21 July 2210, Thursday. Dark clouds covering the sky; I cannot feel any warmth from the sun.

Every time I wake from a dream I feel my body has gotten weaker. I know this is not my imagination, because these past days it has been harder every single time. I know it is me getting closer and closer to death.

Is it going to end… this broken, ruined life of mine that should have run dry long ago…

How much longer can I really hold on…

Death came and stood beside me when I was nine. In that sleep, I felt the world getting farther and farther away from me… I struggled and wept, using every scrap of strength I had to try to wake up… and at last I did. That day I woke much later than usual. Afterward there was a deep weakness all through my body, so weak I could not move even my little finger. But when I saw the worry and tears in my sister’s eyes replaced by joy, I suddenly felt that being alive is such a beautiful thing.

If I had gone quiet that day and not struggled, everything would have ended then, wouldn’t it? From that day on, death has beckoned to me every day, and I have lived in a struggle that hurts so much. Day after day, I have gotten used to it… but death’s footsteps are getting closer, and I do not know how much strength I have left to struggle with.

If it were not for my sister, I would have chosen long ago to sleep forever in a dream, with nothing holding me back and no more weeping. My sister says that after people die they all go to heaven, and that it is a place where there is never any pain, no lies, no bad people, and that Papa and Mama are up there watching over us quietly…

Is there really a beautiful heaven in this world?

But however beautiful heaven is, it cannot match my sister’s smile when it comes from her heart.

For my sister’s sake, I am willing to be in this hellish torment every day rather than answer heaven’s call.

Because my sister is the only reason I am alive…

So — before death takes me away, could I be allowed to see my sister find the happy home that belongs to her? Then I could smile and put down this broken body of mine, and go to heaven to look for Papa and Mama, and watch quietly from there, smiling, while she is happy forever.

My sister’s home…

My sister has gone into that marvelous game world called Fate again. Fate… every person has a fate that belongs to them alone. And my fate has walked hand in hand with pain and hardship since the day I was born. But I do not resent it, and I do not hate it… because of my sister. If it could make my sister happy, I would give everything I have in thanks to heaven.

Yesterday afternoon my sister came out of the game a little distracted. I asked her, and she gave me that familiar smile of hers and did not answer. In the evening, when we were talking, something she let slip finally made me understand why she had been the smallest bit unhappy… because when she said, “That big brother has been out of town these two days, I haven’t seen him,” there was something very faint but very plain in her smile, and it was sadness.

I have no right to enjoy love myself, but my heart tells me my sister must have come to like that big brother — only she has never known it. Because my sister, for my sake, has never been in love either, the same as me… no, that is not it. It is because there has never been a boy good enough for her, a boy she could like.

But that boy has finally appeared.

Is this heaven’s last charity and pity toward me?

To make the gentlest, most beautiful sister in the world come to like him this quickly, he must be a very fine, very kind boy who is very good to her.

And he has been helping her all along. My sister says he has done so much for her, that he fought a whole crowd of people to protect her, and gave her a great deal of encouragement that moved her and gave her more confidence… I still remember that from the very first day my sister spoke of him, the smile on her face grew a little more every day.

Truly, I am so grateful to that big brother… and I would so like to see him once, and say so many things to him.

If he could like my sister the way my sister likes him, and take care of her and protect her all her life, and give her a happy home to the end of it, what a perfect ending that would be…

This is the last… and greatest longing of my life. I will hold on. I will use everything I have to hold on, hold on until the day my sister has the happiness that belongs to her. Then I can go looking for heaven with a smile.

Two more pages of Chenxue’s diary had been filled with fine, close writing. Her world was very plain. There were only two people in it… herself, and her sister.

The muddled, sinking wish to sleep came over her again. She looked quietly at her sister lying beside her for a while, and at last could not push down that heavy drowsiness. The instant her eyes closed, her consciousness went with them.

Is there really a heaven in this world? That was the last thread of consciousness she had before she slept.

She was like a doll made of thin ice now, fragile enough to break at a touch.

The heat of the City of Heaven’s Sun was not the stifling kind that is hard to endure. It was a fierce, scorching, dry heat that nobody would want to bear in the first place — as if an enormous bonfire were blazing away right in front of you, roasting your body.

Because of the climate, the City of Heaven’s Sun plainly had far fewer townspeople than the City of Stars. There were only a scattered few NPC pedestrians strolling the streets. It hardly takes imagining: if this had been the first main city players were sent to, there is no telling how many of them it would have driven off.

Ye Tianxie was beyond question the first person ever to enter it… but unfortunately, no reward.

“Hello there, little brother. Could you tell me where the City Lord’s residence is?” Ye Tianxie caught hold of a small child who looked five or six and asked pleasantly.

“Papa says I can’t talk to strangers.” The little boy shot off like a puff of smoke.

Ye Tianxie: “……”

“Hello there, little sister. Could you tell me where the City Lord’s residence is?”

“Papa says I can’t talk to strangers.” The little girl shot off like a puff of smoke as well.

Ye Tianxie: “……”

“Hello there, uncle…”

“Mama says I can’t talk to strangers.” The uncle shot off like a puff of smoke too.

Ye Tianxie: “I…”

“Ma’am…”

“What? Ma’am? Take a good look — I’m only eighteen this year! What a rude man.”

Ye Tianxie’s jaw dropped, and he went on staring dumbly at the departing back of this bloated, gravel-voiced, jowly, deeply wrinkled, “eighteen-years-young” middle-aged-to-elderly woman.

…What exactly is the situation in this City of Heaven’s Sun?!

My Charm is all the way up at 32!! Do the people in this city just not care about Charm?

“Hello there, miss. How do I get to the City Lord’s residence?”

The middle-aged woman he had called “miss” broke into a smile that opened her old face like a flower, and along with a prompt tone — “Auntie Meng’s favorability toward you +10” — she pointed ahead of Ye Tianxie and said, “Oh my, you’re from out of town, aren’t you? You don’t see young men with manners like that these days… Go straight on from here, keep going until you reach that tallest clock tower and turn right, and you’ll see a building with a red roof soon enough. That’s the City Lord’s residence.”

“Oh… thank you.” Ye Tianxie waved and headed straight over.

“Mind you come and visit my family’s bun shop often from now on. I’ll give you twenty percent off.” Behind him, Auntie Meng’s warm voice rang out.

Talking always needs a bit of art to it, in whichever world you happen to be. Especially with women.

Following the old lady’s directions, Ye Tianxie soon spotted where the City Lord’s residence was. It was as imposing a building as the one in the City of Stars, and what caught the eye was that the roof really was a fiery red — which suited the blazing surroundings rather well.

“Hello. I’ve come from the City of Stars, and I have something very important that requires an audience with the City Lord… This is a letter of introduction from the City Lord of Heaven’s Star. Please be so good as to deliver it to your City Lord.” Ye Tianxie took out the letter he had been given.

The guard standing watch in front of the City Lord’s residence gave him a doubtful look, and showed his surprise that Ye Tianxie had come from the City of Stars. They had long since had word that a crowd of humans from another world had descended on the Lost Continent and were all gathered there, and that reaching the City of Heaven’s Sun ought properly to take at least half a year yet.

The guard hurried inside with the letter and came back very quickly, stepping aside and saying, “Guest from afar, the City Lord is waiting for you in his study.”

The thick walls of the building could not shut out that unbearable wave of heat. After too long in surroundings like these, Ye Tianxie found even his breathing came unevenly. When he met the City Lord of Heaven’s Sun, the man was fanning himself with a palm-leaf fan. This City Lord was nothing like the City Lord of Heaven’s Star, that dignified and rather lovable middle-aged fellow — this one had a beard all over his face, heavy jowls, and eyes like brass bells, opened preposterously wide. When Ye Tianxie saw him he almost thought he had crossed over into the Three Kingdoms by accident and run into the legendary Zhang Yide.

“So you’re that lad from the City of Stars… damn it all, what message did that fellow the City Lord of Heaven’s Star send you here to give me?” The City Lord of Heaven’s Sun turned his head to look at Ye Tianxie, and the thunderclap of a voice that came out of that enormous throat nearly knocked him senseless.

Surely the people here don’t all have tempers to match the climate?

Feeling strongly that this was no place to linger, Ye Tianxie hurriedly handed the letter over without explaining. In front of a man like this, the less said the better.

He took the letter with his eyes bulging, and without so much as glancing at the envelope, moved one finger — there was a hiss, a tongue of flame appeared on his hand, and the envelope was burned to drifting ash on the spot. But the letter inside it was completely undamaged. Not a trace of scorching on it anywhere.

You would not have guessed it — the man was an expert. An expert with fire.

Sitting himself down with his legs planted wide, the City Lord of Heaven’s Sun unfolded the letter and began to read with those ox eyes wide. At first he was plainly skimming it… but he had barely glanced at two lines when he shot to his feet. Those eyes, wide enough already, stretched until the eyeballs themselves were nearly bursting out. He gripped the letter tight and read it from beginning to end, then from end to beginning, then from beginning to end again… and at last let out a roar.

“Holy shit!! That turtle-spawned, rabbit-raised, deserves-a-thousand-cuts Dark Nether Ghost King has been hiding right next to my City of Heaven’s Sun!!!!”

(End of Chapter 256)