Chapter 1 As Expected

As expected, Wendell was extremely surprised when he saw the spherical aircraft. Clearly, this advanced space-atmosphere shuttle was beyond his expectations. However, the old man quickly recovered from his surprise. He only said thoughtfully, "Twilight City also has machines that can fly in the sky, but I have never seen anything like this… Asgard is the land of ancient gods. I suppose this is something you inherited from ancient times?"

"Twilight City also has aircraft?" Hao Ren was surprised on another level. "I'm really curious about your society."

Wendell boarded the spherical aircraft with the others. Under the control of Anthony and the guidance of Vivian, the aircraft flew towards another Rainbow Bridge. As the end of the earth gradually appeared in the distance, the huge tentacle clusters also came into view. The First Born's tentacles were the only things still surviving in this purgatory. Apart from these tentacles, Vanaheim was devoid of life.

Looking at this environment, it was hard for everyone to imagine how Wendell's people had survived.

"Tell us about Twilight City," Nangong Wuyue asked Wendell curiously (she had turned into human form at this time). "What kind of place is it? And how did you survive after the collapse of heaven and earth?"

"The collapse of heaven and earth…" Wendell repeated the words in a low, hoarse voice. "That war more than two thousand years ago. You all know about that disaster—I don't know how much history Asgard has preserved, but in Twilight City, there are many ancient books recording what happened back then, and many scholars specializing in these things: after all, being trapped behind the barrier, they have nothing else to study. As far as I know, the war of the gods broke the balance of the world, and Nidhogg's gnawing made the great World Tree extremely weak. So the Outer Gods took advantage of the situation and set the world ablaze. The fire burned for three years without ceasing, until it burned out all the light in the entire universe. Thus, the long night descended, and in the darkness there was only a scorching heat. Midgard was also shrouded in a scorching heat, and in just a few days, the population was reduced to less than ten percent. Seeing that all life in the world was about to be destroyed, a Gu Sheng (ancient sage) suddenly appeared among the people. This Gu Sheng was called the 'Traveler.' He awakened some great power sleeping deep in the earth, and used the power of the earth to form a barrier, blocking the poison and hellfire in the long night. This barrier is Twilight City.

"Twilight City is not a city to us, but a kingdom, although smaller than any country in ancient times, but we still survived in it and continued for more than two thousand years. Twilight City was originally formed by connecting several city-states—the barrier's coverage limit was that large, and all places outside the city-states were destroyed—and as time went on, we continued to build our homes within the barrier. Now there is not an inch of spare land in Twilight City. My biggest impression of it is that it is crowded, crowded and old, with buildings from all eras, from a thousand years ago to a hundred years ago, all crowded together in a chaotic manner. The air is full of dust, the whistles of steam workshops often sound in the middle of the night, the large gears creak, and locomotives sometimes rumble through the central line of Twilight City, bringing vibrations that almost make people suspect that the entire city will be shaken down by it. The clothes hanging outside the street-facing windows are often blown off by the strange wind that passes through the district—falling all the way into the city's oldest abyss. That city was built too big, too high, too old. Even the city's builders and planners don't know what the structure is under those layers of houses. I don't know even more. I only know that our city is like a nest stacked layer upon layer, stacked almost to the point of touching the sky's barrier. Every time I open my eyes, I feel like that dim yellow sky is about to collapse."

Lily muttered to herself, "Sounds very unsafe."

"Yes, very unsafe, but few people think so," Wendell grumbled. "Everyone is used to living there, and no one thinks there's anything wrong with such a city. Anyway, everything seems stable at the moment. But those who study ancient books and research machines don't think so. We know that Twilight City is limited, and the city's lifespan is even more limited. The world has been extinguished for more than two thousand years, and we have survived on a bit of embers for too long. Once this bit of embers is also extinguished, it's over."

"So the 'Seekers of Light' appeared?" Vivian asked curiously.

Wendell nodded gently. "There's that reason."

Since the day Twilight City was built, people have always remembered the fact that the outside world has been destroyed by fire—they fear the dark long night outside, fear that the light in the city will eventually be extinguished one day, and fear that the entire world will forever sink like this. Fear gave birth to courage, and so the Seekers of Light were born. These brave, curious, and restless people are the eyes of Twilight City. They carry the blessings and expectations of others, bravely venture into the darkness, and search for other lights in the ruins of the world, such as another Twilight City, or a paradise that has not yet been burned by the hellfire, or...

The sign of dawn's arrival.

"Some scholars believe that the long night will eventually end," Wendell said slowly. "The World Tree Yggdrasil has not died. It is only healing. When those sacred branches complete their transformation, this universe will be re-lit. That is the dawn after the long night, and the dawn will begin first from the land of the dead, Niflheim and Nibelungen. An important mission of the Seekers of Light is to look for signs of the dawn's arrival, but to be honest… not many people hold this hope, including the Seekers of Light themselves. Most are just looking for another Twilight City."

Speaking of this, Wendell sighed, "But even so, there are fewer and fewer Seekers of Light, and fewer and fewer people support us. In the past, Seekers of Light had a lofty status and were regarded as warriors who challenged the long night. Our predecessors were once engraved on the bottommost cornerstone of Twilight City, but slowly, the Seekers of Light's journey became an incomprehensible act of recklessness, because batch after batch of people ventured into the darkness, eventually either being swallowed by the long night or returning insane. Very few people can bring anything back from the night—supporting such a costly team is a heavy burden for Twilight City. The headquarters of the Seekers of Light was originally the most magnificent building in the city, but now it has become a dark alley area in the city's lower sewers…"

The old man's voice was low, and he eventually ended the topic with a lack of interest, "Forget it, I won't talk about these things."

"To be honest, this is an inevitable choice for a group," Galazuriel shrugged. "It can't even be said to be ignorance. For the survival of the group, most intelligent races will be overly cautious. Observers will think that this caution is missing opportunities, but in most cases, this can extend the survival time in desperation."

Wendell looked at Galazuriel with a strange expression, feeling that the other party's detached way of speaking was weird—but this was exactly the most pertinent and sincere evaluation made by an inspector who was used to seeing the rise and fall of civilizations.

Due to Galazuriel's evaluation, the second half of the journey became dull.

And in this dull journey, Hao Ren and the others saw the real situation of the Yggdrasil space chain after Ragnarok.

It was worse than imagined.

The scene seen in Asgard before gave Hao Ren a wrong first impression. He thought that the situation in the Nine Realms after Ragnarok was not so tragic, but after he began to continuously delve into these layers of different spaces, he realized how destructive a big bang running through nine layers of space was. Just like a warhead entering a target will produce wounds inside the target that are far more terrifying than the surface, the beams of the demon hunters' beam cannons and the destruction caused by the magic energy explosion also produced a similar effect. The deep spaces of the Nine Realms were extremely severely devastated.

Vanaheim had become a wasteland full of poisonous gas and radiation; Svartalfheim had been completely torn apart, and the entire continent was floating in a void in two halves, with only those tentacles running through the continent connecting the broken land together; Alfheim was in constant turmoil, and a storm called "Madness" raged in the darkness. This storm absorbed the magic power in the space and continued to operate for two thousand years, and now it has almost completely ground everything on the continent into powder…

They also saw the land of the giants, Jotunheim, which was a desolate desert, silent, quiet, and stagnant there for thousands of years, driving people crazy. The heat waves surged from the ruins of the giant cities, and they were still roasting that land to this day.

However, compared to Muspelheim, where two-thirds of the continent was covered by lava lakes, Jotunheim was nothing.

All these kingdoms had one thing in common, and that was that they were shrouded in darkness.

Smoke and clouds covered the sky, and the turmoil of magic energy destroyed the sources of light in each kingdom. Seeing the situation in those kingdoms, Hao Ren understood why Wendell's people called the era after Ragnarok the "Long Night."

Just as the words implied, after the end of the world, night fell, and eight of the nine kingdoms were ruled by darkness. In that darkness, only the embers of the apocalypse were emitting a faint light, scorching and deadly. The survivors hiding under the Twilight Barrier trembled with fear. Anyone who dared to take a step into the darkness could be called a warrior, let alone those Seekers of Light who dared to travel through the Nine Realms.