Sylvia's first steps upon the land of the Tianhua Kingdom were not greeted by a red carpet or ranks of honor guards, but by the oppressive silence of a coastal forest long abandoned by civilization. The air here felt heavy, filled with the scent of sea salt mixed with the musty odor of decaying leaves and the remains of unidentified animal carcasses.
The trees in this forest no longer held the natural green of flora from the pre-apocalypse era. Due to chaotic mana radiation and dimensional fusion in the past, the tree trunks grew twisted into strange shapes, as though they were suffering in pain. Their bark was pale gray like a corpse, with glowing purple veins pulsing slowly beneath the surface of the wood, indicating that the flora here had mutated into semi-magical energy-absorbing entities.
