Chapter 7: A New Place to Stay
“It’s okay, with the two of us, we’ll find a way. I’ll definitely find a way to keep you alive,” Jayad said optimistically and firmly as I worried.
I was speechless. He was surprisingly reassuring, even though he was just a child, perhaps not even as old as me in my previous life.
Moreover, I really needed Jayad. Without his help, I might die tonight. At least with the blanket and him holding me, I was much warmer than before, even though I wasn’t quite comfortable being held by a man.
Besides, it was pointless for me to refuse now. He couldn’t go back. MacDuff must have already discovered he stole things and fled. Even if he went back, he would be beaten half to death. It was better to just see how things played out.
I fell silent and quietly observed everything around me. Unfortunately, my night blindness was too severe after dark. Everything looked like a blurry mosaic. People were indistinguishable from ghosts beyond ten meters. Wait!
Just as I was thinking about people being indistinguishable from ghosts, I thought I saw something terrifying. In the darkness at the street corner, I thought I saw a bloody head floating. But in the blink of an eye, it disappeared.
Was it an illusion? Or did my night blindness make me see things incorrectly? When I looked at the street corner again, I couldn’t see anything. Jayad quickly passed through this neighborhood, leaving that spot far behind.
At first, I wasn’t sure how big the city I had transmigrated to was. Perhaps it was just a small town. After all, I had been confined to a small neighborhood before.
But now, running with Jayad for a while, I found that the city was quite large. Jayad had been running for over half an hour and still showed no signs of reaching the end.
Although I couldn’t see the silhouettes of the buildings in the distance, I could see the lights coming from the windows. There were tall buildings on all sides.
Before, we were clearly in a slum. The roads were narrow and made of mud, with no drainage system at all. It was all sewage and stench. The houses were dilapidated, and everyone I saw was a vagrant.
But after running for a while, things changed drastically. The roads here were wide, paved with neat bluestone slabs. There were exquisite streetlights every so often along both sides of the road.
These streetlights were different from the previous kerosene lamps. They didn’t use fire, nor were they like the lights in my previous life. Instead, they emitted a silvery-blue light, like moonlight, which was round and gentle. I didn’t know how they produced such light.
Most of the houses on both sides were two or three stories high, with some even four or five stories or taller. They were exquisite and luxurious, many with small gardens, and the stench was gone.
I was finally free from the unbearable stench. It was too difficult. For someone like me, who had lived in an environmentally beautiful, good living condition, and hygienic modern environment in my previous life, the messy, dirty, and smelly slum was no different from hell.
At the same time, upon coming out into the open, although there was still thick fog obscuring the sky, making the stars invisible, I could still see the glow from the celestial bodies closest to us. And this time, I was completely sure. I had truly transmigrated to another world.
Because there were three moons in the sky. One was crimson red, about the size of a washbasin. This moon was the largest. Another was emerald green, appearing to be about the size of a bowl. The last one was pale blue, looking like only a ping pong ball in size.
Moreover, they each had their phases. The blue moon appeared as a complete circle. The green moon was missing a portion. The red moon was only a crescent, bent like the moon in my previous life.
It was clear that my original world did not have three moons, nor were they these colors. It seemed I had truly arrived in an alien world, or perhaps traveled to another planet in the universe?
But this city was even larger than I had imagined. After Jayad ran for a while longer, we had already passed through three neighborhoods. We passed what looked like a factory district or commercial district, a park, and a bridge.
After crossing the river, that faint stench began to return slowly. It seemed we were getting closer to the place Jayad had mentioned. He said he would take me to another slum, a place far from MacDuff, to make a living.
I was relieved that this city was so large. There were quite a few people as we walked, and even though it was already night, there were still many pedestrians on the street. Setting aside the issue of security, at least the possibility of MacDuff finding us two was like finding a needle in a haystack.
“Um, can we not go to the slums? We can just find a place to live on this street corner,” I suggested cautiously. I really didn’t want to go to such a dirty place. Moreover, many vagrants in my previous life would set up a shelter with a blanket or quilt by the roadside and sleep there directly.
“No way, sleeping outside is too dangerous,” Jayad immediately refused my suggestion, looking very serious, which scared me.
I wanted to ask him what was so dangerous, but he seemed unwilling to say more. Instead, he continued to carry me forward, and we finally arrived at a new slum much like the previous one, with dilapidated houses and a cramped environment.
But what was different was that this slum seemed to be surrounded by several factories. Huge pipelines covered the factory area, and some even passed directly through the slum.
The reason I knew they were factories was not because I could see clearly, but because these factories were still making loud noises even at night. Just hearing the huge mechanical sounds, I knew they must be factories.
“This is the area where workers who work in the factories live. Outsiders or those who can’t make ends meet usually have to choose to work in the factories, and then the factory manager will arrange for them to live here,” Jayad said.
It seemed that no matter which world, working in sweatshops and overtime until night was inevitable. I looked at the slum residents around me. Most of them were wearing work clothes, the simplest white t-shirts, with sallow complexions and listless expressions. They walked weakly or were numb.
Well, at least their quality was probably better than the thieves, swindlers, and beggars over there. At least they were doing honest work. The only drawback of the environment was the need to tolerate the factory noise.
I was curious where Jayad would take me to stay, but he led me straight to a small river channel beside us. We walked down the stairs, and I was surprised when we got down there.
On both sides of the river channel, there were platforms hundreds of meters long, extending along the river channel. Many vagrants and beggars were also sitting there. There were also thick pipes on both sides, constantly discharging wastewater into the ditch.
I understood. This was the factory’s drainage system, meaning the sewer. I didn’t expect Jayad to intend to stay here.
