Chapter 1450: Chapter 232: Rise and Fall Through the Ages (Part 1)
[Especially at night, so many intersections.]
[So places are really broken, and there’s no light. I’m afraid to go, so I have to take a detour, and then I get lost…]
[I need to get the dicine to Dad quickly.]
The little girl spoke a bit disjointedly, with a lot of leaps in her thoughts, but Nian Quan understood her and responded to each point. During this process, Nian Quan learned why the little girl couldn’t speak.
[One year, the fog was particularly thick, and the purification array at ho failed. Breathing felt like it was burning.]
[Mom made a mask for , but it didn’t help much. When I woke up, I couldn’t speak anymore.]
Although she didn’t say much, Nian Quan already knew when it happened. It was caused by the fiendish qi cloud descending due to changes in the earth vein in the North Lower City District. For those with enough magic artifacts, it wasn’t a big threat, but for the residents in the poor districts who couldn’t afford ho arrays and purification magical artifacts…
Ah… this is really…
A hard-to-express sorrow mixed with a slow-rising comfort surged through Nian Quan’s heart… Under his mother’s protection, he was happy.
Even though life was hard, it didn’t reach the point where, just because one couldn’t afford a rain cloak, their respiratory tract would be corroded by the fiendish qi acid mist, and such a young child would lose their ability to speak.
But aside from the sorrow, he also knew.
Even if An Jing hadn’t arrived, causing massive changes in the entire Tianyuan Realm, with just his own resources, healing a child would be quite easy.
What’s more, now, the entire Tianyuan Realm is visibly on the path to recovery… Big changes are coming to the conglorate, the corporate system, the safe zone system, and the upper and lower city district systems; everything is going to change.
Healing a child, with the technology of the Tianyuan Realm, is a trivial matter, sothing unnoticed in the past, but now people care.
“You will get better.”
As Nian Quan chatted with the child, the little girl, who seed to rarely talk to anyone and was initially a bit scared, now began to chatter away to Nian Quan, sharing stories about her experiences at school, the beautiful stones she saw in the garden, the stickers she collected, and her friends who looked after her…
A large and a small figure quietly walked under the moonlight, silent yet lively.
Half an hour later, guided by the coordinates given by the girl, Nian Quan and she arrived at the edge of a slum area in a dilapidated housing estate. It had been converted from half-finished buildings, lacking any proper spirit qi network or fiendish qi protection asures. The entire estate was like a patchwork quilt, with all kinds of tin plates and colorful bricks forming its exterior, and peeling paint and wall coverings everywhere.
Yet even in such an estate, it is now filled with pure spirit qi. In tents, in half-converted containers, in semi-collapsed buildings, and in makeshift reinforced small buildings, cultivators are greedily absorbing spirit qi, practicing their cultivation, and healing their bodies.
[There it is! Thank you, big brother!]
The little girl pointed at a small building, and Nian Quan looked up, noticing that this building was obviously an unfinished structure, with many unsealed windows, but so floors were boarded up with planks and iron bars.
The little girl seed eager to go upstairs by herself; she had recovered so strength and could already drag the big package. But Nian Quan shook his head: “I’ll go up with you.”
As he said this, he lifted her up with the package, slowly ascending the building.
The floors were divided into many small sections by various tin plates, railings, and discarded tal sheets, likely serving as the living quarters for different holess people or the poor. With a glance, Nian Quan saw many cultivators in ditation and seclusion.
In so of the unoccupied shacks, one could see makeshift water heaters and blankets that were worn out but still sowhat clean. So cardboard boxes were lined with old clothes, appearing to be a simple sleeping bag, and next to it was a… chanical alarm clock?
Upon closer inspection, Nian Quan discovered it was a tir modified from a dismantled ti bomb, and the inhabitant seed to be a person smuggled from a safe zone without a chip, maybe even from the Wilderness! But this was no surprise; most of those living in the slums were of this type.
However, most areas were already unoccupied. Many of the divided small compartnts had been abandoned for so ti, covered in dust. So small items left untidy were scattered all over the place, unwashed dishes, and a few bottles and jars, possibly seasonings, had toppled over. Their contents had been blown away, carried off by the wind.
Just like their owners.
The war with the Demon Nation claid the lives of so many people, and those who once strived to live here could never return to their simple hos again.
——Are these people just disappearing like this, never to be rembered?
Nian Quan stood still and watched the empty shacks, remaining silent for a long ti.
He never feared death, but for so reason, thinking about this world, wherein so people would die without cause, be forgotten without reason, gone without a trace or shadow…
He felt angry.
It wasn’t grief, wasn’t sorrow, wasn’t regret, wasn’t those emotions.
Maybe this isn’t anger, not even anger, much less helplessness, but a kind of… a kind of… a dissatisfaction with this ‘natural order,’ an extre ‘rebellion’ against such ‘natural order.’
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