City of Peace, Opas, Lower City:
The interior of the vehicle was dim, with only the dashboard emitting a faint Blue Light. Elvira held the steering wheel, her deep ink-blue clothing almost merging with the shadows of the seat.
Outside the window, the outlines of dilapidated buildings and scattered lights flowed backward like a reel of worn-out film.
The radio crackled with static, followed by the sound of a warm and slightly exaggerated male voice:
“Good afternoon, busy or resting friends. This is Afternoon Harbor, and I am your old friend, emotional consultant Chai Kong. The sunlight is growing soft, and the time is right… If you have something on your mind, why not stop and tell me?”
Jiang Ming leaned back against the passenger seat, watching the flowing streetscape outside. For a moment, the warmth of the broadcast, the gentle piano music in the background, and the scent of leather and dust inside the car created an illusion. ‘It’s as if I never transmigrated. I’m just sitting in some ride-share car after finishing overtime, listening to a monotonous radio program, and tiredly traveling through a city that is just as exhausted.’
The voice on the radio continued, but the topic shifted:
“…Speaking of cities, it always makes one feel sentimental. We all know that Opas is divided into upper and lower parts. The currently glamorous Upper District is a new face, jointly planned and built after the Holy Moon Empire and the Rhine Alliance shook hands and made peace 100 years ago. But what about the Lower City beneath our feet? Hey, it’s quite stubborn, obstinately clinging to its old appearance from 100 years ago — or even earlier. The streets, the scents, and the ways of life — everything — it’s as if time had taken a nap here.”
The host paused before continuing:
“So, friends, the true Opas has never been just that holy City of Peace. The Upper District and the Lower City, the glamor and the grit, and the new and the old… only when added together do they form the complete heartbeat of this city.”
Jiang Ming turned his gaze toward the window.
In the distance, amidst the rusted skeletons of factory complexes, thick yellowish smoke billowed from countless cracks and short, stubby chimneys, pouring into the lead-gray sky.
The sky was clogged by this continuous excretion, accumulating into a dense, light-proof haze. Even at this hour of the afternoon, not a single ray of sun could pierce through.
It was as if the sunlight had been completely swallowed and dissolved above those filthy clouds, leaving not even a single shred of light for this land.
Right at that moment, a pair of hands reached from the back seat and rested on Jiang Ming’s chest. A cold voice drifted from behind him.
“Classmate Jiang Ming, what do you think of this place?”
It was Lillian.
However, Jiang Ming did not pay attention to Lillian’s overstepping touch. His brow furrowed slightly as his gaze remained fixed on the landscape outside, which was being consumed by industrial pollution. One strand of cold unease coiled around his heart like a vine.
Too many things had happened lately, as if everything had been premeditated.
In the back seat, Lillian leaned her body forward, her hand still pressed against Jiang Ming’s chest, greedily feeling his heartbeat.
Regarding this operation, she naturally knew of Elvira’s existence. To be honest, she would have preferred this to be a trip for only her and Jiang Ming. With her methods, there were 100 ways to ensure that black-haired Girl simply could not show up.
But she had not done so.
This was because she knew even more clearly that Jiang Ming would not like that.
Deep within those black eyes currently reflecting the bleak streetscape, there was a sense of vigilance and principle that even he might not have noticed yet. She had seen the way he burned for those principles 100 years ago; how could she possibly forget?
If one day those dusty memories truly broke through the shackles of time and awakened in his mind…
Then any deliberate exclusion or any slight toward others she committed today might turn into a cold blade piercing his gaze, leading to his resentment.
That was a price Lillian was absolutely unwilling to pay.
Furthermore…
She leaned back slightly into the shadows of the seat, her lips curving into the arc of a predator.
In terms of priority, she was the childhood friend who had grown up with him and shared the Empire’s most turbulent years. In terms of destiny, she was also the Heaven-sent who had crossed 100 years of time to break into his life once more.
Both time and fate were on her side.
She had enough patience and absolute confidence to win this war — to win Jiang Ming, all of him.
In the driver’s seat, Elvira’s knuckles turned slightly white as she gripped the steering wheel.
A sense of crisis, like a cold needle, quietly crawled up her spine. It did not stem from the dilapidated scenery outside or the unknowns of the mission itself, but from the mirror. In the rearview mirror, she saw a calm and determined Glimmer flash through the white-haired woman’s eyes as she withdrew her hand.
‘She is stealing.’
That woman was attempting to seize the position beside him with a composed attitude — the position of her partner.
And this was a partner she had found with great difficulty.
Elvira’s gaze swept quickly over Jiang Ming’s profile as he stared out the window.
Calm, sharp, and possessing an almost terrifying intuition and execution on the battlefield — a person like Jiang Ming was an almost extravagant luxury to someone like her, who had walked the edge of danger alone for years.
She had once thought she had encountered a stroke of incredible luck, stumbling upon such a rare puzzle piece in the vast sea of people that happened to fit the jagged edges of her own broken life perfectly.
And now, someone wanted to take the most important piece of the map she had only just begun to claim.
‘This sort of thing absolutely cannot happen!’
“It’s terrible,” Jiang Ming whispered.
His gaze swept past the window. Every pedestrian wore a similar style of anti-pollution mask, the filter vents opening and closing rhythmically with their breathing. Countless figures flickered through the iron-gray haze, carrying loads or bending over, their silhouettes blurred by dust into swaying shadows that mechanically repeated their daily trajectories under the massive shadows of the factories.
Such a scene was a common sight in the Lower City.
Housing prices in the Upper District were exorbitant; that was simply not a place where they could survive.
Thus, the poor, the exiled, and the rootless could only huddle in this forgotten bottom layer, using their lungs to filter the turbidity and their spines to support the roaring assembly lines.
They were the indispensable fuel for the dark side of Opas — cheap, abundant, and easily replaced.
They shuttled through the mist in their masks, like a group of Wraiths crawling out of their graves.
At that moment, Jiang Ming’s eyes landed on a man pushing a heavy freight container.
Though the man’s steps were unsteady, his shoulders beneath the mask remained squared. He even raised his hand occasionally to wipe the dust from his mask’s goggles with his sleeve, as if he were afraid of missing some invisible Glimmer ahead.
But even so, they accepted it gladly.
Because this was Opas. In this legendary city of freedom and opportunity, the Miller earned here was indeed slightly more than a full year’s harvest from the parched earth of their homelands.
The roar of steel drowned this place out, just as water drowns the wail of a drowning man.
Sometimes, so-called hope was merely a relative term. Having a single shred of light more than absolute despair was enough to keep a person walking through the haze and calling it living.
“Yes, but that is what a city is,” Lillian sighed softly.
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