"Hey, quit talking about people, Hendra. Watch your head!" A tall, skinny man carried a bamboo pole with bloody cow lungs hanging from it as he walked past the two of them toward the meat stall.
A woman in a sarong was waiting in front of the stall.
Hearing this, Wu Heng turned around. Hendra, who had called out to him, was a middle-aged man with a thick, short neck and a belly squashed into a lump by his sitting posture. He was slightly hunched, as if carrying a heavy burden.
His clothes were worn and smelled faintly of cooking oil.
When the tall, skinny man reached his stall, he immediately plastered a smile across his face and bowed repeatedly as he started chopping meat for the woman.
His cleaver came down with sharp, rhythmic thuds.
Bloody water from the chopping board splashed onto the plastic sheet of the durian stall beside him.
"That kid made a good haul again today. The cow lungs he brought weren't even enough!" Hendra said to Wu Heng with a hint of envy.
"Just good luck, I guess." Wu Heng smiled in reply, then picked up the long chopsticks he had placed on the table in front of him.
Bananas were frying in the wok before him. Their rich, sweet scent kept rising and drifting into the nostrils of the surrounding stall owners, serving as a sort of air freshener.
As Wu Heng used his chopsticks to lift out the fried bananas and place them on the draining rack, he examined himself.
For him, he had been in Fear Tower one second and had become an Indonesian fried-banana vendor the next. Though he had experienced this many times already, it still felt somewhat strange.
Another new world. He really was looking forward to it.