In order to make herself feel happier when looking at Hope City this time, Ling Mengyu specially chose a better time.
Hope City is particularly lively today. Many residents, large and small, gather at the outermost city gate to welcome the people who are about to enter the city.
Soon the person they were waiting for arrived. They were a group of people whose clothes were obviously different from those here. They were enjoying the cheers of the people in Hope City and carrying boxes of gifts into the city.
Those people are not residents of Hope City. They are from other city-states. Others are still not destroyed and are holding on to this doomsday city-state together with Hope City.
As more than seventy years have passed, some of the city-states that were first established have only dilapidated ruins left, silently recounting their past.
Sometimes some people in the expedition team would nostalgically point out to their companions that this was the city-state where he or his parents once lived.
But in addition to the ruins of these city-states, there are many city-states that are still surviving tenaciously. There are as many as 18 city-states that are directly connected to Hope City alone.
These are city-states that can reach Hope City directly by walking, and among these city-states, Hope City is not the only city-state they know.
In fact, relying on this spider-web-like transmission, the surviving city-states recorded by Hope City have a scale close to three digits.
Some people in the city speculated that if every city-state known to them had as many city-states as Hope City, there might be thousands of city-states in this god-forsaken land.
Regardless of the thousands of city-states, it can be said that the relationship between the 18 city-states known to Hope City is quite close.
The reason why we have maintained close ties with all city-states is mainly based on two premises. First, each city-state maintains a relatively long distance, and second, the world is in eternal night.
The distance between each city-state is far enough, and the world is in dangerous eternal night, which means that there is no possibility of war between the city-states.
Because even if the city-state's army can cross the long wilderness in the eternal night and conquer the opponent's city-state, it will no longer have the strength to transport the spoils from the ruins back to the original city-state.
As for why there is a relatively long distance between each city-state, after discussions among players on the forum and subsequent dlc additions, a reason was found that is fairly recognized by everyone.
Once multiple city-states are too close together, the monster tides will cross together, making the difficulty higher than normal, leading to the destruction of both city-states.
This conjecture can be supported by the later online DLC and the relatively close ruins.
And since there is no possibility of conquest and plunder, as a group of people who are also defenders of Eternal Night, the two sides will have friendly exchanges, because this is a matter of mutual benefit.
From a spiritual level, knowing that in this dark and lonely world, there are others besides yourself who are persevering, can effectively increase people's hope.
From a practical perspective, intermarriage among various city-states can reduce the occurrence of consanguineous marriages, thereby reducing the probability of deformed people.
After all, children born from consanguineous marriages are more likely to become deformed, and the degree of deformity will be greater than those born from non-consanguineous marriages.
What Ling Mengyu saw at this time was that residents of a city-state in the distance came to Hope City with the girl they were about to marry.
So starting from the past few days, the residents of Hope City had decorated the place with lights and colorful decorations. For a while, even the despair and depression of the doomsday seemed to be diluted a bit.
On the opposite side were not only the women who were getting married, but also the guards who escorted the women, the boys and girls who came to see the world, and even members of other city-states.
This is also a custom in the apocalypse. In order to strengthen the understanding between city-states, they will consciously send their young people to live in other city-states.
For example, today this city-state has sent over women to be married, and when they return, there will be a few more young men from Hope City in the team.
When they were young, they went to live in various city-states for a period of time. When they grew up, they were able to maintain goodwill towards other city-states.
Let the various city-states under the doomsday form a situation where you are among me and you are among me, thereby strengthening the unity among the various city-states to fight against this terrible apocalypse.
Looking at the lively scene in the distance, Ling Mengyu, who was standing quietly on the top of the tower, watched for a long time without realizing it, and then slowly smiled.
Although even she herself didn't know how long this precious and beautiful scene could last in the apocalypse, at least the happiness at this moment was real and real, which was enough for him.
From coming to carry out the mission more than seventy years ago, to seeing the prosperity of Hope City now, Ling Mengyu believed that she had been worthy of her former companions who sacrificed.
Although she knew that as time went by, the evil seedling of deformed people took root and sprouted, and the city-state could not always be so happy, but at least... they had tried hard and struggled, right?
Ling Mengyu turned her head. There was nothing interesting to see after that, so she walked unsteadily, preparing to return to her office.
She is really very old, so old that there are not many of her contemporaries left, and she is the only one left among the transcendent invitees who performed the mission together.
In this way, at a slow but firm pace, Ling Mengyu came to her office, handed over to her successor, and left with a satisfied look.
The current third-generation leaders of Hope City and the third-generation core leaders also followed behind Ling Mengyu without saying a word. They were coming to see the old man off on his last journey.
Because this is the end of an era, she is the last one of the leaders who led the founding of Hope City still alive today.
Ling Mengyu walked forward slowly like this. Although the speed was quite slow, one day she would eventually reach the end, and her destination was the public cemetery in Hope City.
Unknowingly, the public cemetery is in front of us, and in front of us is Suo Jian's tombstone. After more than seventy years, the tombstone is now covered with moss.
After all, moss is one of the lowest plants. Even if the sunlight has disappeared, it can still survive under this eternal night.
Ling Mengyu stroked the moist surface of the moss, and her heart couldn't help but be filled with sighs. Perhaps when human beings perish in the eternal night, only this moss can still hold on in the darkness.
Thinking of this, Ling Mengyu lamented, and then put down her palms helplessly, because although she had always said that the important thing was the process, until the last moment of her life, she still felt that her efforts of more than seventy years were just a dream.
Slowly she closed her eyes and leaned her bent back against Suo Jian's vicissitudes of tombstone, and soon there was no movement at all.
