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Chapter 453. The Sculptor's Distant Horizon
I remember a few months ago, she became the largest supplier of statues for the Papacy with her carving skills. She was already an outstanding person among the common people, and only one step away from becoming a noble.

In order to fulfill her dream of becoming a noblewoman, she found her current fiancé.

His family had long since fallen on hard times, retaining only a noble title and no real power.

According to the mainland's traditional marriage principle of "matching social classes," it is best for people of the same social class to marry. If a person of a higher social class marries a person of a lower social class, the more capable party must provide the weaker party with a certain amount of compensation.

Because Grant was far superior to her fiancé, she would have to pay hundreds of thousands in compensation to complete the marriage.

She was willing to pay the money, since she would receive a noble title after the marriage, and with her wealth and noble status, it was possible for her child to enter a noble academy.

At that time, she will be able to come into contact with more and more prominent families, expand the scale of her carving shop, and establish a new noble family named after her surname—that would be a complete and brilliant turnaround.

A bright future beckoned to her.

But now, it's all broken.

The mountains of expensive raw materials and the meticulously carved statues were reduced to piles of waste.

The sudden tightening of the cash flow did not escape the keen scrutiny of her fiancé's family.

Fearing she was unable to afford the enormous compensation, they didn't hesitate to switch the engagement, arranging for their son to marry another powerful and high-ranking individual.

Her fiancé, over the course of their long relationship, had indeed developed genuine feelings for her.

However, the family's will was as firm as a mountain and could not be defied.

And so, with the deafening roar of the power plant explosion, her life seemed to be shattered by the shockwave, plunging into an unfathomable darkness.

That day, Grant sat blankly on the floor, staring out the window with an empty gaze.

The windows in the working-class neighborhood were narrow, and the view was cut off by the crowded rooftops, so the towering spires of the distant church could never be seen.

She had the privilege of stepping into the golden area of ​​the aristocratic district.

Looking up from there, the church's gilded spire pierced the blue sky serenely, holy, distant, and alluring.

In order to ensure that small, shining spire would forever remain in her future life's picture, she gritted her teeth and struggled year after year.

Now, it's all gone.

Grant had to pull his exhausted body to its limits and face the cruelest reality—

What should we eat tomorrow?
Prices were skyrocketing; a rough, hard piece of black bread was now priced at a number she couldn't afford.

Hunger, like a cold snake, began to coil around her stomach.

The gray-robed sculptor turned around, his gaze slowly sweeping across the room.

The statues she sculpted herself stand silently, their faces compassionate and their eyes filled with pity, as if silently watching over her despair.

She stared at them for a very long time.

Then, she rushed over.

"Crash—bang!"

The first statue was violently pushed over, crashing to the ground with a crisp yet dull thud.

The compassionate face shattered instantly, and expensive stone and gold leaf splattered everywhere.

Then came the second statue, the third statue...

"Splash!"

"boom!"

In today's market, these completed statues are now considered worthless junk.

But the original stone that made them up, and those scattered gold leaves, might... be sold to other industries at extremely low prices, in exchange for a few pieces of bread to survive.

The destruction continues.

Each shattering sound felt like it was hitting her own body.

Months of hard work, years of dreams, and all the imagination for the future were reduced to dust with this shattering sound, mingling with the earth and settling on the ground.

"Splash—"

The last statue, the most exquisite one, the one on which she had placed the most hope, finally collapsed and shattered completely.

The room was a mess, a mixture of gold and stone chips. Grant stood in the center of the ruins, looking at everything he had created and then destroyed with his own hands.

An intense mix of bitterness and ecstatic pleasure gripped her at the same time.

A tearing pain shot through my heart, and with each breath, the pain became more intense.

"Uh...uh ah—"

Finally, she could no longer hold on, her knees buckled, and she collapsed heavily to her knees on the rubble-strewn ground. She then covered her face with her hands, which were covered in stone dust and dirt.

Between her fingers, the despair, pain, and collapse that had been suppressed for so long finally turned into a heart-wrenching, uncontrollable sob.

……

"You mean...you have nothing left now?"

Jiang Jianxin sat in Granny Qingye's shed, which was filled with the smell of herbs, and looked at the woman opposite him.

The once vibrant gray-clad sculptor now resembles a withered leaf—her face is gaunt, her figure thin, and the ring that symbolized her engagement has long since disappeared from her finger.

The last time I saw her, her eyes were still full of light, but now they were just a pale, exhausted look, as if she had just gone through a serious illness that could drain her soul.

This last dose of medicine was ordered before she went bankrupt, after she had paid off the entire amount. While waiting for the medicine to boil, she met Jiang Jianxin, which led to this conversation.

"Yes... fate is unpredictable, who could have foreseen it?"

The woman smiled, a smile etched with the marks of time.

Jiang Jianxin read too much in her eyes.

"What are you planning to do next?"

"Sell all the materials that can still be exchanged for money to raise the last bit of travel expenses."

Grant's voice was very soft:

"Then, go to the domain of the God of Original Sin."

She was clearly not fully recovered from the huge blow, and the weariness of the collapse remained between her brows.

But a person who can climb from nothing to the pinnacle of ordinary life must have resilience deep in their bones.

This resilience may go unnoticed in favorable circumstances, but it reveals its rugged outline in dire situations.

"Why the God of Original Sin?"

Jiang Jianxin asked.

She already had some guesses in her mind, but still wanted to hear it from the other person's own mouth.

"The god of fire has fallen silent, the faith in this land is dying out, and greater chaos is imminent."

Grant looked out the window, his gaze seemingly piercing through the alleyways and reaching into the unseen distance:
“What’s the point of me, a man who makes a living by sculpting idols, staying in a land devoid of faith? Rather than eking out a living here, I might as well use my last bit of capital to gamble on a way out.”

She paused, then turned her gaze back.

"As for why we chose that place... firstly, currently only the domain of the God of Original Sin is willing to accept refugees from the Vulcan Domain; secondly, I heard that there... there are no fixed social classes there."

At this point, she gave a very faint, almost self-deprecating, bitter smile.

"I've struggled for over twenty years to become an aristocrat. Now, I'm truly exhausted. I want to see... what a world where no one is born with a predetermined social class is really like."

"I understand your thoughts."

Jiang Jianxin nodded slowly, but his tone became more serious:

"But you must understand that the words 'classless' may sound simple, but they actually imply a set of social rules that are completely different from ours. Even many of the ideas of the God of Original Sin are considered by most people to be... wild, difficult to understand and accept."

"I know."

Grant answered quickly and calmly.

But beneath that calm, Jiang Jianxin caught a glimpse of something almost insane, burning faintly in her eyes.

"I have no intention of bringing my original identity into the new society."

She lowered her eyes, looking at her hands, calloused from years of holding a carving knife, and spoke in a voice as soft as a whisper:

"A carving knife can be used to carve statues of gods, and naturally... it can also be used to kill people."