The Dome shrouding Pipi Castle was golden, pure and dazzling. Yet inside Pipi Castle, everything was gray and murky. The sky's original color was nowhere to be seen, dim as the pitch-black heavens before a storm descended.
Beneath that dark canopy lay ground paved with steel and concrete, along with pointed-roofed houses resembling pyramids.
For now, they could be called pyramid houses.
The quality of these pyramid houses was immediately apparent. The poorer ones were made from pieced-together metal sheets and painted in gaudy colors, while the slightly better ones had bodies made entirely of metal, without a single patch.
Among pyramid houses of different materials and sizes, the only common feature was that their pointed tops—where the chimneys were—were all billowing with the same thick smoke.
Even from several hundred meters away, Angel could smell the outrageously choking metallic stench in the smoke.
The blackish-gray smoke gathered in midair, forming a low Black Cloud that pressed down upon the city.
By then, Angel understood why Pipi Castle's sky was so dim. It was caused by pollution.
For a moment, Angel felt as if he had been transported to Yirong Kingdom. Yirong Kingdom's greatest strength was its outstanding machinery; its greatest weakness was its poor-quality air, bad enough to kill people.
"Although Pipi Castle has no strict district divisions, only inner and outer city areas, this place belongs to neither. It's a transition zone." Luigi's voice drifted over. "The people living here are mostly from the Dome Guard Unit, or rather, Pirushu who don't want to pay the air tax but want to conduct heavily polluting experiments."
"I understand the guards. What is this air tax?" Angel looked at Luigi in confusion.
Luigi said, "Just what it sounds like. Both the inner and outer cities have isolation shields that can