The trip had gone incredibly smoothly for Li Xingkong, until just now, when the local customs of Prisoner Continent had taught him his first lesson.
Fortunately, Li Xingkong still had his phone on him, and Guan Zhenzhen had left him his passport.
Li Xingkong stood at the airport entrance, unsure what to do for a moment. Fortunately, his upbringing reminded him that he could call the police.
He found the number for a nearby police station and hurriedly called it.
"Hello, is this the Prisoner Continent police station? Someone stole my luggage here at the airport."
No sooner had the thought occurred to him than Li Xingkong found the emergency number for the police on Prisoner Continent.
"Hello, sir. Are you a Prisoner Continent local or a visitor from elsewhere?"
Instead of first asking what had happened and when and where, as Li Xingkong had expected, the person on the other end asked whether he was a local.
"I came to Prisoner Continent for work. I only arrived today. The theft happened at..." Li Xingkong answered the officer's question and prepared to tell him where he was.
"All right, all right, I understand. I've registered your case, and it should be taken up in about three months. All right, sir, bye-bye."
Before Li Xingkong could finish giving the address, the person on the other end had already cut in.
Without waiting for Li Xingkong to speak, the person on the other end hung up. Just before the line went dead, Li Xingkong could still hear laughter coming from the other end.
"Another unlucky outsider, hahaha~~"
Li Xingkong gripped his phone tightly. He would have been better off not calling. Those officers plainly had no intention of doing anything, or perhaps, since he was a foreigner, they didn't think he was worth the trouble.
"Damn it."
Accustomed to the kindness of the people of Divine Land, Li Xingkong had finally understood why Prisoner Continent was called "Prisoner" after his first reception by its people.
"My advice is to turn back and settle the score with those two cops right now."
Just as Li Xingkong was getting angry, the system appeared. "That woman and those two cops were obviously working together. They've probably used that routine to scam plenty of people."
"But..." Li Xingkong hesitated. Decades of education had given him a natural sense of distance from law enforcement officers.
Most importantly, those two really were carrying weapons, and he couldn't stop them as he was now.
After hesitating for a while, he set aside the idea of going back to teach the two cops a lesson. It was too risky, after all.
He would find somewhere to settle down first, then decide what to do. Although he had lost his luggage, he still had his phone, so his losses weren't all that great.
His first priority was still to create spiritual energy. He didn't have much time to waste here. The system's method for creating spiritual energy depended too heavily on chance: with good luck, it could appear quickly, but with bad luck, it was possible he wouldn't gather enough in an entire lifetime. He didn't have much time to waste on this.
With that thought, Li Xingkong left the airport, planning to take a look around this city on Prisoner Continent first.
Outside the airport, a massive billboard stood by the road. A beautiful woman on the billboard was waving hello, with a line of text beneath her:
"Welcome to the City of Freedom!"
Standing by the roadside and preparing to hail a cab, Li Xingkong saw the sign and exclaimed.
"Freedom. So damn free!"
Although the airport was far from the city center, it was an important transportation hub, so there were plenty of taxis on the road. Li Xingkong had only stood by the roadside for a short while when a taxi pulled up beside him.
"Hey! Where you headed, buddy?"
The car stopped, and the driver rolled down his window and asked. The driver looked like a Prisoner Continent local: a white man with a rather square face that showed a few signs of wear. He had deep wrinkles at the corners of his eyes and a distinctive handlebar mustache beneath his nose. He wore a worker's overalls and a denim vest with loose threads sticking out in quite a few places.
"To the city first," Li Xingkong said, pulling open the rear door and climbing into the back seat.
Once he was in, the driver deftly started the meter, fired up the engine, and drove off. The engine stirred with a hum, and the car moved forward. The lane beneath them was a straight road stretching far toward the horizon. The driver kept one hand hooked over the steering wheel while the other groped around the middle of the car, as if looking for something. As he watched the road ahead, he also glanced at Li Xingkong in the rearview mirror.
"Heh, kid, just got welcomed, did you?"
The driver had obviously noticed how full of resentment Li Xingkong was. He laughed, found a cigarette with his searching hand, and lit it.
"Prisoner Continent's welcome really opened my eyes," Li Xingkong said through gritted teeth.
"Buddy, that's what we call freedom!"
Perhaps because they had left the airport area, the driver became even wilder behind the wheel and stomped on the gas. The already old-looking taxi wheezed even harder.
"Lots of outsiders say how much they love freedom before they come, but once they get here, they're scared to death. You're not a weakling like that too, are you?" the driver said, puffing out clouds of smoke.
"Looks like I'll need quite some time to get used to Prisoner Continent's customs too."
Li Xingkong didn't smoke, and the heavy smell made his nose uncomfortable.
The driver also saw his discomfort in the rearview mirror and opened the window, letting the smoke drift out.
"Kid, good thing you ran into me. Otherwise, you'd have learned a few more lessons along the way. If your luck was bad, you might even have lost your life here."
From what the driver said, he was a good man, but no matter how Li Xingkong looked at him, he couldn't associate that appearance with a good man.
The car sped down the road. Just then, a horn beeped behind them, and Li Xingkong saw an SUV pull up in the passing lane on the right. The vehicle had been modified to hell and back, even turned into a convertible. Four young men with mohawks sat inside, honking their horn to provoke the taxi.
"If you want to get by on Prisoner Continent, you've got to be ruthless!" The driver glanced at the vehicle beside them as he spoke to Li Xingkong, reaching over to pull something from the front passenger seat. Li Xingkong hadn't paid it any attention before, thinking it held only ordinary odds and ends, but as the driver moved, he pulled a very rugged-looking handgun from the pile. No, it was more of a hand cannon. The radius of the barrel looked big enough to fit a fist.
The driver rolled down his window and even smiled at the mohawk-wearing youths opposite them. Then he reached out and fired a shot straight into their tire. The shot blew the tire clean off. The SUV, minus one wheel, plunged headfirst off the highway and spun around several times.
The driver pulled the handgun back in and tossed it onto the passenger seat.
"See that? That's how we Prisoner Continent locals solve problems."
Li Xingkong watched, dumbfounded. What had happened over the past few minutes had given him a deeper understanding of the city of Prisoner Continent.
"So the police on Prisoner Continent don't do anything about it?"
Li Xingkong still held a sliver of hope for Prisoner Continent's government.
"They do, of course they do. If you don't have a gun, they'll deal with you." The driver stubbed out his cigarette and tossed it straight out the window. "But as long as you have a gun, you'll only see them on tax collection day."
Li Xingkong now fully understood the situation on Prisoner Continent.
To put it simply: the weak were meat, and the strong ate.
Only now did he begin to come to his senses. This place was different from the Divine Land he had left, and he ought to change his own way of thinking in time.
The car traveled for nearly half the afternoon before finally easing into the city and stopping by the roadside.
"Kid, 590. Pay up!"
The driver leaned back and turned his head to speak to Li Xingkong.
"That expensive? And is the airport really that far from the city?"
Li Xingkong had sat in the car for ages. If the route hadn't been so desolate, he would have wanted to get out half an hour after getting in.
The driver chuckled, smoke still pouring from the cigarette in his mouth, though there was no telling how many he had gone through.
"Kid, next time you take a cab, remember to say which city you want to go to."
Li Xingkong understood at once that he had been taken the wrong way. It was like landing in Dadu and having a taxi take him straight to Jinhai.
"Paid, paid."
Li Xingkong raised his phone, opened the door, and got out. The driver drove straight off into the distance.
The driver had heavy firepower, after all, so Li Xingkong wouldn't make an issue of it.
After getting out, Li Xingkong looked around.
Skyscrapers towered overhead, and the place glittered with lights and revelry. At first glance, this city on Prisoner Continent was much like the big cities of Divine Land.
There were plenty of signs around and crowds of people coming and going. Li Xingkong planned to find a hotel to stay in first, then decide what to do.
He looked left and right, unsure where to go, so he decided to stop a passerby and ask. After looking around, he picked a man whose clothes looked relatively expensive. In a place like this, someone who could afford to wear such clothes out on the street generally wouldn't make things difficult for an ordinary person like him, who looked utterly average.
Li Xingkong stepped forward and asked:
"Excuse me, which part of Nature City has reliable hotels?"
"Buddy, are you kidding? This is Freedom City. Nature City is a three-hour drive away."
After answering, the richly dressed man looked at Li Xingkong, his eyes full of pity and surprise for someone with an intellectual disability, then hurried away.
Li Xingkong was a little bewildered. As it turned out, he hadn't even been ready to travel yet, and he had already made a trip across Prisoner Continent.