On the east coast of the Dark Continent, beside the endless Eastern Sea...
In a kingdom of hot springs composed of tens of thousands of pools, large and small, lies the 'Purification City'. Every day, it welcomes and sends off countless customers stained with 'filth'.
In the western suburbs of Valencia, which bears the beautiful name of the 'Clean Capital', at the hot spring located at No. 54-09, Shuilanfang 7th Avenue.
Vanessa Siren dragged her weary tail, forcing a smile as she saw off the last wave of guests... [Toadman]. She instructed her younger sister, Lola, to close the door and decline any further guests. Without even eating dinner, she went straight to the second floor.
Her snake tail, covered in silvery-white scales, rustled against the wooden stairs... Creak. The door closed. Unlike Vanessa, Lola—who was a size smaller—hung up the 'Closed' sign and followed her sister upstairs. Seeing Vanessa lying prone on the bed with her tail curled into a ball, Lola said with heartache, "There's really no need to work this hard, sister. If we really get demoted, the worst that can happen is I find a man to marry. I'll ask for a hundred thousand or eighty thousand 'Qin Pills' as a betrothal gift!"
Lola pinched her small waist, her impressive chest heaving as she spoke with an air of pride. Suddenly, a pillow thrown by Vanessa smacked into her. Vanessa feigned anger and said, "Your sister doesn't need to sell you to support the bathhouse yet. Go back to sleep and don't annoy me."
"Hehe, I won't... I just want to sleep clinging to you, sister..."
Lola's emerald green snake tail slithered over. She climbed onto the bed and, like a large monkey, hung herself onto Vanessa, using both her hands and tail.
Two snake tails, one white and one green, entangled together. Vanessa prayed Lola's head away with a reproachful look and said with mock disgust:
"Stay away from me. Don't drool on me later!"
Lola took the opportunity to extend her long tongue and lick Vanessa's palm, saying with a playful grin, "I refuse!"
After her sister's playful interruption and a bout of frolicking... a moment later, Vanessa held Lola in her arms, watching her fall asleep and listening to her faint snoring. She reached out and tucked a lock of hair behind Lola's ear. On that bright, gentle, and smooth little face, a thick weariness and sorrow crept up once again...
The reason the 'Clean Capital' Valencia possessed the reputation of being a 'Purification City' relied entirely on their Siren clan. Through the Nen ability 'Siren's Tears' inherited from the 'Siren' surname, they could drip tears into the hot springs to help customers drive away the [Filth] lurking in their bodies caused by the backlash of [Nature] against [Faith]...
In other words—
Their Siren clan was a well-known clan of [Nen Exorcists] in this corner of the Dark Continent!
Legend had it that when the 'Great Siren' awakened, even figures like [God], if they encountered problems, could be exorcised or even healed... This showed just how important the Siren clan was to magical beasts or humans of the [Faith] faction!
They were undoubtedly the 'doctors' of this world, capable of saving people from dire straits and preventing them from degenerating into unconscious beasts or 'calamities'!
However, 'healers cannot heal themselves'. 'Nen Exorcism' did not mean the 'Nen' could be truly removed!
The Siren clan used 'Siren's Tears' to wash away the 'pollution' in the customers' bodies, but they then had to temporarily store this 'pollution' within their own bodies. Afterward, the 'Great Siren' would instruct believers to distribute 'Qin Pills' periodically and in fixed amounts to suck away this 'pollution'. Otherwise, over time... the pollution would accumulate in the body and eventually explode, forcing the person to lose their reason and degenerate into a 'monster' or 'calamity'. They would then be purged by the [Cleaner Squad] of Valencia or left to perish on their own.
What Vanessa hadn't told her sister Lola was that their parents had failed to meet their 'performance targets' back then. They didn't receive enough 'Qin Pills'. In the end, before the Cleaner Squad could act, and while they still had a shred of consciousness, they voluntarily left Valencia to seek another way of life in the depths of the Eastern Sea...
Now—it was her turn to face this problem!
Because she was afraid of accumulating too much pollution, she didn't dare to take too many customers. Because there weren't many customers, she didn't meet the performance targets. The hot spring's rating was downgraded, and the allocated Qin Pills became fewer and fewer, leading to more and more pollution accumulating in her body... Watching this 'vicious cycle' continues... Vanessa stroked Lola's small face. Thinking of her parents, she even had the thought of 'following them'. But Lola was still young. Could she really leave her all alone to walk the same old path as herself and their parents?
Vanessa was unwilling and reluctant. Dazed and groggy, drowsiness struck, and she fell asleep clinging to her sister.
A wisp of ethereal mist surged in, quietly infiltrating the depths of her subconscious, curling around a sliver of her consciousness and drifting toward Roy's dream domain...
Dark Continent, Northern Frontier.
Kobold Tribal Settlement.
In the territory of the Howling Moon Wolf King, within Bone Shatter City's River Valley Town, near a small river, dozens of scattered households formed a remote little village named Yellow Village.
It was late at night. At the west end of Yellow Village, Old Kohler took advantage of his wife and son being quickly asleep to quietly get out of bed. He read a dim oil lamp, went to the woodshed, and lifted a floorboard, revealing the deep and cramped basement beneath. He stood silently by the side for a while, lowered his wrinkled dog head, and squeezed in...
Tap... tap...
Footsteps echoed in the pitch-black night...
Because the basement had been sealed for years, it was damp and stuffy... Old Kohler carried the oil lamp, coughed a few times, and walked slowly to the end... In a corner against the wall, he saw a broken wooden chest that had been gathering dust for a long time.
The chest was locked. Old Kohler gently hung the oil lamp on an iron hook protruding from the left side. He fumbled up and down his body, took out a key from his chest pocket, squatted down, and inserted it into the keyhole. With a click , the chest opened, and a layer of burnt-yellow 'Nen aura' halo flickered in his face...
The halo was faint. It seemed that due to being sealed for too long, the 'Nen aura' was thinning day by day, on the verge of dissipating...
Old Kohler stared blankly. He reached into the chest and felt around. It was a set of tattered plate armor and a rusted morningstar, testaments to an unknown epic of years past...
"You want to go adventuring again?"
At this moment, a hoarse voice rang out from behind Old Kohler... He couldn't help but shiver. Before turning around, he hurriedly put on a smiling face. His dog face squeezed together, full of wrinkles, completely hiding his eyes. He quickly closed the chest, fawned over to his wife, supported her waist, and said, "Just one last time... I promised, really, just the last time..."
"The harvest isn't good this year. A few days ago, Mark's son met with disaster again; he was dragged away and eaten by a few green-skinned beasts."
Old Kohler stroked his wife's increasingly bulging belly. "We don't know how many you're having in this litter. I was just thinking of doing some work to earn some milk money before the children are born..."
"You always have a reason."
"Kohler," Jenny stroked Old Kohler's dog head. Those wrinkles were as deep as gullies, weathered by wind and frost; clearly, he was no longer young...
She said, "Do you think you can still lift the hammer and wear the armor?"
"What if..."
Jenny's gauze was filled with worry. "You said it yourself, something happened to Mark's family."
Jenny leaned against Old Kohler, nuzzling him affectionately with her dog nose, and murmured, "I can't lose you."
"Yes... yes... let's not talk about it, let's sleep..."
That night, Old Kohler coaxed his pregnant wife back to bed. Just as he was groggily falling into a dream, he felt himself floating up. Wrapped in a wisp of looming, hazy dream energy, he roamed in the sea of the 'collective' subconscious...
Opening his eyes again, he arrived at a vast place where directions were completely indistinguishable. He looked up...
He saw a young boy whose face was unclear and a 'humanoid' magical beast with a human body and a snake's tail...
His pair of dog eyes suddenly constricted!