(A loyal little section break, just to let you know you're in the right place. Keh keh keh.)
Night fell, and the airport blazed with light. Under the local government's strategy for stimulating the economy, the clean, spacious departure lounge had been converted into a shopping street, complete with the city's only mega-casino and luxury stores carrying the latest and most comprehensive selections.
Such commercial measures meant that certain gambling-obsessed rich people didn't mind buying a plane ticket as an "admission pass," then entering the shopping street to spend lavishly.
Li Anjun sat in a waiting-area seat. To his left, a beautiful young married woman checked her makeup in a small mirror. To his right sat a pile of food wrappers, and farther right, a middle-aged man with grease smeared around his mouth sampled delicacies from the shopping street.
The aromas of all kinds of food drifted freely through the lower departure lounge, constantly teasing people's taste buds.
Li Anjun's mind was elsewhere entirely. He was returning to the temple in his birthplace to pray to the ancient God of Marriage.
This was a traditional rite in their country. Hundreds of years ago, after they had rebelled against the Imperium of Man, which had done nothing but exploit them, a great deity had descended into the mortal world and brought people the best possible matches. She was far better than that so-called Emperor.
On their eighteenth birthday, everyone had to visit their local temple and pray to the God of Marriage.
That night, they would fall into a deep sleep and enter a wonderful dream.
The great deity would take the form of a graceful beauty with a human head and a serpent's body. Dressed in festive scarlet clothes, she would use a red ribbon to bind two destined lovers