When Lin Sanjiu was halfway there, she turned her head and looked at the place where the aircraft was parked.
The iron-gray, triangular aircraft had smooth lines and a gloomy luster. It was sitting in the middle of a bunch of broken and messy vehicles. It looked as if it was about to break out in a cold sweat. Generally speaking, a luxury car in a slum would be in a precarious situation.
Even though it was also called a parking lot, its facilities were far worse than those in the CBD. It was a large piece of land that had been trampled hard by the vehicles and feet. There wasn't even a single line to delineate the area, let alone a layer of cement. A few wet clothes hung on a clothesline swayed gently in the wind, brushing past a canoe-shaped flying vehicle.
The parking fee was paid in advance. The old man who collected the fees was just an ordinary person, so he wasn't afraid that the ship owners would run away. As a security measure, he tied the new aircraft to the previous vehicle with an iron chain and added a lock. From afar, all the vehicles looked like criminals who were chained up by a long iron chain.
"I hope the aircraft is still here when I come back," Lin Sanjiu muttered in her heart.
As long as she could spread the news as soon as possible and lure her grand prize and Yu Yuan back to her side, she was willing to take a risk that was ten times greater than the cost of the aircraft. The kid had been afraid, struggling, and in pain, but she had never pushed him away or rejected him — until three days ago.
She couldn't imagine what kind of state Ji Shanqing was in at the moment.
She even wanted to use Quan's pocket dimension on Ji Shanqing to make him forget what had happened. Apart from relieving his pain, she also wanted to bury her own guilt. When she thought about how she had pushed the two of them off the airship, Lin Sanjiu wished that she wasn't Lin Sanjiu anymore.
The billboard with the words "Beacon Smoke" was not far from her. It stood alone on a muddy ground with a puddle of water. Below the words "Beacon Smoke", there was a line of smaller words, "Welcome to Fanjia City! The local Beacon Smoke Information System has set up a new registration office. Great discount. You can benefit all year round. Please move to the 143rd wall, 5th floor. "
"Fanjia City?" Lin Sanjiu mumbled to herself as she stood under the billboard, "The name sounds much richer than the city itself."
The problem was that she knew the destination but did not know the way. She looked up at the numerous walls that grew like weeds and had no pattern. She could not even count the third wall, let alone the one hundred and forty-third wall.
"Are you going to Beacon Smoke?" someone called out to Lin Sanjiu from afar. She looked towards the direction of the voice and saw that it was a young boy who had not yet grown up. His body was thin and his appearance was disheveled, and his height only reached her chest.
Although he was facing an evolved human, he was not afraid at all. He was quick and confident in his extortion. "I am familiar with that place. I will lead the way for you. Are you new to Walk the Clouds? Like I said, you don't look like a local … How about this, let's be friends. I'll give you a discount, 50 fog balls. "
Lin Sanjiu narrowed her eyes at him.
"No less," the lad said very seriously. "The place is very far, and leading the way is very time-consuming."
"… You saw my spacecraft, right?"
"Huh? No, I didn't, "the lad's long and narrow eyes widened in shock when he heard Lin Sanjiu's words." What does that have to do with your spacecraft? How about 45? I still have a family to feed. "
"Does my head look bigger than an average person's?" Lin Sanjiu laughed. She pointed at the entrance of the wall in the distance and said, "I think I can ask for directions as I walk. Trouble? I'm not afraid of trouble. Let's go. Goodbye. "
"Three," the lad immediately changed his mind.
"Deal," Lin Sanjiu stopped and said without hesitation. "Have you ever succeeded in asking for an exorbitant price?"
"No, I haven't. But I have to try. What if it works? "
The teenager did not seem to be disappointed that he failed to extort her. He waved at her and turned to leave. When the two of them reached the wall of the first ring, Lin Sanjiu couldn't help but stop. She raised her head and looked at Fan Jia City.
She couldn't find a suitable word to describe it.
Clumps of uneven walls, like a forest, stood on the hills that gradually extended into the sky. High in the air between the walls, men whizzed by on ropes and garters, with pulleys on their hands; men trod on the high ramparts, and plunged to and fro between the gaps and the windows. Behind the thick walls, the sound of shouting, the steam from cooking, and the noise of children playing could be heard.
Bricks, glass, wood, cloth, and straw made up the whole of Fan Jia City, giving it a shabby yet luxurious look. All the talents that were born for the sake of survival were added into the city piece by piece, filling it with freedom, chaos, and vitality amidst the chaotic atmosphere of poverty.
"Isn't it great?" The lad raised his head and looked at her for a while. He smiled and said, "I know Fanjia City is poor, but I'm willing to live here for the rest of my life."
Lin Sanjiu looked at the sunlight falling on his dirty hair and felt a little dazed.
She hadn't heard such a simple sentence for more than ten years. Only ordinary people, only ordinary people who had somehow been spared by the apocalypse, could casually decide their future in a certain place. She and her friends, no matter how strong they were, could only become ants that were washed away by the flood. There was nothing they could do.
"Oh, by the way," the lad turned around and broke her momentary daze, "I'm Yuan Shiming."
"Is that the croak of the frog?"
"It's the croak of the crow!"
Lin Sanjiu scratched her face and followed Yuan Shiming into the entrance of the first ring of wall.
A gloomy and cold wind, mixed with the faint smell of metal, sweat, and food, blew at the two of them. The walkway was astonishingly wide, at least seven or eight metres wide. The little ray of light that came from the entrance almost disappeared after a few paces, and turned into a long sigh as it passed through the rest of the walkway. Only when it came to the next skylight did it wake up and light up again.
"Follow me," Yuan Shiming said. "This place is too far away. It's not safe, so no one lives here."
Dusty plastic buckets, horizontal scaffolding, and bags of sand occupied both sides of the walkway. There was only a path in the middle that was wide enough for two people to walk. The organization that maintained Fan Jia City had obviously stacked the construction materials at the entrance. It seemed that they were either not afraid of being stolen or they were not worth stealing.
"Live?" Lin Sanjiu looked around, "Where do we live?"
"Isn't this a walkway?"
"No one lives here, so they stacked the things here," Yuan Shiming pointed to the junk on both sides and said, "You will know when you walk further in. There are living quarters on both sides, and there is a walkway in the middle."
Lin Sanjiu swallowed the question, "How do you guarantee my privacy?"
Even though she knew logically that she was walking uphill, she felt as if she had entered an underground maze as she walked along the winding walls of the walkway. It was only when she turned a corner that she was greeted by the sound of people and the smell of the human world. She snapped back to her senses.
The distant and faintly bustling city that she had heard a moment ago suddenly stretched out along the walkway and touched Lin Sanjiu's shoulder.
"Dang dang," Yuan Shiming raised his hand, "Welcome to Fan Jia City!"
A child shrieked with laughter as he ran down the far aisle. Someone poked his head out of the skylight and shouted in a language that Lin Sanjiu didn't know. Suddenly, a hand raised a parcel. The parcel bobbed up and down like waves as it passed from the hands of the posthumans to the person. The person shouted, "Thanks!" and disappeared through the skylight.
There was a young mother sitting on a blanket at the corner of the wall. Judging from the furniture around the blanket, her home was indeed at the corner of the road. She was a normal person, but the child in her arms seemed to have evolved abilities. Lin Sanjiu stole a few glances at the mother. She didn't know what to do, and she didn't know how much time they had left to spend together.
When Lin Sanjiu walked past an ordinary woman who was pushing a cart, she realized that the cart was filled with soil and all kinds of unknown green seedlings. The woman walked to the sunlight under the skylight and stood still. She placed her hands on her waist, looking like a mother bear guarding her cubs.
"She's a vegetable farmer," Yuan Shiming explained after he walked past her, "She can't plant her vegetables in the open space outside. It's too far away, and if you don't see it, it might be stolen. Most people carry their vegetables with them. "
"Is one cart enough?" Lin Sanjiu was doubtful, "It won't last more than a few days, right?"
"They are all high-yielding seedlings developed by the posthumans," Yuan Shiming obviously didn't know how to "develop" them, so he simply made up a story, "Once the posthumans work hard, the seedlings will grow rapidly."
Lin Sanjiu was rendered speechless by Yuan Shiming's words, which meant that she agreed to "work hard".
One hundred and forty-three walls was as long as it sounded.
Even though Lin Sanjiu was impatient and wanted to send a message as soon as possible, Yuan Shiming couldn't keep up with the posthumans, so she could only follow behind him patiently. Along the way, Lin Sanjiu looked around Fanjia City. She thought that Bee Sting's living environment was ordinary enough, but she didn't expect the people of Fanjia City to live on both sides of the road. Some people pulled up mosquito nets, some erected bamboo walls, and some even built a small "room" with mud and sand — if a rat's cage could be considered a room.
Peddlers, craftsmen, and people from all kinds of professions that could not be named, regardless of whether they were ordinary people or posthumans, were all mixed in between the "houses". From time to time, the corridor in the center would be filled by the bustling crowd on both sides of the corridor and the houses that were quietly expanding outwards. It brought the two of them between the high walls, and sometimes, they would run into a dead end. Both of them had to walk through a hole in the wall above them.
Lin Sanjiu felt that the three fog balls were well spent.
After a series of dizzying, endless turns, forks, and wall jumps, her vision suddenly widened. She finally saw the words "Beacon Fire" on a "square box" that extended out from the old city wall.
There was also the Eight-Headed Druid standing at the entrance, wearing a pair of sunglasses and looking around furtively.
"My brain hasn't been idle for the past few days, so I've sorted out the next part of the plot. It can be considered as sharpening my knife for chopping firewood (pun intended). "Thank you for your understanding. I rested for three days in one go (it should be three days). You guys still comforted me and helped me reduce my psychological burden. If you didn't respond positively, I wouldn't have been able to rest. I would have tossed and turned restlessly during my rest … I took some blood tonic. I suspect that I might be a little anemic, so I feel a little better today. "Anyway, before I see a doctor, I might as well give it a try."
(End of this chapter)
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