Everyone gathered on the deck blown by the sea breeze.
In the distance, the outlines of rolling buildings appear on the land.
After twenty-four years, Lu Li saw Himfast Port again.
The port has been completed a long time ago. What was once only half a street has become three. The simple port has also become quite large, but there are no ships to berth, and the wooden bridge has collapsed into the sea.
"Weird... hiding... in it."
When Andrea leaned toward the port, Ophelia felt an obscure atmosphere filling the air: "A lot..."
Apparently, this area is now occupied by weird things.
"Okay...I'll go investigate." Ophelia said.
"Need not."
Lu Li rejected her proposal. Wraith spirits are not at the top of the weird food chain, and their main body that has not yet been separated is their greatest weakness.
If you encounter pagans who capture weird things, the ghosts will not be much stronger than humans.
Andrea did not approach and quietly left the harbor.
The port is not their destination, Himfast is. It is not a good idea to rashly set foot in a strangely occupied port.
After sailing a few miles further, Andrea docked at a shore with deeper water.
Andrea was asked to stay here and wait for them, while Lu Li and others rowed to the shore and moved towards Himfast.
…
Himfast.
The elegant, slender figure of a girl stands on the top of the towering spire.
The wind blew through this silent city, and the black shadow raised its skirts, like a beautiful girl standing on it, quietly overlooking the endless city of death below.
I don't know how much time passed, but the girl's figure turned her head slightly and looked quietly into the distance.
On the edge of the city, many insignificant black spots appear.
…
Himfast, the city of art in the past. It has been famous from the Allen Peninsula to the Main Continent for a long time.
Here, even poor people in the slums can talk about every master, every oil painting, every sculpture, and every art-related thing.
Art is engraved in the blood of this century-old city.
It's just that art has never been a necessity for survival.
When disaster strikes, the city of art, like the meaning it represents, quickly disappears from people's eyes and is only talked about occasionally.
[Himfast was destroyed internally, which sounded the alarm for all human gathering places.]
The first sentence of the information about Himfast's disappearance reads.
[At that time, when the steam-powered battleship Azazel, known as the backbone of human civilization, appeared in the port fifty miles away from Himfast after nearly a hundred years, most of the locals fell into some kind of fanaticism. A few remained
The reminders of rational people are also drowned in fanaticism.]
[The Azazel and its crew members were only briefly inspected, and were welcomed back to Himfast like a hero in triumph. They should have been more vigilant... although at that time, people had not yet sorted out an effective way to deal with the strange invasion.
】
[As a huge city crowded with almost a million people, hundreds of weird-related incidents occur here every day, and hundreds of people die. Although for Himfast, which has a huge population, hundreds of people die every day.
Within the range it can bear, if you count the births of babies, the population reduction can almost be ignored. Even to put it cruelly... this trend is beneficial to Himfast to control the bloated population.】
[But the superiors cannot ignore it. The deaths of people around them every day are enough to make people fall into numbness and despair. Especially the weird attacks will not change due to identity]
[They need anything that represents hope to inspire the desperate people. We can understand... After all, when the Exorcist returns, our performance is not much better than them. But we also have reason to doubt the unquestioning fanaticism behind it.
There are weird shadows.]
[The Azazel returned at the right time. These crew members, who have not aged even after a hundred years, were given a grand reception, and their family members and heirs welcomed them with tears...]
[Everything happened three days later. The being behind the Azazel didn't have much patience. He could have done something more perfect, such as leaving the entire city of art without any survivors... but he didn't do that. This allowed the sacrifice to happen.
Later, some survivors escaped, but the disaster struck suddenly.】
[The returning crew members tore off their disguises, and the upper levels of Himfast who were infected by them turned into ugly and smelly monsters like fishmen, sacrificing the entire city to their indescribable gods sealed in the deep sea. 】
[That is, the existence that was suppressed by the Deep Sea Stone Mountain and caused the Deep Sea Stone to lose its power.]
[The number of survivors is small, but I don’t think it’s too many.]
[But we should be thankful that the existence that has broken away from the seal has not continued to encroach on our territory, leaving only believers to spread his pollution. 】
[It’s like there is a rein around His neck, prohibiting Him from attacking us. He can still attack us by throwing stones, spitting, and yelling curses, but he cannot destroy our desperate world.]
[So I support the Croatian faction’s “grazing theory”: Our world is just a weird pasture, and they will come to harvest every once in a while]
In the end, the information was the private property of the writer. Maybe the person who checked the information didn't see it or was a supporter of the "herding theory", so it was sent directly to Lu Li.
Lu Li has been exposed to the theory of "herding theory" for a long time, but it is meaningless to talk about "what is the status of the human world in their eyes".
At least this is not the "meaning" Lu Li is looking for right now.
Ophelia is just like Anna in the past, exuding aura to announce her existence, and Lu Li's 1.3 points of humanity will not attract weird covetousness.
Catalina sometimes thinks that if there were more weirdos who had the same sense and strength as Ophelia, the human condition might not be as bad as it is now.
With the help of weirdos, humans can move through the wilderness relatively safely, and even clean up the weirdos around gathering places.
Then she abandoned her stupid ideas and struggled to survive in the wilderness for more than ten years. She had never seen a monster with power and reason.
Reason and strength, to gain one of them is to lose the other.
Ophelia is the only weirdo with reason she has ever seen, and Andrea can barely be counted among them.
There is also Anna who Lu Li is looking for.
After a long and boring journey, towards the afternoon, the silhouette of Himfast appeared in the distance.
Now there is only an empty shell left there.
The pollution of the Deep Sea God has poisoned this sacrificial land. There may still be weird people and survivors who are not afraid of death, but they are never as popular as Belfast.
"Why do you think Anna is here?"
Catalina frowned.
She would rather face the empty wilderness than step into a city destroyed by weirdness.
"This is her former home." Lu Li replied.
The quiet black eyes looked past the log city wall surrounding Himfast and the silent streets blocked by the city wall, staring at the towering spire of the church in the west of the city.
