Although Lin Miao still hadn’t called the number given by the bartender, he can now shamelessly bluff. When it comes to business, confidence is key.
Whether it’s true or not doesn’t matter, as long as the other party believes it’s true.
Lucy scrutinized Lin Miao with some suspicion, hoping to detect some flaw in this guy’s expression.
A small team of bounty hunters, a dozen unidentified guys, plus Adcardo, the Night Wanderer, Peizhuo Petrochemical – she considered herself the least noticeable person among them.
"Why did you come looking for me? We’ve only known each other for a day."
"Why can’t I look for you?" Lin Miao chuckled, "Besides, you owe me a debt, remember?"
He then shook his right arm.
"Thanks to you, my arm still hurts. The doctor said whoever stitched my wound must be an idiot and should have their medical license revoked."
Lucy almost spat out her soda, her previously cold and stunning image instantly shattered, as she flushed.
"Shut up, you asked me to stitch it!"
"I never thought your skills were so poor, making me go back to the doctor to have it undone and redone, suffering again."
Lucy felt like pulling out a monomolecular wire to slice this annoying guy into pieces. It was her first time bandaging someone else’s wound, and instead of appreciating it, he was mocking her.
"Alright, so are you agreeing? And if you get any more excited, the towel’s going to fall. Although I wouldn’t mind, I felt it necessary to warn you."
Lucy glanced at her loosely draped towel; she wouldn’t have cared if he hadn’t pointed it out. Now that he mentioned it, she felt a bit self-conscious as she adjusted the towel and headed to the bathroom.
"I’ll go change, wait here a moment."
With the bathroom door closed, the sound of a towel dropping could be heard, but Lin Miao wasn’t much interested in what was happening inside. Instead, he was seriously observing everything in the room.
The lighting and view were quite nice. The floor-to-ceiling windows on the balcony offered a full view of the enormous overpass spanning hundreds of meters between Chinatown and the municipal skyscrapers, adorned with countless ads and lit rooms, resembling a radiant bridge of neon. Below the bridge flowed the mighty river toward the West Pacific, where yachts and cargo ships traveled by day.
Though he didn’t know why Lucy lived in a love hotel, the room was maintained decently clean. However, he didn’t see the hacker’s chair he imagined; as far as he knew, all capable hackers had one. They cost tens of thousands, even more than custom prosthetics. The poor ones could only lie in ice baths to cool their bodies and brains for overclocking.
Lin Miao began wondering if choosing Lucy was the right decision. What if he hired a newbie nobody wanted?
No wonder she was getting beaten by the Valentino gang.
He suddenly noticed an old lunar travel poster on the wall dated back to the 2020s. Its style clashed with the room’s decor. A hotel wouldn’t leave such a thing up; it would’ve been torn down long ago. So, it must be Lucy’s own?
"What are you looking at?"
Lucy emerged from the bathroom and saw Lin Miao’s gaze fixed on the lunar poster.
"Nothing... just marveling that people of this era can casually travel to the moon... whereas in the past, even bringing back a scoop of moon soil was a remarkable achievement." Lin Miao shook his head in contemplation.
Some technologies in this world have advanced absurdly fast compared to another one. Large-scale aerospace construction and moon development were happening in the 2020s here, while on the other side, not even a base was assured, let alone tourism.
"You speak like an old man..."
Unlike Qiwei, she wasn’t mocking him for being ignorant or backwards, nor was it a lack of knowledge about aerospace. Rather, it was a sigh of how technology progressed.
"A new life is about to begin... I bet the editor of this poster didn’t imagine the future would turn out like today."
Reciting the poster’s slogan made Lin Miao even more reflective. The past folks always unleashed their imagination envisioning how future worlds would be, yet when the time came, extracting a time capsule belonging to the past and looking back... only ruins remained.
Would today’s people, seeing their inability to fulfill their predecessors’ aspirations, mock their naivety? Or mourn their incompetence?
"Heh, so what do you think the future world will become?"
Lucy lay sideways skillfully on the balcony, gazing at the moon as she lit a cigarette and tossed one to Lin Miao.
Lin Miao caught the cigarette but didn’t smoke it. In fact, it wasn’t just cigarettes; he didn’t like drinking either. But doing business often required socializing, forcing himself to do things he didn’t enjoy, knowing he couldn’t yet have others conform to his habits.
"This world will change by my hands, either shaped into my ideal form, or I’ll smash everything to rubble, level the skyscrapers, and have everyone start from scratch."
"That’s your dream?" Lucy laughed uncontrollably, nearly dropping her cigarette, "You’re such a... that’s a bit too juvenile, don’t you think?"