."