Longshande

After passing through the riverside woods, a broad road appeared ahead.

Rayne remembered this road as one of the main routes into the city. A few kilometers north lay Longshande. The sky was now fully bright, and farmers pulling carts hurried along the road, their wagons piled with fresh vegetables and food to sell at the city market.

There were also pedestrians like Rayne, all rushing about in pursuit of their livelihoods.

As he walked, Rayne noticed that his physical condition was quite good. His stamina was excellent, far stronger than in his previous life. It seemed he had not learned nothing at the academy over the past three years.

Whether it was a benefit of transmigration or simply because his body was in such good shape, the wound at the back of his head seemed to be healing rapidly. It did not hurt at all. If it did not still ache faintly when he touched it, Rayne would have suspected it had already healed completely.

As he walked, Rayne swept his attention over the Little Red Flower. It immediately enlarged into an interface before his eyes, and he spotted a change at a glance.

"Hmm? The battery has gone up one bar. So recovering physical strength is the equivalent of charging."

The discovery delighted Rayne. He no longer had to fear running out of power.

"The healthier my body is, the higher the battery level should be."

Rayne pondered this, but it still seemed somewhat unreasonable.

Judging from his current condition, even if he fully recovered, the battery could probably only reach around ten percent. So how was he supposed to raise it to one hundred percent?

And what would happen once it was fully charged to one hundred percent?

There were far too many questions left to explore.

As he pondered, a commotion came from behind him.

Rayne turned around and saw a black automobile driving down the road. It seemed to be in a hurry to enter the city, and the driver kept honking the horn to force the carts and pedestrians ahead out of the way.

Four attendants guarded both sides and the rear of the automobile. They wore light armor and carried longswords at their waists, riding their horses with practiced skill while keeping an appropriate distance from the vehicle to avoid collisions. Yet they did not ride too far away, ready at any time to protect their master inside.

The road fell into chaos. The farmers hurriedly pulled their carts over, and people moved aside to the roadside.

Rayne also quickly stepped out of the way.

Before long, the automobile drove past him, kicking up a cloud of dust. The mounted guards galloped after it, leaving a string of hoofprints in the dirt.

Watching the group depart, Rayne felt strangely unsettled.

He knew this world possessed a fairly advanced industrial level, especially in its use of steam machinery, which was even more developed than on Earth. Yet seeing an automobile drive past with several cavalrymen riding alongside it was simply too incongruous.

In the words of his previous life, the whole aesthetic was off!

When the automobile passed, he had deliberately observed it.

Its appearance was much like a car from Earth, though there were some slight differences in the details. The windows were lavishly decorated and covered by curtains, hiding the interior. The white smoke billowing from the rear had no obvious odor and looked like steam, because it was powered by a steam engine.

"To make a steam-powered automobile like this, and have it move so quickly, is pretty amazing too."

In Rayne's memories, he had never ridden in an automobile.

Automobiles were among the most high-end mechanical products, outrageously expensive. Only nobles, great tycoons, or Transcendents could afford one. Ordinary people might never get the chance to ride in a car even once in their lives. He had not seen what the people inside looked like just now, but they were surely either wealthy or noble.

As he drew closer and closer to the city, the road widened and the number of pedestrians gradually increased. Farmland stretched as far as the eye could see along the roadside, with many farmers already working in the fields.

This was already the outskirts of Longshande. Besides farmland, there were factories, plantations, ranches, and private estates belonging to nobles.

Before long, an enormous city appeared in view.

From afar, countless buildings formed a city that stretched beyond sight. The closer one got to the city center, the taller the buildings became. Though it lacked the skyscrapers that could easily surpass a hundred meters in Earth's major cities, its prosperity was no less impressive, and its population was extremely dense.

This was Longsand City, one of the Empire's most prosperous major cities, with a permanent population of over a million!

Longshande had no city walls, but its defenses were extremely formidable.

At a glance, Rayne noticed conspicuous stone towers throughout the city, one every few hundred meters. They stood thirty to forty meters tall, with what looked like gun emplacements on their tops.

Weapons had been installed atop the towers, but they were covered with waterproof tarpaulins, concealing what lay beneath.

Rayne knew there were Steam Crossbow Cannons beneath those tarps, an extremely powerful weapon said to have a range of five hundred paces. They were the ultimate weapon for defending cities in this world.

There were no city walls, but checkpoints had been set up on the main roads leading into the city.

Since dawn had come only recently, the people entering the city were not yet crowded together. The guards stationed at the checkpoint did not inspect every cart or every person. They only occasionally stopped someone for a few questions before letting them pass.

Rayne often left the city, and he had nothing to fear, so he walked over with an unchanged expression.

"Stop."

A fully armed guard suddenly blocked his path, his gaze sweeping over Rayne.

Rayne immediately realized that his clothes had not fully dried and looked wrinkled. He had not expected that to draw the guard's attention.

"Sir, I left before dawn this morning. I couldn't see the road clearly and accidentally fell into the river."

Rayne took the initiative to explain, pulling out a white card from his coat pocket and handing it over.

On his way back to the city, he had checked everything on him. Other than his clothes, he had not a penny to his name. There was only a key and this strange card.

The card was about the size of an ID card. Its material was extremely hard and difficult to damage. It bore a black-and-white portrait of Rayne and brief identification details. Most importantly, one side of the card had dozens of tiny holes. When inserted into a large precision machine for reading, those holes could be used to verify whether it was genuine.

Rayne's card had been issued by the academy as a pass for entering and leaving the academy.

Academy passes were quite valuable. Ordinary people could not obtain them, and they were considered a symbol of status. Thus, they were accepted in many places; as long as one showed the card, one would be allowed through.

Sure enough, the guard lowered his guard as soon as he saw the card. After confirming that the portrait on it matched Rayne himself, he immediately stepped aside.

Rayne put away the card and entered the city along the road.

The main roads in the city were extremely wide, enough for several carriages to travel side by side. A gas streetlamp stood every dozen meters or so. Carriages and automobiles traveled down the middle, while pedestrians could only walk on the sidewalks on either side.

Traffic streamed across the stone-paved streets, and buildings stood row upon row on both sides. Most had stone foundations, supplemented with wooden boards and a small amount of brick. The shorter ones were only two or three stories high, while the tallest reached five or six stories. Their roofs were covered in red tiles, and the architectural style was highly uniform.

People flowed through the streets in a bustling crowd, most of them walking in great haste.

All kinds of people passed by him: postmen delivering letters, housewives buying groceries, apprentices going to work, cart drivers hauling loads of goods, and children at play. Some of the roadside buildings were homes for commoners, while many others were shops. Clothing stores, restaurants, general stores, blacksmith shops, bookstores, markets, taverns, inns, Newspaper Stands... every trade was represented, and the entire city brimmed with the breath of life.

Walking through this city filled with foreign charm, Rayne looked around with great curiosity.

It reminded him of cities in medieval Europe.

Yet the two were utterly different. First of all, the sanitation here was excellent. Well-designed drainage channels ran along the roadsides, and the ground was paved with smooth stone slabs, so it would never turn into a muddy bog whenever it rained. Nor would people dump chamber pots into the streets as Europeans did, filling the air with stench. Even in Paris, supposedly the center of Europe, one might be drenched by a great "delivery" if one was not careful while walking down the street.

Second, the architectural style here was vastly different from that of medieval Europe.

Rayne knew little about architectural history and could not explain the precise differences.

But from his personal impression, Longshande's architecture felt grander. It favored massive blocks of stone as the main material, with patterns carved into the stone and various statues used as decoration. Every effort was made to make the buildings broader and brighter, giving them an air of solemn majesty.

This architectural style carried an exceptionally strong religious character. It bore some resemblance to Baroque architecture, but it was even more like Ancient Greek architecture in its grand magnificence.

Suddenly, a fragrant aroma drifted out from a restaurant by the street, making his stomach growl and interrupting Rayne's thoughts.

He touched his empty pocket and could not help cursing inwardly. Damn it. They even searched my body after trying to kill me and took all my money. Sooner or later, I'll settle this debt.

Swallowing his saliva, Rayne could only quicken his pace back to his apartment.

According to his memories, the previous owner of this body had hidden some money in a crack in the apartment wall. It was money he had saved in the past. Though not much, it would be enough to live on for a while.

Rayne's apartment was in Los District, not far away.

The residents of Los District were ordinary citizens. It was only slightly better than the slums, but the rent was cheap, which was why he could afford it.

More than ten minutes later, Rayne finally arrived below his apartment building. He went through the main entrance, climbed to the third floor, and took out his key at the door at the end of the corridor before unlocking it and entering.

The room was not large and was simply furnished, containing only a bed, a table and chairs, and a wardrobe against the wall. Beside it was a crude bathroom.

Rayne took off his uncomfortable wet clothes and tossed them into the bathroom. A bag of bread he had bought yesterday sat on the table, and he grabbed it and began stuffing it into his mouth.

He had never felt so hungry before, as if he had gone several days without food.

Chewing the cold, hard bread and washing it down with a cup of water, Rayne wolfed it down and quickly finished the entire bag. The bread had originally been enough for three breakfasts, yet he was still only half full and felt he could eat much more.

But at least he was no longer so hungry, and his strength was gradually returning.

Only after easing his hunger did Rayne remove the last pair of shorts he was wearing and enter the bathroom. He took a refreshing cold shower, dried himself with a towel, and came out feeling completely refreshed.

He walked over to the wardrobe, intending to change into a clean set of clothes, only to discover a mirror half the height of a person on its door. It clearly reflected his current appearance.

He stopped moving and carefully examined himself in the mirror.

This body was nearly one meter eighty tall. It was somewhat lean, but well-proportioned, with fairly defined muscles. That was the result of three years of training at the academy.

Most importantly, he was well-endowed too. Rayne glanced down and smiled in satisfaction.

The only flaw was the patches of blue and purple across his skin. Bruises covered his body everywhere, a horrifying sight, as though he had been viciously beaten. This was also why his entire body had hurt when he had first transmigrated. As for the wound at the back of his head, he found a palm-sized mirror in the desk drawer, stood before the dressing mirror, and used them to reflect each other until he finally saw what the wound looked like.

The wound had healed considerably. Lifting his hair revealed only a bloody, mangled indentation. It was relatively regular and circular in shape, and the contrast between the skin around its edges was stark. It was clearly caused by someone striking him heavily with a blunt weapon.

Rayne put down the mirror, his eyes darkening, because he knew exactly what had happened.