He is the leader of the Tantric sect in Chagdu.

Every impending end is accompanied by a beginning.

Six years ago, a child left his hometown.

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Gurn "escaped".

In a village without electricity, nestled deep in the wilderness, the night is a kingdom ruled by darkness—if a child wants to escape under the cover of night, he can merge into the darkness like water flowing into the sea before the sun rises the next day.

This is how it should be...

But Gern was almost caught.

The nightingales that roamed at the village entrance had eyes that could see through the darkness... If little Gern hadn't been shorter than the ears of wheat in the field, avoiding every gaze directed at him, his "future" might have been far off.

He made some preparations before planning this escape.

Gern knew of the existence of trains—though he had never seen one with his own eyes before, he often heard the sharp whistles from afar on quiet afternoons. When the giant, serpentine-like creatures described by adults roared across the fields, young Gern would imagine its destination—a city woven from steel, a brand new world where inspiration rose like steam from a boiler.

The sparks from the collision of the axle and the rails would sometimes ignite in his curious eyes.

This hope lasted until he waited for four hours by the tracks in the dark, and only after the night was about to dissipate and the morning mist had soaked his clothes did he finally wait for a transport train that passed through Xiu Village.

Faced with a shaft taller than himself and still spinning, little Gern squeezed into the violently shaking gaps, crawled into the open cargo box, and finally hitched a ride to Tunling.

His memories of the journey consist only of bumpy turns, acrid carbon ash, the darkness of tunnels along the way, and the piercing whistling sound of the wind as it swept through the gaps in the carriages, sounding like a child crying.

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New Dunling.

This is the starting point of the Glorious Route, an industrial jewel standing atop Isle, a port city of extreme luxury.

At the entrance of the transport station, the cold iron gate was tightly closed. Early in the morning, many laborers had already gathered here—first come, first served was not a rule, but physical strength was a power.

Gern, who had been waiting there all night, tried his best to push forward, but due to his small stature, he was quickly pushed out of the crowd and lost his good spot at the front.

When the iron gate was opened, the indifferent person who had made the request appeared at the station entrance. He casually moved his hand a few times in the crowded people, and the few people who were selected showed ecstatic expressions. Amid the envious gazes of those around them, they became the lucky ones who had been chosen.

At least for this week, they can earn a living as temporary workers at the railway bureau, and won't have to sleep on the streets.

Gern stared blankly at the scene, remaining there for a long time until the morning mist dissipated, before turning away in a daze.

This is his third day in Tun Ling.

The new world was not as bright and cheerful as he had imagined.

The start of their new life was not smooth.

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Before this, Guern had never seen such a vast community: on his first day there, he was speechless and his legs trembled so much that he could not stand in the shadow of the industrial area that filled his entire field of vision and the Nirvana-style buildings—until law enforcement officers arrived and took him away from the middle of the road, restoring order to the blocked traffic.

After the spark of idealism faded, the practical problems followed one after another: Gern came from the deep wilderness, and the Agdewe were a people not officially recognized by Ys... His reddish skin, as well as his sunken eyebrows and nose, all foreshadowed his identity: a "barbarian" destined to be discriminated against, coming from outside the realm of glory.

The local police station was unable to process temporary residency for Guern because he had arrived illegally, couldn't speak the language, had no identification, and was a complete illegal immigrant. The officers couldn't even obtain any information about his family...

According to Ys's laws, Gern, who has no legal status, is not even eligible to be admitted to the "Children's Home"... Soon, everyone lost patience with a foreigner who could not communicate, who behaved like an animal, and whose mind seemed uncivilized.

The next day, he was released from the temporary detention center and left to wander in a strange and unknown new world.

On the third day, he still hadn't found shelter or work. Hunger and exhaustion were the worst enemies of a homeless person—he lay on a damp street corner for a few minutes, and lost consciousness the instant his eyes closed.

When Gurn woke up again, he was lying on a soft, white, narrow bed.

"woke up?"

A figure with his back to him was sitting at a desk not far away, holding a pen and writing something... He quickly noticed Gern's awakening, turned his chair half a turn, slowly turned around, and drew an elegant arc with the pen in his hand before putting it into the hard pouch on his chest.

Looking at the sharp needle inserted into the back of his hand, Gern suppressed his fear and didn't touch it. He cautiously surveyed his surroundings: the almost entirely white room contained virtually no familiar elements; everything was utterly unfamiliar.

The stranger was still speaking in a language he couldn't understand. Guern opened his mouth, and the blank look in his eyes elicited a sigh of incomprehensible meaning.

"Why……"

Only when the figure approached his bedside did Gern dare to cautiously raise his head:

The woman was tall and thin, with sharply defined eyebrows and uncomfortably thin lips, giving her face, which was even more rugged than a man's, an eagle-like sternness. Her hair was short and as black as her eyes, as if filled with a black diamond, so deep that the bottom could not be seen.

If it weren't for her smooth throat and prominently undulating chest, Guern might have been more likely to mistake her for a man.

She deftly pulled the IV tube from Gern's hand, then pointed her rough fingers at herself.

"Doctor," she said.

"doctor."

Gurn repeated the word, mimicking the woman's pronunciation, then again, and then once more.

"doctor."

This was the first Issu language he learned.

The doctor was the first person he met in Tun Ling.

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The doctor runs a small clinic in the cheapest slum, selling some of the most common medicines and antibiotics, and sometimes performing minor surgeries for people in the neighborhood... such as open-chest treatment for tuberculosis infection, or lobectomy for pneumoconiosis.

The doctor's hands were very steady, so she performed the surgery very well—even after spending a long time with her, Gern was still hesitant to look the doctor in the eye. Her gaze was like a scalpel held in her hand, so sharp that it seemed capable of slicing through the skin and cutting through the hair.

So Guern asked her to have his scapula removed, arguing that none of the people he had met in Dunlin had bones like wings.

The doctor performed the surgery, but also gave Gern another reason: "It's deformed: those extraneous tissues and structures are parasitic and stealing energy from your body, making you sick, thin, and unhealthy—that's why I removed this bone for you, not what you call 'something no one else has'."

As she spoke, her gaze was like a scalpel, dissecting Guern's soul layer by layer. She said, "I can see that you loathe your past, but removing this piece of bone won't free you from it—to embrace the future, you need a true rebirth..."

The future, new life—young people who have never looked ahead can hardly understand these issues, just as he could hardly understand that woman.

The doctor often said many incomprehensible things. At first, she most often said to Guern:

"You need to learn to read."

So, it took Gern about half a year to speak Issu as fluently as his native language... Then, the doctor told him, "You need to go to school."

She liked to use affirmative sentences, which made her words sound like commands, but Gern didn't understand. So he obediently went to school as the doctor had arranged.

Going to school was much harder than learning to read. Everyone hated this seemingly dull-witted, red-skinned, flat-nosed foreigner. So, it took Gern four years of bullying for him to barely complete the three-year course and obtain that flimsy diploma.

By this time, Gern had finally grown up.

This is his fifth year in New Tun Ling, and also the fifth year he has known the doctor.

From the moment he graduated, the doctor began to speak to him in a tone of inquiry and discussion, and the old "commands" were no longer present. As Guern grew up, the woman no longer avoided smoking and drinking in front of him... In Guern's memory, when the doctor was drunk, she would say more strange things—she said that she had joined a union, that the workers' movement had recently succeeded, and that the minimum wage in Tunningham was now enough for a low-income worker to support his family without any pressure... She also said that the Nightingale Cross and the Charity Church had started a collaboration, and that they had set up more than two hundred relief points throughout the city. From now on, the situation that Guern encountered when he first came to Tunningham would no longer exist.

"Hahahaha!"

She suddenly burst into laughter, and this woman, who always seemed as stiff and acerbic as an eagle, laughed in an unprecedentedly bright tone:

"Gern, Gern! Can you see it? Embracing our future, it's a rebirth for Ys!"

The doctor's eyebrows, like the wings of a bird pointing to the sky, shone with the brilliance of flames. She said:

"We are embarking on a great journey."

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Rusty Village.

A not-so-tall figure walked along the road leading to the church against the gloomy sky.

This was the second day after Gern returned to Rusty Village.

It was also the first month after the doctor died.

The thought that this busy, seemingly never-ending woman would also reach the end filled Gern with a profound sense of unreality, yet it all seemed to happen so naturally...

That guy spent most of his life wandering the slums of Issu, collecting symptoms and cases for the union, trying to legislate restrictions on the artificial production of asbestos.

Over a decade, asbestos fibers in the air unknowingly filled most of her lungs—and so severe pneumoconiosis took the doctor's life. This guy had performed surgeries his whole life, but he had overlooked his own.

After the doctor's body was cremated, Gern received her will, which she had entrusted to her before her death: Gern inherited her unprofitable clinic, as well as memberships in a bunch of clubs and societies, big and small...

Finally, there is her name.

It wasn't until six years after they met, and even after she died, that Guern finally learned the doctor's name.

Her name is "Abram," which in the context of Ys means "leadership" and "innovation."

Such a glorious name, I don't know why the doctor is hiding it and refusing to say it, maybe she herself has forgotten it, which is just good for her.

Thinking about this, perhaps self-deprecation far outweighs other emotions.

Gently stroking the rusty cross pendant in his hand, one of the doctor's legacies, Abram couldn't help but laugh: the silver contained too many impurities, and its original luster had long been corroded by oxygen. That seemingly clever doctor had actually bought a fake.

Faded memories, like inferior silver, begin to rust. Abram hung the pendant around his neck, slowly raised his head, and looked up at the sky.

As night slowly falls, the outline of the sun appears and disappears on the edge of the horizon. The radiance that has cycled through this point is about to be lit again, displaying a restrained, fish-belly white hue, heralding the approach of daylight.

Everything cycles between creation and destruction—perhaps the end I'm fleeing from is another future that extends outwards.

"Hiss..." As he walked, his old injury flared up again. Loth really went too far last night—his stomach was still aching slightly. Abram frowned, hugged the backpack behind him to his chest, and sighed softly.

Even so, I still have to help him delay the church's time, and that guy has disappeared somewhere again.

...I hope he knows his limits.

As the first rays of dawn broke, his figure disappeared through the church's white doors.

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On the other side, in the center of a rice stalk bent under the weight of a figure.

Ai lay there quietly, watching Abram walk into the church in the distance, and sighed softly.

The fate of this village to be punished was already sealed, and Abram had the countdown in his hand. While the church was being held back by Abram, he wanted to witness this history as completely as possible.

He closed the book he had been reading for most of the time, "The Story of the Sky," and put it aside—he had just finished another long chapter, and besides the teachings of God and the praise of birds, he had discovered a noteworthy section, which seemed to be a special warning.

"Birds are not the only creatures that understand the principles of flight—birds have wings, but ※※ also has wings, yet it defies the will of the sky..."

Turning to the next page, I found that the page numbers had been torn out.

(Blurred and illegible handwriting, incomplete content)

A portion of the records in this book seemed incomplete, missing several keywords, which puzzled Ai and stirred a sense of unease deep within her.

However, since there are no relevant clues at the moment, we can only put it aside for now.

Ai fell into deep thought—

Combining the first half of the book, he had almost thoroughly understood the core doctrines of the Bishop, with only a few questions remaining: such as the origin of the first eminent persons, and... the specific forms of the Bishop's sins.

Recalling the content of the three revelations, the part about the "Red Bird" is likely the main storyline of this instance:

Regarding Anda, the fate of that "Kite Priestess".

My current goals.

Ai silently raised her head.

In the distance, accompanied by the clear and melodious sound of bells, a flock of sheep, as white as clouds, is moving upstream along the river.

There will always be a shepherd around the flock of sheep.

The girl with golden-red eyes staggered toward them.