Standing at the entrance to a commercial street on the Luofu, Li Sushang looked up and read the seal script characters carved above the vermilion stone archway:
"Cloudford City..."
Moon Shade had already explained to her why she could directly understand the language, both written and spoken, despite never having seen it before.
Li Sushang's gaze lowered, looking straight ahead.
A red-lacquered archway held a high-hanging golden plaque, bronze bells on its eaves swaying gently in the wind. The storefronts on either side were packed tightly together, their gilded signs gleaming brightly.
"It's so lively! This market is much bigger than the ones in Mobei!"
In her memory, even during the most joyous national holidays, she had rarely seen a spectacle that could rival the bustling scene before her.
A crisp, silvery chime suddenly sounded at her feet. Li Sushang looked down to see two strange-looking "dogs" zipping past with packages in their mouths, startling her into taking half a step back.
"Is that... a mechanical beast?"
[Yes, those are the Luofu's automatons. They have a wide range of uses and come in many forms. The two you just saw look like they're making deliveries.]
With the Cycranes—which functioned as official map navigators and traffic lights—malfunctioning, Luocha, Dan Heng, and Li Sushang had been sent to Cloudford City along with the departing starskiffs.
Unfamiliar with the place and the people, they should have, in theory, stuck together.
However, Dan Heng was determined to find and regroup with the crew, so he bid farewell and left shortly after.
Moon Shade wasn't sure if Silver Wolf's block on Dan Heng's phone and the Cycranes was still active, but either way, Dan Heng wouldn't be in any real danger.
She knew, after all, that Dan Heng had a hidden power—the Little Azure Dragon of the Waves.
Luocha also said he had a business partnership to discuss and took his leave.
Moon Shade was skeptical of his excuse, but tailing him directly would require deceiving Li Sushang. After some thought, she decided to first help Li Sushang familiarize herself with the Xianzhou.
"De-deliveries? What's that?"
Li Sushang murmured softly, at a volume only she could hear.
"Deliveries, well, that's when..."
"Oh, so it's soliciting bribes."
Li Sushang walked down the main street, looking left and right, her eyes wide with wonder. The architectural style and cultural atmosphere here gave her a sense of familiar warmth.
Because of this, she didn't feel the loneliness of someone who had slept for five hundred years to awaken to a world utterly changed.
"Some of these things feel a bit strange, though."
Li Sushang said pensively, folding her arms.
She was actually quick to accept completely new things, but it was the things that looked familiar on the outside yet were entirely different on the inside that felt odd, like the silks floating overhead.
Li Sushang, of course, recognized silk fabrics, but the ones above were transparent and illusory. Moon Shade called them holographic billboards.
A fairy made of iridescent light was holding a bowl of Poria cake with a gentle smile. Small seal script at the bottom of the bowl read: "Brewed with ancient methods, enhanced with genetic preservation technology. Shelf life: three hundred years."
Li Sushang could read the words, but she couldn't understand them.
She gained a more direct and profound sense of having traveled through time and space to another world.
"Moon Shade, where are we going next?"
[Is there anything you want to buy? Or anything you want to do? It's not every day you get to come to another world, so why not have some fun? My treat.]
Moon Shade said with a light, clever laugh.
"Alright, then I won't be shy about it."
Li Sushang replied with a carefree laugh.
As a martial artist who had roamed the lands since childhood, she was always straightforward and didn't sweat the small stuff. If you treated her this time, she'd simply treat you next time.
Besides, her relationship with Moon Shade was more than just a friendship; Moon Shade was another 'self.'
Li Sushang felt as if she had gained an inseparable twin sister.
"Then let's buy something to eat first. I'm feeling a little hungry."
[Okay, watch closely how I buy things.]
Moon Shade took control of the body, found a nice-looking stall nearby, and took out the phone Caelus had prepared from her spatial storage.
She had Li Sushang pay with credits using the phone, and when they turned around, a steaming hot pastry was in Moon Shade's hand.
[Did you get all that?]
Moon Shade's auto-tease mode was on again.
"That's it? It's really that convenient? With a phone, you don't need to carry heavy silver taels when you go out, and you don't have to worry about thieves. Wonderful!"
Fiddling with the novel object in her hands, Li Sushang smiled bashfully.
[Try it and see if the food here suits your taste.]
Li Sushang's pale lips brushed against the oil paper as her white teeth bit into the pastry. Her eyelashes fluttered, and she let out a cry of delight and surprise.
"Ah! This flavor... it's taro cake!"
"I can't believe they have taro cakes in this world too. After so many years... although it's not exactly the same as the ones from my childhood, it's very close."
Munching on the taro cake, the girl's brown twintails swayed gently with her steps.
[Your childhood?]
"Yeah, back then, my master would buy a few taro cakes whenever she came back from the market in the early morning." A nostalgic look appeared on Li Sushang's pretty face.
[Your master was very good to you, then.]
Moon Shade could also taste the taro cake. It was indeed delicious.
"Ha!?"
Li Sushang's eyelids drooped. She let out a speechless scoff and shook her head.
"No. My master... she ate them herself."
[Hmm?]
"Sigh, I was only six back then. My master would be slowly eating the taro cakes, and she'd say, ahem..."
The girl cleared her throat twice and imitated her master vividly: "Sushang, you can only eat after you've finished your training."
"But my master ate the very last piece, and I still hadn't finished the repetitions she'd set for me."
Li Sushang spread her hands. "But my master just brushed the crumbs from her hands, looking happier than ever, and said, 'Sushang, you're so slow.'"
The pitch-perfect imitation made Moon Shade chuckle.
"Sigh, Master was so mean... Don't laugh."
"I'm pretty tough, though. Thinking back, I can't believe she didn't make me cry then. But when it comes to sword practice, I haven't cried since I was three."
Li Sushang proudly patted her large pillow.
[That's certainly impressive.]
Starting sword training at three years old, for real!
"Hehe, but you know, I made up my mind that morning. I was going to ignore her, whether it was noon or evening."
Li Sushang flashed a cute smile. "Master was competing with me, too. Starting from chen shi, she pretended to be calmly peeling an orange, but she was secretly watching me."
"Ha! In the end, Master couldn't hold out! She said, 'Sushang, let me teach you how to make orange lanterns. How about I take you to the market at xu shi to listen to the opera and release flower lanterns?'"
"After we made the orange lanterns, Master took me to the biggest market in Mobei. We listened to the opera for a good while and bought a whole bunch of new taro cakes."
Li Sushang chattered on about her childhood, and Moon Shade listened quietly, chiming in from time to time. Their already close relationship grew even warmer.
[In that case, now that we've had taro cakes, how about we go see an opera?]
Moon Shade suggested.
"Huh? They have opera troupes here too?"
Li Sushang paused for a moment.
[Of course, they do. But I'm not familiar with this area either...]
Before Moon Shade could finish, Li Sushang puffed out her chest. "That's easy! There are so many people here, we can just find someone and ask."
[Er...]
Moon Shade wanted to say they had phone navigation, but Li Sushang was already walking toward a clerk standing at a counter outside a shop.
Seeing the brown-haired girl walking straight toward her, the female clerk, dressed in a distinctly Xianzhou-style white blouse, immediately broke into a smile.
"Hey little sister, want to try our newest face mask?"
"Face mask?"
Li Sushang froze, muttering to herself, "First noodles, now steamed buns... it doesn't even have a meat filling, what could it possibly taste like?"
"Thanks, but I just ate, so I'm not hungry right now. Could you please tell me where I can find an opera stage?"
The clerk slowly formed a question mark in her mind.
What did eating and not being hungry have to do with face masks?
Though a bit baffled, she still enthusiastically gave Li Sushang directions: "It's in that direction. Go past Myriad Vistas Street, turn left at Nine Bends Ward... it's at the end of Danxia Lane, where you see the big crowd."
Li Sushang gave a polite martial artist's salute, thanked her again, and turned to leave.
"See? Simple."
The most important thing when roaming the world is being able to talk to people.
[Can you remember all that?]
Moon Shade had a terrible sense of direction, the type who couldn't leave the house without phone navigation.
"Of course! And even if I can't find it, I can just ask again."
Her cloud-patterned soft boots tapped against the stone slabs as Li Sushang demonstrated what true footwork was.
Passing a roadside stall, the busy owner bumped into his stand, nearly snagging the jade pendant at her waist. She twisted nimbly out of the way and even steadied a toppling jar of pickled sauce for the vendor next to him.
[Nice moves!]
It would take Moon Shade a while to learn footwork like that.
As it turned out, Li Sushang had not been infected with Moon Shade's poor sense of direction despite sharing a body. She quickly found her destination following the clerk's directions.
"Danxia Lane... this should be it. There are a lot of people, but... where's the opera troupe? I don't see one."
Li Sushang stood on her tiptoes to look, but she still couldn't see anything. Pushing off with a bit more force, her figure gracefully leaped to a rooftop.
[The Illusory Opera here might be a tiny bit different from the opera you're used to... Hmm?]
Just as Moon Shade was about to explain, she suddenly noticed a commotion in the distance, and the crowd on the street was descending into chaos.
Li Sushang immediately turned her head and looked up.
"Is that-!?"
A perfectly adorable, purple-haired little loli with small dragon horns on her head, a dragon tail, and a gourd hanging from her waist was sprinting for her life on her chubby little legs.
"A dragon?"
As someone from Shenzhou, Li Sushang recognized the little loli's features at a glance, her eyes widening in surprise.
There are dragons here?
"Move! Make way!"
"Excuse me! Coming through!"
The little purple-haired girl's face was tense, running as if her life depended on it and kicking up a cloud of dust. A group of burly men was in hot pursuit behind her.
Li Sushang's brows furrowed instantly.
As the first disciple of the Peerless Freedom Sect, she had traveled far and wide, righting wrongs, and could never stand to see the strong bully the weak.
Especially not in broad daylight, in front of everyone.
Without a second thought, Li Sushang was about to push off and leap into action.
[Wait!]
The sudden voice in her mind made Li Sushang pause.
"What's wrong?"
[She's actually...!?]
Li Sushang could hear the hesitation in Moon Shade's tone, but after a sudden two-second silence, it did a complete 180.
[She needs help right now! Let's go save her!]
"...?"
Li Sushang blinked, finding this a bit strange.
But now wasn't the time for questions. She leaped toward where the little girl was being cornered.
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