Nabistin

"To think it really took only ten minutes..." At the Purple Beaver Parking Apron in Third New Nabistin, a hovercar descended from an azure skyway. Without requiring any manual guidance, the hovercar's autopilot system pulled directly into a parking space. Nona opened her Book of Gospel and checked her route history. The map clearly indicated that ten minutes ago, she had still been in the Sennheiser Building in Fanmula, yet now she had already arrived in Nabistin—the imperial capital of the Gospel Country and the blessed land of the Omniscient Weaver! One had to understand that Nabistin lay at the very heart of Gospel, while Fanmula was on its southwestern edge. The distance between the two exceeded one thousand two hundred kilometers! "This speed completely surpasses high-speed trains and rivals Mach 10 aircraft. Yet we're only riding in Salome's Ten-String sports car; its materials can't compare to alchemical aircraft at all, and we didn't have any protective measures against hypersonic speeds. The whole ride was entirely smooth," Nona said, biting her nails. "Unless spatial gates become fully popularized, no other means of transportation could ever compare to this 'Azure Lane'!" "No wonder they waited until today to send us an invitation." Qinna tapped her fingers lightly against the steering wheel and smiled. "Turns out it was to let us personally experience the focal point of future development." Generally, when a normal country wanted to test new technologies, systems, or policies, it designated an experimental zone to observe the results, expanding nationwide if successful. But the Gospel Country was completely different in this regard: all reforms started from the imperial capital, Nabistin. Even if another city invented some advanced technology, it was inevitably Nabistin that popularized and implemented it first. It was not that Nabistin suppressed other cities or stole their inventions, but that Nabistin was simply too efficient—while other cities were still conducting surveys and planning, Nabistin had already put it into production. It was just like in school, where before you even received the assignment, the class study representative next to you had already finished it. And in fact, it had been proven that any technology Nabistin adopted was bound to be good, and Nabistin consistently delivered a flawless model for the entire country. Over time, other cities stopped bothering to do their own homework and simply copied Nabistin's answers. Two-tier cities were like this, and now this Azure Lane was the same. Today was June 18th, three days after the ninth woven leaderboard. That afternoon, Qinna and Nona were discussing when the Gospel Board would be released when an invitation from Nabistin arrived in their Books of Gospel, requiring them to depart by 18:30 at the latest and arrive in Nabistin before 19:00 via the Azure Lane. Though they had heard of Nabistin's Court Banquet, they had never attended one—the ones who attended fifty years ago were the previous generation of Six Emblems family heads. But by any standard, it made no sense to issue an invitation so late on the afternoon of the event, demanding guests travel over a thousand kilometers to the imperial capital within thirty minutes, as if they were just dropping by the neighboring subdivision for a meal. Yet now, they genuinely felt as though they had just popped over to the neighborhood next door. Qinna opened her Book of Gospel to look up information on the Azure Lane; to her surprise, it did not cost any points, as if someone had already picked up the tab for them. The technology behind the Azure Lane was an advanced application of the space faction. Nona could barely understand it, and even Qinna, a Sanctuary Sorcerer, could only just make sense of it. Simply put, imagine space as a porous sponge, through whose gaps all objects moved. Now punch a depression into the sponge; when an object slid toward the bottom of the depression, gravity made it slide faster and faster. This was the principle of the Azure Lane. Now, the spatial sponge across the entire Gospel Country had been warped: Nabistin was the 'bottom of the depression' in this sponge, and all the Azure Lanes were the 'walls of the depression.' When Qinna and Nona traveled along the Azure Lane toward Nabistin, they were like grains of sand sliding down the wall. It was not just that they were 'approaching' Nabistin; Nabistin was also 'pulling' them in. Under the premise that spatial gates could not be universally implemented, this was unquestionably the most cost-effective mode of transit. After all, two stably connected spatial gates took a space Sanctuary Sorcerer a whole year to construct, and they required frequent maintenance afterward to prevent spatial turbulence—an exceedingly fragile installation. The Azure Lane, on the other hand, was not nearly as fussy. All it required was punching a depression in space. Although the spatial depression still needed maintenance by a Sanctuary, a single depression could branch into more than a dozen Azure Lanes. The cost was slightly lower than a spatial gate, but its reach was more than ten times greater. The Isu royal family's intention was plain to see: just as the nationwide plan over the past fifty years had been to build two-tier cities to increase plot ratios, the plan for the next fifty years was to construct an Azure Lane transit network, shrinking the travel time between any two cities to within thirty minutes. Moreover, unlike other policies, this was presumably an ironclad decree from the Isu, leaving zero room for negotiation. The Isu royal family rarely forced policies through; instead, they granted individual cities ample autonomy, allowing mayors to selectively implement the policies they needed. For instance, Fanmula never implemented the "Universal Popularization of Smart Homes." Many jobs were still manual labor, and maids even still existed. Or rather, all of Fanmula was an inefficient, labor-heavy "old-era city" with the lowest degree of automation among second-tier cities. The reason Fanmula was so "feudal" was that its city revenue depended entirely on mermaid fish-mint; the gross product generated by its citizens was negligible, so there was no need to boost their productivity. On the contrary, boosting productivity meant another group of people would lose their jobs. Although Fanmula could easily afford to support an unemployed population, the Six Emblems could not accept anyone in their clan not laboring, not producing, and merely enjoying services without providing value. Even low-value labor was better than no labor at all. Yet this was actually a flaw of the Six Emblems, because they were unwilling to abandon a single clansman. In Mengfeila, by contrast, the "unemployed" discarded by societal technological advances would, under the sway of their subconscious, voluntarily take on extremely hazardous jobs—like human experimentation. In short, "even scrap paper can yield some value." In Gospel's evaluation system, the most important metric distinguishing first-tier from second-tier cities was citizen labor force participation. The higher the participation, the higher the happiness, public security, and education levels across the board. Thus, the Azure Lane gave Qinna quite a headache—its establishment would inevitably bring about a dramatic shift in relations of production. New jobs would emerge, and many existing jobs would be phased out. How to handle and adapt to this transformation was a challenge every ruler had to face. The two got out of the car and walked to the apron exit. Beside it was a pane of transparent glass, and as they passed, purple text appeared on it, displaying their identification details: "Qinna Sennheiser, visit time: June 18, 17:53. Access granted." "Nona Sennheiser, visit time: June 18, 17:53. Access granted." At that moment, a staff member stepped forward and pointed at the ground. Qinna and Nona looked down and saw laser-projected guidance text: [Restroom, Mink Street], [Imperial Palace, Central Avenue ↑↑↑], [Nabistin Sorcery Spirit Museum, Platinum Avenue]. Having no interest in browsing around, the two headed toward the Imperial Palace. Nabistin had no roadways whatsoever; it was paved entirely with silver-white tiles for pedestrian walkways. As they continued walking in a given direction, their movement speed naturally increased, and a golden [↑↑↑] guiding path lit up on the ground ahead. At times, their speed would suddenly slow down until others crossed the path ahead, before resuming a rapid pace of 80 km/h, or even reaching 120 km/h. The same was true for all the other pedestrians. Even though everyone was moving at high speeds, not a single collision occurred. Even if someone suddenly stepped out of a nearby shop or came to a halt in the street, everyone's speed would adjust accordingly, incorporating the "noise" into the "melody"—looking for all the world like a grand yet impeccably precise symphony. This was another urban amenity fully implemented in Nabistin that other cities had yet to adopt: the Path of Heaven's Choice. In essence, it used ground motion to accelerate pedestrian movement. It had previously been applied to high-speed lanes, and once the "path regulation mechanism for different individuals" was perfected, it naturally became viable for city walkways. Nabistin was now so advanced that it had returned to simplicity—there were no vehicles inside the city, and everyone traveled on foot, only at terrifyingly fast speeds. Halfway there, Qinna suddenly stopped and turned into a cake shop. Knowing Qinna's love of cake and considering that visits to Nabistin were rare, Nona silently followed her inside. The clerk respectfully greeted them, "The recipes for all our cakes have already been sent to your Book of Gospel via mail. Tailored to your tastes, we recommend No. 13 Black Forest Lava Cake, No. 19..." Nona reminded her, "We have to attend the Court Banquet in a bit. You can buy cake on the way back." "Do you honestly expect that banquet to fill our stomachs? Let's have a bit of cake now to line our stomachs first," Qinna said cheerfully. No sooner had she pointed at Cake No. 13 than a server emerged from the back carrying the Black Forest Lava Cake she was about to order. "Eat quickly, then. Once you're done, we need to hurry over." "Here, open wide." "Mmph... I told you I don't want any." "Whoa, this molten filling is so sweet. Try some." "Stop feeding me!" Nona poked out her little tongue to lick the cream at the corner of her mouth. Finding it out of reach, she wiped it off with a finger and popped it into her mouth, then said suddenly, "The Weaving Ceremony ends tonight." "Mm." Qinna nodded. "The chiming bells marking the end of the Weaving Ceremony herald the footsteps of the new Empress. In six hours at most, we'll see the next earthly saint who will reign over Gospel for fifty years." "Little Annan probably failed, seeing as even her own ranking was nullified by 'Yaxiu,'" Nona said. "According to your contract with little Annan, she'll have to return to Sennheiser once the Weaving Ceremony ends, right?" "Mm." Qinna pressed her lips to the spoon, savoring every bit of cake cleanly. "When tomorrow's sun rises, Annan will become our clanswoman, and the legacy of the Doran family will take the Sennheiser name." "So what are your actual thoughts on this?" Nona did not care about the Doran family. "Little Annan will probably bring Yaxiu back with her." "Then Yaxiu will also have to take the Sennheiser name." "You know that's not what I'm getting at. It's about your special relationship with Yaxiu on the Future Board." "I already told you, that was just Gospel weaving nonsense." "Then do you have any designs on him?" "What kind of designs?" Qinna bit her spoon and chuckled. "If you don't spell it out, I have no idea what you mean." "For instance, calling Yaxiu out on the day he and Annan get married to devour him first," Nona said deadpan. "...Have you been reading something weird? Give me the title; I'll check it out when we get back." "Depending on your answer, I might take little Annan and him and leave," Nona said seriously. "Unless you revoke my clan authority right now, I have the power to do so. Last time, you said you wanted to bring her back into the family, which was why I colluded with you to pretend to leak her intel. But this time, I won't help you undermine her interests again." Qinna took another bite of the lava cake, molten chocolate dripping down the corner of her lips. Spoon in mouth, she fell silent for a moment before shrugging. "All right, all right, I admit I do have a bit of interest in Yaxiu. "But that interest is like seeing a cute little animal, plus partly because he's Annan's pet. While making my daughter cry is indeed fun, I only wanted to tease her a bit; I never thought of stealing her toy." Nona breathed a sigh of relief. "In other words, you don't actually intend to make a move?" "Eh?" Qinna blinked in surprise. "If you saw a pet you liked or a fun toy, wouldn't you want to borrow it to play with for a few days?" Nona's face darkened. "And just how many days do you plan to play with him?" "Until I get bored, then I'll return him."