A dark, windy night was the perfect time for murder and arson.
A first-quarter moon hung over City A tonight, but it would set during the latter half of the night.
The four bodyguards in black barely made it through the Western District checkpoint before the gate closed at midnight. A staff member about to finish his shift rolled his eyes. People who arrived at the very last second were such a nuisance.
A woman wearing purplish-red lipstick pursed her lips at their retreating backs and exchanged a knowing look with a coworker. “Those country bumpkins from the Northern District! They only ever wear black or white. Sunglasses in the middle of the night? Can they even see?”
As it turned out, they really couldn’t.
The four hired an unlicensed cab to Broken-Wire Street, where the driver fleeced them for twelve hundred.
“Didn’t you say three hundred?”
“That’s right. Three hundred per person.”
“…”
Four shadows darted into Alley Thirty-Six like ghosts. The bodyguards had the builds of strongmen but moved with the lightness of swallows, vaulting over walls and rubble without getting so much as a speck of mud on their highly polished leather shoes.
In the blink of an eye they appeared silently outside the Ji family’s small house. On the steps stood seven pots of cacti grown by Ji Sinan. Beneath the eaves hung a souvenir Ji Tan had brought back from his interview in the city center: a plastic Little Abyss logo that looked rather like a red doughnut.
One of the bodyguards stepped up and knocked. There was no answer.
He exchanged glances with the other three, pressed one hand against the door, and shoved hard. Crack! The doorframe shattered. The house was pitch-black and empty.
“Boss, they’ve moved out.” The first man inside turned on the light and found that even the bedding was gone. Only the bare bed boards remained.
“Woof, woof!” A gray dog with a bald patch on its head bared its teeth at the four black-clad men and growled threateningly from outside.
The bodyguard on the steps slapped it. “Shut up!”
The gray dog toppled to the ground with a piercing howl.
“Idiot! Why would you pick a fight with it?” The leader slapped his subordinate and looked down at the dog, which appeared to have fainted. A slender chain hung around its neck, like the one suspending the “doughnut” from the eaves, and a little tag was attached to it.
He squatted and turned over the rather crude, bone-shaped wooden tag. It read:
[Dog Care Instructions: The bare patch on its head came from rubbing against something in a fight. It is not a mangy dog.]
The next instant, the dog opened its eyes and savagely bit the hand holding the tag. While the man recoiled in shock, it slipped through a dog hole beneath Sister Xu’s courtyard wall across the lane and vanished.
“Damn it!” Clutching the two bleeding punctures in his hand, the bodyguard stopped his men from chasing the dog. “Leave it. We’re going to Purple Arc Street.”
According to the time reported by the three thugs, even if the brothers had moved immediately, it would take them a while to haul all their belongings across most of the Western District to Purple Arc Street. They were probably only just arriving.
At that same moment.
In a bright, spacious high-rise apartment, Ji Tan was writing instruction labels for the furniture and appliances.
He stuck a yellow note reading [Old electric fan. Doesn’t work. Do not throw away.] onto the dusty fan he’d just sorted out.
The apartment was fairly clean and came furnished, with appliances already in place. The brothers had been able to move straight in with their bags. But their landlady was an extremely particular old woman. When they first rented the place, she’d warned them: “Nothing that was originally in this apartment may be thrown out. Not even a scrap of paper.”
Fortunately, the apartment had a tiny storage room where they could put all the broken things they weren’t allowed to discard.
“Isn’t this apartment a little too big?” Ji Sinan asked breathlessly, holding a cleaning rag.
Cleaning a three-bedroom apartment with two living areas, inside and out, three times over was an enormous undertaking. Ji Sinan had only finished two bedrooms and already felt his obsessive-compulsive tendencies might finally be cured.
“Just get the beds ready. The landlady had someone clean before we moved in.” Ji Tan couldn’t participate in his brother’s three-round cleaning ritual. Even if he wiped something himself, his brother would wipe it again. All he could do was urge him to leave the rest for tomorrow.
The rent wasn’t expensive. Thanks to genius Little Ji Tan’s bargaining skills, the three-bedroom apartment cost hardly any more than a two-bedroom, so they’d simply taken the larger place.
Living for years in cramped quarters could put tremendous strain on a person’s mind. His brother was still ill; Ji Tan wanted him to have as much space as possible. Once he found a job and had a stable income, he’d rent an enormous flat where Student Ji Sinan could even turn somersaults indoors.
“I heard that the only thing expensive about an apartment like this is electricity. But don’t worry, you can use as much as you like. I put a thousand City A currency units on the electricity card, so that should…” While speaking, Ji Tan went to the entrance to check the card.
It was a translucent pink card displaying a constantly changing number: the remaining electricity credit. As long as the card was inserted into the slot on the foyer wall, they could use electricity.
Now the numbers on that cute pink card were falling before his very eyes at an insane pace: 933, 928, 923…
This had to be a joke. They’d only switched on the lights!
Just then, Ji Sinan switched on the kitchen extractor hood, preparing to make Ji Tan a late-night snack. In that instant, the numbers plunged to 898, 888…
Ji Tan yanked the electricity card out.
Everything fell quiet. Ji Sinan stood frozen in the kitchen with a wok in his hand. The glowing electricity card stopped at the auspicious number 888.
Ji Tan held the card with trembling hands and turned it over, hoping for some instructions. But it was transparent, looking the same on both sides. The only writing was in the lower-right corner: [Xili District Fake Power Company].
The “Just Kidding” Power Company.
Elio’s Note ¹: The electricity company’s English branding literally reads “Fake Power Company”; the Chinese line immediately afterward supplies the punning sense “We’re Just Messing with You.”
Ji Tan walked to the window and looked out over the surrounding high-rises. This was a densely populated residential district, with occupied apartment buildings on every side. Right now, not a single household had its lights on. The distant buildings were the same, with only scattered points of light.
Yet gigantic billboards atop the buildings blazed with brilliant neon. Light pollution seeped into every corner, bright enough to make out the furnishings indoors even with the lights switched off.
“It’s fine. We won’t switch on the lights from now on. Give me everything you need charged, and I’ll charge it for you every day when I go to work at Quick-Knife Li’s.” Ji Sinan remained remarkably optimistic and promptly found a solution.
He tossed the wok, already coated in oil, into the sink and began washing it seven times. Without an extractor hood, they couldn’t stir-fry. He might as well wash the wok and cook some porridge instead.
Perhaps developing a mental illness really did broaden a person’s horizons. You could accept absolutely anything.
Ji Tan asked curiously, “Wasn’t electricity expensive on Broken-Wire Street?” Ji Sinan had handled the bills at their old home, so Ji Tan hadn’t paid attention.
Ji Sinan thought for a moment. “We didn’t have an electricity bill.”
“Huh?”
For a power company this bloodthirsty to have survived without being overthrown, it had to be immensely powerful. Ji Tan couldn’t imagine how the residents of Broken-Wire Street could be so formidable that they didn’t need to pay for electricity.
“Because we didn’t have an electricity meter,” Ji Sinan explained.
Every electric cable on Broken-Wire Street was strung up privately and haphazardly. Thus, in the supposedly high-tech Western District, the entire lane was oddly filled with utility poles. Whenever the power company discovered those unauthorized lines, it cut them, which was why that neighborhood suffered frequent outages.
Ji Tan: “So that’s where the broken wires in Broken-Wire Street came from…” No wonder the locals were always complaining that the power company’s staff were so domineering and arrogant.
Who exactly was domineering and arrogant here?
Ji Tan’s vision suddenly darkened. He even wondered why he, who didn’t work for the power company, could be so furious with it that his eyesight was going black. The next second, his head grew heavy, his feet went light, and the floor seemed to tilt toward him. He lost consciousness on the spot.
When he opened his eyes again, he saw his brother solemnly pouring something into his mouth. It was sweet, like sugar water.
“Your blood sugar dropped, and you fainted.” Ji Sinan made him drink an entire bowl of sugar water, helped him sit up slowly, and pointed outside. “Go eat something at the dining table.”
A pile of instant foods was on the table. Ji Sinan must have rushed downstairs to buy it.
His brother lifted him with his powerful arm and set him before the table. At the smell of prepared instant noodles, steaming packaged rice, and freshly roasted meatballs from the convenience store, Ji Tan was struck by a hunger unlike anything he’d ever felt, as though he hadn’t eaten for three days. He grabbed the food and started devouring it. Only when his jaw began to ache did he realize how quickly he was eating.
Alarmed by his speed, Ji Sinan could only watch with his mouth half-open, pour him water, and keep heating more instant rice.
At last, Ji Tan was full. The table had become a mountain of discarded food wrappers.
He stared blankly and touched his stomach. It was only slightly rounded. Just now, it had felt as if a black hole had opened inside him, swallowing the food as quickly as he poured it in.
This was clearly not normal.
Ji Tan took the purple ring off the index finger of his right hand and examined it under the light pollution shining through the window. It was unnaturally quiet now, without even the faintest electrical arc, like an ordinary metal ring.
“Are you full?” Ji Sinan asked, watching him anxiously.
“It’s okay, Brother. I think that magical item caused it.” Ji Tan reached out to clear the table, but his brother stopped him.
Ji Sinan had opened all the packages and insisted on tidying up himself. Ji Tan had no choice but to let him. He took out his phone, which had only twenty percent battery left, and called Xie Zhi’s Western District number.
The call didn’t connect.
All he heard was a busy signal, without even a recorded announcement.
Ji Tan frowned. He hadn’t contacted Xie Zhi for the past two days, and Xie Zhi hadn’t contacted him either. Before leaving, the man had mentioned trouble in the Central District. Could something have happened to him?
At the thought, Ji Tan’s heart began to pound. For the first time in his life, he found himself worrying about his boss’s safety.
After hesitating a moment, he tried calling the contact saved as “Xie Zhi North.”
It connected.
The call was answered after two rings. Xie Zhi’s voice had the drowsiness of someone abruptly awakened.
“Mm-hmm? What’s up?”
Ji Tan quietly let out the breath he’d been holding. Only after several seconds did he ask calmly, “Why can’t I reach your Western District number?”
“Oh.” Xie Zhi rolled over and sat up, making his clothes rustle. “That phone doesn’t have a signal right now. Did something happen for you to call at this hour?”
Once Ji Tan had confirmed that the other man was fine and had actually been sleeping soundly, he felt like grinding his teeth. He described what had happened earlier.
“Who was giving you trouble?” Xie Zhi’s tone immediately turned tense. “Were they Orderbearers?”
“No, just those same three thugs.”
“That shouldn’t have happened…” Xie Zhi sounded puzzled. “The negative side effect of using that ring really is that it consumes the wearer’s bodily energy. It’s one of the relatively rare magical items that doesn’t consume favor-power. Hmm. Didn’t I tell you that?”
Ji Tan found that almost funny. “What do you think?”
Just as always, this man loved shirking responsibility. At the first sign of trouble, he’d pretend to be clueless and ask, “Didn’t I mention it?” If the other person wasn’t firm enough, they would end up taking the blame instead.
Xie Zhi: “Then I must have overlooked it.”
Ji Tan: “?”
Something was very wrong with this man.
“However…”
There it was. The qualification! Ji Tan relaxed. This was still his boss after all. Even if he offered some self-criticism, the conclusion would inevitably place the responsibility on his employee.
“But taking a couple of punches from ordinary people shouldn’t cause side effects this serious. How exactly did you use it?” Xie Zhi sounded relaxed again, and more than a little curious.
Ji Tan: “Uh…”
When Xie Zhi gave him the ring, he’d said it was for self-defense. But Ji Tan had treated this defensive weapon as a shield and charged in swinging his knife. The three thugs had repeatedly pounded on him while struggling. Some blows had even become rapid, involuntary taps from the pain, like a massage gun, setting off the ring again and again.
Xie Zhi laughed softly. “Our Director Ji has really grown impressive. I gave you something for self-defense, and you’ve used it like the Golden Bell Shield and Iron Cloth Shirt to launch counterattacks.”
“What’s wrong with that? I’m making efficient use of my tools.” Ji Tan strongly suspected that Xie Zhi was just jealous.
When the ring had belonged to Xie Zhi, the man certainly hadn’t been using it properly. Just like those coworkers of his who seemed to have nothing but screws in their heads: unless you spelled out exactly what to do and how to do it, they were as simple as algae.
“Mm, very impressive. Carry a few pieces of candy with you from now on, and try not to let people hit you too many times.” Xie Zhi seemed to slide under the covers, his laughter becoming more muffled.
“Is that thing finished?” Ji Tan was about to end the call when he remembered his proposal.
“Mm.” Xie Zhi answered with a single syllable.
They had agreed not to discuss this matter over the phone, so they spoke only in vague terms. Relieved, Ji Tan gave his boss the signal that he could end the call.
He waited for quite a while, but Xie Zhi didn’t hang up. His breath washed against the microphone in steady little whooshes.
Just as Ji Tan was about to hang up, thinking the man had fallen asleep instantly, another voice came through, as though Xie Zhi were speaking into his pillow. “Director Ji, you woke me up in the middle of the night. Now all my sleepiness has run off. Don’t you owe me some compensation?”
“What kind of compensation?” Ji Tan rubbed his face. He himself was sleepy now. Xie Zhi’s breathing had nearly lulled him to sleep, but there was no way to transfer drowsiness from one person to another.
“Tell me a bedtime story.” Xie Zhi buried his face deeper into the pillow, giving his voice an even more nasal quality.
What was this man playing at? Surely he couldn’t be embarrassed?
Ji Tan’s mouth twitched. It made no sense to him.
Still, since he was the one who’d woken the man, he had to take responsibility. With a sigh, Ji Tan got up to rummage through their luggage. Besides prescribing the blank-prescription medicine, the doctor had also given him a book of fairy tales, suggesting that he read to his brother at bedtime when he had the time. It could stabilize Ji Sinan’s mood and help prevent his sanity level from dropping any further.
Unfortunately, he’d stuffed everything into the suitcases at the last minute, without any organization. He couldn’t find the book on short notice.
Helpless, Ji Tan sat right there among the luggage, patted his knees, and began reciting the kind of nonsense children’s story he’d heard as a child:
[Once upon a time there was a mountain. On the mountain stood a temple. In the temple lived an old monk. The old monk told a little monk a story. What story did he tell? Once upon a time there was a mountain, and on the mountain stood a temple…]
A tale that circled back on itself forever without end. Every child’s first encounter with an infinite-flow novel.
Elio’s Note ²: The endlessly recursive old-monk tale is a familiar Chinese childhood storytelling gag. The narration compares its infinite loop to the “infinite-flow” fiction genre.
By the time Ji Sinan had finished tidying the living room, the only sound on the other end of the phone was even breathing. Ji Tan exhaled with relief and finished his bedtime story with the standard closing: “And from that day forward, the prince and princess lived happily ever after.”
He wasn’t sure whether he was imagining it, but amid that steady breathing he thought he heard two small snorts of laughter.
Hmm. Xie Zhi must have slept at an awkward angle and was having trouble breathing. Ji Tan hung up with perfect confidence. Only then did he realize that when he’d worried something had happened to Xie Zhi, he hadn’t once feared that the man had run off with his proposal.
Boss Xie’s credibility seemed to have risen a little in his eyes.
Ji Tan yawned, brushed his teeth, and collapsed onto the bed his brother had just made. He stretched in comfort. Drowsily, he thought that Xie Zhi was the Administrator of City A, after all. Surely he had a reputation to uphold. If the man ever refused to return the proposal, Ji Tan could go to the government offices in the Central District and hang up a protest banner.
[Corrupt Official Xie Zhi, Give Back the Book I Bled and Sweated For!]
As he pondered this, he drifted into a deep, sweet sleep.
Almost a week after arriving in this world, he finally enjoyed a good night’s rest. There was no more clamorous barking and crowing, no stench of garbage and excrement. The quarreling couple, roaring machinery, and motorcycles racing through the streets that had repeatedly awakened him at night, along with the anxiety that dogged his every step, were all gone.
Ji Tan dreamed of Xie Zhi. Xie Zhi had grown small, shaved his head, and put on a gray cloth robe. Sitting on a meditation cushion with his plump, pale dumpling face propped in one hand, he asked, “Master, what happened next?”
Ji Tan couldn’t resist reaching out to rub the little Xie Zhi’s smooth bald head. What happened next…? He lifted his eyes through the mist hanging over the mountain on a cold night and saw the Eye of Argus.
This time, the eye was outlined in violet lines across a black curtain. Then the view gradually pulled back, and countless lashless eyes became stars filling the sky. In the moonless night, they all slowly blinked together.
Beneath the dim yellow streetlamps of Broken-Wire Street, an unlicensed black cab stood motionless by the road.
A drunk stumbling home late at night clung to a utility pole and vomited for some time before noticing the black car under the lamp. Bolstered by liquid courage, he wiped his mouth, grinned, undid his belt, and urinated on the wheel, the stream reeking of alcohol.
When he finished, the driver inside still hadn’t said a word to stop him. The drunk grew bolder and peered through the car window. Suddenly, his face changed. The alcohol cleared from his head in an instant. “M-murder! Someone’s been murdered!”
Half-sober and without even pulling up his trousers, the drunk scrambled away on hands and knees. His terrified screams woke the residents of the entire street.
Morning sunlight filtered through the window, which had only a thin gauze curtain, and woke Ji Tan from his sleep. He rubbed his eyes and sat up, thinking that he needed to buy two pairs of thick curtains today.
Ji Sinan had already gone to work. There was no breakfast on the table, only a note and a ten-unit banknote.
[Big brother has gone to work. Cooking here uses too much electricity, so buy yourself a bowl of something downstairs.]
“I’m not a child.” Ji Tan picked up the note and tucked the money into his pocket.
After washing up, he slung the secondhand laptop he’d bought yesterday over his shoulder. Electricity was just too expensive. He decided to go downstairs, eat breakfast, and do his programming at the teahouse run by the old landlady.
Ji Tan stopped in front of the full-length mirror near the door and casually fixed his hair. Several of the résumés he’d submitted still hadn’t received responses. If he was suddenly invited to an interview, he could head straight out from downstairs.
He smiled at the mirror and stuck a note onto it.
[Mirror Instructions: Best Used While Smiling.]
He locked the door and walked to the elevator, where the smile vanished from his face.
The elevator buttons were gray. The power was off. He lived on the twenty-third floor, which meant he’d have to walk down. Going down was one thing, but when he came home, he’d have to climb all twenty-three floors.
How had they gotten upstairs last night?
He seemed to remember meeting the waiting landlady by the road. The old woman had stood energetically in the dark, neon lights shining across her gaunt face and frightening him half to death. Still shaken, he’d followed along in a daze, dragging their suitcases down to the twenty-third floor.
Yes, down. He was certain that he’d descended, not climbed.
Curiosity drove him up several flights of stairs. When he reached the twenty-eighth floor, he found a wide road. Cars and motorcycles roared past, and a young man with dyed yellow hair riding a flashy scooter whistled at him.
“Hey, handsome! Come take a ride with big brother!”
Ji Tan scoffed. “No thanks. I can tell just by looking at you that you don’t know how to lean into a turn.”
The blond immediately took offense. You could question his character, but you absolutely could not question his riding skills. Redness climbed visibly from his neck to the top of his head. Burning with indignation, he twisted the throttle and tore toward the next sharp bend, leaning so low that his knee scraped the pavement. Then he disappeared along the one-way elevated road.
Ji Tan shrugged and muttered, “If you can do that, there’s even less reason to ride with you. You’d scrape your knees flat.” He turned and went back downstairs.
He finally figured it out. This building had four exits, on the first, thirteenth, twenty-eighth, and fiftieth floors. Every exit led straight onto level ground, and each one looked like the ground floor.
“Isn’t this just Chongqing all over again?” Ji Tan’s mouth twitched. He sat at a bamboo table outside the old landlady’s teahouse. “Boss, a bowl of red-oil wontons, please.”
Elio’s Note ³: Chongqing is famous for its steep, layered urban geography, where separate floors of a building can open directly onto streets at different elevations.
He shrank his neck as soon as the words left his mouth. Why had he said that so automatically? This place only resembled Chongqing. It wasn’t actually Chongqing.
The old landlady sold big bowls of tea in her teahouse. Supposedly the leaves were imported from the Eastern District and were exceptionally precious. To Ji Tan, however, it was just coarse tea, full of large leaves and stems. The old woman had a dreadful temper, and when Ji Tan came to inspect the apartment, he’d sat drinking it for ages without daring to tell the truth. He’d forced himself to praise it as “excellent tea.”
Now he’d sat down at her teahouse and ordered spicy wontons. The old woman would probably overturn the teapot onto his head.
Ji Tan silently picked up his laptop bag, hunched over, and prepared to sneak into the breakfast shop next door.
Clang! A bowl of wontons covered in brilliant red chili oil and toasted sesame seeds appeared on the square bamboo table before him.
The old woman’s graying hair was permed in a fashionable tight curl. She glanced at him out of the corners of her drooping eyes and said sharply, “You’ve got quite the nerve ordering that, boy.” Without waiting for her stunned customer, she turned and went back inside.
Ji Tan blinked, unable to decide whether she’d praised him or insulted him. He scooped up a wonton and took a bite. The springy, savory meat filling and fragrant, fiery red oil burst together across his tongue. It was delicious.
The real deal!
Ji Tan slurped down the entire bowl and licked his lips in satisfaction. He hadn’t expected to find such authentic wontons in a strange world so far from home. It made him a little homesick.
He wasn’t from Chongqing himself. It was just that the pressure of this bizarre world had become too much. Even if someone had served him authentic Colonel’s Chicken Nuggets right then, he would have missed home.
A stranger alone in a strange land: one bite of wontons, roujiamo, spaghetti, or Texas Magic Chicken, and he missed Earth twice as much.
Ji Tan sighed, ordered a big bowl of tea with unlimited hot-water refills, and began his day’s work.
There was a charging socket beneath the table, and plenty of neighbors came here to charge their phones. The Xili District really was absurd. Electricity was ruinously expensive for residents, yet commercial electricity was cheap.
“Because the super-corporations need to keep their neon lights glowing,” the man drinking tea at the next table remarked with a bitter smile.
Ordinary people didn’t dare turn on a light, but the three-colored neon blazed all night long.
“Doesn’t the Western District’s dictator do anything about it?” Ji Tan complained along with him.
“Young fellow, you only just moved into the Western District, didn’t you?” The tea drinker looked at him in surprise. “There isn’t a dictator in the Western District. The administrative offices are as chaotic as Broken-Wire Street.”
Ji Tan: “…” Fine, it was chaotic, but why did everyone have to take a swipe at our Broken-Wire Street? At least we didn’t have to pay for electricity.
As he thought this, the phone he was charging rang. The caller ID read [Zhang Mian – Little Zhang, Silver Officer].
“Mr. Ji, were you on Broken-Wire Street last night?” Little Zhang sounded relieved when the call connected.
“No. I moved out,” Ji Tan answered.
“Good. There was a murder there last night. An unlicensed cab driver was found with his neck twisted and broken. We believe an Orderbearer did it.” Little Zhang sighed.
Cases involving Orderbearers were referred to their Order Administration Bureau for examination.
Broken-Wire Street had always been disorderly, and Orderbearers often fought around there. But attacks on ordinary people were relatively rare. It wasn’t that City A’s laws offered ordinary citizens much protection. Many Orderbearers simply felt that being punished for attacking an ordinary person wasn’t worth it.
If they were going to spend time in prison anyway, they might as well kill an Orderbearer of their own rank and get their money’s worth.
Ji Tan frowned. “I suggest checking which Orderbearers entered the Western District last night.”
The three thugs had come to harass the brothers only yesterday, and now a murder had happened that night. Ji Tan felt sure Huo Zhaixing was somehow involved.
“All right. Be careful, and don’t reveal your address to anyone, including me,” Little Zhang cautioned before ending the call.
Ji Tan glanced around. The little square was wedged between several residential buildings and crowded with people coming and going. Men, women, young, and old alike wore loud, colorful clothing with a distinct hip-hop feel. He took out the black mask he’d bought before and put it on, then pulled up the hood of his sweatshirt.
Dressed like that, he didn’t stand out here in the slightest. Everyone else looked similar, and some people were even wearing several hats at once.
No matter how close danger came, life still had to go on.
Ji Tan took a sip of bitter tea, opened his secondhand laptop, and began writing code.
Building his own software empire would require both capital and contacts. Right now, he was still a “runaway wife of a domineering CEO,” hardly in a position to launch a business. First, he needed a well-paying job to cover his and his brother’s living expenses.
So he decided to make a simple game and give City A’s entertainment-starved capitalists a little shock.
“How about a watermelon-merging game? Those go viral easily, and you can tie them into social platforms.” Ji Tan made up his mind.
He’d built something similar in college as a practice project, called Merge Cat Heads. He could finish it in two or three hours.
But when Ji Tan confidently opened the editor, he was dumbfounded.
There was no gaming platform here, much less a game-development platform. A watermelon-merging game required a physics engine for falling, stacking, collisions, and bouncing. Without a physics engine, he’d have to start with Newton’s laws and personally calculate gravity, acceleration, and changing vector coordinates. The workload was enormous. It was like deciding to cook a bowl of rice and having to begin by farming the rice yourself.
Ji Tan drank some more tea. All he could do was abandon the fancy game and write Snake first.
While coding, he received several calls rejecting his job applications. The occasional caller who was interested wanted to know his educational background, which he’d left off the résumé. As soon as he announced his qualification as a “Master of the Smelting and Reconstruction of Metals and Natural Organisms,” the caller invariably fell silent before declining.
Ji Tan wasn’t in any hurry. He hung up and kept programming. When no more calls came, he consulted the list of companies he’d applied to, identified those that hadn’t contacted him, and called them himself to ask.
The result was the same across the board.
Not a single company appreciated a chef who could write software. Ji Tan was heartbroken by their blindness. His technical expertise was truly formidable. If necessary, he could even build an AI operator from scratch.
“What you’re overlooking is a sleeping technology giant.” Still indignant, Ji Tan stuck a meme sticker of a “giant crocodile” onto the back of his laptop.
At the same time.
Four black-clad bodyguards sat on a bench in the central area of Purple Arc Street, studying every passerby. They hadn’t slept all night, but at least their sunglasses concealed the dark circles beneath their eyes.
“He’s only an ordinary person, while we’re all Orderbearers. One of us is even D-rank. There’s no way he can escape. Rest assured, President Huo.”
After ending the call, their leader stood up. “One of you stays here and watches. Everyone else, spread out and look.”
One man remained on the bench, serving as a human facial-recognition camera, while the other three searched near the apartment buildings.
“Hey, Giant Crocodile! You’ve been sitting there for four hours already. At least order another bowl of wontons.” The old landlady leaned against the doorway, dusting with a feather duster.
“I’m not hungry yet.” Ji Tan was so absorbed in his programming that he really didn’t feel hungry. Then he looked over and saw the landlady beginning to berate the other neighbors who were charging their devices at lunchtime without buying anything. He swallowed and meekly, obediently ordered a bowl of hot noodle soup.
He slurped it all down, felt his energy return, and went straight back to writing code!
…
One of the black-clad men suddenly stopped in his tracks. After carefully studying the figure ahead of him from behind, he hurried over.
…
A shadow fell across Giant Crocodile’s laptop.
“Shh…” A long, slender index finger pressed against Ji Tan’s lips. Just as his hair stood on end in fright, a soothing whisper sounded beside his ear. “It’s me.”
Ji Tan turned and saw Xie Zhi, wearing his iridescent wind goggles.
Meanwhile, over on Purple Arc Street, the black-clad bodyguards stopped Zhao Gang, who was in the middle of an argument with Green Bean Eyes.
“I told you to find Madam. Who on earth have you found?” The leader, summoned over by his subordinate, was furious.
“I thought it was Young Master Qiao when I saw him from behind,” explained the bodyguard who had spotted Zhao Gang first. “Besides, there’s nothing wrong with questioning him. He’s the one who tipped the young master off.”
At the sight of these enormous men in black, Green Bean Eyes was already too frightened to make a sound.
Zhao Gang was frightened too. He’d accepted money from Huo Zhaixing for his information, but these men had failed to find Ji Tan. If they couldn’t account for that, they were bound to give him trouble. Stiffening his neck, he put on a brave front. “I made it perfectly clear to Young Master Huo: all I saw at the agency was that he wanted to rent a place on Purple Arc Street. I have no idea which building or apartment he’s living in. You’re all so resourceful, so investigate it yourselves!”
Of course they’d already tried. No matter how much they threatened or bribed the property agent, she refused to reveal where Ji Tan had rented. She stubbornly insisted that he hadn’t rented a place through her. The bodyguards were almost impressed by the woman’s resolve. With nerves like those, it was a shame she wasn’t a spy.
Back at the bamboo table, Xie Zhi lounged lazily beside the laptop and asked Mr. Giant Crocodile, “What made you think of moving here?”
“I always wanted to rent on Green Arc Street. It’s close to Broken-Wire Street, so moving would be easy.” Ji Tan lifted his fair chin with the air of a seasoned schemer. “But I didn’t know what the rent should be, so I went to an agency. Once I knew the prices on Purple Arc Street, which is in a comparable location, I’d have a benchmark.”
After learning the market rate, Ji Tan had come to Green Arc Street on his own and asked the neighborhood’s older residents whether anyone had a vacant apartment to let. By cutting out the unscrupulous agent, he’d saved a substantial sum.
His inquiries had led him to the old woman who ran the teahouse. Only after he’d paid for a bowl of tea did she finally say, unhurriedly, “I have an apartment to rent. Three bedrooms and two living rooms. Eight thousand a month.”
The agency had told him that apartments with three bedrooms and two living rooms averaged around five thousand.
Ji Tan confidently named his price. “Three thousand five hundred!”
The old woman: “Deal.”
Ji Tan beat his chest and stamped his feet. He hadn’t haggled hard enough!
The old woman consoled him by saying that if he rented her apartment, he could charge his devices at her shop. Electricity was expensive here, and charging things at the shop would save him quite a bit.
Ji Tan had believed her. But when he came to charge his devices, he still had to pay for tea. Worse, all the other neighbors could charge their devices here as long as they paid for tea too. That wasn’t a tenant benefit at all!
Xie Zhi laughed so hard that the table shook.
The old woman materialized behind them like a ghost. “Be grateful I let you charge anything at all. I can’t stand half the people in this building. Even if they come to buy tea, I won’t sell them any.”
Xie Zhi was struggling so hard not to laugh that he buried his face in the crook of his arm.
The old woman tapped his goggles. “Don’t think I can’t see you just because you’re wearing reflective lenses. Pay up. The tea-seat charge is fifty.”