He Ao exited the photo-viewing interface and glanced at the timestamp on the photo: December, year 757.

Counting the time, that was just after the Rock City incident.

By then, the Rock City Miners’ Mutual Aid Association had already completed its reorganization and was being managed by Nell’s two older brothers.

But He Ao had never expected that Erian had been to Rock City.

Hawke didn’t know either.

In fact, in June of 757, Hawke had gone to Vilensis, met Erian once, and quarreled with his son over the issue of ’K’.

Geographically speaking, Vilensis is in the Northeastern Federation; heading northwest from Vilensis, passing through Xiqilelan, you can reach Rock City quite quickly.

Of course, this "quickly" is only in comparison with cities in the South and Western Federation.

After Erian went to university, he’d never asked Hawke for money; if he took an airship, he could only afford the cheapest one to Rock City, and it would still take several days to get there.

If he went overland, traveling together with a caravan, then the time needed would be counted in months.

Judging from Erian’s course schedule, roughly after the quarrel with Hawke, Erian must have begun arranging his trip to Rock City.

He Ao opened that photo again and continued flipping forward.

Erian seemed to have stayed in Rock City for quite some time; judging from his status, he appeared to have been hired as some kind of "miner," going deep into the miners’ front line and talking with all the workers.

The photos recorded not only scenes of them holding bonfire parties together, but also mining in the snow, eating in the canteen, and taking part in internal votes of the Miners’ Mutual Aid Association.

At the end of this Rock City series, there was even a group photo of Erian and Nell’s third brother, Yvo.

After looking through this set of photos, He Ao fell into a brief silence.

After quarreling with his father, this child had set out alone on a journey to trace the tracks of ’K’.

For a long time, Hawke had believed that Erian’s belief in ’K’s rhetoric was nothing more than a young man’s sense of justice and impulsiveness, that he thought he’d found the Truth just from some videos and books at home, without thinking it through.

In Hawke’s understanding, he leaned more toward seeing ’K’s faith and rhetoric as merely a tool used by Dawn City to counter Ains, an extension of the political contradictions between the Federal Central and the regional Leader cities.

Even when Erian ultimately died in Ains, Hawke’s anger was directed more at his stupidity and recklessness in rashly involving himself in the struggle between Ains and Dawn City.

He Ao gripped the album and continued turning the pages.

The next set of photos began with a street at dawn.

The street was old yet neat; in the background were huge cranes and scaffolding wrapped around buildings, with the rising sun slowly emerging at the edge of the scaffolding, casting its radiance onto the nearby street.

And on a bench at the edge of the street, an Elderly man was holding an accordion, playing alone.

He Ao had seen this cityscape in his memory before, only the scene in his memory was older and more chaotic.

This was a street in Kay City, a back alley not far from the Nolanka Group tower.

The photo was taken in December 757.

Rock City and Kay City were not close; to get there you almost had to traverse half the Federation from north to south.

Most likely, not long after leaving Rock City, Erian had already arranged his trip to Kay City.

He Ao continued flipping forward.

The Kay City photos carried a strange vitality and tranquility; from main streets to back alleys, people were moving everywhere.

Busy figures crossed the clean streets, and everyone wore a faint smile on their faces.

Erian seemed to have worked for a time in a Nolanka Group factory; his photos included the restaurant Boss at the factory gate, an Elderly man doing a street-corner performance, playful coworkers, and stern management personnel.

Aside from these, his lens also captured those dirty, chaotic streets under demolition, as well as the dense, sprawling construction sites that covered the whole city.

He didn’t meet Lina or Danny, but in one of his photos of a mercenary recruitment event, the Captain of the Nolanka Mercenary Corps, Fiss, appeared.

Fiss stood on the stage, unsmiling, his gaze fixed on the people below.

Erian deliberately gave Fiss a close-up.

The last photo of this set was of the Nolanka Group tower rising in the morning light, a faint warmth shining through the Stars City emblem, spreading across the entire glass façade of the building.

December 757—counting the time, that was just over half a year after the Vian Copy World.

Even He Ao himself had never seen Kay City at that particular time point in such detail.

He kept flipping downward, and the next set of photos was also a familiar scene.

The first photo in this set was of a densely stacked complex of "garbage towers."

The Scavenger community.

This was Vitland.

From the Vitland photos it was already early autumn.

There weren’t many photos in this set; they focused on desolate, dilapidated streets, densely packed tents, and chaotic drifter high-rises, inside which neatly dressed office workers went through their morning wash with numb expressions.

Vitland certainly had glamorous, beautiful areas, but none of those places appeared in Erian’s lens.

This set of photos was also rather small.

He seemed not to like this city.

After flipping past this set, the next city emerged.

Dawn City.

The first photo was of the Glorious Palace, where the Ellenska statue stood.

What followed seemed to be the slums of the Aston District.

Going first to Vitland and then to Dawn City meant he had traversed the entire Federation.

The scenes in the photos seemed to show it was raining; neon lights shone through the raindrops, and busy figures were erecting scaffolding and hanging tarps outside old buildings.

Below were tattered figures huddling under a narrow eave, raising their heads to look up at that building.

At the side of the scaffolding was a small platform, with a sign reading "Construction Worker Recruitment Office" hanging from it.

The photo was taken in May 759.

Dawn City in the middle of Christos’s first presidential term, just after the midterms.

The next photo showed a densely packed job market, crammed with people.

The photo after that was Dumel National Cemetery, where Erian had laid a bouquet of flowers for Ande.

In the photos that followed, the statue of Ronald also appeared, as well as Wilderness Wanderer figures busy at work inside factories.

The Dawn City in Erian’s lens was characterized by being "big" and "slow."

Endless cityscape, wide streets, crowded masses.

Their eyes were not filled with hope like in Kay City, but neither were they completely numb and despairing anymore.

Some photos showed factory employees standing by the roadside, chewing bread, smiling.

Others showed gang members sitting in off-road vehicles, smoking, faces fierce.

These photos also featured Christos sitting at the edge of a street, while the streams of pedestrians and vehicles flowed past the edge of this city like streaks of light.

In the photo, Christos raised his head and looked toward the camera, as if he had noticed the photographer.

The last photo was of an acrobatic performance: an acrobat laden with chains and fire stood at the center of the stage, slowly turning around.

He was bearing a great load on his body, dragging at his body, yet he still continued to slowly turn.

"What are these photos even supposed to mean?" The young man sitting on the bed stared blankly at He Ao flipping through the photos, asking with some boredom.

"The delicate thoughts of a young man conducting a field investigation." He Ao quickly flipped to the next set of photos, speaking softly.

"Huh?" The skinny youth raised his head, eyes vacant.

But He Ao had already opened the next series of photos, depicting a city that took him somewhat by surprise.

Limen City.

The first photo in this set was the front gate of Pet Enlightenment Medical College, and inside the gate you could vaguely see cherry blossoms in full bloom and a bronze statue of Pete.

Erian’s activities in Limen City also seemed to revolve around hospitals.

Inside there appeared, crammed and dense, a large amount of medication and medical bills; some were Erian’s, some were bills he had photographed that belonged to other people.

The only thing these bills had in common was that they were cheap.

Far, far cheaper than normal Federation hospitals.

The antibiotics he had given the scrawny young man should have been brought from Limen City.

And after Limen City, the next set of photos was of a statue under construction.

Loren’s statue.

Erian seemed to have taken part in building Loren’s statue; in this set of photos there were a large number of construction workers working in front of the statue.

And at the end of this set of photos was a figure who had turned his head back.

Kemingda.

The former President Kemingda, who had been assassinated.

Erian had met Kemingda?

When he saw this photo, He Ao paused for a moment.

Some blurry memories floated up in He Ao’s mind.

He seemed to have met Erian as well; in Loren’s Copy World, Erian had once eaten with his classmates right next to He Ao.

It was through their conversation that He Ao learned there were Witch of Desire cultists active in Vilensis.

This kid had really gone to a lot of places and met a lot of people.

He Ao’s fingertips slid along the edge of the electronic album.

It appeared that Erian’s faith in "K" was not simply hearsay.

He slowly flipped backward.

There was still one last set of photos in this album.

The cover of this set was an old, worn signboard.

On it were written the words "Fro City Cleaning Company."

The instant he saw this photo, He Ao opened the detailed information and glanced at the time it was taken.

March, 758.

Before going to Vitland.

That year Hawke was seventy-eight; Erian rarely came home and spent one New Year with Hawke.

Judging from this point in time, Erian should have come to Hawke directly right after returning from Kay City.

And Hawke had taken his son to pay respects to his wife, then brought his son back to Fro City.

And had his son get acquainted with the cleaning company left by his grandfather, that is, the cleaning company in the photos.

Fro City was in the Western Federation; starting from Fro City, you could reach Vitland quite quickly.

So the next stop in time was Vitland.

In this way the overall logic became clear, but the question was, why hadn’t Erian put the photos of Fro City before Vitland, and instead placed them after all the other photos?

He Ao slowly flipped through this set of photos.

There were no traces of K in Fro City, nor had any Advent of K occurred there.

To be honest, this was just an ordinary, all-too-ordinary small city in the Federation.

The city was controlled by Rockville Energy Group, and the treatment of its employees was not particularly good.

In Erian’s photos, Fro City was indeed much worse than Kay City.

Old streets, gang members with guns, the towering, luxurious branch building of Rockville Energy Group, and one dilapidated old building after another along the edge of the streets.

However, Erian had not photographed the dense tent clusters of vagrants in Fro City, only some scattered drifters.

He Ao thought back; in Hawke’s memories, Fro City indeed did not have that many vagrants. Compared to Vitland and other cities, the streets of Fro City were much more "tidy."

He Ao continued to scroll down; after a series of dimly toned photos came a slightly more warm set.

In the photos was an Elderly man of some age, quietly cleaning the streets and sorting and organizing the trash scattered on the ground.

The man’s skin was dark, his frame thin, but his movements looked very quick and deft.

He Ao knew this Elderly man; he was an old employee from the days of his grandfather’s cleaning company. He was much younger than Hawke and was one of the youngest batch of employees back then.

Only, with the passage of time, he had already become one of the oldest employees in the cleaning company.

At present, the entire cleaning company was being managed by these old employees Hawke had entrusted it to.

The cleaning company left by Grandfather had somehow survived all these years, but in Hawke’s memories it had always been half-dead, unable to make money, sometimes even making slight losses, yet once everything was offset, it could still barely keep running.

Rockville Energy Group looked down on the paltry profits of a cleaning company, so they had never bothered to squeeze it to death.

According to Hawke’s thinking, he had planned to pass this cleaning company on to his son; he himself had no time to manage it.

The Elderly man in this photo was the one Hawke had entrusted to "take" Erian around to get familiar with the cleaning company.

He Ao kept flipping through the photos; more and more people began to appear in them.

Among them were Elderly people, middle-aged people, and young people; all of them were wearing the cleaning company’s uniforms, some sweeping the streets, some at garbage disposal stations, driving old vehicles to sort trash.

The further back he went, the more people appeared in the photos.

Looking at these photos, He Ao felt a bit at a loss.

Because in Hawke’s memories, he had never seen this many people; at some unknown point, this cleaning company had already hired so many.

In the later photos appeared the company’s apartments—rows of old buildings, not exactly new, which seemed to have been purchased when Grandfather was still alive.

They were densely packed with figures living inside.

And in the apartments were hand-written banners pasted up.

"Please vote in support of Adric; he’s the old man’s grandson."

This was not campaign material for his younger brother Ed; it looked more like some kind of spontaneous support.

After that, more and more apartment buildings appeared in the photos, including quite a few new ones, though most were old.

Hawke had never known that Grandfather had bought so many apartment buildings.

And these buildings were all crammed full of people.

In the photos that followed these apartment buildings were some simple small factories responsible for secondary processing, production, and sale of garbage.

Many people gathered in these small factories; their bodies were not exactly healthy, but it was clear they still had strength.

The products of these small factories couldn’t fetch high prices, and the profits were extremely thin; even their wages could only be set at the minimum.

This was the scrap that Rockville Energy Group disdained.

But these "scraps" were supporting many, many lives.

Silently, He Ao flipped through these photos; at this moment, he finally realized what exactly Grandfather had left to Hawke and the others.

He also finally understood the words Erian had said to Hawke when leaving Fro City,

"Grandfather saw much farther than you."