Blackwater City, West District Three, No. 7, Bluestone Alley.
On the right side of the door, a copper mailbox.
This was the address written on the letter.
Lin Gui sat sideways on his staff, gliding at a low altitude over expanses of broken walls and ruins.
Eve sat quietly behind him, her hands still lightly clutching the hem of his mage robes.
Blackwater City had once been a prosperous city-state; though it was now a wasteland, the skeleton of its districts was still faintly discernible.
Many directional landmarks still bore characters that could be barely recognized.
Comparing the address on the envelope, Lin Gui followed the blurry landmarks and began a street-by-street search.
The staff was no more than a meter off the ground as Lin Gui rode it through the massive city-state of Blackwater City.
And this search took him a full two hours.
In terms of size, Blackwater City was nearly four times larger than Carter Royal Capital.
After all, the borderlands were not famous because of the Carter Royal Capital.
The region of the Blackwater Corridor was named such precisely because of Blackwater City.
Its unique regional advantages meant that it could never have been ordinary.
It joined the Dwarven Royal City to the north and the Elven Forest to the east.
To the west, it bordered the sea and served as a natural seaport.
One could say it was a hub among hubs.
Unfortunately, it had encountered the Dark Tide.
In the end, this grand city-state, which had once ranked among the top five in the entire Akara Continent, became a dead city under the crushing weight of the Dark Tide.
After searching for a long time, Lin Gui finally found West District Three in the southwest.
It was a former commoner settlement.
Now, all that remained were collapsed houses, stone-paved roads overgrown with weeds, and an omnipresent deathly silence.
The staff skillfully threaded through the narrow alleyways.
Lin Gui’s gaze swept across one doorway after another—some rusted, some deformed, and some that had simply vanished.
He was looking for that “copper mailbox” which might likewise no longer exist.
“Is there a letter to be delivered here in Blackwater City?”
Eve leaned forward slightly, her voice coming from behind his ear.
Eve knew where most of Avalon's letters were sent.
She didn't remember any being sent to Blackwater City.
Lin Gui nodded, his eyes still scanning the ground below.
“Yeah. It appeared on the counter right when I went to the treehouse to find you guys.”
Eve thought for a moment before coming to a realization.
“Ah! You mean the one you were planning to ‘peek’ at back then?”
The staff suddenly wobbled!
Lin Gui stumbled and nearly fell off.
He steadied himself and refuted her seriously, “That wasn't peeking!”
Eve tilted her head, a hint of mischief flashing in her purple eyes. “Then it was… looking ‘boldly’?”
Lin Gui knew that the Saintess was deliberately teasing him again.
He paused, then suddenly smiled and said without looking back, “That’s right.”
“Just like how you, Eve, stood ‘boldly’ beside us at that time, ‘watching’ the whole scene of Theia and me getting intimate.”
Perhaps the Saintess was quite lacking in experience in this regard.
As a result, there were times when Lin Gui felt she was too much of a third wheel.
When encountering that kind of thing, shouldn't she have blushed and gone outside to keep watch?
Yet Eve had just stood there, even covering her eyes with her hands.
However, the gaps between her fingers and those prominent purple eyes had long ago exposed the fact that she was just playing at being oblivious.
The strangest thing was that even with her best friend right there, Theia had actually used her brute force to… do that to him…
Recalling it now really left him not knowing what to say about them.
Was it because their friendship was so deep that they didn't mind, or did they already consider each other family?
The moment Lin Gui’s words fell.
“…”
The space behind him went silent instantly.
Immediately after, Lin Gui felt it.
The hands that had been lightly encircling his waist suddenly let go as if they had been burned.
Eve’s fair cheeks turned a brilliant red at a speed visible to the naked eye.
Even the tips of her ears were dyed a light pink.
The scene from the morning had simply been too much of a shock to her pure heart.
When she was young, she hadn't felt much when listening to the sisters talk about being impure.
But once she witnessed it with her own eyes…
Eve subconsciously let go and leaned back slightly.
It was as if she were afraid that the person in front of her would suddenly pounce like a “wolf”…
To be precise, pounce just like Theia had…
“I… I didn't, I definitely wasn't peeking!”
She defended herself in a small voice, but her words lacked conviction.
Lin Gui smiled silently and didn't continue to tease her.
The staff lowered its altitude once more.
He squinted his eyes, looking deep into the alley ahead.
Beside a semi-collapsed wooden door.
A rusty yet still identifiable shape…
A copper mailbox.
It was hanging quietly on the right side of the slanted doorframe.
Lin Gui didn't land immediately.
He controlled the staff to slowly fly a circle around the house.
The building was low, with most of the roof collapsed and the walls covered in cracks.
Weeds grew from the window frames and the gaps in the bricks, some reaching as high as a person's waist.
Circling back to the front entrance, he found a slanted doorplate.
The wood had long since rotted, and the numbers on it were blurry and difficult to read.
However, the street sign for this road was lying on the ground, and the three characters for “Bluestone Alley” could vaguely be seen.
The address should be correct.
Lin Gui descended from the staff and arrived in front of the semi-collapsed wooden door.
He raised his hand and lightly rapped on the door panel with his knuckle.
Knock.
Just that one tap.
The door panel let out a groan as if it could no longer bear the weight, and then—
Crash!
The entire door collapsed inward, kicking up a massive cloud of ancient dust.
Lin Gui silently raised his hand, using a Wind Guiding spell to swirl the dust away to the side.
The scene inside the house was laid bare.
Empty and dilapidated.
The roof beams hung at an angle, and the floor was piled with broken tiles and soil.
Spiderwebs clung to the corners, and there were no signs of furniture or life.
“It looks like we found the wrong place.”
Eve’s voice came from some distance behind him.
She pointed at the remains of a wooden table inside that was completely covered in dust and nearly rotted away.
“Clearly, no one has lived here for a long time.”
“If no one lives here, who is the letter for? And who’s going to sign for it?”
Lin Gui was also quite puzzled.
He had thought that perhaps a few survivors were still hiding within the ruins of Blackwater City.
But during the flight here, they had seen no traces of humans besides themselves.
Even the cathedral where the bounty hunters had gathered previously was now completely empty.
Rather than that, Lin Gui suddenly noticed something else.
He turned his head to look at Eve.
She was standing by a broken wall at least twenty meters away from him.
“…” Lin Gui couldn't help but complain, “Why are you standing so far away from me?”
Eve said with a serious expression, “This is the safe and respectful distance a beautiful woman deserves.”
Lin Gui rolled his eyes. “At this distance, if something happens, it won't even be easy for me to protect you.”
Hearing this, Eve smiled mischievously. “Maybe… I should be the one protecting you, little mage.”
Lin Gui: “…”
“So, just because my rank is lower, I have to be called ‘little mage’?”
Lin Gui shook his head helplessly.
That address was becoming his exclusive nickname.
However, Eve was right; there were no signs of life here.
He had most likely found the wrong place.
The System’s requirement was to “deliver to the recipient’s hands.”
A recipient was a “person,” so they had to be alive.
But here, there were no living people.
Lin Gui could only control his staff, preparing to search nearby.
Right at that moment—
Thump.
A dull, soft sound.
Abruptly, it came from within the dead silent house.
Rate on N.U.
