Yang Ming opened his eyes in a daze and looked at the watch beside his pillow in the morning light.
The dial automatically jumped out of the stereoscopic projection and unfolded a letter from Miss Windsor.
'Good morning, Ming, how did you sleep last night?'
Yang Ming rubbed the corners of his eyes and turned his hoarse voice into words.
'Not bad. Were you in trouble yesterday?'
After he replied to the message, he was about to sleep for a while, but the other party had already replied quickly.
'Does the trouble mean that I was reprimanded by my father? In fact, it's okay. He is relatively open-minded. He just told me to pay more attention to safety. There is chaos outside now. It is said that many spies from the New Federation are engaged in sabotage activities.'
Lu poked his head into the chat box and waved secretly to Yang Ming, as if he were a thief.
"Boss, I can turn on Miss Windsor's camera. There will be a surprise!"
Yang Ming frowned and said, "Invading other people's privacy like this... Let's take a look."
A small square box appeared next to the chat box.
Windsor appears in the frame with two dark circles under her eyes. Her face without makeup has a slight flaw, but her facial features are still pretty and pleasant.
Surprise refers to Windsor's bare-faced photos?
This is pretty good.
Yang Ming turned off the cheating device with satisfaction, continued chatting with Windsor, and quickly regained his energy.
After a while, Windsor took the initiative to send out an invitation.
'Ming, can we go shopping tonight? A friend of mine is sick and I want to go and visit. If I go there by myself, my father will arrange bodyguards for me, which will be too conspicuous. I have convinced my father that if it is
If you stay with me, he will keep the bodyguards away from us. Well, we didn't quarrel.'
Yang Ming thought for a while: 'Is it okay at noon? I have to go to the palace for duty in the afternoon.'
'Okay! However, the environment where we are going may not be very good, so you have to be mentally prepared.'
Yang Ming smiled.
The environment is not good?
The capital of the majestic Luofeng Empire, how much worse could it be?
When he was looking for a job after graduation on Earth, he lived in a small shared bungalow in an urban village. Next door was a hair salon that made strange noises at night.
However, what Yang Ming didn't expect was;
The place they were going to next was, in a sense, not as good as the urban village where he had lived.
…
It's about nine o'clock in the morning.
Yang Ming and Windsor met smoothly in the square of a large commercial building.
Windsor still dressed very carefully today.
She put on a turtleneck sweater, paired with tight jeans and riding boots. Her tall and slender figure attracted many passers-by to secretly take photos.
When Windsor spotted Yang Ming's figure, she immediately laughed happily, and as if she had practiced it many times, she moved forward and took Yang Ming's arm.
"Thank you for coming to accompany me."
"That's right," Yang Ming said with a smile, "You really don't need me to drive?"
"The styling of your car is too exaggerated. It has made many gossip headlines," Windsor said with a squinted smile, "We can just take a taxi there. It's not far from here."
Yang Ming looked at the small bag hanging on her waist. It could only hold some small items such as cards.
"Isn't your friend sick? Don't you need to send some condolences?" Yang Ming asked with concern.
Windsor shook his head slightly: "Gifts will be reciprocated, and reciprocal gifts will add additional financial burden. Friendship should be simple and direct, and you don't have to worry about these minor details."
Yang Ming looked at Windsor in surprise.
This was the first time that he noticed something other than her beauty.
They took the unmanned taxi and rushed towards the residential area called 'Third Happiness'.
From time to time, Windsor took out an oval-shaped network access terminal from her small bag and tapped it quickly with her manicured fingers, probably chatting with her friends.
Yang Ming looked at the scenery outside the window and thought about his plan for tonight.
The moth means that he is like a fluttering moth, rushing toward the highest point of power in the Luofeng Empire.
I chose this name to remind myself not to be blinded by the bubble-like power.
He is here to mess with the planet.
The scenery outside the window gradually changed.
As taxis move away from downtown Ilando, the density of high-rise buildings is rapidly declining.
The buildings that Yang Ming could always see when he stood on the edge of the palace and looked at the city skyline showed their old bodies that had been polished by time at close range.
Occasionally, you can see some construction sites, but the progress of the project seems to be not going well, and there are no equipment working inside.
Below the suspended lane, there were also some congested ground roads that had been in disrepair for many years. Yang Ming also saw public transportation running on the ground.
——Vehicles running on the road save more energy than hover vehicles, and travel costs are lower.
"Dad said that this country's economy is like the remaining blood in an old man's body, which has been almost drained by the sovereign state."
Windsor sighed softly.
Yang Ming nodded in agreement without making any comments.
The taxi finally landed at the top-floor parking lot of an old building.
Windsor paid an extra fee to keep it carrying passengers and wait in the parking lot for their return journey.
"There are no taxis here that can go back directly," Windsor explained softly. "There are license plate restrictions between urban areas, and many license plates cannot enter the core urban area."
"It's really too crowded there."
Yang Ming responded casually and turned to look in the direction of the palace.
Those tall buildings hide the palace.
It's like hiding a treasure.
"Would you mind coming to such a marginal place?" Windsor asked.
Yang Ming chuckled: "Why do you mind?"
"Then come with me," Windsor responded happily, secretly observing Yang Ming's expression.
Obviously, she had some hidden thoughts.
Although Yang Ming noticed it, he cooperated and did not expose it.
Windsor took Yang Ming through the elevator several times with familiarity, from the top of the building all the way down to the bottom of the building - the twentieth floor.
When the elevator door opened again, bursts of noise filled Yang Ming's eardrums.
Outside turned out to be a narrow but lively market.
At first glance, what caught Yang Ming's attention most were the two rows of eye-catching advertising lights and the various vendors setting up stalls under the lights.
The environment here is a bit like the black market that Yang Ming has visited twice, but the products here are all daily necessities that are not prohibited, and everything is in order, and there are many patrol policemen.
There was a small puddle in front of the elevator. Windsor jumped over it deftly, and Yang Ming followed up.
The market is more than two hundred meters long, and there is an elevator every twenty meters. Only a small part of these elevators lead to the surface.
When they walked out of the underground area of the building, both sides of the corridor gradually became wider.
Neat buildings carved into the rock walls appeared on both sides, so densely packed that the edges could not be seen at a glance.
Ant nest.
Yang Ming thought of this word inexplicably.
He speculated that this place was originally an abandoned shelter, a complex of underground buildings used by the Luofeng Empire to deal with war crises.
There are ample light sources here, as well as complete sewage, ventilation, and water purification systems. The people living here are not homeless - although you can occasionally see some homeless old people - you can see them everywhere, running on their way.
White-collar workers, students carrying schoolbags, and some well-dressed middle-aged and elderly citizens.
Clinics, supermarkets, fire brigade, sanitation robots...
Everything that a complete urban area should have is lacking here.
While walking, Yang Ming spotted a group of young people riding exaggerated hover motorcycles, gathering under advertising lights and speaking meaningless modifiers in exaggerated tones.
This made Yang Ming sigh with emotion:
Jieliuzi is really a magical urban species.
Yang Ming was a little puzzled: "Windsor, how could your father allow you to come here?"
"I've only been here twice, and each time I was secretly followed by seven or eight bodyguards, who secretly took pictures with a bunch of instruments. Although my father promised me that he would not interfere with my freedom to make friends, he was indeed very
It’s hard to trust the environment here.”
Windsor was obviously a little nervous, and she whispered:
"But don't get me wrong. Although this is underground, it is an urban area with relatively good security and is an absolutely legal area. The biggest reason why people choose to live here is... the rent is very cheap."
Yang Ming smiled.
His eyes flickered across the faces of several children who were playing. The eyes of these children were much brighter than those of the adults.
Windsor held his arm and whispered beside him:
"She and I actually met on the Internet, three years ago. Occasionally I would come to her rented house and she would cook some of her specialty meals for me, which made me feel pretty good."
Yang Ming asked warmly: "What disease does she have? Nowadays, medical conditions are so advanced, we can always help her."
"This is what worries me the most," Windsor said, looking up at the residential area in front of her. "She always said she was not sick and that her health was fine, but sometimes she couldn't get out of bed and walk."
"Don't worry too much, just ask."
Yang Ming said softly, and some bad associations arose in his heart.
Windsor is the only daughter of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who has held the position for more than six years.
She is easily targeted by people with ulterior motives.
But when Windsor took Yang Ming into a 'built-in' residential building, took the elevator to the sixth floor, walked along the corridor filled with all kinds of shoes, socks, clothes hangers, and sundries, and arrived in front of Windsor's friend's house
, after knocking on the security door...
Yang Ming was also stunned.
This is an old lady with gray hair, a gentle and slightly pale face, a thin body and a bit stooped. After seeing Windsor, the old lady's expression became obviously excited.
Ding ding.
Yang Ming's watch vibrated a few times, and the old woman's message appeared.
She is a former professor of economics at Ilando University.
No wonder the Finance Minister allowed Windsor to come here.
"Windsor?" The old lady was full of surprises and moved forward to hug Windsor. "Why did you come to me suddenly? Oh! You were chatting with me just now, saying where you were going to study today."
Windsor sighed: "I was worried about your illness and couldn't feel relieved, so I came here to take a look."
"This is the disease of old age," the old lady sighed softly, "There happens to be a little girl here. She is a very cute little guy. I will introduce you to my neighbor who just moved here recently...
By the way, who is this?"
"My boyfriend," Windsor whispered, "should be."
Yang Ming smiled and said, "Nice to meet you."
"Oh, come in, come in, this is such a handsome boy!"
While talking, footsteps came from the direction of the kitchen, and the 'cute little guy' that the old lady called came out with brisk steps.
When she saw Yang Ming, she was stunned and confused at first, and then extremely shocked, and almost threw the warm water in the cup at Yang Ming.