Chapter 138
“Drip... drip...”
From the mouth of the rusted faucet, transparent drops of water fell one after another in a steady rhythm.
You Xingluo’s eyelashes trembled slightly.
He felt as though he had been having a dreadful nightmare. In the dream, he had been possessed by an evil spirit, and afterward had gone on to attempt all sorts of absurd extreme sports, such as racing antelopes, competing with whales in deep-sea diving, and trying to outfly eagles...
Please, you were just an ordinary human!
Deep within the nightmare, You Xingluo ran in utter exhaustion while shouting at the “body” drifting farther and farther away, “Stop right there! Don’t dump my body in some strange place! I won’t be able to find my way back to it!”
That nightmare left pain written all over You Xingluo’s face.
When You Xingluo finally woke from it, he instantly felt aching pain in all four limbs, as though someone had run him over back and forth with a cargo truck several times. Judging from the contents of the dream, the state he was in strangely matched it rather well.
You Xingluo sighed inwardly.
A faint scent of rust suddenly drifted to his nose, as though it had been soaked through by endless rain, carrying a trace of damp, moldy gloom. His awareness was returning, his senses were recovering, and his skin felt several cool threads of rain.
You Xingluo’s body tensed abruptly.
He had already realized that he was no longer somewhere familiar. It had not even been a week since the last time he had made a Prophecy of his own accord. You Xingluo thought calmly: if something was going to happen, then now really was a very good opportunity for it.
It was not that he was especially composed. He simply knew that sooner or later, this calamity would come for him.
If not today, then tomorrow.
If not this group, then the next.
Very well. Then let him see what had happened this time. You Xingluo quietly opened his black eyes. His eyes were as dark as night, and in this already dim and gloomy room, they did not look particularly remarkable.
The room he was in was extremely bare. There was only a single bed, a low stool, a door, a window, and a mirror hanging on the wall directly opposite the bed.
It looked like a place meant for prisoners, You Xingluo thought.
He quietly swept his gaze around the room, then fixed it directly on the mirror on the wall. Lifting the blanket aside, You Xingluo walked barefoot to the mirror. He deliberately raised his index finger and touched the surface. The self in the mirror and the real one met fingertip to fingertip.
So it wasn’t being used for surveillance, You Xingluo thought as he lowered his eyes.
His gaze soon turned toward the other furnishings in the room. After checking the rest of the furniture, his attention finally fell on the window not far away. The glass window was currently open by a small crack.
The rain he had felt in his dream had drifted in from outside.
Standing barefoot by the window, with the cold cement floor beneath him and the chilly rain brushing against him, You Xingluo felt his mood sink to the freezing point. He murmured softly, “...Where exactly have they taken me?”
Before him stood several towering steel “mountains,” cramped together like rows of pigeonholes.
One decrepit old high-rise after another was packed tightly together, forming the skeletal frame of a steel city. The gaps between the buildings were so narrow that it felt as though one could stretch out a hand from the window and touch the balcony of the building opposite.
Lines for hanging clothes had been strung between many floors, blocking what little sunlight there already was between the buildings.
You Xingluo cautiously leaned out the window and looked down.
The room he was in was very far above the ground. He could not even make out the figures moving below, only several black or colored dots shifting across the ground, disappearing now and then behind clothes drying in midair or the rain awnings erected below.
You Xingluo silently counted the floors of the high-rises pressed close against the one he was in. Combining that with the floors of the building opposite, he was already able to infer which floor he was on: the building had forty-two floors in total, and he was on the thirty-ninth.
“Hiss...”
You Xingluo could not help sucking in a breath.
Now he could finally infer where he had been taken.
In the twenty-first year after the Federation was founded, the Federal Council had revised the 《Federal Residential Housing Act》 for the third time. The Act stipulated that the height of buildings within a town could not exceed the height of that town’s walls, and all towns under the Federation were required to enforce it without exception.
You Xingluo also remembered the reason for that revision.
If the buildings rose higher than the protective walls around a town, they would be extremely likely to attract birds searching for places to roost. Since the laser guns and bird-repellent shells mounted on the walls were not effective enough at driving off Bird-Type Aberrants flying high in the air, the only choice had been to impose height limits on buildings.
After the new housing law was issued, dangerous old buildings within towns were supposed to be uniformly demolished and rebuilt by the city government...
And yet, up to now—
Only one city had refused to enforce that law.
Cold sweat instantly broke out across You Xingluo’s back.
Frowning, he muttered, “How did I end up this far away all at once...?”
Xucheng lay extremely far from Central City, but it was very close to the Federation’s northern border. Because the journey was long and the local people disliked being governed, the City Lord appointed by Central City had always found it difficult to control that city, to say nothing of the additional historical factors involved.
This was a place far removed from the center of power and rarely subject to restraint.
This didn’t feel like something done on a whim. It was more likely that they had organized and planned to take him away from Central City. Forcing himself to stay calm, You Xingluo thought: It seems someone within the family leaked his movements to people on the outside, but at the moment it’s still unclear what exactly is going on.
Still, that sort of thing was normal enough.
After all, he had been very young when he became Clan Head, and many of the family elders were unwilling to submit to his authority. Asking them to bow respectfully to a child who wasn’t even half their height and call him Clan Head was probably more painful to them than killing them.
That was why he had refused back then...
You Xingluo felt utterly deflated.
If his grandfather had not insisted on forcing the position onto him, even going so far as to write his name directly into the family register, he would not have been burdened with all these troublesome matters. He could have gone to school and come home in sound body and mind like any other person his age, rather than worrying over one headache after another.
The You Family had already entered its decline.
Although most of the family members were unable to realize it, as the current Clan Head of the You Family, You Xingluo could see with perfect clarity the family’s decline over the coming years, and even the coming century. Prophecy was, in itself, an extremely mysterious Ability.
Ever since the Federation had been founded, the rise and fall of the You Family had always rested upon Prophecy.
If the descendants of the current generation were exceptionally gifted, then the You Family could use that to recruit talented outsiders and strengthen itself. If the descendants of the current generation were merely mediocre, then they would rely on the shelter left behind by their forebears and wait for the next opportunity.
That strategy could not be called noble, but it was enough to preserve the family for a long time.
It was for that reason that the You Family had advocated having many children and forging strong marriage alliances from generation to generation. And yet... the ancestors probably never imagined that their descendants would turn out to be so disappointing.
You Xingluo let out a soft sigh.
The blood flowing through their veins was the root of the You Family, while the Prophecy Ability they awakened was its soul. Once the family lacked the birth of an exceptionally gifted Seer, the entire family was destined to decline within five generations.
He was the most outstanding Seer of the current You Family, and likewise the most gifted Seer the You Family had seen within five generations.
His birth had halted the downward slide of the You Family’s standing, but it could not stop the suspicion and jealousy festering within the family itself. With some melancholy, You Xingluo thought: after all, there were still too few intelligent people in this world...
Just as You Xingluo was preparing to return to the bed, the door to his room was quietly pushed open.
The moment the newcomer saw You Xingluo standing by the window, his eyes widened. “So you were already awake?”
“Is there a problem with that?” You Xingluo asked in a perfectly normal tone.
Because his mood had sunk somewhat, he quickly burrowed back into the bedding his kidnappers had prepared for him and answered lazily, “I was just about to go back to sleep and see whether I could sleep my way back to Central City in one go.”
“This is definitely a nightmare. Once I wake up, everything will be fine.”
As he spoke, You Xingluo pulled the blanket over his head, but soon afterward, he expressionlessly yanked it back down again. Although You Xingluo considered himself quite adaptable, that absolutely did not include foul-smelling bedding!
Good heavens, how could a blanket smell moldy?!
Were these kidnappers really content to leave him lying together with moldy sheets and moldy quilts? What if mold infected his lungs? Was he supposed to spend another ten days to half a month lying in a hospital in Central City?
Ahhh... forget it. Better sleep first.
After grumbling inwardly to his heart’s content, You Xingluo continued lying there in peace, hugging the pillow as he went back to sleep. In any case, he absolutely refused to set his bare feet back on the floor. At worst, if he died, then he died.
The newcomer stared in utter disbelief.
He had originally thought he would be facing an ill-tempered, endlessly demanding young noble master, but he had not expected this young master of the You Family to be so down-to-earth. That left him with no chance at all to use the standard kidnapper speech he had already drafted in his head.
At once, the newcomer threw back the blanket with both hands and shouted in embarrassment and anger, “Wake up! Is that any way for a hostage to behave?!”
“Achoo—”
Before the kidnapper could say another word, You Xingluo sneezed from the cold.
Shivering, he wrapped his arms and legs tightly around himself and said weakly, “Then... do you want a hostage with a high fever? Let me emphasize in advance that I’m allergic to penicillin. You can’t give me penicillin...”
“...”
The kidnapper was dumbstruck.
The moment his hands loosened, that thin blanket fell neatly back over You Xingluo again.
Damn it, what kind of situation was this?!
The kidnapper quickly raised his head and recalled his own rough treatment along the way. He... he... he and his gang hadn’t paid the slightest attention to the hostage’s physical condition at all! All they had thought about was that the hostage needed to eat and sleep. It had never once occurred to them that he might get sick!
If the hostage died and the client refused to pay, then what were they supposed to do?!
Seeing that, the kidnapper immediately turned around and ran off, intending to report the hostage’s condition to his boss. He moved so fast that he disappeared in an instant, leaving the door standing wide open behind him.
You Xingluo blinked several times.
In the very next second, he broke his own vow and once more planted his bare feet on the freezing floor. Sneaking over to the door, You Xingluo quietly shut it, then revealed the first sly grin he had worn since waking up.
“Heh heh heh. Only a fool refuses a free advantage.”
Even if he were stabbed to death in the very next second, in this second he still had to step out through that door!
