Chapter 22: A Guide to Wandering the Metropolis

No sooner had Zhao Meiyou finished speaking than Qian Duoduo nodded. “Then let’s get going.”

Tonight, they were both dressed as archaeologists, decked out in sharp suits, ready for a date, a murder, or a dash to the ends of the earth.

After those words, Qian Duoduo clasped Zhao Meiyou’s hand, and the two of them leaped off the rooftop. The crowd on Layer 1 was deep in revelry. The Lead Actor seemed to sense something amid the hookah smoke. He lifted his head and spotted the two lovebirds plunging past the window like they were about to die for romance. Grabbing a bottle from the table, he hurled it outside and bellowed, “Don’t go dying on us, Zhao Meiyou!”

The drunken crowd surged to the windows en masse, shrieking and whistling at their plummeting figures. Zhao Meiyou couldn’t be sure if someone even dropped trou to take a leak, but through the racket, one phrase rang crystal clear: “Safe travels!”

The wind roared past their ears as multicolored neon lights converged into a dazzling river. They hurtled down past countless windows, scents of pop jazz, burgers, and hops drifting out from over ten thousand rooms. Men and women bickered, threw parties, danced, or hooked up on balconies. Laundry fluttered from drainpipes like colorful flags—polyester, cotton, synthetics. In their descent, they sideswiped a hovering fast-food cart, sending red-and-yellow wrappers tumbling through the night sky. In the Middle Layer District, you could see stars, whether they were the real deal or holographic gimmicks. Giant goldfish swam past the eaves, fireworks bursting overhead.

Down they fell, down and down, lost in dreamlike freefall where time and space lost all definition—until the stars and moon vanished, and the air grew thick with a salty, damp tang of rust and earth from the sewers, like the bottom of the sea.

Zhao Meiyou knew that smell all too well. They had arrived in the Lower District.

Qian Duoduo had unfurled a black umbrella at some point, and now they drifted down gently to land beside a stretch of old rail tracks. The line had been abandoned for ages, and homeless folk sprawled asleep on the ties. Zhao Meiyou glanced around. “This is Layer 15.”

Qian Duoduo gave a soft hum of acknowledgment.

Zhao Meiyou hadn’t expected them to drop quite this far. Layer 330 marked the boundary between the Middle Layer District and the Lower District, sealed tight with impermeable nano-filters accessible only via authorized checkpoints.

Yet here they were, safe and sound.

Qian Duoduo folded the black umbrella away. “It’s from Young Master Liu’s husband’s collection. The canopy projects a quantum magnetic field about five meters across, which neutralizes nano probes.”

With that, he jerked his chin at Zhao Meiyou. “Lead on.”

Everything from Layer 15 downward was the Metropolis’s core zone—a forbidden area, in a manner of speaking.

Archaeologists swapped tales of ways to reach Layer 1, but for a homegrown Lower District kid like Zhao Meiyou, those were just outsiders’ fool ideas.

Qian Duoduo clearly knew better. Zhao Meiyou grinned and led him threading through the darkness. They passed abandoned streets where mercury vapor lamps occasionally flickered with ghostly white light. At last, Zhao Meiyou guided him into a towering old building, long since forsaken. Dust blanketed the marble reception desk, beside which sat a bunch of plastic osmanthus flowers for decoration.

They came to a bank of elevators. Zhao Meiyou pressed the down button, and the display lit up with the words “Safe travels!” With a ding, the doors slid open.

No cramped box awaited them. Instead, the space was surprisingly vast. Behind plastic strip curtains came the clatter of mahjong tiles. At the table sat three automatic players—mechanical contraptions all—while at the head position perched a frail old woman well past sixty. Spotting Zhao Meiyou, she adjusted her tortoiseshell glasses. “Xi Shi? You finally showed up?”

“Granny.” Zhao Meiyou drew Qian Duoduo forward and clapped him on the shoulder with a grin. “Come meet my boyfriend.”

“Even a pig like you managed to root up some fine cabbage?” The old woman blinked in surprise, stepped up for a closer look, then nodded with evident delight. “Not bad at all. Good breeding stock!”

“You got it!” Zhao Meiyou replied. “I brought him to meet my mom.”

“About time she got a look.” The old woman bobbed her head repeatedly, then shuffled behind the table and yanked down a lever. The elevator lurched into descent amid a thunderous rumble that echoed all around. After an age, it ground to a halt with a ding.

“Off you go.” She waved them away. “Safe travels!”

“Smooth sailing both ways!” Zhao Meiyou shot back without missing a beat, tugging Qian Duoduo out of the elevator. “See you later, Granny!”

The doors boomed shut once more.

“Granny used to run a gambling den back on Layer 330. She’s my mom’s sworn mother,” Zhao Meiyou explained to Qian Duoduo. “That swordplay I know? She taught it to me.”

Qian Duoduo hadn’t caught a word of their exchange. “What language was that?”

“An old Eastern dialect,” Zhao Meiyou said. “I told her you’re my guy, and I wanted to bring you to meet my mom.”

“Here?” Qian Duoduo blinked in surprise. “To meet your mother?”

“It’s symbolic, I guess.” Zhao Meiyou shrugged. “My mom died jumping off a building.”

In the Metropolis, that kind of death meant no body to recover. The city was too vast, too deep—the depths might as well have been an endless graveyard. Making it all the way down here counted as paying respects at the tombstone.

Outside the elevator stretched an open expanse lit by the faintest glow from some unknown source. Chalk circles scarred the ground, each with scorch marks at the open side, remnants of incense sticks, and scraps of joss paper.

“Folks who come to pay respects usually just burn some paper money here and head out,” Zhao Meiyou told Qian Duoduo. “Your move now, Brother Qian. Which way?”

“After all that time away, won’t your Granny worry about you?”

“What’re you on about, Brother Qian? Kids from the Lower District sprout right out of the muck—no birth mom even bothers. Besides, we showed up claiming to visit my mom without so much as paper money. Granny ain’t stupid.”

Qian Duoduo took that in, then unfastened a cufflink and pressed it. A beam of azure light sprang forth. “Follow the light.”

Layer 1: the very bottom of the Metropolis, ground zero where the city began.

Zhao Meiyou’s first trip down here had been back when he was just a kid—no special reason. Pretty much every Lower District brat came once, driven by curiosity.

Urban legends had it that Layer 1 cradled some colossal slumbering beast—a giant weapon left over from the Orion Arm wars. Elders dimly recalled it as the city’s foundations, where pioneers had toiled, moving mountains and filling seas to raise towering nuclear plants. And myths aplenty: they had quelled disasters, while a tyrant fled to the moon in the last spaceship, leaving the land to the common folk.

The tales varied in their wild absurdity, but the Metropolis stood built atop gods and ghosts, ruins and tech wreckage, an abyss unknown—majestic, wondrous, revered by millions.

Hand in hand, they wove through the gloom, one behind the other, past colossal exhaust vents where battered fan blades still turned lazily. The massive rusted metal gleamed with a chill light like the eyelids of sleeping giants. Amid the dust motes floated faint clinking sounds, like wind chimes in the breeze.

After some time, Qian Duoduo halted. Zhao Meiyou felt him rub his palm, then let go. With a sharp click, he seemed to flip some ancient electrical switch.

Zhao Meiyou saw it then.

The Giant Buddha Statue.

They stood on what resembled a divine pathway. Azure bricks stretched out from underfoot, flanked endlessly by golden prayer wheels.

Qian Duoduo murmured, “Follow me.”

The path rose in steps toward the Buddha’s chest cavity. Trailing behind, Zhao Meiyou felt swallowed into some ultramarine belly: ocean floor, mountain heart, forest depths. The prayer wheels had fallen still, whale-breath sighing through leaves, the air hissing with electric static.

At the path’s end loomed a vermilion gate at the Buddha’s chest, its golden beast-head knocker biting a ring, studded with eighty-one nails. Zhao Meiyou had figured it for a massive barrier, but it sensed their approach and creaked open on its own.

Just as The Lead Actor had once put it: “Deep in the Metropolis lies this escalator, running from Layer 1 all the way to Layer 990.”

Beyond the gate lay a hall like an ancient temple, its golden shrine replaced by… the escalator.

A shaft of light speared down from impossible heights, bathing the entrance from above.

The scene was profoundly eerie. The escalator was ancient, like something from a centuries-old underground mall—not stepped, but the flat kind with grooves to catch shopping cart wheels. Faded gold murals peeled from the walls, and where luohan statues should have stood on either side, Zhao Meiyou saw rows of shopping carts—the standard supermarket kind, complete with fold-down kid seats.

“Brother Qian,” Zhao Meiyou said, eyeing the setup. “Is that a guy who hanged himself up there?”

He meant the spot at the escalator entrance where the light pooled pure white: a body dangling in an astronaut’s suit.

Qian Duoduo paid the corpse no mind—archaeologist creed number one: ignore the uncanny. He tugged out a shopping cart and motioned for Zhao Meiyou to hop in, then shoved the hanging astronaut aside. The cart’s wheels locked into the grooves. Sensing the weight, the escalator hummed to life. A sign at the entrance flickered on, and from somewhere came a synthetic voice: “Safe travels!”

“Blessings come in doubles; misfortunes never alone!”

“Today’s temperature: 33°C. Rain within 87 kilometers.”

“Top-rated liposuction doctors nearby—here’s our list…”

“Sri Lankan flight crash: over a hundred passengers killed…”

“Outside the long pavilion, by the ancient road, green grass stretching to the sky…”

“Jixiang Ruyi app—scan to use. Wishing you all the best!”

“Celebrate the double festivals! Ring out the old, ring in the new—half-price refunds, today only…”

The escalator began its slow ascent. Zhao Meiyou and Qian Duoduo basked in the glare, synthetic chatter enveloping them. It wasn’t wide—barely room for four abreast—and the light poured from beyond the handrails: countless computer monitors crammed together, stacked into sheer cliffs like ax-hewn mountains.

Each screen blared different fare: ads, news, music channels, variety shows, dramas. No single voice dominated, but their collective roar crashed like magma, thunderous and relentless.

Zhao Meiyou tsked and rose to clap his hands over Qian Duoduo’s ears.

The din was overwhelming; neither could make out the other’s words. Qian Duoduo stared at the towering walls of screens as the escalator crept upward. After a stretch, he reached out, braced his arms, and wrenched one monitor free from the mass.

In that riot of multicolored glows, only this one screen was pitch black.

It was like flipping a special switch valve. At that very moment, all the electronic screens went dark, and the display in Qian Duoduo’s hand began to boot up.

Zhao Meiyou let out a sigh of relief, his mind buzzing as he finally managed to say, “Brother Qian?”

Qian Duoduo pulled himself out of his intense mental focus and pressed a few acupoints near Zhao Meiyou’s ear. “We’ll have to stay on this escalator for a while. It will take us to the 990th layer—the entrance to Site 000.”

He exhaled deeply, as if only now truly relaxing. “From here until we enter the site, there won’t be any more danger.”

Zhao Meiyou gave him a comforting hug. “Brother Qian, where did you learn these entry methods?”

“Fragments of the Mountain-Sea Notes circulating in the archaeologists’ black market, plus some logs of unknown origin,” Qian Duoduo replied. “Zhao Meiyou, after this, I have no idea what we’ll face.”

Zhao Meiyou hummed in acknowledgment.

The display’s page finished loading, accompanied by a melody like ancient chime bells. A genderless mechanical synthesized voice began to sing.

“Heavenly Gate opens, swirling vast and grand,

Harmonious ride, descending to the feast.”

“Stars linger true, blocking fallen light,

Illuminating purple canopies, pearls vexing yellow.”

“Vast cinnabar spreads wide, leveling stones for halls.”

“Adorned with jade branches in dance and song,

Shaking like eternal stars.”

With the ancient melody, they suddenly saw light.

Not the blue glow of the display, but the true sun.

At that moment, the impenetrable rock walls on either side of the escalator seemed to turn into transparent glass panels. The container-block towers of the Lower District lay far below them. At their level, around the 400th layer, the railway department was holding a ribbon-cutting ceremony. The red ribbons snapped with a crack, and a maglev train roared toward them, offering a seamless trackless ride. The escalator continued its ascent, and they could now almost see the holographic sky dome on the 660th layer.

The Lamp-Lighting God Statue extinguished its lamps. In the hologram, massive waterwheels flipped like giants slamming down hammers, golden pool water splashing across the heavens. In an instant, the entire city was bathed in light.

A voice came from the display: “The sun rises from the Fusang Valley, atop the Fusang tree.”

They beheld the sunrise over the Metropolis.

Among archaeologists, there was a legend of an escalator like this one in the Metropolis, stretching from Layer 1 all the way to the 990th layer. From it, one could see a cross-section of the entire city.

“The legend is real,” Qian Duoduo murmured, gazing at the distant sunrise.

Zhao Meiyou took in the scene before him and suddenly found it amusing. They had spent half the night delving into Layer 1. Though not exactly retracing their steps, they were undeniably ascending again.

Where was this escalator usually hidden in the Metropolis?

He spotted the University City in the Upper District. He and Diao Chan had spent seven years there. The streets and buildings of the Upper District were orderly, far more so than the labyrinthine Lower District. In those seven years, Zhao Meiyou had explored every inch of University City, yet he had never seen this escalator.

“Brother Qian,” he asked Qian Duoduo. “Have you ever seen this escalator in the Metropolis?”

Qian Duoduo shook his head. “It reminds me of a long poem.”

“I’m illiterate, Brother Qian. Just tell me straight.”

“The Divine Comedy by Dante, the last poet of the Middle Ages,” Qian Duoduo said. “Guided by Virgil and Beatrice, the poet descends layer by layer from the entrance to Hell, from top to bottom, only to return to Paradise from the deepest depths.”

Just like their path to the Heavenly Gate—a cycle descending from above, then rising again.

The mechanical synthesized voice from Qian Duoduo’s display spoke once more:

“From earth to heaven, and from heaven descending,

Gaining the power of above and below.”

“The below is like the above, and the above like the below,

Thus accomplishing the miracle of the One.”

Zhao Meiyou, illiterate as he was, couldn’t grasp the meaning of these esoteric words. He looked at Qian Duoduo, lost in thought, and pressed his index finger to the man’s brow. “Brother Qian, don’t overthink it. You’ll just get a headache.”

He always said that when trying to comfort someone—don’t think too much.

If thinking and rationality were the noble traits of humanity, what did Zhao Meiyou’s attitude amount to? Escapism? Cowardice? Blind optimism or numb indifference?

Perhaps all of it, perhaps none. Qian Duoduo gazed at Zhao Meiyou and suddenly asked, “Zhao Meiyou, don’t you ever feel fear?”

“Of course I do. How could I not?” Zhao Meiyou seemed a bit surprised by the question but answered anyway. “Fear stems from an inability to let go of death. Who isn’t afraid of dying? Of course, physiological and psychological fear are different things.”

“Then how can you stand not thinking about it?”

“Brother Qian, in the face of overwhelming terror, people often lose the ability to think.”

“But you don’t look scared stupid right now.”

Zhao Meiyou pondered for a moment at that, then pulled out his cigarette case and lit one up.

“You know, Brother Qian, sometimes you really don’t need to think so much. My mom used to tell me, ‘The road is right under your feet.’ Later, our hospital held some lecture or whatever, and they had everyone talk about how they’d want to face death. Grandpa De said he wanted to die in a girl’s arms, Diao Chan said at sixteen, Noble Consort—that’s Liu Qijue—refused to answer… I thought about it and figured, following in my mom’s footsteps, dying in a love suicide with Li Ming like she did. If I die and someone’s there with me, that’ll be enough.”

Qian Duoduo watched him quietly. “So?”

“So, I’m not dead yet, and I’ve got someone with me.” Zhao Meiyou met his gaze. “What is there left to fear?”

Qian Duoduo paused, seeming not entirely convinced. “That’s just living for the moment, wine today for joy today.”

“Worries tomorrow for tomorrow.” Zhao Meiyou grinned around his cigarette. “Brother Qian, if you keep obsessing over tomorrow, that ultimate tomorrow is death—equal for everyone.”

“The road is under our feet. We’ve started walking it. Just keep going. No need to obsess over swerving into oncoming traffic, slamming the brakes, traffic lights, safety manuals… The endpoint’s right there. No escaping it. Everyone arrives eventually.”

Qian Duoduo looked at him. “Don’t you have any ambition?”

Zhao Meiyou replied calmly, “If you’re talking about flooring it at 800 miles an hour, then no, I probably don’t.”

“Then what is your ambition?”

“You drive, Brother Qian. I sit shotgun. When the light turns green, you turn, lean over, and kiss me.”

“…”

“You can’t say that’s not wildly ambitious.” Zhao Meiyou looked at him seriously. “Go ask around the archaeologists—who dares claim they’ve got Qian Duoduo?”

It took Qian Duoduo a long moment to respond. “Zhao Meiyou, you don’t seem like the type who’s all about love.”

“I’m not. Before this, I never thought about seeking some fated one.” Zhao Meiyou smiled. “I told you, Brother Qian, live in the now. And right now, being with you feels like the most important thing.”

Zhao Meiyou emphasized “now,” which hardly fit an archaeologist’s style. They were seekers of past and future, traversing history and the stars, so on the axis of time, “the now” was inevitably overshadowed by both ends as the least compelling point. It wasn’t their fault. In the 25th Century Metropolis, the golden age of technology had passed. Myth and alchemy had been demystified even earlier, leaving only scattered feathers for them to gather. What was left of the present? Collapsed rites and music, a mishmash of civilizations, a flood of nonsensical information, and the eternal silence of infinite space?

Yet a man like Zhao Meiyou lived in the deep-sea-like Lower District, where everyone was a frog at the bottom of a well.

And he said, live in the now.

“Every now builds all our pasts and futures.” Zhao Meiyou looked at Qian Duoduo softly. “The me loving you in this moment—even if just an instant—will live forever in my entire life.”

The road was under their feet. The saint’s road, the madman’s road, the rainbow’s road, the guppy’s road—whatever damn road it was, this would be the one they walked together. Laughing as they sped by, or crushing drunks under their tires, they could rob banks, flee doomsday, smash jewelry store windows. Even if burned alive in a star’s death throes—as long as you drive, I ride shotgun, and in that wait at the light you give me a kiss—then in the instant before the end, I’ll place my hand in yours.

The sun rose. Dawn broke.

“The light’s turning yellow,” Zhao Meiyou said, gazing at the gleaming city in the distance before turning to Qian Duoduo. “You gonna give me that kiss?”

“…A man needs ambition.” After a long pause, Qian Duoduo’s voice rose. “One’s not enough. You should demand ten thousand.”

“Yeah. I love you too.”