The night hung heavy, and the shabby, filthy streets of the slums were shrouded in thick darkness. The dim light occasionally spilling from some ramshackle dwelling did nothing to dispel the night; instead, it made the place seem even more lifeless.
Silence reigned in every direction. Apart from the occasional bark or two, this dead and dreary place seemed to have been forgotten by the world.
Ash Rat continued weaving through the slum's tangled, spiderweb-like alleys, leading Hao Ren and Lily deeper into its depths.
Hao Ren felt as though he were walking through a gigantic nest, advancing toward the most chaotic and filthy core of it. The medieval city, built without any planning, was like a bloated, diseased organ. Its outer reaches had swollen to an astonishing size, but inside, its oldest and most fundamental parts had begun to rot and decay. The city's once-prosperous districts had turned into slums one after another, choked and occupied by garbage, sewage, rats, and homeless beggars. These areas could bring the city no vitality or vigor, yet they could not be severed from it either. The rulers were intoxicated by sensual pleasures and superficial glory, blinded by the ideological repression and bloody thrill brought by the witch hunts, to the point that they had completely failed to notice—or, even if they had noticed, were powerless to stop—the city's decline.
The Mythical Era had ended, and control of the world had finally returned to its native inhabitants. Yet these young natives were nowhere near ready to usher in a new age. Faced with this sudden upheaval, humanity chose temporary numbness, using ignorance and superstition to protect its minds. But sooner or later, the Renaissance and the Industrial Revolution would bring two great baptisms, burning away these bloated, rotten cities and the gangrenous sores