The streets were narrow and lively, filled with neon signs and flickering electronic screens. Billboards played animated advertisements for all kinds of products and entertainment. The pavement stayed wet year-round, reflecting the colorful neon overhead and lending the city a hazy atmosphere.
Pedestrians wove through the streets in wildly different styles of clothing. Now and then, people with partially mechanized bodies passed by, their mechanical limbs reflecting a cold gleam beneath the lights.
Small shops and stalls lined the streets, offering a dazzling variety of goods. A food stall might stand right beside a shop selling high-tech gadgets, including portable electronics, modification parts, and all sorts of novel trinkets.
Normally, Beigong Ling would have been happy to stop by these shops and see if she could buy something interesting.
But today was different.
Mist hung in the air.
Beigong Ling walked along the busy street, her heartbeat gradually quickening. She felt an unusual gaze following her closely. People came and went around her, but her keen senses picked up on an indescribable wrongness.
A sense of danger, like being stalked by a predator, warned her that District 25 was unsafe right now. Extremely unsafe.
Every hair on her body stood on end. Given what she was capable of now, nothing in the world should have been able to make her feel this way.
Yet here, right now, she felt it. She felt danger.
She felt as though, in just a few minutes, she would face a life-or-death crisis and vanish from this world completely.
That was exactly how it felt!
After messaging Jonas, Beigong Ling quickened her pace, weaving through the crowded streets. Neon lights flickered around her, and her pounding heartbeat drowned out the street noise. Whenever she looked back, she saw only ordinary pedestrians hurrying past, but her