Underneath the coniferous forests of the Northeast, only an aged, cracked voice singing a folk song still echoed, but not a single person could be seen.
"The moon is bright, the wind is still, the tree leaves cover the window lattice..."
While that voice was still echoing in the forest, thousands of miles away in Virtue City, on a small path outside a villa district, the same aged singing floated up.
An old man dressed in a padded coat, sitting on a flatbed cart and waving a horsewhip, stopped his singing. He looked around, feeling the temperature of this place.
"Ah, the South..."
He closed his eyes and sensed carefully.
For him to have been so compelled that he hadn't fully processed abandoning the transaction there, and had instead crossed thousands of miles to appear here—there could only be one reason.
There had to be a unique treasure here, one of a kind in all the world, to have drawn him directly to this place.
