Since the sky was covered, the heavens began to show their holiness

"Is this the 998?"

Zhou Xian stared at the blurred statue in the ruins. The cool outfit made him recognize it at a glance. It was the guardian of the twin cities - the wind goddess Janna. After years of erosion, the statue was mottled, but it still revealed the majesty of protection, as if silently telling the past of the city-state.

The gentle breeze blew, and Zhou Xian's ears suddenly lingered with tiny sounds, which seemed far and near, like wind chimes swaying in the clouds, or like streams flowing over bluestone slabs. The sound was wrapped in the fragrance of plants and trees, gently tickling his heart, and in a trance, he even had the illusion that it was Janna whispering - was it a protective motto, or a whisper of the years?
Zhou Xian's spiritual power spread out like a gossamer, falling into the spiritual realm in the hazy halo. There were tiny starlights suspended here, and the wind trajectories condensed into crystal blue ribbons. Janna's true body stood in the center of the cyclone - her body was woven by air currents, her long skirt billowed like waves, her hair was dotted with light particles like morning dew, and a flock of fluorescent butterflies fluttered and emerged with a flick of her fingertips.

"Faith is truly magical. It can make a demigod rise, or it can make him fall. No wonder there is a saying that incense is poisonous."

Zhou Xian looked at Janna's aura, which was obviously extremely weak, as if this guardian god who once protected Piltover and Zaun would be annihilated from this world in the next moment.

Janna's figure trembled slightly in the air current, and the bright halo of the past was now like a candle about to go out. Zhou Xian looked at the gradually dimming prayer gold ornaments on her wrist - it was once the peace rope tied by millions of believers, but now it was like a rusty chain, cutting into the transparent texture.

"Incense is the obsession of believers," her voice mixed with the sand in the wind, "some people use it to build the throne, and some people use it to weave prison nets." Her fingertips brushed across the void, and in the distance, the afterimages of the streets of the Twin Cities emerged. On a windowsill, next to the faded statue of Gana, there were dried flowers for offering.

"You are nothing more than a harmless breeze now. Do you still want to protect them?"

Zhou Xian narrowed his eyes slightly. He had sensed someone spying on him since he stepped into Shuangcheng. He had no doubt that if he did anything bad to Shuangcheng, this former guardian would definitely stand up for him.

Janna's air body suddenly condensed into a translucent human figure, and the wind blade spun out tiny silver lights in her palms: "The wind can be cut by bricks and stones, but it will not be imprisoned by a cage." She looked at the neon lights of Piltover outside the spiritual realm. In the ruins of a slum somewhere, several children were tying new colorful ropes for Janna's statue with rags. "As long as there are still people who plant hope in the dust, I will still be the sail they raise."

Before he finished speaking, Zhou Xian felt a chill on the back of his neck - it was the lantern offered by the old woman at the corner of the alley, flickering with his breathing.

"Don't worry, I'll leave after seeing you." Zhou Xian narrowed his eyes slightly. He had originally planned to leave Shuangcheng, and Janna's warning did not seem threatening at all in his eyes.

Janna's cyclonic body gradually turned into fireflies, and the wind blades on her palms shattered into dandelions all over the sky, spinning out tiny silver rays in the spiritual realm. She finally looked towards the Twin Cities, where in the ruins of the Zaun slums, a few dusty-faced children were standing on tiptoe to tie bright colored ropes to the damaged statues - the indigo of the new ropes was particularly dazzling between the faded gilded cuffs.

"The wind will remember the path of every fallen leaf." Her whispers mixed with the swaying of the wind lantern in the distance, turning into a transparent silk thread wrapped around Zhou Xian's wrist, with the other end tied with a trace of undried glue at the end of the colorful rope, "But the wind never asks whether people stay or go."

When the words faded away, there was an extra jade talisman in Zhou Xian's hand. Wind patterns as thin as spider silk appeared on the surface of the jade talisman. It was the last gift she left for Zhou Xian.

As the gentle breeze blew the gravel past his ears, Zhou Xian suddenly fell back into the hustle and bustle of the material world. His fingertips touched the jade talisman in his pocket, which was piercing and had spider-web-like pale green lines. When his fingertips touched it, there was a humming sound in the breeze, which was very much like the tremor of the firefly in Janna's palm before it dissipated.

He looked at the towering neon lights of Piltover in the distance, and then looked down at the broken colored ropes floating from the direction of Zaun. Everything just now was not a dream. The gift of the wind was still entwined around his wrist, and next to the withered flowers on a windowsill, there seemed to be a trace of water in the corner of the faded statue's eyes. It was unclear whether it was morning dew or the sigh of the god falling when the spiritual realm was shattered. Zhou Xian stroked the wind-patterned jade talisman with his fingertips, and his eyes were solemn. Witnessing Janna being eaten away by the power of faith and almost annihilated, he suddenly understood that the so-called incense of believers was both the cloud that supported the gods and the sword hanging over their heads.

“Under the Lord God, all faiths are cages.” He looked at the interlaced light and shadow of the two cities. The gold paint on the dome of a church somewhere was peeling off, and the colorful ropes in the ruins were still dangling in the wind. “Instead of being sculpted into a statue by millions of people, it is better to be an undefined cloud.” The wind patterns on the jade talisman suddenly trembled, as if a sigh was brought by the distant wind, but it did not cause any ripples after all.

In the spiritual realm, Janna's cyclonic body was rippling. She looked at the lines on her palm that were gradually becoming transparent, and suddenly remembered the prayers of the first believers when she was born - at that time, the window frames were hung with wind chimes, the alleys were filled with burning incense, and people shouted her name in the storm, weaving hope into the wind.

"I was originally a rootless wind, but was carved into a stone statue by obsession." The air flow swept across the faded gold ornaments on the wrist, which were once the prayers cast by the most devout believers with wedding rings. "Now they have learned to use gears to fight against rainstorms and neon lights to replace starlight. The wind should retreat back to the wilderness."

The colorful ropes in the ruins were suddenly rolled up, drawing a half arc of light in the material world.

She suddenly smiled. When people no longer needed gods, perhaps that was the moment when they would truly learn to fly. Although she could stop all this from happening, she did not do so, even though it would cause her to completely disappear from this world.

“Divinity is always a reflection of humanity.”

Zhou Xian shook his head and put the jade talisman into his sleeve, crushing the withered prayer paper at his feet with his boot soles. The wind blew the broken colored ropes over his shoulders, and children's laughter could be heard from the slums in the distance. A candlelight flickered from a broken window - someone was putting their hands together in front of the damaged statue of Gana.

He stepped onto the moss-covered stone steps, and the ruins behind him collapsed into a blurry silhouette in the twilight.

After leaving the ruins, Zhou Xian did not stay in the Twin Cities. Instead, he rode his Hexspeeder towards Noxus. The Hexspeeder, with its blue glowing engine, crushed the wind behind him.

The neon lights of the Twin Cities shrank into two broken stars in the rearview mirror, and on the broken wall of the Janna ruins, the colorful rope was still swaying in the wind like a question mark. He held the handlebars tightly, and the clothes Gwen had knitted rustled in the night wind.

As the car cut through the clouds, Zhou Xian's throat still smelled of the dust from the ruins of the Twin Cities. The iron walls of Noxus lay like giant beasts in the wilderness, the spikes on the walls gnawed at the dusk, and the red light of the furnace dyed the sky rusty. He turned off the engine and let the car glide, listening to the clear sound of weapons clashing in the wind - compared to the silent incense in the Janna ruins, the sound of fighting here sounded more like the heartbeat of life.

"Sword and blood are at least honest."

As the car flew over the moat, the reflection of myself was as sharp as the battle flag flying on the top of the city wall. Cheers came from the execution ground in the distance, and the blood of a defector was seeping into the cracks of the stone slabs. The onlookers' eyes were not beating with fear, but instinctive worship of the law of the strong.

(End of this chapter)