“Give me a long-term one.” After hearing Xie Miao’s quote, Feng Xue didn’t waste a word. He slapped down a chip card containing fifty thousand credit points. Xie Miao froze at that, for a moment even suspecting that Old Jiang had transferred all his inheritance to this brat before he died.
But in his line of work, he naturally wouldn’t ask what shouldn’t be asked. After confirming the amount was correct, he immediately began helping him settle the identity information.
If Feng Xue had only bought a short-term identity, Xie Miao would have had to worry whether this guy had gone mad and was planning to rob some corporate storefront or the like. But since he was buying an identity with long-term access, Xie Miao actually felt a good deal more at ease.
There was nothing difficult about processing an identity card. Once the money was in place, this kind of authorization that didn’t involve a past résumé or history was easy to handle.
Relying on the fact that he was not currently in his main body, Feng Xue wasn’t worried about Xie Miao cheating him either. If this old bastard really dared give him a fake identity, then once the character-creation cooldown ended tomorrow, he would immediately come charging over with Demon Sword No. 3!
……
Stepping out of the elevator shaft embedded in the pillar, Feng Xue—now with yet another face—looked at the scene outside, and a sense of familiarity welled up in his heart.
Compared to the garbage zone, which resembled wasteland punk more than cyberpunk, everything before his eyes could be said to satisfy every fantasy he had ever had about the word “cyberpunk.”
Towering skyscrapers leaned against and spliced into one another, forming walls, enclosing fortress-like blocks, and building one sky-piercing tower after another. Flickering neon lights intertwined with chaotic advertising music, making people dizzy and dazzled.
Enormous holographic projections tore through the night sky. A seductive virtual songstress twisted her waist made of data, while streams of advertising light poured down the glass curtain walls of the skyscrapers like living, multicolored magma, shifting between product information and provocative slogans.
“Rhine Life,” “Blacksteel International,” “Loken Water Tank”... One corporation after another branded its logo onto every corner visible to anyone who looked up, in the crudest and most direct manner possible, proclaiming ownership and power.
Beneath this radiance, there seemed to be no room for even a trace of shadow, yet in the corners of the narrow alleys, thick darkness still lingered, impossible to disperse.
This was the street district—the area of the city that came closest to the concept of “civilians.” In the numerous factories, countless commoners used themselves as components in exchange for meager wages, wages so low they were not even enough to rent a place in the worst corners of the street district. In the technical schools, children who had already accepted their fate as “consumables” filled the classrooms.
His gaze swept over the tea hostess posing coquettishly at the entrance of a bar. Ignoring her invitation to “cool off,” Feng Xue walked on down the street. Because no matter how much they saved, it was difficult to cross the boundaries of their own class. Most civilians in this city had already given up on themselves. After satisfying their basic survival needs, they would pour their pitifully small surplus entirely into cheap entertainment.
Low-end tea hostesses of unknown age, relying entirely on the performance of their prosthetic bodies to ply their trade; crooked gambling dens managed by gangs, where anyone who won too much would never make it out; or tavern dance halls where buying a single cup of inferior liquor allowed one to twist their body as they pleased amid piercing music.
Of course, there was also no shortage of braindance parlors of unknown qualification, where people could experience lives they could only dream of.
……
Carefully avoiding the gang members striding along with their don’t-give-a-damn swagger, Feng Xue followed the navigation all the way to Service Tower B-7. It was the closest elevator leading to the building district.
“Identity verification.” The cold electronic voice sounded the instant Feng Xue approached. He immediately raised his left wrist, revealing his wristwatch-style terminal. After a brief silence, the screen on the interactive interface by the entrance turned from blue to green, and the mechanical voice, now slightly gentler, sounded again:
“Verification passed. Welcome. Please abide by the behavioral regulations of the building district.”
The metal gate opened in response. Feng Xue let out a faint breath of relief and stepped into the empty elevator.
The doors closed behind him, as if instantly cutting off the noise and chaos of the street district outside. Accompanied by the faint vibration beneath his feet, Feng Xue’s emotions rose and fell without cease.
At last, the elevator doors opened once more. Before he had even seen the scene outside, his brows had already lifted.
Fresh air, warm light, elegant music, and those “respectable” people dressed in neat attire, their steps precise and meticulous.
“The difference is already this great when it’s only the building district?”
Feng Xue stepped out of the elevator and looked at an environment that, rather than cyberpunk, seemed more like an ordinary high-tech community. Although each floor was only about five meters high, great effort had clearly been put into the ceiling. As long as one did not deliberately scrutinize it, anyone who raised their head would only feel as though they were seeing a stretch of blue sky.
The environment of the building district was far more comfortable than that of the street district, but there were far fewer pedestrians on the road. Even the few passersby appeared hurried.
Knowing that most of the people on this level were probably corporate clerks, Feng Xue did not linger. Using the city map built into his terminal, he began searching for the location of a cyberware store.
The transportation within the building district could be described as a tangled maze. If one insisted on making a comparison, only the mountain cities of his previous life could put up a fight. Constantly taking elevators and bridge corridors, Feng Xue finally arrived at the area marked as the shopping street on the map after gaining more than sixty meters in altitude.
However, just as he was passing an elevator, a burst of somewhat noisy laughter and chatter suddenly rang out. As the doors opened, three men and two women walked out. Unlike the corporate clerks he had seen before, these people clearly carried a bit of a street aura, but compared to the gang members in the street district, they also possessed a kind of arrogance that seemed innate.
Their punk clothing, which looked similar in style to street-district gangs at first glance, only revealed its extraordinariness upon closer inspection. The fabric was not synthetic fiber, but genuine cotton and linen, and the gleaming metal accessories were full of various precious metals.
As for the prosthetics on which they had deliberately chosen not to install bionic skin, they were visibly high-end. With just one sweep of his eyes, Feng Xue spotted several top-tier pieces that he had only ever seen in the cyberware magazines Old Jiang had subscribed to.
Feng Xue’s steps paused almost imperceptibly. At that exact same moment, the other party’s gaze also landed on him.
The clothes Feng Xue wore were not bad either, but that depended on who they were being compared to. It was not that he couldn’t afford better; it was just that when he had first come up, he had wanted to avoid standing out too much, so he had bought an outfit on the level of a corporate clerk. But now, the strange look in the other party’s eyes clearly showed that they had seen the difference between him and an ordinary clerk.
Feng Xue found it very difficult to understand why, no matter where he was, people could spot him at a glance. But just as he was wondering whether he should fight or run next, the bald young man at the head of the group, who was at least two meters tall, actually spoke in a rather friendly tone:
“Hey, bro! You here to have fun too? I’m Johnny. Let’s get acquainted?”
“???”
Feng Xue’s gaze swept over the other party’s body, which was sprayed with all kinds of colored designs yet had not a single tattoo. Feeling helpless, he still revealed an interested smile and said:
“Sure. Where are you guys planning to go?”
As for why he didn’t buy a real identity: because he didn’t need one, and there was no point. Buying an identity means you have to become that person. If that person is a white-collar worker, then you have to go to work. For the protagonist, that’s unnecessary.