As the sun sank below the horizon, the vintage car descended from the expressway overpass along with it.
The two-tiered city was already within reach on the horizon, but it was nothing like Azula.
If Azula's upper tier was like a giant umbrella towering over the earth, this two-tiered city seemed perpetually under construction, with several small umbrellas planted across the ground, making the entire city appear piecemeal and modular.
Yet compared to its second tier, something else caught the outsiders' attention.
When the sports car pulled to a stop at the city outskirts, Yaxiu couldn't help but say, "Isn't it... very foggy here?"
Even at dusk, the entire city remained shrouded in a white mist, casting the warm yellow light in an even more ambiguous glow. Yet this fog did not feel eerie; rather, it was like a soft-focus filter that lent the city a hazy, ethereal beauty.
Harvey sniffed and stuck a stick of cat grass smoke into his mouth without lighting it.
"Fog is Fanmula's local specialty. I wasn't used to it back then either, but we'll only be staying here for a few days, so bear with it." Annan signaled everyone to get out, then sent the antique vintage car to where it belonged—the adjacent junkyard.
Driving an old vintage car inside the city was out of the question. On urban roads efficiently dominated by hovercars, a vintage clunker was like discord in a classical symphony—so jarring that it would draw Red Hats knocking on your window, prosecuting you for malicious disruption of intercity traffic.
"Are we riding bicycles again?"
"No, automated scooters this time."
Like Azula, rental vehicle sheds stood on the outskirts here as well. But compared to Azula's focus on healthy cycling, Fanmula seemed to favor cool outdoor recreation. And so, everyone stepped onto scooters, slowly cruising into this misty city.
"Oh, right, Yaxiu—put on your cloak," Annan suddenly remembered. "Without my order, you are not allowed to take off your cloak at any time unless you're taking a bath. You must keep it on even when meditating to enter the Void Realm."
"Even at the safe house?" Yaxiu asked in confusion. "I know I need a cloak to conceal my identity, since I'm the only wanted criminal hunted by the Imperial Red Hats... but once we settle down, shouldn't I be able to take it off?"
"No. Have you forgotten your Fiend Trench Coat?" Annan shook her head. "I thought it over carefully. The two from the Broken Family Agency retreated far too quickly last night. There's no way they could have been scared off by you, so the only explanation is that they were scared off by you."
"...Miss, promise me, don't take after Igola and speak in riddles."
Igola remarked faintly, "Whenever you don't understand, you accuse me of speaking in riddles... Perhaps the Gospel is right; letting you wallow in ignorant illusions might just be a blessing."
Annan shook her head. "What I mean is, your Fiend Trench Coat might intimidate anyone seeing you for the first time. And the intimidation effect only depends on the realm gap in the mind faction, meaning Two Wings and even three-winged sorcerers could potentially suffer a setback.
"Therefore, your Fiend Trench Coat could become a crucial trump card. You must never let anyone easily see what lies beneath your cloak; you can only take it off at a critical moment."
"...Why do you make me sound like some femme fatale who solves problems by taking off clothes..." Yaxiu grumbled as he donned the full-coverage cloak, looking even more like a wanted criminal than before.
Lisi zipped along cheerfully on her scooter. Although she had never ridden one before, a scooter was clearly far more appealing to a child than a bicycle. She quickly mastered it, playfully scampering at the front of the group as if on a school outing.
As she passed two pedestrians, both suddenly turned their heads in unison to look at her.
One was a dark-skinned human, the other a green-skinned lizardman. They didn't seem to know each other, yet both fixed their gazes simultaneously on the white-haired little girl.
Lisi instantly shrank back to Yaxiu's side. Yet as the group passed, the two local residents continued to track them with their eyes.
There was no disgust, joy, or curiosity in the locals' eyes; rather, it was the look of students watching an unfamiliar classmate suddenly wander into their classroom.
As they ventured deeper into the city, these staring rituals multiplied. Pedestrians on the streets stopped in their tracks, patrons in open-air cafes set down their teacups, and passengers inside hovercars poked their heads out.
From all directions, high and low, inescapable and impossible to ignore.
The six of them seemed endowed with some breathtaking charisma, drawing every eye wherever they went.
Now, not just Yaxiu and Lisi, but even Harvey and Igola felt thoroughly creeped out. The sensation of walking down the street under the silent scrutiny of every passerby bred gruesome fantasies in the mind. The stares weighed like lead, suffocating them, as if even the air had grown thin.
"Harvey, I'm sorry."
"Hm?"
"You were right," Igola whispered. "Dead people really are much better than the living. At least corpses don't stare at me like this."
Harvey hesitated for a moment. "Actually, corpses can stare at you like this too."
"What a pity. The dead just lost another redeeming quality. I'm not learning the necromancy faction anymore."
Yet unlike the outsiders, Annan and Banjie remained completely unfazed throughout, paying no heed to the surrounding stares. They arrived at a free urban rail transit station, where Annan actually gestured for everyone to board, stepping willingly into the cramped car to endure the baptism of every passenger's gaze.
Lisi timidly buried her head in Yaxiu's chest, and Yaxiu badly wanted to bury his face in Annan's chest—he was terrified too!
He didn't dare look around the carriage, so he directed his eyes out the window toward the warm sky. Inside the city, however, the fog had not dispersed at all; instead, it grew thicker and cloyingly sweet. Filtered through the light mist, the setting sun and full moon dueling for supremacy over the sky looked ambiguously intimate, like lovers bickering at the head of a bed.
Still, Fanmula's aerial logistics system seemed inferior to Azula's. If Azula's drone swarms were like a campus cafeteria right after the noon bell, Fanmula's drone swarms were like school restrooms between classes: sparse, two or three scattered about. It was hard to tell whether Fanmula's consumer spending had plummeted or if people here simply disliked shopping online.
The railcar pulled into a stop, and new passengers stepped into the car. Yaxiu and the others immediately sensed an odd shift—a portion of the locals, who had been subtly observing them, suddenly diverted their gazes toward two new passengers.
Even without knowing the local customs, they instantly grasped what this gesture meant: those two new passengers weren't locals either!
Sure enough, the two new passengers looked toward Annan's group of six and strode straight over. One was a burly orc and the other a spindly goblin. No weapons were visible on them, but the vast majority of gospel sorcerers used firearms as mediums. Judging by the bulges concealed beneath their trench coats at their waists, they were clearly keeping up with the meta.
They stopped next to Annan's seat. "Purple Moth, the Duchess sends her regards. I am from the Family Harmony Agency—"
"You two have probably been operating in Fanmula for the past few days, haven't you?" Annan's expression remained unchanged. "Do you like this city?"
"Fanmula belongs to the Six Crests. We're not of the Six Crests, so how could we possibly like this City of No Return?" The goblin chuckled. "We were on an assignment in nearby Aliando and were just about to head back when we received the Duchess's orders to wait for you in Fanmula. We didn't hold out much hope and intended to hurry back after waiting a few days. Who knew luck would be on our side—we found through the Book of Gospel that Fanmula's migrant population suddenly increased by five around this time, matching your numbers perfectly."
Using the Book of Gospel to check the migrant population and track their movements?
Yaxiu and the others immediately gleaned two pieces of intelligence: first, Fanmula had remarkably few outsiders; second, the Broken Family Agency truly had no way to obtain intelligence on them directly, and could only deduce their itinerary through such roundabout means.
Except...
Weren't there six of them? Why had the migrant population only increased by five?
"Are you sure luck is on your side?" Annan touched her amethyst earring and sneered. "This is Fanmula, not Azula. Do you dare make a move?"
Annan did not lower her voice. Upon hearing her words, the surrounding locals' gazes grew sharper and heavier, yet they remained quietly seated, coldly watching the dispute among these outsider bumpkins.
"How will we know unless we try?" The goblin gave a faint smile and summoned his Book of Gospel. The railcar suddenly braked hard, the violent inertia nearly pitching the passengers forward. Yaxiu and his companions, already braced, swiftly steadied themselves, preparing to fight the Broken Family Agency bastards to the death—
"Don't move."
With a single command from Annan, the men's killing intent froze in their eyes. Strangely, however, neither the orc nor the goblin seized the opportunity to attack. Instead, they stood casually to the side, looking as though they were taunting them: *Come on, hit me.*
The railcar began reversing, hurtling back toward the outskirts of the city.
The other passengers straightened their clothes and sat back down. They offered no complaints about this sudden disaster; they simply stared at the outsiders as if looking at corpses, disdainful of exchanging a single word with doomed cockroaches.
Igola suddenly asked, "Is the one who strikes first committing a crime?"
"Anyone who strikes first to harm someone in a public place will be marked as a criminal by the Book of Gospel, which will even proactively alert the Red Hats to make an arrest," Banjie explained. "Furthermore, the moment a criminal initiates an offense, others automatically gain unlimited right of self-defense against them. That's why who strikes first is crucial—though this only applies in public. If it's a private area, the Book of Gospel knows, but won't intervene, leaving it entirely to the Red Hats to investigate on their own."
That was why, even though Annan's house had been demolished the night before, the Book of Gospel hadn't reported the Broken Family Agency. It only forbade PvP in public areas; PvP in private areas was treated as an internal dispute between players, outside the Book of Gospel's jurisdiction.
The duo's plan was exceedingly simple—take control of the railcar directly to leave Fanmula and head all the way back to Azula, and whoever struck first was a dog.
Although Yaxiu was already a wanted criminal, Annan and the others were still clean in the eyes of the law. By right and reason, the Red Hats could only attack Yaxiu; they couldn't harm these law-abiding citizens.
For instance, if they were in the same vehicle, to protect the safety of Annan and the others, the Red Hats could at most intercept them to force Yaxiu out. They would never blast them with a Fireball. No matter how advanced the medical technology here was, harming the interests of lawful citizens was strictly prohibited; that was an untouchable dead line for the Red Hats.
But if they handed over leverage on their own initiative, the Red Hats wouldn't have nearly as many reservations—they could even beat them to death first, heal them back to life, and put them on trial at their leisure.
This plan essentially tested whether Annan had the resolve to stake everything on a single throw. If she couldn't bring herself to surrender her lawful citizen status, she would have no choice but to accept this "One-Day Azula Tour" grand prize from the Broken Family Agency.
Of course, they had another option: let Yaxiu, who was already a wanted criminal, deal with the two of them.
Setting aside whether Yaxiu could beat them, the moment he proactively revealed himself in a public venue, it would instantly trigger the Imperial Warrant. Every Red Hat in the city would scramble for this windfall of a bounty.
What was more, Yaxiu genuinely stood no chance against two Two-Winged Sorcerers, unless he managed to trigger the special effect of the Fiend Trench Coat again—but what if it failed?
The safest way was for Annan and the others to suppress these two agency specialists with thunderous force and flee immediately, but...
Igola looked at Annan, but saw no plan written on the young lady's pretty face; she seemed entirely content to watch this unfold.
The Swindler made a gesture toward the necromancer, and Harvey raised his brows.
Since the young lady was unwilling to make a move, they would just force her hand.
From start to finish, Igola and Harvey's attitude toward having a boss had never changed: no boss.
To them, the status of wanted criminals felt far more familiar than an ID card. If they could use this chance to drag the young lady into the same camp, they couldn't think of a single reason to refuse.
At that moment, the railcar crossed a street that served as a clear dividing line within the city. To the north lay Fanmula's core two-tiered urban circle; to the south was the new urban district awaiting development.
Right then, Yaxiu and the others felt as though something had been drained from inside their bodies. Their frames felt empty, their thoughts turned sluggish, and they couldn't muster the energy to do anything.
The other passengers reacted even more visibly, drooping their heads like wilting flowers, lacking even the strength to gaze at the outsiders.
The railcar suddenly braked hard, not because it was forced to stop, but out of hesitation from whoever was controlling it.
Within a few short breaths, the orc and the goblin turned deathly pale and listless, their hands and feet trembling uncontrollably. The orc fared slightly better, merely gasping in huge gulps of air, while the goblin collapsed straight to his knees, saliva drooling uncontrollably from his mouth. Their heartbeats pounded so loudly that they echoed through the entire carriage.
Chapter 291