Over the next few days,
Lin Gui felt like he had dreamed his way back to his college finals week from his previous life.
That same despair of being buried under papers and exams, with days and nights flipped upside down and his soul practically leaving his body, descended upon him once more.
His daily routine became bizarrely orderly.
To accommodate these “special clients,” the interior of the post office had been renovated by the ghostly artisans.
In front of the counter, several slightly grooved, smoothly polished stone tracks had been installed.
At this moment, a glass bead rolled along one of the tracks with a soft clack-clack, stopping right at the edge of the counter.
Lin Gui sighed and put down the pen in his hand, which had grown hot from writing.
A faint gray light flickered in his eyes as he activated the 【Eyes of the Netherworld】.
In front of the counter, the ghost of a middle-aged man wearing tattered work clothes and a sorrowful expression slowly materialized.
“Th-Thank you, Master Mage,” he thanked timidly, his soul form somewhat unstable.
“Where is it going? To whom? What do you want to say in the letter?”
Lin Gui picked up a fresh sheet of paper and a pen, his tone practiced, almost numb.
“Send it to... Ironforge in the north, the Third Forge District of the outer city, to my wife, Tracy.”
“I should have been in Ironforge that day.”
“But a noble lord in Blackwater City wanted to build a grand manor.”
“For this job, the guild spent a fortune to hire a Gold Rank adventure group to escort me and the other workers.”
“We came all the way here from Ironforge.”
“But who could have known that the Dark Tide would come.”
“She and I have been separated for over a decade now.”
“If you find her, Master Mage...”
“Just tell her... tell her I'm sorry.”
“I shouldn't have taken this job so far from home just out of spite back then.”
“Tell her that under the third brick from the left beneath the bed, I hid three silver coins. They were meant for her to buy a new dress.”
“And... tell her not to wait for me anymore. If she meets a good man, she should marry him.”
“Uh... though if she's turned into a ghost too, I guess she can't really marry anyone, haha. Cough, cough.”
“My apologies, Master Mage. It's been too long since I've spoken to a living person.”
“So I might be rambling a bit.”
“In short, if she's still alive—ah, no, if she's dead... wait, that's not right.”
“Anyway, please tell her for me.”
“I love her.”
He spoke very slowly, and Lin Gui wrote very quickly.
Once finished, Lin Gui read it aloud to verify.
The male ghost nodded, his figure slowly fading away as his glass bead silently rolled toward the collection track on the side.
It then slid down from the counter, rolling along the tracks until it finally left the post office.
Lin Gui sealed the completed letter, tossed it into a nearby basket, and tapped the bell at his side.
“Ding.”
As the crisp chime rang out,
the next glass bead immediately rolled onto the track with a soft rattle.
Over and over again.
During the day, he received these spirits who were obsessed with delivering their final words.
At night, with Eve's assistance and the help of several cultivator ghosts, he organized, sorted, and sealed the backlog of letters.
The operations of the Blackwater City post office moved forward slowly in this absurd, silent, yet busy rhythm.
Meanwhile, on Lin Gui's system panel, the number of pending letters to be sent was climbing at a dizzying, frantic pace.
The process was tedious, but it was far from boring.
Lin Gui would often pause his pen and listen quietly.
He listened to the fragments of stories that had finally found their voice after more than a decade.
What truly touched him was not just the longing written between the lines,
but rather the event that had caused this longing—the very disaster that had turned these residents into what they were today.
The Dark Tide known as “The Silent End.”
Akara's Twelfth Dark Tide—The Silent End.
Through the narrations of one spirit after another, the despair of that day gradually pieced itself together.
“...It was as if a hole had torn open in the sky, but there was no sound.”
A ghost who had once been a teahouse owner murmured.
“First came the silence—a terrifying silence. And then, the mist poured in.”
“It wasn't ordinary mist... it was alive. It devoured things.”
“The city descended into utter chaos!” a young Defense Force spirit said, his voice filled with agitation.
“The wealthy masters and noble lords were pushing onto the transport fleet's airships like madmen!”
“A single seat... a hundred thousand gold coins! Later on... even for a million, no one would sell!”
“They only took their own families, abandoning even their stewards and servants...”
“I was holding my baby, trying to squeeze onto the North Wind caravan's land-ship...”
A spirit who looked like a mother wept softly.
“They beat my hands with clubs... and my baby cried...”
“When the hatch closed, I saw a noble lady inside, cradling a dog in her arms...”
Her voice gradually faded, dissolving into quiet sobs.
“The magic towers lit up for a brief moment, and then they all went dark.”
An elderly mage ghost said softly.
“The Legendary mages tried to erect a barrier... but the moment it rose, it shattered like glass.”
“He plummeted from the top of the tower, coughing up blood... and never stood up again.”
“As for the mages remaining on the tower, they looked as if they had seen some sort of monster. They were literally scared to death right then and there.”
“Run? Where could we run?”
A lame old artisan gave a bitter smile.
“There was mist on all sides. The city gates? They were packed with people. More were trampled to death than were swallowed by the mist.”
“I hid in the cellar... and when I woke up, I was like this.”
Lin Gui recorded it all in silence.
His pen rustled softly as it swept across the paper.
He could almost see how that once-bustling hub of a city-state had plunged into madness and despair in an instant.
He saw the privileged paving their way to survival with gold, abandoning the vast majority to the spreading, dead silence.
He saw magic and power proving utterly defenseless before a higher-tier existence.
He saw ordinary lives, insignificant as dust, crushed so swiftly that they could not even let out a cry.
This was no natural disaster.
This was a naked, apocalyptic filtration based on class, resources, and power.
And those left behind after this filtration were these thousands of spirits wandering the ruins, lacking even the strength to hold a pen.
Their letters were not merely expressions of longing.
They were accusations.
They were the final, unuttered cries of despair.
Ironically,
those who ultimately “survived”...
were actually these ordinary residents who had been abandoned in the city, powerless to escape.
Meanwhile, those who had relied on power, wealth, and strength to board the escape vehicles first—
“They all turned into the things wandering outside,”
said a veteran spirit who had been a city gate guard in life, his tone resolute.
“Those ‘Soulless Demons’... they’re what they became.”
The first time Lin Gui heard this, his pen paused, and he froze on the spot.
He had assumed this was merely a delusion or rumor born of despair.
Regarding the origin of demons, academia indeed held a hypothesis of “transformation from devoured living beings.”
But the numbers did not add up at all.
The total population of living beings in the Golden Age was barely over three billion, while the current number of wild demons was conservatively estimated to be in the tens of billions.
How was that possible?
Yet, there was more than one “eyewitness.”
“I saw it with my own eyes!”
a ghost who had once been a roof repairer gestured excitedly.
“The luxurious airship of the northern ‘Silver Wing’ Chamber of Commerce had barely flown three miles past the city walls!”
“It was dragged down by an invisible ‘hand’ stretching out from the gray mist!”
“The airship shattered. The people crawling out from inside... their bodies began to melt and stretch...”
“And finally, they turned into floating, faceless shadows!”
“Then they vanished!!”
His voice was trembling.
“Yes! It was the same at the West Gate!”
a female spirit chimed in, her tone urgent.
“Baron Rodel and his family, carrying over a dozen wagons of treasure, tried to use their knight order to clear a path and break out.”
“The moment they entered the mist, the people, horses, and wagons... all ‘melted’ like wax.”
“And then... from that puddle of muck, several translucent monsters wielding swords and blades stood up...”
“They turned right back around and began slaughtering the people escaping through the city gates...”
More and more spirits joined the narration.
Every single detail corroborated the next.
They had witnessed it with their own eyes:
the crash of the airships escaping the city walls, the dissipation of the convoys.
They had seen how the people inside twisted and mutated within the mist, ultimately turning into mindless spectral demons driven only by hunting instincts.
And the very first move of these newborn demons was often...
to turn around and pounce on their compatriots who were escaping Blackwater City.
Yet strangely, not a single demon ever crawled back into the city.
Rate on N.U.
