Chapter 288: The Empty City
Ian should have realized it earlier. Travira was an island adjacent to Raijin Island, meaning this was roughly the route the later Supernova Urouge would take in the New World. Naturally, the Sky Island Barron Gray Terminal fell within this range.
And this place happened to be where Kaido of the Beasts jumped off islands to commit suicide. How could Ian not be alarmed?
Who knew if that madman Kaido had played this high-altitude freefall game more than once? Ian understood that the odds were low. Even if Kaido jumped islands, it wouldn’t always be on this Sky Island. But what if they actually ran into him?
Ian didn’t want to deal with that lunatic. He turned his head and scanned the surroundings for a while. Seeing no one around, he finally breathed a sigh of relief.
“Let’s go. Let’s head forward and take a look,” Ian said, calling Baby-5 along.
The two walked forward. Gradually, the buildings ahead came into clearer view. But what struck Ian as odd was that although this cluster of structures looked like a city, it appeared extremely dilapidated. The various buildings visible were all damaged and incomplete. Strangest of all, the entire city was silent, with no human figures in sight—completely dead and still.
It was more like ruins than a city...
“This really is a ruin,” Ian remarked, looking at a windmill-like structure ahead. One of the cross-shaped blades was completely missing, and the rest was riddled with holes. There was also a round-roofed building with a large gap in its ceiling. Similar structures were everywhere, making the place look like an abandoned city.
Ian and Baby-5 walked along the streets, which were covered in strange moss. They pushed open the doors of some houses to check inside.
But in many rooms, all they saw was chaos. The contents were either weathered or gone entirely, as if the place had been looted.
Baby-5, holding a cigarette in her mouth, brushed the dust off her hands and said, “This city was probably ransacked by pirates.”
Ian nodded, recalling the pirate ship that had fallen earlier. That ship looked quite old, but there was no one on it, suggesting it had been abandoned. Thinking about it, if a ship actually reached this Sky Island, getting back down would be a huge problem.
“But why haven’t we seen any corpses?” Ian asked, puzzled.
The walls did have various sword and knife marks, as well as some damaged areas that seemed to be from cannon fire. Although moss and plants now covered these walls, close inspection still revealed them.
If this city had been raided by pirates, there must have been battles. And battles meant deaths. Even after a long time, traces like weathered bones should remain. But as Ian and Baby-5 walked, they hadn’t seen a single skeleton.
Could it be that after the battle, someone collected all the bodies and disposed of them? But which side had won? It didn’t seem to be the pirates. If it were pirates, this city was huge—it could hold over a hundred thousand people. Surely not all the residents were slaughtered? But if the residents had won, where had they all gone?
This ruin left too many questions. But that was the fun of adventure. Ian and Baby-5 carefully explored the city, trying to uncover its past secrets.
However, after searching for a while, Ian noticed a new issue: they weren’t the first visitors to this Sky Island. He could see some relatively fresh traces.
He even picked up a rusty sailor’s knife. Though severely corroded, it wasn’t completely ruined. Ian estimated it had been rusting for no more than twenty years. That meant at least twenty years ago, a group of people had landed on this Sky Island.
How they got up there, Ian didn’t know. Whether they were still on the island was also a mystery. He could only continue exploring the city slowly with Baby-5.
Meanwhile, since the Video Den Den Mushi’s feed was transmitted below, Fujitora and the others on Travira Island were also speculating. Some even went into town to ask elderly miners if they knew about the Sky Island Barron Gray Terminal.
After spending most of the day, Ian and Baby-5 had covered nearly half the city but still hadn’t seen anyone. Even though there had been battles here, the bones and such had been thoroughly cleaned up, leaving no clues.
Finally, Ian and Baby-5 arrived at the largest building in the city center.
It was a strange structure. From the outside, it looked like walls all around. But when they entered, Ian found it was a massive hall, as vast as a football field, completely empty!
The hall had nothing inside—no pillars, only smooth floors. But the floor was covered in many winding golden lines, forming regular geometric patterns. Ian stared at them for a long time but couldn’t figure them out. The lines didn’t seem to have any special meaning; they weren’t narrative patterns.
“Hey! There’s something here!” Baby-5 suddenly called out to Ian. He turned and saw her standing in front of a wall.
This wall was also covered in moss, but the moss in one spot seemed thinner than the rest. That had caught Baby-5’s attention.
Ian’s heart stirred. He reached out and scraped away the moss, revealing a square brick underneath.
“Looks like it can be pushed?” Ian noticed the brick had noticeably larger gaps around it. Curious, he pressed his hand against it and pushed hard.
His guess was right. As he pressed, the brick slowly moved inward, creating a recess in the wall!
Then, when the brick couldn’t go any further, the ground began to tremble slightly. A rumbling sound echoed through the hall, and countless stone chips fell from the ceiling.
“Ah! Is the hall going to collapse?” Baby-5 was startled. She grabbed Ian’s sleeve and said, “Let’s get out of here!”
“Wait!” Ian stopped her and turned to look at the center of the hall.
There, the floor slowly opened, and something rose from below.
Ian understood. Someone had indeed come here before them. The previous group had also discovered the mechanism on the wall, scraped off the moss, found the brick, and pushed it.
With a loud clatter, the object that had risen from below appeared before Ian. It was a strange device. Its base had many indicator lights, but the top was a huge, hollow transparent sphere. Ian walked over to it. He initially thought the hollow sphere was made of glass, but after tapping it, he realized it wasn’t.
What was most puzzling was that although the device looked old and dusty, its exterior was still intact.
“What is this?” Ian circled it, observing. “It should belong to this city.”
He tried tapping the indicator lights on the base, but there was no response. The base had no switches or buttons either. Since it had risen, nothing else had happened.
Ian scratched his head in frustration. They had finally found something, but now they were stuck again.
But then, Ian noticed the bottom of the device. It was positioned exactly at the intersection of all the golden lines on the hall floor!
Seeing this, a flash of inspiration struck him: “Could this be some kind of energy core? These lines look like integrated circuits!”
Looking up at the device, Ian suddenly understood. This mechanism might be some kind of power source. It wasn’t responding now, probably because it had lost energy! If they could get it running again, they might uncover deeper secrets of this city!