Jiang He's neighborhood belonged to the affluent district. Standalone villas lined every street, many with lights still burning in their windows. Uniformed patrol squads appeared at regular intervals, slender metal rods hanging at their waists.
Each time he passed a patrol, Su Chen felt their scrutinizing gazes, tinged with suspicion.
But his expression remained composed — neither nervous nor timid. His clothes matched the neighborhood's atmosphere well enough that no one stopped to question him.
Once he left the affluent district, the streets widened considerably.
They also grew noticeably darker. The yellow glow of streetlamps flickered unsteadily, spaced absurdly far apart, leaving stretches of shadow so thick they bordered on true darkness.
His gaze fell on a vehicle parked by the curb.
Su Chen walked over and rapped on the window. The driver glanced at him, a hint of confusion on his face. "Su Chen?"
"That's me." He nodded.
The driver eyed the clothes he was wearing — the man seemed to recognize them. He opened his mouth as if to speak, then thought better of it, privately marveling at how their mistress's tastes grew more adventurous by the day.
"Let's go."
The door opened. Su Chen settled into the back seat, looking left and right. The interior wasn't all that different from a regular automobile.
The driver swept his palm across the dashboard. A low hum resonated through the chassis as the vehicle trembled faintly. The scenery on either side dropped away rapidly — they were lifting off.
"...Right, heading to the outer city. Taking the C-7 air corridor — should be clear at this hour..." the driver murmured. Through the window, Su Chen couldn't make out much below, but the light source overhead blazed considerably brighter from up here.
Whoosh—
The acceleration pressed Su Chen back into his seat. His gaze swept through the window, and now he could see them clearly — those streaming bands of light really were steel rail tracks. Some kind of transport probably ran along them during the day.
'Beyond the city walls lies an endless expanse of fog. Anything could be hiding inside — mutated monsters, machines...'
He dredged up whatever scraps of information he could about this world. The original owner hadn't known much either. That inexplicable fog seemed to cut off everything.
Had the world suffered some catastrophe that made it this way, or had it always been like this?
The original's memories held no answer. All he knew was that it had been like this since the day he was born.
'However...' Su Chen frowned. According to the original's memories, he wasn't native to Nanfeng City. He'd arrived from somewhere else around the age of five or six, though those early memories had grown hazy.
'So the outside isn't absolutely lethal — but it's also far beyond what I can handle.'
After an indeterminate passage of time, the vehicle shuddered lightly and touched down.
"We're here." The driver was courteous.
"Thanks." Su Chen stepped out. Cool air rushed into his lungs.
This area was far from the artificial light source, and far darker. He could barely make out his surroundings — rows of makeshift gray shelters crammed together on both sides, silhouettes moving in the gloom, the roads pitted and uneven.
This was where he lived. The outer city's fringe, known colloquially as the slums.
Following his memories, Su Chen found a few familiar landmarks and made his way home.
In the world outside, the special environment meant the city could not afford to shelter those who contributed nothing.
Whether family or individual, everyone had to be of use. Allowing people to remain unconditionally until adulthood was already the greatest mercy Nanfeng City offered.
After coming of age, you either served as cannon fodder, scouting paths through the fog. If you were lucky enough to return alive, you earned six months of reprieve.
"S-Su Chen?" A vaguely familiar voice emerged from the shadows.
Su Chen stopped. His "home," it seemed, was here.
"Why are you dressed like that?"
Once his identity was confirmed, several ragged figures crept out from the darkness. None of them looked very old.
'Huang Peng... Black Dog...' Names surfaced one by one in his mind.
"Did you... get into Nanfeng Academy?" one of them asked cautiously.
Su Chen's thoughts churned. Though the original had grown up here, the harsh environment meant his bonds with most of these people were superficial at best.
His silence drew what sounded like sighs of relief, and someone chimed in with a teasing tone.
"Told you — trading your body for a future isn't impossible, but you're a man, after all. Nanfeng Academy isn't a place for people like us."
"It's fine even if you didn't get in. You said the woman's pretty, right? Not a total loss."
"Yeah, and you got these nice clothes out of it. Should be worth something. Let me try them on..."
A hand reached out, tugging at his coat, trying to strip it off.
Su Chen frowned. His arm tensed slightly, and the one grabbing at him stumbled backward, toppling to the ground with a yelp. "What the hell?!"
The sudden commotion silenced everyone.
"Ha. Spends one night with that slut and thinks he's somebody now?"
"Leave it. Things didn't go his way — he's in a bad mood. Don't provoke him. Let's just go back to sleep."
"..."
The group dispersed. The surrounding noise faded into silence. Su Chen's expression remained cold. In the darkness, he found his way unerringly to his "home" and pulled back the tattered cloth covering the entrance.
Following memory, he located a lamp. The feeble light that sputtered to life at least made the space feel marginally more bearable.
"Home" was nothing more than a few bolted-together sheets of scrap metal. The space was absurdly cramped — even sleeping required curling up.
A small pot on the ground still held congealed rice porridge.
He shook his head, unbothered. He just half-crouched in the space.
"Su Chen..." The cloth flap lifted, and a small figure slipped inside. Her belly was distended, her face smeared with grime.
She spotted Su Chen and seemed to freeze for a moment, standing wordlessly in place.
"...Little Pigeon?" Su Chen ventured.
"Ah..." She startled. "Su Chen, you... you look... really nice..."
She mumbled under her breath, then glanced around with exaggerated caution. From beneath her relatively clean clothes, she produced a small bundle and pressed it into Su Chen's hands.
"These are for you," she whispered.
"Where did you get food?" Su Chen examined the canned goods in the bundle. Nanfeng City distributed only two meals a day to people like them — barely enough to stave off starvation.
The cans in the package, by contrast, had reasonably polished packaging. For people like them, these were a small fortune.
"I've got a secret to tell you — don't tell anyone else..." Little Pigeon leaned in close, her eyes sparkling as she whispered, "I'm leaving this place soon..."
"Where to?" Su Chen frowned.
"...Xi-jie will take me away..." She hung her head, looking somewhat guilty, fidgeting. "But right now... she can only take one person..."
'Xi-jie?'
A figure materialized in Su Chen's memory — someone with a soot-blackened face, brittle, lifeless hair, and a perpetually stern expression.
Another denizen of the slums. But now, she should be called Bai Fengxi.
By some stroke of extraordinary luck, a powerful figure in the city had taken notice of her and sponsored her admission into Nanfeng Academy, where she'd taken the name Bai Fengxi.
The whole affair was a closely guarded secret. Almost no one in the slums knew about it.
Su Chen and Bai Fengxi weren't particularly close — their connection was mostly through Little Pigeon. He only knew about it because Little Pigeon had told the original owner.
The original had kept the secret faithfully, but it had stung him enough to drive him onto Jiang He's bed.
"That's great." Su Chen relaxed slightly.
"Don't worry — I'll figure out a way to take you with me too." Little Pigeon added hastily.
"Don't worry about me. Just take care of yourself." Su Chen's tone was gentle. Little Pigeon had drifted in with a large group of wanderers a few years back. The original had looked after her.
She put on a solemn face to show she wasn't joking, then turned and left.
Su Chen chuckled quietly, set the bundle aside, and opened his panel.