Lin Sanjiu had to admit that she had already seen quite a few different worlds, from the Hyperthermal Hell with its unbridled desertification, Garden of Eden with its weird technologies and Kisaragi Station with its death-like silence...
However, none of these worlds had ever made her feel like a sort of… unsophisticated country bumpkin.
When Lin Sanjiu arrived at Red Nautilus, it was nighttime.
Two large moons hung in the dark red sky. They were like two stacked sheets of ice. The moons were so close to the ground that a person gazing at them would even suspect that their lunar craters were visible to the naked eye. Walking under the two large moons almost created a sort of soul-stirring sensation as if one was just floating in space.
The luminous moonlight pouring from the two moons were partially blocked by gigantic mountain-like shadows that covered the land. Lin Sanjiu stared at the black shadows. She strained and squinted her eyes but she just couldn't tell what those structures were.
Clearly, man-made structures wouldn't be that big. Even though she was looking at them from afar, the size of those structures seemed oddly out of place when compared to the size of a city. When she compared a skyscraper to one of those large mountain-like structures beside it, the skyscraper was like a grass sapling beside a hill. They created a mind-blowing contrast in terms of size.
It was as if Zeus had thrown down Mount Olympus and left a chain of mountain ranges resting on the horizon under the glistering red moonlight.
Lin Sanjiu looked around as if she was trying to get some clues from her surroundings. After a quick survey, she found out that she was lost, and this made her almost forget those large shadows in the distance.
She had arrived in an alley between two skyscrapers. She could look into the distance through this gap between the two buildings. Lin Sanjiu didn't know if she could count herself lucky. When she looked up, she realized that the skyscrapers were so tall that they disappeared into the clouds in the night sky. She couldn't even tell how many stories there were. As she walked a few steps down the alley, she realized that she was surrounded by a jungle of concrete and steel. She discovered that the particular alley, situated between the gap of two buildings, was so rare that it was one of a kind.
Above her, there were various flyovers segregated into twenty stories. The skyscrapers were so densely packed that there was barely any space for people to walk. She spotted smoke rising from some chimney somewhere. The sky with the large moons was well-sliced into various pieces by the countless overhead power lines as she walked through the alley with puddles of dirty water. The various elements combined to form a strange landscape of a technological wasteland. Lin Sanjiu could hear the vague sounds of vehicles driving by and human conversations. She suddenly felt a sense of long-lost novelty. It was as if she hadn't seen enough of this place. Almost as if she was in a reverie, she slowly walked along the small alley.
Her skeletal wings trailed behind her in the dusky night as she took her first step into a bustling city.
"Beep!" A sharp alarm suddenly pierced through the air. This was followed by some cries of alarm and complaints. A metallic flying vehicle managed to apply its brake in front of the building beside Lin Sanjiu. It was just in time. The vehicle wobbled in the air for quite some time, the driver seemed to spend quite some effort before the vehicle stopped properly in mid-air.
Lin Sanjiu was amazed, she gazed at the flying vehicle for a few seconds. After that, she walked past the vehicle and continued walking through the strange new world.
There was a "Hostel— Only 35 small crystals per night" sign hanging haphazardly by the entrance of a building. It was so dirty that Lin Sanjiu could not even make out what its original color was. Beneath the sign, there were a few other translated words. Lin Sanjiu could only recognize the additional English and Japanese translations. The remaining languages were all very strange and she had never seen them before.
Looking around, she could see these multi-language signs hanging outside shops and stalls providing all sort of services. These signs covered the alley, clogged with dirty water, in a chaotic manner: "Special Item High Cash Conversion", "Half-priced Information Consultation", "Weapon Upgrade and Advanced Ability Training", "Free Special Item Appraisal", "Doomsday Survival Course", etc. There were so many signs that there was barely any space between them. The facades of the skyscrapers were also covered by layers upon layers of advertisements.
Even though Lin Sanjiu had a pair of retracted wings which were almost 2 meters long, surprisingly, she looked comparatively unremarkable. The people here had a very weird sense of fashion. The siblings' outfits could even be described as "very conservative" compared to the fellow residents of this world.
A cat-like shadow streaked across the other end of the alley. Shortly after, a woman wrapped in a skintight garment made of snow-white fish skin chased behind it, she seemed to shout something like, "Wait for me, my little baby!" About 45 degrees above Lin Sanjiu, a window opened. An old but energetic Taoist priest, with typical long white hair and a lofty appearance, stuck his head out. He started quarreling animatedly with his neighbor, a middle-aged woman with multiple rollers on her hair, in Shanghainese.
Lin Sanjiu walked slowly through the street, feeling somewhat at a loss, like a country bumpkin who had just arrived at a large city.
"Missy, would you like a bun?" a refined-looking woman dressed in a red qipao smiled at her, beckoning, "In Red Nautilus, buns are our most famous snacks!"
Even a bun seller could tell that she was a newcomer to this world. Lin Sanjiu suddenly remembered what Reno said so she couldn't help feeling a little curious. She looked at the glass steamer in front of her inquisitively. The steam made it difficult to see the content in the steamer, so she asked, "What sort of steamed buns do you sell?"
"I sell all sorts of buns!" the woman replied cheerfully, the seller did not show even a slight bit of curiosity toward Lin Sanjiu's skeletal wings. "What color do you want? I have mysterious purple, elegant gray, romantic pink, classic black, refreshing green and sepia yellow. One bun costs one small crystal. How many do you want?"
Lin Sanjiu frozen for two seconds.
"I'll hav- have a sepia yellow and a refreshing green," she stammered slightly. She had no idea how she should phrase all her curious questions.
"Sure!" the woman in the qipao took out a piece of brown paper from nowhere and wrapped up two snow-white buns before handing them to Lin Sanjiu. Lin Sanjiu took out two red crystals of the smallest size and paid the woman. Next, she examined the buns closely but she couldn't see a tinge of sepia yellow. She was a little hesitant and didn't dare to eat the bun she clasped in her hands.
"You always operate your stall here?" she probed.
"Every time I come back to Red Nautilus, I would open my stall here," the woman in the qipao was rather friendly, "I just came back, so I'll be here for 14 months. If you want to eat steamed bun again, you can always come back!"
"Ah, yeah, sure…" It was very obvious that this was the first time Lin Sanjiu was in one of the worlds within the Twelve Worlds Centrum. "Excuse me. How can I reach Seagral Square?"
That was the meeting point she and the siblings had agreed on.
"Oh gosh. That's far," though the woman in the qipao sounded just as friendly as before, her face revealed slightly that she wanted Lin Sanjiu to move away from her booth quickly, "Why don't you buy a map and check!"
Lin Sanjiu answered the woman with an agreeing tone, but she felt slightly embarrassed. Holding the buns in her hand, she continued walking and looking around. When she turned behind, she spotted a person, who seemed like a local, buying a few steamed buns from the woman in the qipao. After she saw him eating the buns nonchalantly, Lin Sanjiu placed the steaming, "refreshing green" bun near her mouth cautiously.
A refreshing scent of new leaves, like the smell of the forest reviving in early spring, wafted into her nose. Lin Sanjiu had no idea what sort of ingredients were in this bun, but she had never tasted such a wondrous fragrance in her mouth. It was as refreshing as nature yet had a sweet, dry aftertaste. When she chewed, she could taste a very faint bitterness. The taste of the complex amalgamation of flavors was simply marvelous.
After Lin Sanjiu finished that steamed bun very quickly, she spent a little time recalling the taste of the buns wistfully.
"These buns are certainly worthy of being Red Nautilus' most famous local snack," Lin Sanjiu thought to herself and looked at the remaining "sepia yellow" bun in her hand. Her curiosity grew and just as she was contemplating whether to eat the steamed bun immediately, she spotted a small shop selling maps. She hurried over.
There were more than ten types of maps of Red Nautilus. Lin Sanjiu didn't know which was good. After considering for a long time, she spent eight small crystals on a world map and an area map of the Cyber District she was in.
Lin Sanjiu stood at the side of the street and started examining the two maps side by side. After more than ten minutes, she placed the maps down, feeling a little stunned.
"Who said that Red Nautilus is very small?"
Cyber District was almost 10,000 kilometers away from Seagral Square. In other words, Lin Sanjiu needed to travel across half the planet.