Fine rain pattered against Zhao Cheng's face, bringing an icy chill that made him shudder.
The weather at this time of year was not actually cold. It was simply that his body had been getting worse and worse, especially over the past few years—visibly so.
Years of wandering had hollowed out his body. Using the glass of a roadside shop as a mirror, he caught a vague reflection of himself. He rarely groomed himself, and his beard and hair had grown long. Though only in his thirties, they were already a patchy gray-white. Looking like this, he could claim to be over fifty and people would surely believe him.
In his daze, Zhao Cheng recalled the dream from earlier. Everything in it felt like yesterday, yet also like a lifetime ago.
Then Zhao Cheng looked up at the vault of Heaven. Above him, he could see a blurred halo—that was Cloud City, the true Cloud City. As for the lower city where he stood, it was not acknowledged at all.
War had changed far too many things.
More than ten years ago, the two most powerful nations had gone to war. In the end, both sides had been badly wounded, and neither became the victor. Instead, the corporations rose to power, formed an alliance, and created the twisted world of today.
Each corporation controlled its own city. To the corporations, people were divided only into useful and useless. The useful ones signed contracts that were practically slave pacts—not only selling themselves, but their children and descendants along with them. From then on, generation after generation, they would be corporation people.
And the useless? How could there possibly be anything truly useless in this world? Even a scrap of waste paper had its value. Thus, those seemingly useless people were exiled