Chapter 1 The Rain Turned to Fire

The rain turned to fire.

Heidi cried out, her voice lost, and that seemingly illogical exclamation was the only way she could describe what she was seeing—she simply couldn't comprehend the scene before her, couldn't understand what was happening. All she knew was that a torrential downpour of fire was falling from the sky.

It happened in an instant.

The rainstorm that had enveloped Pland instantly transformed into a downpour of flames, as if the setting sun had fallen or the corona had inverted. In less than a second, the entire city-state was no longer a city in the rain but a living furnace.

Everything was ignited—trees, houses, towers, clock towers, even the ground itself was spewing flames. The rainwater flowing on the ground had turned into molten lava, and the deafening thunder had become a series of explosions across the city-state, the sound of steam pipes, gas lines, and pressure vessels detonating in rapid succession. The explosions were even more terrifying than the earlier thunder… The entire cathedral was shaking violently!

Heidi retreated in terror, witnessing an apocalyptic end directly overlaid on the reality, and then she heard a bell toll.

The sound seemed to come through a thick barrier, as if from a great distance—it was the steam clock tower behind the cathedral, striking the hour.

The loud, melodious bell broke through the rain of fire, followed by more bells ringing from the depths of the flames, near and far.

The hundred bells of Pland's cathedral matrix rang in unison, and the reality stabilization barrier was triggered. The torrential rain of fire seemed to be disturbed by an invisible force in the chiming of the bells, and the flames falling above the cathedral turned back into ordinary rain, even the cathedral spires and flags that had already been ignited were restored in the blink of an eye.

The whole city of Pland was ablaze, yet all the cathedrals withstood the flames from the sky in the chiming of the bells. The bizarre rainstorm and the even more bizarre sea of fire were mixed together in this burning land in a contradictory fashion. Cathedrals were like isolated islands in purgatory, supporting continuous anchor points amidst the cataclysm.

Only then did Heidi finally hear a steady, aged voice from behind her, that of Bishop Valentine, breaking the silence: "The enemy is attacking… Destroy all targets attempting to approach the cathedral clock towers!"

Heidi turned her head, and as she was about to ask something, she heard a series of deafening roars erupt from the plaza outside the cathedral.

She ran to the window and saw the guardian forces assembled in the plaza opening fire—the Gatling guns of steam-powered walkers sprayed a barrage of bullets across the distant streets, the main cannons of the steam tanks fired continuously, and the forces urgently transferred from the city-state guard had already built fortifications at the edge of the rainstorm, beginning to pour fire on something in the sea of flames.

Heidi finally saw the enemy.

They were writhing, humanoid ashes, endless, struggling, writhing out of the sea of fire, humanoid ashes that chilled the heart.

Those ashes seemed to appear out of thin air in the flames, their amorphous shapes seeming to scream and shriek in pain every second. They surged in from all directions, rushing toward all the reality stabilization nodes in the city-state—the cathedral clock towers—like beasts attracted by an unknown force.

The warriors pulled their triggers in bewilderment. Most of them didn't know what had started this battle, didn't know what was happening to their familiar homeland, and didn't even dare to think about where those seemingly disturbing "enemies" came from. Only the mission to guard the city-state, the instinct to obey orders, and the will to survive kept them rooted to the defense line in the face of this hellish sight, and they began to counterattack according to the muscle memory they had trained thousands of times.

Thus, the guns of the guarding forces roared, easily tearing apart the first batch of ashes that swarmed forward.

But the next second, more ashes emerged from behind those scattered ashes, even more twisted and burnt things, rushing toward the cathedral wrapped in flames and smoke.

There were as many of them as the entire population of the city-state.

"Hold the clock towers," Valentine's voice suddenly rang out, echoing across the cathedral square, even across the entire city-state, "as long as the bells continue to ring, our reality will not be modified and overwritten by them! Believers, the time to witness your faith has come… Hold the clock towers!!"

Heidi watched all this in great confusion, feeling as if her world was falling apart at this moment, but after a brief adjustment, she had forced her thoughts to calm down. After realizing that this was a disaster on the level of a reality intrusion, she forced herself not to focus on the sea of fire across the square, not to think about the "fact" that ninety percent of the entire city-state had been substantially destroyed, but instead ran to Valentine as quickly as possible: "Is there anything I can do to help?"

"Soothe the civilians taking refuge in the cathedral. We need to avoid mental breakdowns within the cathedral as much as possible," Valentine said in a deep voice, "and then wait with them for this storm to pass."

Heidi nodded immediately, and then Valentine suddenly raised his head, his gaze seemingly piercing through the high walls of the hall, gazing into the distance.

The bishop's eyes reflected flames and flashes of light, and a bird's-eye view of the entire city-state appeared in his vision.

He clearly saw the entire Pland burning fiercely in the rain of fire, with cathedrals turning into isolated islands in the sea of fire. Each cathedral was suffering an invasion from outside of reality, and the fiery evil souls released from some doomsday branch were frantically attacking the still-ringing clock towers, as if desperately trying to make this still-existing reality fall into the same tragic end as them. And behind those ashes were countless tall, thin shadows.

Those shadows stood silently in the flames, silently pushing the city-state into the apocalypse.

They were the claws of the Sun's Children.

The claws of the Sun's Children?

Valentine's expression suddenly changed slightly. In the face of this massive disaster on the level of a reality intrusion, he suddenly remembered a "small matter" that seemed to have been resolved long ago and had almost been forgotten.

He suddenly turned to a high-ranking acolyte beside him: "Are those solar heretics still in the underground sanctuary?!"

"Solar heretics?" The high-ranking acolyte didn't react for a moment, then hurried to say, "Yes, they are still imprisoned in the underground sanctuary, guarded by an entire guardian battalion. They can't escape…"

"They never intended to escape from the beginning!" Valentine said quickly, "They wanted to be locked in the cathedral from the very beginning!"

"What…"

The high-ranking acolyte's eyes widened instantly, and then, before he could finish speaking, a dull roar suddenly came from the depths beneath the cathedral.

It was as if some kind of giant beast was awakening in the underground sanctuary.

And some of the clerics in the cathedral who had experienced a certain solar crisis four years ago associated this roar with another event—

Four years ago, hundreds of solar heretics gathered in their hiding place and summoned a brief and terrifying forbidden power in a frenzy of bloody sacrifices, and a "fake sun" formed from underground, almost causing a catastrophe.

But before this could succeed, their conspiracy was discovered by the newly appointed Inquisitor Vanna and extinguished by her team.

“…That was a test…”

The high-ranking acolyte's eyes widened as he muttered to himself.

Heidi felt the heat around her suddenly rising, and the tremors from the depths below growing stronger and stronger.

The sea of fire rose, the bells rang in unison, and the sirens wailed sharply in the rain of fire as countless ash monsters emerged from all directions, rampaging across the world.

Vanna had experienced many dangerous battles. She had faced cultists, forbidden monsters created by cultists, and even out-of-control abyssal demons and insane preachers of the end, but no battle could compare to this purgatory.

What she was facing was no longer a battlefield, but a sudden apocalypse.

Or rather, the apocalypse had already arrived, but had been concealed by a curtain until today. Now the curtain had suddenly been lifted—the living had no time to react and were already embers in the apocalypse.

But she was still alive, cutting a bloody path through the sea of fire and ashes, struggling to get closer to the towering cathedral in the center of the city-state.

Every breath brought a burning sting, and the fatigue in her body was almost enough to crush an ordinary person several times over. Vanna's armor was also severely damaged, and her body's recovery was gradually unable to keep up with the rate of injury, and her injuries were getting worse.

But the young Inquisitor was still moving forward.

The bells of the cathedral were still ringing, which meant that Bishop Valentine's defense line had not yet been breached—perhaps the guardians did not know about this conspiracy to pollute history, but they had always been prepared for all conspiracies and battles.

Since the battle at the cathedral was still going on, she had a duty to return to her battle station.

Vanna was thinking.

She noticed that Bishop Valentine had activated the reality stabilization measures, which meant that he had realized part of the truth, at least this part of the response was not a problem, and as long as the clock towers were not lost, the heretics' conspiracy to cover "true history" with "false history" would not succeed so easily.

As long as the covering process was eventually interrupted, and the pollution was peeled away from history at its source, the city-state could still be saved—the destruction at this moment was not true destruction, but a terrifying "possibility" brought about by the superposition of two histories… It was not too late, not too late.

Vanna repeated to herself as if cheering herself on. She tried not to think about the possibility of the cathedrals being lost everywhere, nor did she think about which link the mysterious and terrifying Captain Duncan would be waiting for her in. She just mechanically moved her feet, destroying all obstacles she encountered on the road, and moved forward step by step on the burning streets, shortening the distance between herself and the cathedral.

But suddenly, she stopped at an intersection not far from the cathedral.

A dark gray car was lying on its roof by the roadside, seemingly having rolled over in an accident. Several bodies were lying dead beside the road, apparently thrown from the car.

And inside the car there was still someone—an arm was sticking out of the tilted car window, stuck in the twisted and deformed car door.

Vanna instantly recognized the car and the arm.

It was her uncle, Danteween.