"Did we just cross over into an incredible country?"
Yaxiu pressed his entire body against the floor-to-ceiling glass, looking down at the sleepless city below. A dim white jade disc hung in the night sky, an unmistakable testament that they had completely lost their chance to participate in the live-streamed reality adventure known as the Blood Moon Trial.
Towering skyscrapers stood in dense clusters beneath blazing neon lights. The automated cars on the highway—forgive Yaxiu for not possessing much science-fiction vocabulary—behaved like a strictly programmed collective. Every vehicle maintained an identical following distance, and all of them moved at virtually the same speed. Whenever one turned off onto a slip road and left a gap, another immediately moved in to take its place. There were no traffic lights, zebra crossings, or any other traffic infrastructure on the roads; the automated cars seemed to possess remarkable self-governing capabilities.
Beyond that, countless drones shuttled through the night. They were similarly tightly orchestrated, navigating the skies with swift efficiency and even offering point-to-point service—just moments ago, a drone had abruptly darted into their room, dropped off several pairs of underwear, and flown straight out.
This was because Harvey preferred briefs, Yaxiu preferred boxer briefs, and Igola preferred wearing no underwear at all, yet the room had only been stocked with briefs.
Upon hearing their requests, the young butler Banjie had simply said, "I will accommodate your needs as soon as possible." But none of them had expected it to be so fast; fresh underwear arrived the moment they finished their showers.
Only then did the trio realize the room had a delivery hatch specifically designed for drones—just large enough for a drone to slip through, but flat enough that a human arm could not reach inside.
Rather than the grandeur of the cityscape, it was subtle, considerate little designs like this—deeply integrating architecture and automated services—that left the three migrant workers truly unsettled. Had productivity here become so abundant that people could save even that final minute of receiving a package?
If he had to use a single word to describe this city, the only word Yaxiu could think of was "alive."
The city was like a living machine, operating with maximum efficiency driven by precise computational power. Everything moved fast without descending into chaos, like an orchestra led by a virtuoso conductor, where every single note locked into place without a shred of redundant noise—everything pleasing to the ear.
Yaxiu had originally thought Kaimeng City in the Blood Moon was quite decent, but compared to the city beneath him, Kaimeng could at best be described as heavy death metal—not just down-to-earth, but down to hell.
By the way, although Yaxiu was looking down at the city, he was not currently high up in a skyscraper. In fact, it was quite the opposite: he was on the building's lowest level, basement floor 51.
Yet beneath the floor he stood on lay not a foundation, but a rooftop.
Below that rooftop was the first level of the city on the ground.
An eighty-story building faced Yaxiu's basement floor 51 across open air, with a straight-line distance of less than a hundred meters. When Yaxiu had observed this spectacle from the car earlier, it had felt as though teardrop stalactites and stalagmites were gazing at each other, or as though the sky and earth were locked in a kiss.
This was a fantasy city so insane it made one shudder: ground level one was a normal city, but ground level two was an inverted city—all its buildings were constructed downward, with ground level two's floor serving as the very highest point.
"I hope the corpse management regulations here are relatively lax..." Harvey swung his newly healed left arm, lazing in a soft armchair with a piece of moon sugar in his mouth. "A civilization that knows how to put corpses to use is a good civilization."
"No wonder those Red Hats who looked like security forces let us off so easily."
Igola watched the drones zipping through the night sky. "Simply mounting firearms and artillery on those machines would be enough to encircle and slaughter an ordinary army of sorcerers. The unmanned, three-dimensional security system that the Blood Moon Country is still researching has already become a reality here.
"Unless a major Void Realm passage of Rank 3 or higher is opened, and Sanctuary Sorcerers personally lead a hunting festival, nothing can make a ripple in this country.
"To them, nobodies like us who came through a Rank 2 Void Realm passage are indeed evil foreign enemies that must be eliminated, but at most we're at the level of cockroaches. We don't even rate as centipedes."
Speaking up to this point, Igola could not help feeling somewhat resentful. "In a civilized country with such refined systems, as long as we had hidden for three days until the countdown vanished, we certainly could have found a way to become official citizens here and enjoy social welfare, instead of being forced into becoming that woman's slaves for a hundred days like this—"
"The social welfare in the Blood Moon Country is actually pretty thorough too," Yaxiu remarked suddenly, "except you have to have a chip implanted in the nape of your neck. If the Blood Moon were willing to commute your sentences on the condition that you had the chips implanted again, would you agree?"
"No way." Harvey spread his hands. "The research institutes have a monopoly on the corpse industry. Small-scale independent operators like me can't survive at all. Even if not for the jailbreak, I definitely would have left that hyper-competitive red ocean of the Blood Moon... Sigh, where on earth is the blue ocean corpse yard meant for me?"
"I don't like answering hypothetical questions," Igola said calmly.
"Although I have no evidence, I have a feeling this country might not be as wonderful as it appears to our eyes." Yaxiu picked up a sandwich cookie from the snack tray. "If everyone here truly lived in peace, contentment, and without a care in the world, why would the Four Pillar Cult here flourish even more than the one in Kaimeng City?"
"Did it ever cross your mind that this is simply because there's an undeniable chasm in ability between the leaders of the two organizations?" Igola sneered dismissively.
"Besides, being hired by Annan isn't entirely a bad thing," Yaxiu continued. "Being used isn't scary; what's scary is having no use value. Even if things went as you said, male Veela, and we could slowly integrate into this world from the bottom, how long would that take? Wouldn't the risks and costs be sky-high? Could a bunch of penniless migrant workers like us truly gain a foothold in a civilized country with comprehensive systems? More likely, if we slept under an overpass, we'd be chased off for 'damaging the city's appearance.'
"Annan knows racial advantages that we don't even know ourselves. Not only does she know, she was even willing to pay a price just to secure the opportunity to use us... Igola, if I discovered your talent in some sorcery faction, and the price was that you had to suck up to me relentlessly from every angle for the next hundred days, would you be willing?"
"I told you, I don't like answering hypothetical questions," Igola said coldly. "Besides, I couldn't pay such a price anyway. Within three minutes at most, intense nausea and vomiting would cause me to dehydrate and die."
Having said that, everyone understood Yaxiu's underlying point—during these hundred days, not only would Annan be using them, but they could also use Annan.
With the help of a native like Annan, Yaxiu and the others could not only rapidly integrate into this world, but Annan would also help uncover latent value that they themselves were unaware of.
Even if Annan took the lion's share or even the entirety of the profits from that value, they would at least learn their own unique talents. They could treat it as vocational training—albeit one paid for with their own flesh.
"Still, don't forget who sold us to the Four Pillar Cult as sacrifices in the first place."
Harvey snapped his left arm straight, the bones popping with a crisp click, appearing completely healed. The muddled languor vanished from his face as he slightly narrowed his eyes, his dark countenance radiating the chill befitting Kaimeng City's number one assassin, the Control Master.
Chapter 190