Chapter 3: Missing Person

Wen Luan felt like he was soaking in hot springs, with a soothing comfort permeating through every pore. This made him unable to resist pulling up the quilt, covering his head to block out the light, and continuing to sleep lazily.

In the blur, the sounds of conversation continually reached him from all around.

“Quick look, it’s just this kind of bed… Without sturdy materials, it creaks when you lie on it. I’ve only seen replicas before in museums. Ah, the daily necessities of life back then were truly poor!”

“Who said what? I’d rather return to those times and sleep on soft textiles. It must be very comfortable.”

“Is that so? Let me try feeling it—”

Wen Luan felt a chill in his chest as someone pulled away part of the quilt covering him.

“Oh! It is indeed quite good, but the ventilation isn’t too great!”

“The fabric is also rough, easily damaging the skin.”

Dazed, Wen Luan stretched out his hand, and the quilt was thrown back over him once more. He heard voices, but couldn’t distinguish what they were saying. Perhaps the neighbors’ TV is turned up too loud, he thought half-dreaming, half-awake, burying his head in the quilt.

“Do you want to wake him?”

“Wake him up. He’ll have to face reality eventually.”

“Uh oh, the city patrol officer is coming!”

Moments later, with two soft clicks, a mechanical arm moved through the air above Wen Luan’s head. Immediately after, a large amount of purple gas was released, enveloping the entire bed.

“Mm… cough cough!”

Wen Luan instantly woke up, abruptly jumping off the bed. While desperately fanning at the air with his hands, he cursed loudly: “What kind of smell is this? So sour? Could it be someone has an entire warehouse full of spoiled cheese?”

All he could see was purple smoke. Wen Luan lifted the quilt, intending to run to the window to check the situation. However, upon looking down, he discovered his slippers had disappeared.

They weren’t here on this side, nor were they there on the other side.

Could it be that mice came into the house, bit away his slippers, and used them as nesting material?

Puzzled, Wen Luan hopped onto the ground barefoot, preparing to look under the bed. But as soon as the sole of his foot touched the floor, he froze in shock.

His home only had substandard wooden flooring. Due to its age, some boards had even loosened. How could there possibly be such a smooth and flat marble surface?

The purple smoke slowly dissipated. What appeared before Wen Luan’s eyes wasn’t stained and discolored wallpaper along with narrow windows, but rather a vast open square.

At the end of the square stood a building complex so antiquated it resembled Europe’s Palace of Versailles, with snow-white stone carved into numerous golden fountains. Around the square was a road about twenty meters wide in all directions, extending outward in all directions, and Wen Luan stood on one such road.

Wen Luan slowly opened his mouth wide, took a step back, and fell onto the bed.

Could it be that someone ran to Meteorite Town in the middle of the night and kidnapped me along with my bed?

“Hello!” A synthetic voice speaking with a standard London accent came from behind him.

Wen Luan sprang up quickly, grabbed the baseball bat from the bedside cabinet, and swung it hard backward.

“Crack!”

Wen Luan stared dumbfounded at a two-meter-tall Eastern European man. From below the elbow, his entire forearm was encased in gleaming dark mechanical parts, the icy metal lines perfectly smooth. On the back of his hand was a wolf head with fangs, ferocious and menacing. His metallic fingers held the baseball bat, and with an effortless squeeze, the sturdy bat turned to powder.

Behind him stood quite a few people scattered here and there, all watching the spectacle. They were dressed in clothes made of strange silver or blue fabric, entirely in a postmodern style, without zippers or buttons. All the decorations on their clothes were metal, and the material had no patterns nor pockets.

Further away, nothing could be seen clearly, as the area around the square was filled with dense white fog.

“Do you understand this language? If you do, nod your head,” the man who crushed the baseball bat said expressionlessly. This fellow had half a metal ring around his throat, and he spoke with a pure London accent. At the same time, he raised his right arm, and Wen Luan clearly saw a small black cannon mouth on the mechanical outer shell. Blue light continuously compressed and flickered at the cannon mouth.

Wen Luan’s throat went dry. He slowly and stiffly raised his hand over his head. Although the other party only asked him to nod, he felt it would be more appropriate to show some tact.

Damn it! Could it be that he was taken away by a UFO?

Every year in the United States, there were several mysterious events involving fifth-class alien encounters. Wen Luan never thought such an event would happen to himself.

The East European man threatening Wen Luan with a small energy cannon nodded satisfactorily. He spoke with a haughty attitude, “Welcome to the Deep Blue Star of the White Whale Galaxy. Your name, race, age… and the point in time before you appeared here.”

He seemed not to notice Wen Luan’s suppressed anger. He looked Wen Luan up and down, then stroked the stubble on his chin and said, “Very good. It looks like you’re from after 1900 AD. This really makes me happy.”

“I don’t understand what you’re saying.” Wen Luan watched his surroundings cautiously, wanting to find more clues.

In the eyes of the onlookers, Wen Luan saw only curiosity. They were clearly more interested in his bed and quilt; some even pointed excitedly.

“People before the year 1900 need detailed explanations from them, wasting several hours. Unlucky guy, report your exact era! If I’m free, I’ll make it a bit easier for you!”

“2010, are you planning to make up an interesting story to fool me?” Wen Luan sneered.

“Make up stories? No no,” the Eastern European man said contemptuously. “Whether you believe it or not has nothing to do with me. As a Deep Blue City Patrol Officer, my duty is just to tell the lost people necessary common sense. You can completely choose suicide, or die of starvation on the streets.”

“Lost people?”

“Yes, time-space rifts, spatial turbulence, swept you into… let me calculate, ah ha, for you, it’s two thousand years later!” The city patrol officer laughed heartily. “You disappeared from your original place, so you are lost people. Even the most authoritative experts don’t know how many lost people exist within the time turbulence.”

Wen Luan forced out a stiff smile. “It seems I’m not the first person to be so unfortunate?”

“Hmph, ninety-five percent of lost individuals appeared in the White Whale Galaxy, especially concentrated on Deep Blue. You’re the second unlucky one I’ve encountered this month. Oh, you’re much easier to deal with than him. That guy was an Athenian city-state guard from ancient Greece. We don’t even have the language of that era, let alone make him believe Earth is a sphere, and he’s already in other star systems countless light-years away.” The urban patrol officer’s expression softened slightly.

Wen Luan opened his mouth, then closed it.

When receiving time travelers has become standardized, you can only praise the progress of technological development.

Is all this really true?! He just fell asleep, how could it be two thousand years later?

A spatial rift dragged him over? This is truly more terrifying than winning a lottery jackpot or becoming the national drift racing champion!

Wen Luan pulled his hair in frustration. “Damn it! I want to go back to Earth!”

“I am very sorry,” the other party said in a heavy tone, “In 2190, nuclear war erupted on Earth, now it has certainly become an absolutely silent deadland. Humans fled in spaceships, but their fate is unknown. The humans of the White Whale Galaxy and nearby Unicorn Galaxy were all civilians abandoned on Earth by the despicable government. The Big Bang tore open several spatial rifts, throwing our ancestors into this star domain. Now it is the Xin Yuan calendar year 2007.”

Wen Luan turned his head, bursting out laughing: “Oh God, you’ve just spent two thousand years in this galaxy, yet you tell me coming here is already two thousand years later. Who knows if we might have even traveled back in time? For all we know, Earth could still be in the Jurassic era!”

“Of course we have accurate time calculations.” The urban patrol officer spoke with arrogant contempt. “I don’t expect someone from the lost population to understand our technology.”

“…”

Wen Luan desperately wanted to smash this guy’s nose flat with one punch.

However, when Easterners seek revenge, waiting several years isn’t too late—Wen Luan wasn’t particularly familiar with Chinese, especially idioms.

His parents were stowaways, harboring American dreams. Yet after crossing the vast ocean, they ultimately became miners in Meteorite Town’s iron mine. In this foreign land, they gave birth to Wen Luan, but within a few years, they died. Wen Luan, along with other orphans, was taken in by the town’s church. Racial discrimination made his childhood very difficult to bear. However, Wen Luan can no longer remember those awful days; he happily forgets everything once his revenge is complete.

The eyes of this district patrol officer carry almost the same prejudiced disdain.

Fine, Wen Luan thinks, squinting, one day, sooner or later, I’ll teach this district patrol officer a lesson with my fists.

“All right, you can take your belongings and come with me now.”

“Belongings?” Wen Luan asks, puzzled. He has nothing on him except a nightgown and bare feet. Forget coins, even something valuable—he doesn’t have any such thing. Where would these “belongings” come from?

The district patrol officer impatiently points at Wen Luan’s bed.

“Carry it and follow me to Deep Blue Star’s Household Registration Office. Fill out a lost person registration form there, and you’ll receive free food supplies for a month. You might even get a job. But if you want to support yourself quickly, you need to sell your property to the Kingdom Museum—it’s an antique.”

Wen Luan stares blankly at his bed.

On the first day of his transmigration, forced to carry his bed and walk barefoot down the streets—why was I swept away by the spatial rift while asleep? Why couldn’t it have happened when I was driving?! Damn God!

This city is even more exaggerated than London, with dense fog everywhere.

The buildings are faintly visible in the mist, completely unclear. Except for the public square just now, other places become blurred beyond fifty meters away, the sky unseen, and there is no wind either.

Few people can be seen on the roads, nor are there any flying saucers or high-tech magnetic levitation cars.

“Underground!” said the leading city patrol officer. “Most of Deep Blue’s main buildings are underground. Only citizens with a rank above 3 can reach the surface. You damned lost souls are the only exception.”

Wen Luan’s eyes flickered slightly. “Sounds like your per capita living space must be very cramped?”

“Not at all!” the urban patrol officer said angrily. “The Kingdom has thirty-eight habitable planets, but the capital, Deep Blue, has only a narrow strip of land. Do you know how much effort an ordinary kingdom resident needs to put forth to obtain citizenship and residency qualifications for Deep Blue?”

Wen Luan was starting to understand where this guy’s biased hostility was coming from.

While the other party still had value to exploit, he never minded disguising himself as incapable and weak. Following the other’s words, he replied: “Then citizenship on Deep Blue must be synonymous with ‘elite,’ those who can come to the surface are surely even more remarkable.”

The urban patrol officer snorted through his nose: “That’s right.”

The Deep Blue Star Household Registration Office was over a thousand meters away from the public square. Wen Luan, drenched in sweat, placed the bed at the entrance to the building, already feeling the urge to lie down and rest.

“Hello.” A red-haired beauty approached with a smile. She also wore something similar to a translator around her neck. The urban patrol officer left Wen Luan behind to say a few words in a language Wen Luan couldn’t understand before striding off.

“The antiques will immediately be appraised by the museum, it’s fine to leave them at the entrance. Sir, please come with me.” The red-haired beauty made an elegant gesture.

The registration office was very large, its interior filled with random items. There were over ten chairs and tables with different styles alone. Some were reminiscent of 18th-century European courtly style, which Wen Luan had only seen in oil paintings in his art textbooks, complete with feather quills and parchment laid out upon them.

Seeing Wen Luan’s peculiar expression, the red-haired beauty immediately explained: “All of these are replicas. Once there was a period when all the missing persons appearing on Deep Blue were nobles from France and Germany two thousand three hundred years ago, who refused to fill out registration forms at tables befitting their status.”

Wen Luan, with black lines on his face, casually found a chair and sat down.

“After 2000, we already had low-dimensional information exchangers… I’m sorry, I meant computers. So, there’s no need to give you a form. You only need to answer my questions, and I’ll input your information into the photobrain.”

“…”

Wen Luan sensed that here he was an absolute illiterate.

“Please rest assured, our questions are very few, but we hope you will answer them carefully because this relates to your life on Deep Blue. May I ask, before you unfortunately became a missing person, what work did you do? Or in other words, what are you skilled at?”

“…I drove buses.”

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Translated using Omni Literary Translator.