The farther south they went, the stronger the air of civilization became.
Castles stood across the vast plains, where peasants farmed, nobles governed, and knights waged war.
Hunger, death, sickness, crime.
From what they saw along the way, those four words were enough to encompass the vast majority of the Western world.
Jiang Yang neither took part nor interfered.
Last time, he had traveled overland, coming through Constantinople.
This time, Jiang Yang decided to take the sea route.
Eventually, they passed through dozens of kingdoms and duchies, large and small, and arrived in Venice on the coast of the Mediterranean Sea, where they boarded a ship back to Jerusalem.
Venice was flourishing at the time, and it was a city dominated by merchants.
As a result, the Holy See's influence was relatively weak.
Large numbers of dark creatures, witches, and witchers lived here.
During just the night they spent resting at an inn in Venice,
Jiang Yang's keen senses detected at least three bouts of fighting between dark supernatural creatures.
Although these fellows all opposed the Holy See, they were hardly united among themselves.
Otherwise, with the Holy See's supernatural power having actually declined along with the concentration of supernatural energy in the world, it might not have been able to suppress these fellows who wielded supernatural abilities through their bloodlines.
But overall, the world's supernatural powers and factions were all slowly weakening.
Perhaps in another few centuries,
these dark creatures, too, would retreat into the corners of the world, clinging to their last breaths.
Early the next morning,
Jiang Yang and Ated boarded the ship.
They stood on deck, admiring the beautiful scenery of the Mediterranean Sea.
The sea stretched vast and boundless, and there was no telling how many supernatural creatures lived within it.
It was mysterious and