Deep down, "they" did not even count as human, piled up in swaths in the Bright Sea Financial Consortium's supply warehouses.
Li Mingsheng stepped over the Dragon-Gazing Tower's twenty-centimeter-high red wooden threshold and entered an enormous red hall, where rows of red lanterns hanging from the ceiling cast their light below.
He walked across seamless floor tiles glowing red, golden coiled dragons and red phoenixes in flight outlined beneath his feet.
Under the red lantern light, the golden dragons in the tiles gleamed with blood, while the flying phoenixes seemed bathed in it.
The figures coming and going looked like bloodstained demons. Li Mingsheng shuddered, astonished by his own imagination.
Fortunately, there were still elevators. Otherwise, the climb up the stairs would have scared guests away.
After a three-minute elevator ride to the 199th floor, the world before Li Mingsheng brightened.
At last, this place was no longer red. Overhead stretched a clear night sky, with a silver moon occupying a fifth of it. Its cool light illuminated the garden of rare plants below.
Li Mingsheng stepped onto the garden path before him, smooth pebbles winding through the greenery beneath his feet.
He crossed a two-meter-long wooden bridge, his gaze sweeping over the flowing water below, where moonlight rippled and spread.
Voices came from ahead. Li Mingsheng rounded an octagonal pavilion beside an artificial hill, then passed a pond filled with lotus leaves before finally finding the people he wanted to meet beside a grove of purple bamboo.
From here, he could look through gaps in the plants and see enormous floor-to-ceiling windows encircling the outer edge.
From the height of this sky-high pavilion, a vast expanse of Zone 2's dazzling lights lay in view. Stone tables and stools were artfully arranged throughout the garden, crowded with people.
Everyone gathered