Apart from a few designated night market streets, Ice Hammer City was quiet at night. After all, the nights were even colder than the days. Other than a handful of night watchmen struggling to make a living or drunken patrons, most residents preferred to stay in homes warmed by burning fireplaces.
Early the next morning, Ivette left the spring-like warmth of Snow Smoke Manor. Following the stone-paved road that had been cleared but was still covered in a thin layer of frost, she arrived at a street in Ice Hammer City known as Old Book Street.
Bookstores lined nearly both sides of the entire street. Their tall wooden signs swayed gently in the cold wind, creaking softly.
Though it was still early, quite a few pedestrians had already appeared on the street. They moved between the bookstores, most of them holding romance novels or adventure stories printed on rough paper. Perhaps they read them themselves, or perhaps they had someone else read to them.
In any case, in this era where cultural entertainment was scarce, books were one of the more important forms of entertainment for most people.
However, Ivette had not come here to buy entertainment novels. She had already saved some novels in her Soul Brain to pass the time during her leisure hours—some of them were written by Abera, but she was no longer the protagonist, so Ivette could at least appreciate them a little.
Her true purpose was to look up information. The depths of the Snowfields were a vast and mysterious region. Rumor had it that beneath the frozen earth lay numerous ruins of the Ultra-Ancient Civilization, along with monsters guarding them. Without doing her homework beforehand, she might pass right over a ruin without even realizing it.
After making a few simple inquiries, she