Blackwater City, West District Three, the seventh house in Bluestone Alley.
To the right of the door, a copper mailbox.
This was the address written on the letter.
Lin Gui sat sideways on his staff, gliding low over the ruins and broken walls.
Eve sat quietly behind him, her hands still gently gripping the hem of his robe.
Blackwater City had once been a bustling city-state. Though now in ruins, the skeletal layout of the streets remained faintly discernible.
Many directional landmarks still had barely legible words.
Checking the address on the envelope, Lin Gui began searching street by street along the faded landmarks.
With his staff hovering barely a meter off the ground, Lin Gui rode through the massive city-state of Blackwater City.
This search ended up taking him nearly two hours.
In terms of size, Blackwater City was almost four times larger than the Carter Royal Capital.
After all, the borderlands were not famous because of the Carter Royal Capital.
In fact, the Blackwater Corridor was named precisely because of Blackwater City.
Its unique geographical advantages meant it could never be ordinary.
It bordered the Dwarven Royal City to the north and the Elven Forest to the east.
To the west was the sea, forming a natural harbor.
It was truly the hub of hubs.
Unfortunately, it encountered the Dark Tide.
In the end, this grand city-state, which once ranked among the top five most prosperous on the Akara Continent, was crushed.
It had become a dead city under the crushing weight of the Dark Tide.
After searching for a long time, Lin Gui finally located West District Three in the southwest.
A residential area for commoners.
Now, nothing remained but collapsed houses, flagstone paths overgrown with weeds, and an all-pervading, deathly silence.
The staff navigated nimbly through the narrow alleys.
Lin Gui's gaze swept over rusted, warped, or completely missing doorways.
He was searching for the “copper mailbox” that might very well no longer exist.
“A letter to be delivered here in Blackwater City?”
Eve leaned forward slightly, her voice coming from right behind his ear.
Eve knew where most of Avalon's letters were addressed.
She did not recall any letter destined for Blackwater City.
Lin Gui nodded, his eyes still scanning below.
“Yeah. It appeared on the counter right when I went to the treehouse to find you guys.”
Eve thought for a moment, then came to a sudden realization.
“Ah~ The one you were planning to ‘peek’ at back then?”
The staff suddenly wobbled violently!
Lin Gui stumbled, barely managing not to fall off.
He steadied himself and retorted seriously,
“That wasn't peeking!”
Eve tilted her head, a hint of playfulness flashing in her purple eyes.
“Then was it... looking at it ‘brazenly’?”
Lin Gui knew the Holy Saintess was teasing him on purpose again.
He paused, then suddenly smiled and said without looking back,
“That's right.”
“Just like how you stood ‘brazenly’ to the side, Eve, ‘watching’ the entire time while Theia and I were getting intimate.”
Perhaps the Holy Saintess lacked experience in this department.
It made Lin Gui feel like she was a bit too much of a third wheel sometimes.
When encountering something like that, shouldn't she have blushed and gone outside to keep watch?
Instead, Eve had just stood right there, covering her eyes with her hands.
Yet the gaps between her fingers and her prominent purple eyes had long since betrayed her self-deception.
What was even more bizarre was that, with her best friend right next to them, Theia...
...had actually used brute force to do that to him...
Thinking back, he really didn't know what to say about those two.
Was their friendship so deep that they didn't mind, or did they already view each other as family?
As soon as Lin Gui finished speaking,
“...”
The space behind him fell instantly silent.
Right after, Lin Gui felt it.
The hands that had been gently resting on his waist suddenly let go as if they had been burned.
Eve's fair cheeks flushed bright red at a speed visible to the naked eye.
Even the tips of her ears were tinged with a delicate pink.
The scene from this morning had simply been too shocking for her pure heart.
When she was a child, she hadn't felt much when listening to the nuns talk about impurity.
But now that she had witnessed it with her own eyes...
Eve instinctively let go and leaned back slightly.
As if she was afraid the man in front of her would suddenly pounce like a “wolf”...
...or rather, like Theia did...
“I... I did not! I wasn't peeking!”
She protested in a small voice, though she lacked any real conviction.
Lin Gui smiled silently, choosing not to tease her further.
The staff descended once more.
He narrowed his eyes and peered deep into the alley ahead.
Next to a half-collapsed wooden door,
a rusty, yet still faintly recognizable...
copper mailbox
was hanging quietly on the right side of the crooked doorframe.
Lin Gui did not land immediately.
He maneuvered his staff and slowly flew a circle around the house.
The house was low-slung, with most of its roof collapsed and walls webbed with cracks.
Weeds grew out of the window frames and brick crevices, reaching waist-high.
Circling back to the main entrance, he found a lopsided doorplate.
The wood had long since rotted, and the numbers on it were blurred beyond recognition.
However, the street sign lay fallen on the ground, with the words “Bluestone Alley” still barely visible.
The address should be correct.
Lin Gui lowered his staff and came to a stop before the half-collapsed wooden door.
He raised his hand and lightly rapped on the wooden door with his knuckles.
“Knock.”
Just that single tap.
The door groaned under the strain, and then—
“Crash!”
The entire door collapsed inward, kicking up a massive cloud of ancient dust.
Lin Gui silently raised his hand, using 【Wind Guiding】 to sweep the dust and smoke aside.
The interior of the house was laid bare.
Empty and ruined.
The roof beams hung askew, and piles of broken tiles and dirt littered the floor.
Cobwebs clung to the corners. There was no furniture or any sign of life.
“It seems we've looked in the wrong place.”
Eve's voice drifted over from a distance behind him.
She pointed to the near-rotted remains of a wooden table inside, completely covered in dust.
“This place clearly hasn't been inhabited for a long time.”
“If no one lives here, who is the letter for? And how will they sign for it?”
Lin Gui was also quite puzzled.
He had assumed that perhaps a few survivors were still hiding within the ruins of Blackwater City.
But flying all this way, they hadn't seen a single soul besides themselves.
Even the church where the bounty hunters had previously gathered was now completely empty.
Rather than that, Lin Gui suddenly noticed something else.
He turned to look at Eve.
She was standing by a broken wall a good twenty meters away from him.
“...” Lin Gui couldn't help but complain. “Why are you standing so far away from me?”
Eve replied with a solemn face,
“This is a safe, respectful distance that should be afforded to a beautiful woman.”
Lin Gui rolled his eyes.
“At this distance, if anything happens, it'll be hard for me to rush over and protect you.”
Hearing this, Eve smiled mischievously.
“Perhaps... it should be me protecting you, little mage.”
Lin Gui: “...”
“So, just because my rank is lower than yours, I have to be called ‘little mage’?”
Lin Gui shook his head helplessly.
This nickname was fast becoming his exclusive moniker.
Still, Eve was right just now; there were no signs of life here.
He had likely come to the wrong place.
The system's requirement was to “deliver it into the hands of the recipient.”
Since the recipient was a “person,” they had to be alive.
But there was no living person here.
Lin Gui could only maneuver his staff, preparing to search nearby.
Just then—
“Thud.”
A dull, soft sound
abruptly echoed from deep inside the deathly silent house.
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