The tome was quite thick, its surface heavily coated in dust.
Like the books in the church library, its pages were made from a tough, decay-resistant material.
Even so, its cover and spine were riddled with cracks and damage.
"This is..."
Chen Fan reached out and gently brushed the dust from the blank cover. "Something your parents left behind?"
Xu Huai looked at the tome in Chen Fan's hands with a complicated expression, then nodded before shaking his head.
"This tome was indeed left to me by my parents, but they weren't the ones who wrote it."
Chen Fan understood.
He gently opened the pages and carefully examined the heavy tome.
After flipping through it a few times, Chen Fan realized something.
"This is... a diary?"
"Yes." Xu Huai nodded slightly. "A diary written by a Resistance Army Member from outside Varrela City."
Outside Varrela City!
A Resistance Army Member!!
Those two sudden pieces of information hit Chen Fan like deep-sea torpedoes, leaving him dizzy.
"Wait, wait!"
Chen Fan raised a hand to interrupt Xu Huai.
"Wasn't the Wailing Wall supposed to cut off Varrela City from the outside world? Why would a book from outside the city be here? And the Resistance Army... what does that mean?"
"You should already know about the catastrophe that took place in the first year of the Varrela Calendar, right?"
"The nuclear war, right?"
Xu Huai froze for a moment. "You know about nuclear war too?!"
"Are you really a resident of Varrela City?"
He cast Chen Fan a doubtful look, then shook his head before Chen Fan could answer. "Forget it. That isn't important."
"The nuclear war in the first year of the Varrela Calendar caused many believers in the city to contract an illness called Nuclear Radiation."
"It was practically incurable."