Chapter 5: Andumari

This is practically a ghost city.

“No shops, no entertainment venues, can’t even find residential areas. What kind of crappy place is this?” Wen Luan cursed angrily.

Thick fog permeates, the domes and spires of buildings float in the cloud sea, intersecting vertically and horizontally, like magnificent aerial pavilions. Many tall, antique stone sculptures serve as columns for these buildings, with ivy patterns winding around metal railings. The overall view cannot be clearly seen; the entire city resembles an illusionary mirage within a dreamlike realm.

Occasionally, pedestrians emerging from the mist appear very hurried. Wen Luan noticed that among them, some individuals, just like urban patrol officers, wear parts of black metallic armor on their bodies—some covering fists, shoulders, knees, and legs.

The metal lines are perfectly shaped, each with unique forms, exuding a cold tension. It gives Wen Luan a sense of great danger.

These people with metal armor parts walk on the road, while others respectfully make way for them.

This isn’t a good phenomenon.

A strict hierarchical system means ordinary people face difficulties living in this country.

What surprises Wen Luan is that those who bow their heads submissively to make way don’t even show envy or jealousy in their eyes, let alone dissatisfaction and anger stemming from class disparities. This indicates that deep down, they truly believe these individuals should enjoy more rights than themselves, and they aren’t envious at all.

Wen Luan’s eyes lit up; he had guessed these guys’ identities.

Soldiers! Only soldiers who constantly face danger would receive a country’s most abundant privileged supplies, while at the same time ordinary citizens wouldn’t envy them for their privileges… because they might be bought with blood, sweat, or even lives.

Wen Luan’s limited abilities were enough to let him knock down local thugs and petty thieves with his fists, and taking care of a few football hooligans wouldn’t be a problem either, but when facing future people carrying high-tech weapons, he was completely helpless.

Taking advantage of the thick fog as cover, Wen Luan darted into the narrow alley between two buildings. These buildings were made of some unknown material; their hard exteriors felt smoother than metal when touched.

This extinguished the last glimmer of hope in Wen Luan’s heart.

In this future where he couldn’t understand the language or anything else, how could he survive?

He couldn’t just randomly find a place to lie down and expect to wake up back in Meteorite Town after sleeping, right?

The stolen translator was set to translate English only—what use was it? He didn’t understand this high-tech gadget at all. Wen Luan angrily rubbed the translator on his throat before smashing it onto the ground. Then, staring at the mist-shrouded cityscape, Wen Luan intuitively chose a direction and continued walking forward.

He refused to believe he couldn’t leave this city!

Ten minutes later, a jet-black shadow swept through the dense fog, descended from the sky, and stopped precisely above the solitary lying translator on the ground.

“Tap.”

This small black bat gently flapped its wings and flew onto a pillar of a nearby building.

The pillar was a stone sculpture in the shape of a sword-carrying knight. The long feathers on the knight’s helmet had been exaggeratedly elongated, becoming the flat support point at the very top of the column. The horse it rode was the foundation of the building below the column.

The statue was four meters high, and the front of this building had dozens of such sculpted pillars.

The black bat flew next to one of these statues’ faces and said in a deep tone:

“Target confirmed missing, he discarded his translator.”

That statue also abruptly emitted sound, with a muffled voice like it was being transmitted from very far away: “Using this place as the origin, concentrate on searching all directions!”

“Understood!”

After saying this with an emotionless cold hard tone, the black bat flapped its wings and took flight again.

With sharp blood-red eyes, it stared tightly at the street below, focusing on the road branches, corners, and hidden places where one could hide.

Soon, there were three or four similar black bats flying over. They circled around each other once before leaving without any gains.

Gradually, more and more bats appeared in the mist, with almost every street having one.

In this city, there was only dense fog, no direct sunlight, and no shadows could be seen. The bats’ shapes were easily hidden in the mist, and the people coming and going on the streets didn’t notice them at all.

From time to time, a black bat would fly to the statue column near a nearby building on a secluded road and quietly report its search progress.

All buildings in the city had such statue columns. Some were maidens holding fruit platters, some were nymphs cradling overflowing treasure bottles, and others were Greek mythological beasts and monsters. However, the thick fog concealed the details of the statues, and very few people could see their full forms, let alone concentrate on appreciating them.

“This is impossible!”

The voice from within the statue column grew increasingly agitated. “How can a human possibly escape the vampire hunt? He isn’t walking in a straight line, nor is it a curved path… Satan, how is he repeatedly passing through our search encirclement? Could he sense our presence?”

“The number of family members dispatched is insufficient,” the black bat leader said decisively. “We need to expand the encirclement.”

“It won’t work, this will alert Deep Blue Star’s terminal intelligent system!” The voice from the statue sounded very depressed. “We possess the ‘Andumari’ highest authority password that allows us to monitor the entire city district, but using it would expose us. Do you want to tell humans that lost persons were created by our vampire race for daily entertainment? Oh my God, for this bit of entertainment, we’ve wasted three hundred years, participating in or establishing different parties, competing in elections to become legislators to infiltrate human high society, and finally proposing and passing seven bills in the kingdom’s upper house, specifically aimed at improving the treatment, status, and even granting some legal immunity to lost persons.”

This voice started laughing dryly. “Look, what excuse do we now have for the human government to arrest that time traveler? According to the kingdom’s laws, he should be entitled to special treatment from the kingdom instead. All underground entertainment venues can only charge him thirty percent of his consumption amount, and all museums must offer free admission… Curses, my child, these were originally privileges we vampires enjoyed during our entertainments! Curse all spirits in the universe, who could have imagined that one day a real time traveler would appear?”

The Black Bat leader silently, silently raised his little claw on his bat wing and made a highly insulting gesture towards the statue.

“However, why did that guy want to escape?” The statue pillar could only emit sound, having not seen the contemptuous gesture made by the dispatched family descendant towards itself. Still perplexed, it muttered to itself, “The temporary residence was so comfortable, and although the food may have been lacking somewhat, we vampires don’t need to eat human food after all. Even the most sumptuous feast can only be annihilated with black magic. To avoid wasting food, no improvements were made in this regard. Our vampire race is quite enlightened when it comes to protecting resources—eh? The information from the household registration office shows he was an American from 2010. In that era, there was no religious brainwashing, nor were they completely ignorant of space knowledge. Why would he run away? Damn, could it be because he watched too many American movies from that era?”

“Perhaps he recognized Marquis Joachim as a vampire?”

“This is impossible! Although Joachim’s acting skills don’t match mine, within the family, he still ranks among the top! Last year, his brother won the Dark Parliament’s film evaluation championship. How dare you question the acting skills of your compatriots? This is simply the greatest insult!”

The Black Bat Leader rotated his eyes, saying in a venomous tone, “Then, you noble Duke, give me a reason explaining how this cunning human accurately escaped our encirclement in the foggy city district! Every time he chooses dead ends and gaps, it’s too much of a coincidence!”

“Oh, this is indeed a mystery,” the statue muttered. “Perhaps this lucky time traveler inherently possesses special abilities, or in other words, he is a demon hunter? Demon hunters are very sensitive to dark creatures like us. This ancient profession has continuously existed from Earth up until now.”

“Then we must find him even more urgently! Squeeze him to death!” The Black Bat Leader clenched his claws, saying with murderous intent.

“Correct.” A solemn voice came from the statue. “All family members participating in the search shall withdraw immediately. Report the issue to the Dark Parliament and hand it over to those wizards to solve. Without a wristband proving the ‘lost person’ identity and without kingdom citizenship documents, he cannot enter the underground buildings, so he can only wander aimlessly on the ground.”

“Heh heh, human, let’s see how many days you can survive on Deep Blue!”

The Black Bat Leader emitted a resonating infrasound wave, causing all black bats to flap their wings and disappear into the mist.

Those exquisite stone pillars still stood, forming the magnificent main body of the building. With varied shapes, they were like the most distinctive scenery in the city, faintly discernible amidst the fog.

Suddenly, the knight statue that had just been speaking with the Black Bat leader opened its eyes.

A strange mechanical sound emitted from the statue:

“Detected traces of unauthorized use of ‘Andumari’. Unauthorized level, only audio transmission communication enabled. Unauthorized user, Dark Parliament exclusive access code. Conclusion, through unauthorized use clause, no report to human government.”

“Activating autonomous intelligence system, Andumari 40% initiated. Information gathering, unauthorized user seeking a time traveler, unauthorized user judges him as a threat…”

A faint light flashed in the eyes of all the statues in the city district.

One minute later, while Wen Luan was quietly walking on a narrow alleyway, the eyes of the maiden statue atop a tower-shaped building above his head opened, emitting a pale golden glow.

“Target confirmed.”

Wen Luan abruptly lifted his head, revealing a startled expression.

The golden light in the maiden statue’s eyes intensified, even dispersing the mist around the statue. A steady, emotionless mechanical voice emanated from it:

“According to Deep Blue’s protection regulations, Andumari eliminates threats.”

Two dark blue glows instantly flashed on the statue’s body. Wen Luan turned and ran away in fright, feeling a bright circle-like aiming line targeting himself.

Wen Luan had been feeling a sense of suffocating danger enveloping him for these past few hours (in fact, it was due to vampires…) He instinctively avoided it, twisting and turning through the city’s foggy streets while cautiously searching for an exit. Could this sense of danger actually be coming from the statues on top of buildings?

Heavens, he remembered that all the main pillars of buildings in this city were statues!

He shouldn’t underestimate the future people’s city defense technology!

Just as Wen Luan was desperately running forward and despairingly closing his eyes, the energy cannon the statue was about to fire suddenly stopped. The cold mechanical voice sounded again:

“The target is recognized as belonging to Raymond Gaeton. Request denied. Cancel cleaning order, cancel hostile order. Conclusion: Do not report to the Dark Parliament and human government. ‘Andumari’ hibernates.”

The statue’s eyes closed again, becoming completely still.

Having run out onto this street, Wen Luan gasped for breath, looking around at the statues on surrounding buildings with post-traumatic fear.

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Translated using Omni Literary Translator.