Blind Spot
Chapter 412 - 377 Andu 3

Chapter 412: 377 Andu 3

"Brother Yi, should we..." Xiao Zhong quietly asked from the side.

With his ability, there was no one he could not ignite, no one he could not burn.

"No... you’re no match for him." Li Chengyi sensed an intense Shadow Dragon aura emanating from the other person. If it had been before, he naturally wouldn’t have been able to detect this aura.

But now, his Shadow Dragon Bloodline had been elevated to the Common level, enabling him to sense the other person’s general details.

"Those three guys, probably like us, are not part of the reality system."

Upon hearing this, Xiao Zhong looked somewhat surprised, raising his eyes to look at Shadow Dragon Sal and his companions.

"Let’s go."

Li Chengyi took the lead, moving forward along a specially drawn temporary passage to exit.

The others followed closely behind him.

Having just stepped out of the passage and about to enter the elevator to leave the airport, a young boy dressed in a yellow robe with golden dragon patterns had already been waiting there in advance.

The boy looked to be only seven or eight years old, a bit over one meter tall, with an exquisitely handsome yet indifferent face. When he saw Li Chengyi and his party, however, he naturally revealed a gentle smile.

"Brother Yi," he addressed him in the same manner as the people from the Garden of Fate.

"Third Prince?"

It was Prince Zhou Shuo.

He was the same prince they had rescued from an assassination attempt in Chaoyu last time.

A joint assassination attempt by Utopia and Star Lake, which would likely have succeeded if Li Chengyi had not been present.

"Hearing that you were coming, I made a point to wait here in advance," said Zhou Shuo earnestly. "This is Andu, and it’s only right for me to show the hospitality of a host."

In his speech, he did not consider himself a prince, but as a Common person, just like Li Chengyi and the others.

Li Chengyi looked at the Third Prince who appeared to be seven or eight years old but was, in fact, already fourteen or fifteen, and roughly understood the other’s intention.

Back in Chaoyu, their fateful encounter had led to a profound connection. In any case, with a life-saving debt to acknowledge, Zhou Shuo couldn’t help but express his gratitude.

So, it was only natural for him to personally set aside his status and come to meet the party.

"Then we won’t be polite. Please lead the way, Third Prince," Li Chengyi said with a nod and a smile.

"Follow me. It’s your first visit to Andu, and you might find it leaves a deep impression," Zhou Shuo said, turning and walking into the elevator.

"Oh? Why is that?" inquired Li Chengyi.

"Because this is the first of the four great self-circulating cities of Yi Country, unlike any other place," Zhou Shuo replied with a smile, then turned around, his back to the crowd, facing the inside of the elevator.

"Please look this way," he prompted.

The people from the Garden of Fate were somewhat puzzled, but they too faced the metallic wall of the elevator interior like he did.

The elevator began to ascend rapidly with a hum.

The faint sound of high-speed friction indicated that the elevator’s speed far exceeded what one might typically imagine.

"Right now, we’re ascending at a speed of thousands of kilometers per second. Since we’re in a vacuum tube, there’s no sonic boom or screeching noise," Zhou Shuo explained.

"Next, please pay attention to the outside," he said just as the words left his mouth.

About three seconds later.

Hum!

In an instant, the elevator’s interior wall trembled faintly.

After the trembling, the metallic wall turned semi-transparent, revealing the scenery outside.

Pure golden sunlight poured in from the sky outside, casting each person’s face in gold through the glass.

The azure sky, the floating white clouds, and the monumental disc-shaped mechanical city floating among the clouds surged into the view of everyone all at once.

The disc-shaped city, all white with gold patterns, was spinning slowly like a top.

Surrounding it, there was an enormous number of blue and red dots moving in and out.

These were countless flying crafts and Floating Reinforced Humans, with a few Flying Yi mixed in.

On the huge disc city, four enormous golden horns thrust toward the sky, each awash with intricate circuits of light and seamless seams.

Around the edge of the disc city, four grand white waterfalls cascaded from the perimeter straight down, falling to the ground after spanning tens of thousands of meters.

Oddly, at the landing points of these waterfalls were streets flickering with dark red lights.

The white water, upon hitting the ground, would instantly turn into vapor and dissipate, as if they had never existed in the first place.

Li Chengyi and his companions, looking upon the white and gold floating city, were struck by awe.

The sheer size of the city became apparent in contrast to the flying taxis they commonly used.

Numerous flying taxis, each over ten meters long, entered and exited at the city’s rim, appearing like floating specks of dust that were almost invisible to the eye.

The white and gold disc city, its periphery slowly flickering with countless white and blue dots of light.

"Welcome to Andu," Prince Zhou Shuo turned back to look at the awestruck group, wearing a smile both happy and proud.

"This is the premier capital of Yi Country, and also the most secure city in the entire Earth-Moon system," he declared.

"Is the entire Andu floating in the sky?" Dragon Gate Crane couldn’t help but ask out loud.

"Strictly speaking, Sky City is just a part of Andu. There’s another half underground named Black City," Zhou Shuo smiled. "All the nobles, elites, and higher-class citizens live in Sky City. The rest of the common people live in the underground Black City."

"What about the ground? Aren’t there also many urban buildings on the surface?" Li Chengyi asked.

"Those are buffer zones. Essentially, both Sky City and Black City require certain qualifications to enter. The ground part, which we call the Ash Belt, is for the living dead."

"The living dead?"

"The resurrected clones are the living dead. They are not accepted by the outside world, but their families and relatives wish for them to continue to exist, so after weighing the options, they are settled in the Ash Belt."

"And to distinguish them, all people in the Ash Belt are marked with a special symbol to differentiate themselves from common people," Zhou Shuo said, his expression calm as he spoke, evidently this system had been in place for a long time.

The elevator kept rising higher, and in a blink, it passed through the white clouds, reaching an altitude of twenty thousand meters.

The clouds turned into White Sea, lying beneath everyone’s feet,

Under the pale blue sky and white clouds, Sky City, in its platinum glory, floated serenely up high.

From here, one could see some of the high-rise buildings at the top of Sky City.

Click.

The elevator stopped at this moment, and the doors slowly opened to the interior of a pure white, spacious, and luxurious flying vessel.

Li Chengyi and his group entered the vessel with awe and amazement.

As the huge vessel turned slowly like a hot-air balloon,

The group once again saw another massive vessel that was also floating away.

That was the Shadow Eater’s Three-headed Shadow Dragon, which had also mobilized.

Li Chengyi glanced at the other party from afar, ignoring them and focusing his gaze on Sky City instead.

"Sky City is the logistical maintenance base of Taiyi Palace. According to the rules, you will officially meet the emperor here," he said.

The vessel sped up, expelling blue particle streams like ribbons from the rear, propelling itself closer to Sky City.

About ten minutes later, after passing through several layers of invisible force fields, the white vessel slowly docked against the outer wall of Sky City.

The connecting passage opened slowly and linked up.

Zhou Shuo and a team of guards, along with the people from the Garden of Fate, stepped out and entered a silver-grey, spacious mechanical hall. Everyone stood on a fast conveyor belt, swiftly moving towards the center of Sky City.

Soon, coincidentally, on another conveyor on the left, Shadow Dragon Sal and his two companions were also being led towards the center.

"We meet again..." Sal licked his lips, staring at Li Chengyi with golden dragon eyes that showed hints of greed and longing.

The Shadow Dragon Clan’s bloodline was already scarce, and it had dwindled even further due to their rampant devouring within their group.

It could be said that most Shadow Dragons live in solitude, at most cultivating some Dragon Descendants to serve them. It’s rare for Shadow Dragons to live and cooperate with one another.

Sal and the other two were actually outliers, and it was this outlierness that allowed them to work together and continue devouring other Shadow Dragons in the perilous environment of the Black Sea, purifying their bloodline and strengthening themselves.

Li Chengyi ignored the odd gaze from the opposite side, standing in place and listening to the Prince’s brief introduction to Andu.

Sky City, Black City, and the Ash Belt together formed Andu’s complex ecosystem.

The city was made up of three different layers of people.

Sky People, Black Citizens, Ash Folks.

As the conveyor belt moved quickly, the two groups soon left the mechanical hall, rushing into the dazzling golden sunlight outside.

In the light, they appeared like two dark lines, swiftly moving along the platinum metal walls of the city, approaching one of the corners of Sky City.

Strong winds whipped up, causing everyone’s cloaks to flutter noisily.

Li Chengyi surveyed his surroundings.

To the left was the high altitude outside Sky City.

To the right was the inner city, with all its ground paved with golden tiles.

Numerous gold buildings, shaped like mushroom caps, stood tall within the city, below which were densely packed highways.

Vehicles and flyers flowed like countless streams, densely and orderly, along the highways.

"It’s actually very lonely and boring living here for long," said Zhou Shuo by his side.

"Why?" Li Chengyi asked. "Isn’t it beautiful and tidy here?"

"Have you seen any people?" Zhou Shuo asked.

"..." At his words, everyone looked closely and realized that aside from the traffic, they really hadn’t seen many people walking outside in the city.

"Very few people live in Sky City... this bastion designed to accommodate tens of millions only actually houses tens of thousands. The rest is largely automated production lines, defense modules, and so on," Zhou Shuo explained.

He paused for a moment.

"And we, the Imperial Family, are not allowed to freely interact with the common people from birth until death. Even if we leave Andu, we are always under surveillance; every single move has to conform to Royal etiquette."

Li Chengyi and his companions felt an inexplicable understanding of his feelings—lack of freedom, loneliness, isolation... It was no wonder Zhou Shuo still had so little expression at his age.

Soon, the conveyor belt arrived beneath the corner.

A squad of towering warriors clad in ornate dragon-embossed platinum armor stood guard in front of a massive metal door more than ten meters high.

They each held golden halberds, and in the center of the white capes on their backs, an odd blue light symbol glowed; every one of them was over two meters tall.

Li Chengyi and his group, along with the Shadow Eater line, moved into the passageway formed by the rows of platinum-armored guards.