The underground neighborhood couldn't see the true morning sunlight, so they could only rely on the alarm clock to tell people that the morning had arrived.
In such an environment, it was hard to imagine that the people on the entire planet could still maintain the same biological clock and social order.
"Whoa! Whoa! Whoa! "
The alarm clock on the cabinet rang incessantly, sounding like the roosters crowing in the middle of the night.
The big yellow cat in the photo stared at the alarm clock with his black eyes wide open, wondering where the cat was hiding.
Jing Jiu and Zong Lizi pushed open the door and walked out at the same time. Zong Lizi greeted them "good morning", and Jing Jiu uttered "hmm". Like what she had done in the past few days, Zong Lizi washed her face and rinsed her mouth, took the medicine, fetched the breakfast and brewed the tea. Jing Jiu piled the cushions together and leaned against the chair to watch the news.
If their ages were ignored and Jing Jiu didn't eat breakfast, they would look like a couple who had been married for more than ten years.
Yet, it was a bit different that day.
Zong Lizi was about to leave this dark and gloomy neighborhood and go to the high and distant second level to study at the University of Stargate.
She wouldn't come back to this apartment building for at least half a year.
"Are you sure you will come with me?" she asked with a pretense of calmness as she picked up the cup of black tea and took a sip, concealing the expectation on her face with the hot steam.
Watching the news on TV about the transfer of the fleet in the distant starry space, Jing Jiu uttered "hmm", and added, "I'll come to find you after I've settled down."
Zong Lizi was a bit disappointed, but she felt elated when she thought that they would meet again soon, which was much better than parting from each other.
"I'll put up the rental contract today then."
Though it was an underground neighborhood far away from the prosperity and the blue sky, the government was still in effect. There was a special department responsible for renting out the apartment and collecting the rent.
Now that she would be away for six months, she wanted to rent out the apartment and earn some money.
"No," Jing Jiu objected without hesitation.
He couldn't accept another man living in this apartment, and he felt even more uncomfortable when he thought that man would lean against his chair.
It was for this reason that he didn't want to hand over the position of the sect master to Zhuo Rusui even though he had predicted that Gu Qing would leave.
Zong Lizi wondered how much money they would earn if they did so.
Just as she was about to blurt out, she suddenly thought of his personality and how he had already helped her so much, so she quickly shut her mouth.
"I'll make it up to you." Jing Jiu knew what she was thinking and said, "Two gold coins."
Zong Lizi wasn't willing to accept it, retorting, "Your lease hasn't expired yet, and I'm going to return the money to you. Why do you want to pay the rent?"
Jing Jiu said, "You don't have to. There are a lot of places to spend money when you go out."
This was the experience he and Zhao Layue gained when they traveled the world. Whether it was staying in the first room of the inn, going to the auction house to compete for items, eating the best seafood hotpot, or renting the most comfortable carriage, all of them required money. That wasn't all. He continued, "I transferred some credits to you."
These credits were transferred from the account of the owner of the gaming parlor. It was believed that nobody in the Federation of the Milky Way could find out where the money had gone to. The reason he chose the owner of the gaming parlor was not because he had discovered the source of the money was not clean, nor was it because he thought the owner had a bad temper. It was simply a habit.
Since he was already familiar with the owner of the gaming parlor, there was no need to choose another person.
Take the Aoyama Sect as an example. Taiping Zhenren, Liu Ci, and Gu Qing always went to Penglai Island to fetch a godly boat when they left Chaotian for the ocean.
Was it really like what Gu Qing had said, that he owed the King of the Godly Boats a favor?
Maybe he thought so, but Taiping Zhenren, Liu Ci, and Jing Jiu didn't think so.
They were merely used to it.
Habits were the most difficult mental shackles for humans, even for the highly achieved Cultivation practitioners.
The King of the Godly Boats had money and a boat anyway, so he didn't care about it.
Of course, it was useless even if he cared about it.
…
…
Zong Lizi was taken aback. She checked the information on her bracelet and found that a large sum of money had been added to her account.
She of course cared about this large sum of money; it was because she wanted to go to school and undergo the gene modification. All she wanted was to stay alive.
She didn't try to return the money. "Thank you," she said to Jing Jiu earnestly.
She had a proud and aloof temperament regardless of whether she was at the elementary school, the middle school, or the New Era Institute. Even though she had disguised it in the beginning, it had become a habit over time.
She seldom accepted help from others, so she didn't have a chance to say thank you.
Since this young tenant came to her house, she had said thank you more often than she had in the past sixteen years.
It was because this young man had been helping her all the time, and he didn't allow her to refuse him.
"Like I said, I'm making use of you, and this is the reward," said Jing Jiu while looking at her.
Zong Lizi curled up the corners of her mouth, flashing an enchanting smile, as she said, "But you haven't made use of me yet."
Having said that, she walked into Jing Jiu's bosom and hugged him tightly. She rested her head on his shoulder for a long time and didn't want to leave his bosom.
It was deathly quiet in the room. The alarm clock didn't ring again, and the sound of the news had gradually died down.
Jing Jiu was quite experienced in this sort of thing. He stood there like a wooden man, his hands hanging by his sides and his eyes looking straight ahead. He breathed steadily on purpose, and his heartbeat didn't change at all.
This was the so-called "You can hug me all you want, but I won't hold your waist."
It was unclear how much time had passed. It wasn't a short time, but it wasn't too long either.
By the time Jing Jiu started reading the fourth paper, Zong Lizi had finally let go of his arms. She combed her silvery hair uneasily and turned around to go back to her bedroom.
She went back to her bedroom to pack her luggage and to let the blush on her face fade a bit.
It was easy to pack her luggage. The University of Stargate provided the students with room and board, as well as four sets of school uniforms for winter and summer. There was also a free movie theater, a gaming room, a basketball court, a gym … All in all, the university had everything the society needed, and it was free of charge.
She walked out of the bedroom with only some underwear and personal belongings. She came to the front of the cabinet and looked at the big yellow cat in the photo, a reluctant expression showing in her eyes. … …
Looking at the chair, Jing Jiu was also reluctant to part with it.
After he left Chaotian, his ability to hide the Heaven and Earth had lost its purpose, and he couldn't bring anything with him at any time. Even if he had gone to the Cloud-Dream Mountain to get a magic space, it would have been broken during the battle against the heavenly demons of the outside world. Would he have to leave the chair here?
Zong Lizi took out a backpack and handed it to Jing Jiu, saying, "No matter where you hide the money and belongings, be careful when you take them out. Don't let anybody see you."
The backpack was made of overalls, covered with a layer of black lacquered leather. It was sturdy enough, but it didn't have a good appearance.
Jing Jiu had never cared about the appearance. He put the silvery computer into the backpack and a blue tracksuit that he hadn't seen before in the backpack, and turned to leave the apartment.
…
…
The gray and white flying device left the lawn and headed toward the high sky.
The platform was intermittently visible amid the layers of clouds and fog. It looked like two cliffs facing each other, with only the sky visible.
Seeing the flying device disappearing into the clouds and fog, the students of the New Era Institute felt a complicated emotion, and they slowly stopped waving their hands.
Looking at the vague marks left by the two flying devices on the lawn, Lu Shuiqian burst out crying for some reason and ran toward the distance while covering her face.
Seeing the scene, the students were startled, thinking that she and Zong Lizi had such a good relationship.
… …
… …
Sitting by the window, Zong Lizi felt nervous.
She didn't want to be recognized by the middle-aged man named Gao Shu, so she turned to look at the outside of the window after covering her head with the cap of the tracksuit. She had already expressed her sorrow of parting in the apartment. She knew that Jing Jiu wouldn't come to see her off, so she didn't take a look at the teachers and students who were as big as ants on the lawn below.
This was the first time she had left the underground neighborhood. Besides feeling nervous, she also felt a lot of new things.
Looking at the platforms intermittently visible amid the clouds and fog and the buildings of different styles on the platforms, Zong Lizi's gaze was quite focused.
Sitting across from her, Gao Shu looked at her intently and imperceptibly. He was increasingly convinced that the judgment of the President and himself was correct.
Who could behave so calmly when leaving the underground world for the first time? She was merely sixteen years old.
This little girl was definitely not as simple as the information indicated; at least, her family background couldn't be that simple.
It was true that her family background was quite common, though it was rather dismal. In the Federation of the Milky Way, the secondary gene modification provided by the government didn't work, and they didn't have the money to carry out the independent gene modification. As a result, too many people were killed by diseases, and even more people were driven to suicide by the scams of the funds.
However, what was the relationship between her and the President on the distant Main Planet?
The silvery gray flying device kept on ascending amid the clouds and fog.
The clouds and fog were much thinner than they looked from a distance, and they were much lighter than the clouds on the ground described in the textbooks. Her gaze could pass through them easily.
Looking at the outside of the window in Silence, Zong Lizi looked at the slogans of the old era painted on the steel cliff walls and the waste water seeping out from the cracks on the walls. She suddenly thought of the occasional rain in the underground neighborhood. Was this the reason?
After a long while, the clouds and fog dispersed. The steel cliff walls were gradually replaced by the floating platforms of the latest model, and the two sides of the cliff grew farther apart.
The most obvious change was that the blue sky above grew larger and the white clouds grew clearer, looking more and more like the scenes in the textbooks and on TV.
All of a sudden, the flying device leaped up from the ground.
The sun suddenly appeared outside the window and in front of Zong Lizi's eyes.
It was then that she couldn't keep her composure any longer. She opened her mouth slightly, thinking of a documentary she had watched.
In the documentary, a whale in the deep sea had finally rushed out of the surface of the ocean after swimming for a long time and arrived in the sky, bellowing in an exceedingly joyful manner. However, the whale only stayed in the sky for a short while before it fell back into the ocean. In the end, it was dragged back to the harbor by the fishing boats on that planet and became a source of food and protein powder.
Would she experience the same fate?
The silvery gray flying device suddenly began to descend, drawing an obvious arc in the sky.
She didn't know if it reminded her of the whale, or if it reminded her of the strange world she was about to step into, but she nervously grabbed her seatbelt and subconsciously looked around, but she didn't see the figure that made her feel at ease.
Where was he at the moment?
…
…
The people in the underground neighborhood hadn't seen the sunlight for a long time, so they thought the street lamps looked more beautiful.
However, the street lamps were on day and night; as a result, the beauty of the street lamps faded away.
Standing under a broken street lamp, Jing Jiu waited for the dim sunlight to flash past in the sky for a long time.
He had many mathematical papers to read, so the waiting was not a difficult task for him.
As the street lamps flickered slightly, the high and dangerous steel cliff walls above him became pitch-black.
Jing Jiu came to the end of the alley with the backpack on his back, and flew up along the rusty iron frame.
The night wind pulled off the hood. Jing Jiu flew faster and faster. In the blink of an eye, he had passed the plateau on the cliff where the New Era Institute was located.
During this process, Jing Jiu adjusted the direction of all the surveillance cameras on the way and turned off a dozen scanners among the platforms. Turning off the scanners would set off an alarm; but as long as the scanners were turned off for a short time, they would be attributed to a strong electric current fluctuation or some other inexplicable reason by the overstaffed departments.
The explosion of the primordial energy detector at the New Era Institute made Jing Jiu confident in the deduction he had obtained from the TV programs and books.
If there were lights on the steel walls and if someone had a sharp eye, they would be able to see a marvelous scene. A youth in a tracksuit with a backpack on his back was traveling among the huge steel beams as if he was going to school. He could cover a distance of a few kilometers by tiptoeing lightly.
All the scanners and the surveillance cameras were in his mind. The route he had designed was perfect. He didn't encounter any obstacles, and he didn't attract anybody's attention.
It would be even easier if he turned into a sword light. However, a few battleships were hovering in a corner of the dark space, and any moving object at a speed beyond the common sense would attract their attention.
Jing Jiu leaped up among the huge steel beams. Like Zong Lizi, he saw the dirty water seeping out from the cracks, the living platforms and the buildings that he could only look up at from below. In the process, he passed by a few different sealed platforms, which were made of the old-fashioned concrete and full of cracks, which might be the remnants of the ancient wars.
The dark sky had gradually gained some color. It was a warm red color, like the glow of the Thoughtless Sword when Zhao Layue was in a good mood.
Whoosh!!! A dark figure appeared by the edge of the huge floating platform. He passed the magnetic guardrail noiselessly and headed toward the distant metropolis.
It was then that the morning sun leaped out from behind the distant mountain, illuminating the whole world.
You've already exceeded your reading limit for today. If you want to read more, please log in.
Login
Select text and click 'Report' to let us know about any bad translation.
