Editor: Junyans
They easily escaped the trap-laden streets.
As long as you had a clear knowledge of the routes and a well-thought-out plan, the city’s interconnected roads offered countless ways to reach your destination.
Behind them, the destruction of the Iceberg Building was still ongoing, with occasional explosions echoing. The rescue team was fashionably late as usual, preferring to make their appearance after the TV stations had captured enough gruesome footage.
“We need to get more weapons,” Bai Jingan said.
Xia Tian turned to look at the man. The man sat beside him, his white clothes reflecting the light, resembling an unstoppable blade. His tone wasn’t a suggestion. “Let’s grab another box of rocket launchers.” He was talking about something bigger.
“Hey,” Xia Tian said. “Did I mention I really like you?”
“You did,” Bai Jingan replied.
The car sped across the road, the skyscrapers in the Upper City casting shadows over them for a moment, but then sunlight generously poured down, revealing vast stretches of blue sky between the buildings.
For a moment, they were climbing uphill, feeling like they were racing upward, leaving hell behind and heading towards a bright place.
Xia thought that the sunlight today was truly wonderful, reminiscent of when he had first arrived in the Upper City. Everything had seemed full of hope back then.
They continued discussing weapons. Viruses were definitely not an option. The powerful had all sorts of expensive vaccines. What they needed was pure force. Although these people controlled everything, every grand party would always be held somewhere, and there would always be a door. The people inside were ultimately still flesh and blood, right?
For people like them, every bit of freedom was found in the midst of artillery fire and destruction.
Meanwhile, Bai Jingan turned onto another fork in the road, and the car descended, shadows once again casting over them.
“If it could end,” Xia Tian said, “I would sleep a whole day in bed.”
Bai Jingan glanced at him.
“I also want to buy a bunch of egg tarts, chocolates, and souffles. I’ll eat only desserts the whole day,” Xia Tian said.
“It will be over.” Bai Jingan said.
Between the buildings, a brief flicker of sunshine danced before slipping away. The sharp angles of shadow seemed to leap forth in its wake.
In the media, all the news broadcasts were about the collapse of the Iceberg Building.
Dedicated journalists turned the history of Iceberg Private Security Company upside down—Upper City media had the knack for that—reporting sensational and dark stories, which made them achieve high viewership ratings.
Xia Tian had just opened “Skyrim Blade” when he saw the excited expression of the host.
“Iceberg Private Security serves the true big shots behind the scenes of the Upper City. Despite numerous relocations and renovations, this building has stood here for over half a century and has never faced such an offense!” the host exclaimed.
We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.
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The host laughed genuinely, sounding delighted.
“His Excellency, the God of War intends to destroy everything.” He said, “There is also Bai Lin’s blood relative, Bai Jingan, who has an ambiguous relationship with the Resistance Army.”
What a bunch of messy rumors, Xia Tian thought. Bai Jingan is a local in the Upper City. How could his relationship with the Resistance Army be ambiguous?
But the host seemed uninterested in that and turned to interview a guest invited by the Ministry of Defense.
“Have you ever thought that, for Xia Tian, the world is a prison? So, could the fire of His Excellency the God of War be a fuse? Connecting to a massive explosives depot that is large enough to destroy his shackles?” the guest said, with a burning gaze. Both the host and the guest had serious and excited expressions, like they were key members of the Resistance Army’s propaganda department.
“Speaking of prisons,” the host said, “we have to mention the recent rumors about the Guest Show—”
Xia Tian listened to them deliberately exaggerate the introduction of the Guest Show so as to create a sensation, saying that the show indeed existed, and the perverted, anti-human, and inhuman humans found pleasure through this show. They warned that no one was truly safe, fueling curiosity with morbid details.
Annoyed, Xia Tian turned it off. He didn’t need to know more.
Bai Jingan drove and turned onto another fork, continuing downhill.
He didn’t use autopilot to avoid showing the destination on the navigation, as it would easily allow hunters throughout the city to analyze their itinerary.
These data were ubiquitous traps, permeating the sky, the ground, and every breath. The Upper City was a world in the shape of an inescapable net.
Xia Tian turned to look at the sky in the gap between the roads. The deep blue, belonging to the Upper City, flickered and disappeared, replaced by the pressing gray of the building panels.
The surroundings grew darker, and the fluorescent lights came on as the driveway completely swallowed the car.
They had discussed it in the early morning and decided to go to the Lower City.
There weren’t many stations between the two places, but there were quite a few maintenance passages. With their abilities, going down wouldn’t be too difficult.
Below, there was no satellite surveillance, and the influence of the Upper City was somewhat blocked. It was indeed a world with no escape, but they only needed to escape for two or three days. If you were smart, had the right professional skills, and weren’t afraid of death, it was not impossible.
Xia Tian sat in the passenger seat, nervously adjusting Marshmallow’s function to prepare for unexpected situations.
When he recalled his hometown, he felt a hint of nostalgia—it was hard to believe that he would feel this way one day. Although there was no daylight, everything was decaying and death was everywhere, there were rules there. If you followed the rules, you had a chance to survive. In the Upper City, following the rules would only lead to a faster death. The good news was that you provided plenty of entertainment for the privileged.
A sports car zoomed past from the opposite direction before turning onto a fork in the road. The tail lights could be seen far in the distance.
While Bai Jingan was adjusting the camera’s field of view, Xia Tian, gripping the gun handle, asked, “What’s wrong?”
In the traffic camera feed, a roadblock could be seen being set up about three kilometers ahead. Bai Jingan glanced at it and didn’t proceed further. Instead, he turned at a junction and left the current route.
The black van seemed like a startled bird, swiftly disappearing at the slightest hint of suspicion.
At the same time, Xia Tian checked the official website of the road system to confirm if it was indeed an accident.
There was information online confirming that there was a multiple-car accident at the three-way intersection ahead, resulting in seven deaths.
This was not surprising; safety in the Upper City did not improve just because the cars were all self-driving, the roads were well-connected and there was central computer control overseeing everything. This place was full of disasters, with humans going mad like animals locked in a cage, attacking each other and themselves. Car accidents, murders, and collapsed buildings were everywhere.
But…
“Something’s not right,” Xia Tian said.
Bai Jingan stared intently outside. They were still on the city’s expressway, but it had been three minutes since they had seen another car.
He made another sharp turn and drove towards the center of the city.
At this moment, a large swath of bright sunshine shone on them.
Xia Tian froze for a moment, looked up at the sky, and cursed.
Bai Jingaan stared coldly ahead. They were on the lower road, but now they were basking in the ubiquitous sunlight of Upper City.
Above them, the maglev road was being evacuated.
The Upper City’s road system was controlled by a central computer, and there were occasional adjustments, changes, and lane shifts to achieve optimal travel results.
However, the Upper City’s road planning was precise, and major changes in the route were not common, let alone such a large-scale lane change.
Xia Tian and Bai Jingan stared in astonishment as the stable and massive Upper City roads moved slowly. Dust, nails, and billboards fell like rain, and the city seemed to be an awakening monster, hungry and ready to rise.
“Oh, damn…” Xia Tian said.
He stared at the scene. It was a sixteen-lane main road and such a colossal entity was retreating effortlessly, making the situation appear extremely crazy.
Bai Jingan glared fiercely at the scene, quickly opened the control screen, and disabled all safety programs—those things that could save your life in the last second of a car accident. In Upper City, people who drove like this were just plain crazy, but for them, it was a normal way of life.
Xia Tian turned to look at him and said, “Hope your driving skills are good.”
Bai Jingan gave him a sidelong glance while forcefully turning the steering wheel. The van shot out of the moving lane and directly fell off the highway bridge.
At the moment of descent, Bai Jingan activated the anti-gravity engine, dropping straight onto the lower road. The heat generated during the startup scorched a large area of billboards on the side of the road. In the instant the car hovered, he immediately switched back to the suspension function. He executed the whole process smoothly, like someone accustomed to high-speed driving.
Without slowing down, the car rapidly descended, and at that moment, the road above retreated once again.
Since its construction, the Upper City roads had never moved on such a large scale in a chaotic manner. In the blink of an eye, the dust it stirred up polluted the air into a murky haze.
Xia Tian looked into the distance. In the gray smoke, he saw dozens of grayish roads moving rapidly like tentacles. The colorful holographic advertisements along the road flickered in disarray, staining the dust with nightmarishly chaotic colors, and the fluorescent lights illuminated the dust in the sunlight, making it look hollow and eerie.
Behind them, several armored vehicles silently followed, having waited for a long time.
Suddenly, Xia Tian wondered. If they had really gone to the Lower City, would those people drive away the gigantic entity that had loomed over them for millennia, just to dig them out and place them on display at a feast?
Just thinking about it made him feel a shiver.
The surroundings were very quiet—the movement of that colossal entity was silent, like a submissive servant—but he could sense the flames of fury pressed against the back of his neck, emanating from some unimaginable mountainous entity.
Covering the ruins of the Iceberg Building and the chaotic movement of the entire Upper City expressway with its shadow, the monstrous entity was incomparably huge. It hailed from the depths of hell, bloated beyond measure from its insatiable gluttony, its pitch-black and contorted form enveloping the entire world. Year after year, century after century, it gorged itself without restraint; it was eternally ravenous.
And it’s absolutely mad, Xia Tian thought. I indeed have a talent for making people angry.
In front of them, three rows of black vans came to a stop. They were heavily armored and resembled a military force.
Two parallel roads loomed over them like aircraft carriers, bristling with layers of cars, barricades, and hunters.
In real-time satellite images, Xia Tian could clearly see the airborne shuttles gathering above, and all the roads leading to Xiangri District were under strict martial law.
Farther away, those people had spared no expense in deploying even more hunters… More cars, weapons, and barricades were waiting in battle formation.
The public was herded toward detours and compelled to retreat to their homes to facilitate the capture—they hadn’t heard any warning because the elites had directly taken control of the city’s central computer. It no longer cared about traffic and efficiency but prioritized capturing the duo as the main task.
The main city enjoyed a warm climate and was a prosperous place. But at this moment, all around them was only sunlight and emptiness, making people feel chilled to their bones.
This was no longer a game.
Bai Jingan thought, I knew, didn’t I?
At this moment, all pretense disappeared. There was no more “freedom to escape” or “do whatever it takes.” The elites had trampled on the rules, and the faces beneath were twisted with naked greed.
This was their game. The audience’s enjoyment was the only rule, and those people would stop at nothing to get what they desired.
Bai Jingan didn’t know why he had once harbored hope, discussing plans with Xia Tian and desperately trying to escape. He had long understood that this was a world belonging to the devil, a nightmarish toy house where all escape and dreams were mere illusions.
He glanced at Xia Tian, who had adjusted the rocket launcher and was smiling at him. Like many times before when he smiled at him, there was no trace of gloom.
People said his smile was like sunlight and flames of war, tearing through the darkness. But Bai Jingan knew it was also a cold, decisive, and unyielding smile, a flame that would burn instantly and was never prepared to stay in this darkness for a long time.
Yet he couldn’t help but hope, futilely pursuing that glimmer of light.
Even after so many years, Bai Jingan still moved towards that unrealistic light. He knew it was a dead end, and he couldn’t turn back, but he still did.
He glanced at the rearview mirror; they had nowhere to retreat. The roads on both sides were already waiting for them, just waiting to surge up as soon as they stopped.
This was no show. This was a relentless hunt, utilizing all available resources.
他面无表情地把马力开到最大，朝前方撞了过去。
With an expressionless face, he turned the power to the maximum setting and charged forward.
