Darkness shrouded the sky, preventing the sunlight from penetrating the clouds and having to flicker faintly above the haze.

The earth was almost pitch black, losing the favor of light, with only artillery fire reflecting the chaotic battlefield.

At the end of the horizon are countless huge black shadows, and heart-shaking roars resound among the wind and snow of the ice field.

The human front retreated again and again, and they launched round after round of shelling, but the darkness covering the end of the land seemed to be endless, advancing one after another.

This is the last war of the Dark Ages, the war of mankind's withdrawal from the southern ice sheet.

Liuyuan once participated in it, and her last memory of this war was that a middle-aged man grabbed her and said to her.

"Yuan, we can't leave. We have to stay and cut off the rear for other teams, but you can still leave and you can still live. You have the ability to cross the ice field alone, so stay alive for all of us."

As soon as he finished speaking, the "monster" rushed into the human camp.

The screams were endless, the sound of artillery fire was deafening, the blood of "monsters" and humans flowed together, and the soldiers roared, crazy and desperate.

In the dazzling firelight, the middle-aged man put on Liuyuan's coat, patted her shoulder heavily, put down his hat, turned and walked towards the battlefield.

Before leaving, he looked back at Liuyuan with a smile and pulled out the pistol from his waist.

"Take care of Catalina for me and tell her that she is the most precious treasure in my life and the most dazzling light I have ever seen in this darkness."

"Please also ask her to forgive Laila and I, as parents, for not being by her side. Please be sure to tell her that we love her, so we have to leave her."

If humans want to survive, humans need a future, so someone must fight.

So someone has to make the necessary sacrifices.

This is the meaning of the existence of scavengers. They sweep away the filth in the darkness. They are born to find direction.

On the battlefield, there must have been a hot wind accompanied by flames. Smoke and dust obscured Liuyuan's eyes. She tightened her coat tightly and turned around to leave.

He didn't listen to the hopeless wailing of pain behind him, or the roaring with all his might around him.

She just left, carrying the shame of a fugitive and an entrustment.

She just left, with her heart no longer beating.

In Yanagihara's memory, the middle-aged man was the son of Altov, the leader of the Scavenger Corps, and also a good friend of hers.

Catalina, on the other hand, is the man's newborn daughter.

Three years later, as the smoke and dust that had shrouded the sky for hundreds of years gradually dissipated, the dark era gradually became a thing of the past.

Humanity can see the sun again, and Yanagihara also assumes the responsibility of taking care of Catalina.

But as a premature baby, Catalina was in really poor health. She was often unable to go out due to weakness when she was young.

But it's not like good things never happened to her.

When she was twenty-seven, she fell in love with a man and held their wedding two years later.

Unfortunately, everything did not develop in a good direction.

At the age of thirty-four, Caterina gave birth to a daughter, but she herself died in bed due to dystocia.

Her husband passed away a year later due to excessive grief.

Their newborn daughter became an orphan.

As a last resort, Liuyuan could only make the decision to continue raising the girl.

Fortunately, the girl is healthy.

I believe Catalina will be very happy if she knows about it...

When the girl was two years old, Yanagihara gave her a formal name, Angelica.

She is a very lively little guy. When Yanagi Yuan is reading, he will often climb on her lap and let her tell stories.

From time to time, he would knock over the furniture at home, and then look at Liuyuan with an innocent expression.

Every day when she goes out, she either climbs chimneys or plays in the mud. When Liuyuan takes her out, he has to tie a rope around her waist to barely control the little guy.

For Angelica as a child, the happiest thing was to have Yanagihara make a birthday cake every year on her birthday.

This is something that cannot be eaten anywhere after the disaster, even with rare ores, because no one knows how to make it.

But Yanagihara was able to find ingredients from all kinds of wild animals and make this delicious dessert. It was like magic, and she couldn't stop eating it.

So Angelica looks forward to her birthday every year, what kind of pastries Yanagihara will make next, and every day and every year in the future, and forever and ever.

······

As the girl grew older, she began to become more naughty.

To use a pre-disaster saying, it means not having to install roof tiles for three days.

She began to learn the skills of using swords from Liuyuan. It must be said that this girl's talent is indeed very good. It only took one or two years for her to learn some skills.

So much so that she could always beat the children in the neighborhood until their noses were bruised and their faces were swollen, so Yanagihara would often come to her door with gifts to apologize, and then return home to give her a "severe beating."

The girl admired Liuyuan very much. She said that she would also be an employee in the future, travel the continent, explore the ice fields, and change the destiny of mankind.

However, this young man's enthusiasm will always be wiped out by Yanagihara's brain failure, leaving the girl to continue to shrink her neck and help with housework in disgrace.

To be honest, Angelica really doesn't like doing housework. In her own words, her hands are used for hunting wild beasts. How can she be tied down by such trivial matters?

For this reason, Yanagi Yuan often lifted her up by the neck and spanked her.

It can be said that before a girl turns twelve, she grows up making trouble and being beaten.

This made Yanagihara miss the quiet Katarina. They were obviously mother and daughter, but why was there such a big gap?

Until the year when the girl turns twelve.

One day, she and Yanagi Yuan were walking on the street and saw an employee covered in blood being carried into a clinic.

The employee's arm was broken, half of his body was horribly twisted, he was moaning, and the pupils in his eyes were dilated and gray.

"Employers, employers, there are always people like this all day long..." The doctor said as he called on the nursing staff to carry the patient into the operating room.

Liuyuan didn't know what Angelica was thinking at that time. She only knew that the girl's shoulders suddenly trembled, and then she grabbed the hem of her clothes with her left hand and asked.

"Liuyuan, you won't become like this, right?"

"No." Liuyuan replied calmly.

This was the truth, but Angelica couldn't hear it.

At night, the girl had a nightmare. She dreamed that Liuyuan was lying on a hospital bed covered in blood, and the doctor covered her with a white cloth.

She cried hoarsely, but Liuyuan never woke up again.

The next morning, the girl opened her eyes on the pillow wet with tears. From then on, she became much quieter.

She began to practice her sword skills even more diligently, and even began to learn how to use firearms from Yanagihara.

What Yanagihara didn't know was that the girl had secretly found the Employees' Association behind her back and asked carefully about the death rate of employees after leaving the greenhouse.

What she got was a number that frightened her, fifty-eight percent.

In her impression, growing up, Liuyuan almost always had to leave the greenhouse when performing tasks.

Only then did she realize that Liuyuan had been doing something to take care of her.

Wild beasts, cold currents, and ice fields, these things that Yanagi Yuan once mentioned indifferently, turned out to be so deadly and terrifying, and it seemed that they could destroy all her warmth in an instant at any time.

But that person never mentioned the dangers he had experienced to her.

What's ridiculous is that she keeps causing trouble for him. Even in the greenhouse, she can't let Liuyuan have a good rest.

That night, the first thing the girl did after returning home was to run to Yanagi Yuan, hug her without saying a word, and then cry for an entire hour.

This was the first time she was so scared, afraid of losing her only relative.

This was the first time she was so scared, afraid that Liuyuan would leave without saying goodbye.

Angelica seemed to have become a lot more sensible overnight, which made Yanagihara very happy, but while she was happy, she was also a little troubled.

That's why this girl seems to like sticking to her more.

When eating, she would stay close to her, when resting, she would sit in her arms, and even when sleeping, she would crawl into her bed and sleep together.

Isn’t it said that human beings will have a rebellious period when they are teenagers? Why can’t this be seen in Angelica?

Yanagi Yuan has never quite understood this.

But she didn't think much about it, because her idea was to take care of Angelica until she was an adult, and then leave to do her own things.

She can't stay here forever, after all, she is an immortal.
Chapter completed!