“…Its medicine is more than five hundred years ahead of Earth’s, and many terminal illnesses that cannot be cured on Earth can be cured perfectly there…
“…Running the interstellar service to Planet Lyle costs an enormous amount, and the fare for one person’s round trip is provisionally set at one billion Huaxia yuan. Anyone interested may begin reserving a place from today.”
As she watched the news on the television, a brilliant light broke in Ran Chenxin’s eyes for the space of a heartbeat. Then she lowered her head again, gripped her hands together, and bit down hard on her lip…
Don’t give up on any hope…
And today, a true shaft of hope had appeared before her eyes — and it was really there…
Planet Lyle. Another world, its medicine more than five hundred years ahead of Earth’s. A place where a terminal illness could be cured perfectly.
What was a terminal illness? It was the kind of sickness that drove a person to despair, that ate away at a life a little more every day and could never, ever be cured… exactly like the incurable disease that had kept her sister Chenxue company ever since she was small.
When Chenxue was born, the doctors said she would not live to ten.
But she had held on to this day, with a will no ordinary person could imagine… and this year she was thirteen.
She had never bowed to the sickness. But from around that time on, her body had grown as frail as a tender shoot in deep winter, unable to bear the smallest harm. Standing and walking like a normal person, even a few simple steps, had become a luxury she could not hope for.
Ran Chenxin had always known what Chenxue was holding on for. The sickness kept her living every day in pain and in grey, colorless despair; to go to sleep like that forever might well have been her release. But it was for her big sister’s sake — so that Chenxin would not be left with nobody to lean on and nobody at her side — that she held on, and that she showed her, every single day, the smile on that pale face, as warm and lovely as spring sunlight.
The interstellar service… Planet Lyle. This hope that had come from nowhere very nearly made her weep for joy.
But…
One billion…
For that hope to become real, the first thing needed was a full one billion.
What could she possibly use, what could she possibly lean on, to get one billion?
And even if one day she really could scrape one billion together, how much time would Chenxue’s body allow her?
Go back to the place she never wanted to set foot in again, and beg from the people she never wanted to see again…? No. Chenxue would sooner die than accept anything of theirs ever again, not the smallest scrap of it.
One billion…
One billion…
Xiaoxue, hold on… hold on one more year. Whatever it takes, within one year your big sister will raise one billion for you. Whatever it takes…
Even if what stood between her and that hope was a gulf too deep to see the bottom of and too wide to cross — for her sister’s sake, she would spend every last thing she had, even if it meant falling into the abyss and being broken to pieces.
The City of Stars was bound to be extraordinarily lively today. The two Chambers of Commerce that had gone up first, at a speed nobody could quite believe — the July Chamber and the No. 1 Chamber of Wings That Shroud the Sky — were opening on the very same day, and in a format so identical it could hardly be coincidence: an auction.
Even the time was set to exactly the same hour, nine in the morning. Anyone could see that the Shroud-the-Sky No. 1 Chamber had picked the same time and the same format as the July Chamber with the plain intention of stealing its thunder. The July Chamber was run by a bare few dozen people — how was it to match Wings That Shroud the Sky, with a million members behind it feeding in goods? On top of that, Wings That Shroud the Sky had a very high reputation, so a player with rare equipment to consign would go to them first.
The July Chamber was famous not because it was large, or because it carried enormous influence. Quite the reverse: in the game worlds of the past, for scale and for depth of resources alike, it had been an altogether ordinary one, and unremarkable. Its name came entirely from its owner — Liu Qiyue.
In the World of Fate, though, the July Chamber was making a very different kind of noise. Its founding alone had given a great many people a strange kind of shock, both for its jaw-dropping scale and for its astonishing position.
North Street in the City of Stars. That whole great run of linked premises belonged to the July Chamber, stretching very nearly two hundred meters end to end and covering close to ten thousand square meters. Nobody could work out what Liu Qiyue had actually done to get hold of a site like that and a chain that size. For now only a very small part of it was in use, running consignment sales and food service; what the rest would be used for, nobody knew.
And it was exactly this scale of gesture that told people Liu Qiyue was in earnest this time. So the Son of Heaven had decided on the spot and chosen a different way of coming at her. It would also let the commercial alliance of Wings That Shroud the Sky announce itself to the world for the first time, today.
The July Chamber of Commerce.
Liu Qiyue wore a thin half-sleeved robe of bright yellow gauze. The gauze, fine as mist, did nothing to hide the soft, delicate skin beneath it, which to the eye looked smooth and firm, with a springiness to it. It only made her more distractingly lovely. Through the gauze showed a pair of white shoulders like snow-lotus root, and slender arms without a hint of bone showing anywhere. Clothing like this was more the sort of thing worn sitting idle in a lady’s chamber before bed; it could not be worn out of doors. In the World of Fate, a garment like that could only be decorative equipment worn over real gear, and Liu Qiyue had gone to a great deal of trouble to get it out of an NPC’s hands.
No one but her was ever permitted to set foot in this room… or, to put it precisely, no man was ever permitted in.
“…Master. We have Zhao Tianhua’s whereabouts.”
A girl in a tight black assassin’s outfit pushed the door open and came in, saying it straight out. The tight wrap of the cloth showed a figure of exquisite curves, lovely to look at, and her voice was as clear as an oriole’s. Looked at closely, she had a fine, snow-white face and a slim, graceful frame.
Beneath that half-glimpsed gauze, Liu Qiyue wore only a pale yellow bandeau edged with a brilliant peacock blue, wrapped around a fullness that rose in soft, extravagant peaks and spilled over the edge of the cloth. The girl’s gaze was held by the sight for a long moment before she dropped her eyes in a fluster and did not dare look again.
“Oh? Tell me.” Liu Qiyue’s bewitching eyes moved, and she said it lightly.
“Zhao Tianhua is currently in Novice Village No. 78031, and his state of mind is plainly off. He is online twenty-four hours a day, every day, and every hour of it goes into leveling — clearly he wants to be out of the novice village at the first possible moment. In these few short days he has already reached level 7, which is an extraordinary pace. Also, his game name is — ‘Starting Over.'”
“Starting Over?”
Liu Qiyue rose slowly from her chair and murmured the name under her breath. As she stood, the pair of them strained the pale yellow bandeau high and taut and out of shape, showing an astonishing rise and fall; and when she moved even a little, that soft, startling weight swayed with her, enough to make the head swim and the eyes refuse to leave for so much as a moment.
The girl’s breathing quickened. She was a woman herself, and she was at Liu Qiyue’s side day in and day out — and even so she could not hold herself steady. She did not know what man alive could stand against that kind of allure.
“Starting Over, is it…” Liu Qiyue’s lips curved into a shallow smile, seductive and full of something secret, and she said quietly to herself, “That is Zhao Tianhua for you. Even a blow like that could not break you… Well then. Since you want to start over, I shall be the one who decides how you start over. And if you defy me, you will never get the chance to start over again… Nightingale. Watch his movements at all times. The moment he appears in the City of Stars, report it to me.”
“Yes… I understand your meaning, Master.”
“Then…” Liu Qiyue sat down again and lifted a stray strand of hair from her forehead with one slender finger. “Now tell me how the tickets for today’s auction have sold…”
“About that…” Nightingale’s head dropped lower still. She did not dare look Liu Qiyue in the eye, and her voice came haltingly, with something plainly held back in it.
“I want the truth, good girl.” Liu Qiyue smiled faintly and began stroking her own fingers, whiter and smoother by three degrees than white jade itself, entirely unbothered by what Nightingale’s expression meant.
“Yes…” Nightingale arranged her words carefully, and at last told it straight. “Ever since Master put out word that you would not be attending today’s auction, ticket sales have dropped straight off. More than ninety percent of buyers have returned their tickets… As of this moment, of the twenty thousand tickets prepared, we have sold in total… in total only nine hundred. And nearly half of those were bought by people from the Divine Domain Pact.”
“Oh?” Liu Qiyue was mildly surprised, and her starry eyes rested on Nightingale, tense and breathing fast. The auction hall at the center of that vast chain of premises could hold tens of thousands of players without the slightest strain. Nine hundred tickets sold… against the July Chamber’s whole present scale, the figure was too wretched to speak of.
One of the main reasons it was so dismal was that Liu Qiyue had deliberately had the announcement put out… that she would not be attending this auction. The great majority of the players who had rushed to buy tickets in the first hours had done so to get a look at Liu Qiyue’s real face, and once that news went round, nine out of ten returned them. Because anyone who had genuinely come for fine equipment would go to Wings That Shroud the Sky first.
The other important reason was this — the price of admission to the July Chamber today ran to 200 gold, a full five times that of the Shroud-the-Sky No. 1 Chamber. If every ticket had actually sold, the door money alone would have come to four million gold.
Put all of that together, and of course pitifully few players were going to choose the July Chamber. And of the nine hundred tickets sold, well over half were a friendly gesture from the Divine Domain Pact… which surprised nobody, since everyone knew that Zangshen, the Pact’s leader, was infatuated with Liu Qiyue and had pursued her for years without success.
“Nine hundred tickets… and are people still returning them?” Liu Qiyue said quietly, in a tone that was hard to read.
“Master,” Nightingale said at last, unable to keep it in, choosing her words with care. “I… I wonder whether the ticket price has been set too high. This… this will frighten a great many people off.”
“Too high?” Liu Qiyue raised her head, her brows lifting, her pink lips curving into a smile so radiant that Nightingale stared at her blankly for a moment. “…Quite the opposite. That price is, in fact, rather too low. Nightingale, have word put out at once. Buy a ticket before eight thirty this morning and the price is as it stands, only 200 gold. After eight thirty… the price is five times that. For anyone wanting to enter after the auction opens at nine, twenty-five times! And for anyone wanting to enter after nine thirty, the price is… two hundred times!”
As the numbers came out of Liu Qiyue’s lips one after another, Nightingale listened to them and went blank on the spot.
(End of Chapter 224)