After leaving the train station, Chen Shouyi walked up to a newsstand. "Give me a map of Dongxing City!"
"Do you want an ink-printed map or one of the old color-printed maps? The ink-printed ones are cheaper, five yuan each. The color-printed ones are expensive—one hundred. These are all old stock, and there are fewer and fewer of them these days. I reckon they'll be collectibles someday..." The newsstand owner chuckled.
"The color-printed one!" Chen Shouyi cut off his long-winded explanation and handed over a hundred-yuan note.
He had brought plenty of money with him this time, enough to cover his expenses for the next few days.
He unfolded the map and carefully looked for the route to Dongning. Then he folded it up and put it in his backpack.
"Sir, can I ask you something?" Chen Shouyi asked the newsstand owner. "Do you know what's going on over in Dongning?"
"You're thinking of going to Dongning? I'd advise you not to. Even if you go, you won't get in."
A few minutes later, Chen Shouyi left the newsstand, his brows knitted tight.
What the newsstand owner had told him was much the same as what the two sisters on the train had said, though the situation seemed even worse. The entire Dongning area was now surrounded and sealed off by the military, but for some reason, the two sides had remained in an eerie state of calm.
He glanced up at the gloomy sky, breathed out softly, and walked on.
Dongxing City was one of Jiangnan Province's eleven prefecture-level cities. Before the upheaval, its economy had always been above average, but steam-powered vehicles were still pitifully scarce on the streets. In the ten-odd minutes he walked, Chen Shouyi saw only one.
But perhaps because the city had yet to