At Kalasios's cry of shock, Hao Ren and Lily were instantly dumbfounded. Lily was the sort who couldn't keep words bottled up, and she immediately exclaimed in a low voice, "What did you say? City of Divine Favor?"
"By the Goddess's name, I absolutely couldn't have mistaken it." Kalasios lowered his voice, his face pale with shock. It took him a full half-minute to recover enough to speak again. "I was sent to the monastery in the City of Divine Favor when I was a child. I lived in this city for decades, and I knew every one of its walls and towers by heart... That's the Cathedral District. That's Radiant Long Street. Over there... is the monastery where I first trained..."
"It looks like it went through a devastating event..." Hao Ren frowned. "Nearly a third of the city has been destroyed, and the innermost central district suffered the worst damage. Look over there. Those buildings all show signs of violent shaking and extreme heat."
In fact, no reminder from Hao Ren was necessary. Everyone present could see it. Yet more shocking and confusing than the ruined City of Divine Favor was this: Why was the city here? Why had a city that should have existed in the real world appeared in the old world within a nightmare?!
Everyone couldn't help recalling the situation around Sacred Mount Asuman in the real world—the scorching craters and Great Rift that surrounded the sacred mountain and covered the entire ruins of the City of Divine Favor. Hao Ren suddenly remembered a detail: There had truly seemed to be no architectural remains around those craters. Although everyone had assumed that a meteor explosion had destroyed the entire city, no matter how powerful the explosion, could it really have caused all the buildings to