As soon as Zhao Meiyou finished speaking, Qian Duoduo nodded. "Then let us go."
They were both dressed in their archaeologist uniforms tonight—suits tailored and sharp, ready for a date, a murder, or a flight to the ends of the earth.
Qian Duoduo reached out and gripped Zhao Meiyou’s hand. Together, they plummeted from the rooftop. On the first floor, the crowd was in the midst of a revelry. Sensing something, Pillar looked up from his water pipe just in time to see the shameless pair about to commit a lovers' suicide. He grabbed a wine bottle from the table and hurled it out the window, shouting at the top of his lungs, "Don't you dare die, Zhao Mode!"
The drunken guests swarmed the window, screaming and whistling at their rapidly receding silhouettes. Zhao Meiyou wasn't sure if someone had actually unzipped their fly to piss on them, but amidst the cacophony, he only heard one clear cry: "Safe travels!"
The wind howled in his ears. Multicolored neon lights converged into a brilliant river as they fell past countless windows. The scents of bebop jazz, hamburger meat, and hops wafted from ten thousand and one rooms. Men and women argued on balconies, threw parties, danced, or made love. Someone had hung laundry out on the drainage pipes—polyester, cotton, synthetic fibers—fluttering in the wind like colorful flags. During their descent, they collided with a hovering fast-food cart, sending red-and-yellow snack boxes drifting into the night sky. In the Middle Zone, one could see the stars, whether they were a trick of holographic imagery or not. Giant goldfish swam between the eaves of buildings, and fireworks burst in the distance.
Falling, falling. In the dreamlike sensation of weightlessness, time and space lost their concrete shapes. Eventually, the stars and moon vanished, replaced by a salty, metallic dampness in the air—the smell of rust and soil rising from the depths of the sewers, like the bottom of the sea.
Zhao Meiyou knew this scent all too well. They had reached the Lower Zone.
At some point, Qian Duoduo had opened an umbrella. They landed gently beside a stretch of railway. It was a long-abandoned track where many vagrants lay sleeping on the wooden ties. Zhao Meiyou scanned their surroundings. "This is the 15th Floor."
Qian Duoduo gave a soft grunt of affirmation.
Zhao Meiyou hadn't expected them to drop so deep. After all, the 330th Floor was the boundary between the Middle and Lower Zones, sealed tight with airtight nano-filters that required a card swipe at specific checkpoints.
Yet, they had jumped down without a hitch.
Qian Duoduo folded the black umbrella. "This is from Young Master Liu’s husband’s collection. The canopy radiates a quantum magnetic field of about five meters, enough to neutralize nano-detection."
He tilted his chin toward Zhao Meiyou. "Lead the way."
From the 15th Floor down was essentially the core of the Metropolis. In a sense, it was a forbidden zone.
Among archaeologists, there were various rumored ways to reach the 1st Floor, but to a native of the Lower Zone like Zhao Meiyou, those were all "outsider's follies."
Qian Duoduo clearly understood this. Zhao Meiyou smiled and pulled him along through the darkness. They traversed abandoned streets where mercury lamps occasionally flickered with white light. Finally, Zhao Meiyou led him into a skyscraper that had clearly been decommissioned for ages. Dust lay thick on the marble reception desk, beside which sat a bouquet of decorative plastic osmanthus flowers.
They approached an elevator. Zhao Meiyou pressed the down button. The display lit up with the words "Peace in Coming and Going," and with a *ding*, the doors slid open.
Inside was no narrow elevator car; instead, the space was vast. From behind a plastic curtain came the clatter of mahjong tiles. Three automatic players—mechanical constructs—sat around the table, while the head seat was occupied by an elderly woman over sixty. Seeing Zhao Meiyou, she adjusted her tortoiseshell glasses. "Xishi? What brings you here?"
"Ah Po." Zhao Meiyou pulled Qian Duoduo forward and patted his shoulder with a grin. "I came to introduce you to my boyfriend."
"Even a pig like you learned how to root for a prize cabbage?" The old woman was surprised. She stepped forward to look Qian Duoduo over, then nodded in wonder. "Good looking. Sturdy, too!"
"Right?" Zhao Meiyou said. "I’m taking him to see my mother."
"It’s only right you see her." Ah Po nodded repeatedly. She walked behind the mahjong table and yanked a heavy lever. The elevator began to descend, a rumbling sound echoing around them. After an indeterminate amount of time, the car stopped with a *ding*.
"Go on," Ah Po waved them off. "Peace in your coming and going!"
"And smooth winds in our travels!" Zhao Meiyou replied smoothly, pulling Qian Duoduo out of the elevator. "Goodbye, Ah Po!"
The elevator doors slammed shut.
"Ah Po used to be the manager of a gambling den on the 330th Floor. She’s also my mother’s foster mother," Zhao Meiyou explained to Qian Duoduo. "That sword technique of mine? She’s the one who passed it down."
Qian Duoduo hadn't understood a word of their exchange. "What language was that?"
"An ancient Eastern dialect," Zhao Meiyou said. "I told her you’re my partner and I’m taking you to see my mom."
"Here?" Qian Duoduo was slightly taken aback. "See your mother?"
"It’s a symbolic gesture," Zhao Meiyou said. "My mother died by jumping off a building."
In the Metropolis, such a death meant no body could ever be found. The city was built too large and too deep; the bottom was like a boundless graveyard. Reaching the extreme depths was as close as one could get to visiting a headstone.
Outside the elevator car was a vast, empty space. Faint light drifted in from unknown sources. On the ground, circles were drawn in chalk, each with an opening on one side. Inside the circles were scorch marks, along with unburnt incense sticks, candles, and joss paper.
"Usually, those who come to pay respects just burn some paper here and leave." Zhao Meiyou looked at Qian Duoduo. "It’s up to you now, Qian-ge. Where to next?"
"That Ah Po of yours—won't she worry if you don't return for a long time?"
"What are you thinking, Qian-ge? Kids from the Lower Zone grow out of the mud; even their birth mothers don't fret over them." Zhao Meiyou wanted a cigarette but restrained himself. "Besides, we said we were here to see my mom but didn't even bring joss paper. Ah Po isn't stupid."
Hearing this, Qian Duoduo removed a cufflink and pressed it, emitting a cyan-gold beam of light. "Follow the light."
The 1st Floor: the very bottom of the Metropolis, the place where the city was first founded.
The first time Zhao Meiyou had come to the 1st Floor was when he was very young. There was no special reason; almost every child born in the Lower Zone came here out of curiosity.
In some urban legends, a nameless, massive creature slept on the 1st Floor—a giant weapon left over from the Orion Wars. Extremely old residents vaguely remembered this as the foundation of the Metropolis, where pioneers had once trekked to move mountains and fill seas, building towering nuclear power plants. There were myths, too—that they had suppressed a great calamity, and a dictator had piloted the last starship to flee to the moon, leaving the land to the ancestors.
The anecdotes were each more absurd and bizarre than the last, yet the Metropolis was built upon these various ghosts, ruins, technological wreckage, and unknown abysses—revered by millions, magnificent and glorious.
They moved through the darkness, hand in hand, one behind the other. They passed giant ventilation pipes where gasping fan blades still spun slowly. They were colossal pieces of crude metal; their rusty, cold glint was like the eyelids of a sleeping giant. In the air thick with dust-motes, a thin clashing sound echoed, like wind chimes.
After an unknown amount of time, Qian Duoduo stopped. Zhao Meiyou felt him squeeze his palm before letting go. With a loud *clack*, he seemed to pull some kind of power switch.
Then, Zhao Meiyou saw it.
A colossal Buddha statue.
They stood on something akin to a Sacred Way. Blue bricks spread out from beneath their feet, flanked by rows of golden prayer wheels that stretched beyond the limit of sight.
Qian Duoduo said softly, "Follow me."
The Sacred Way rose step by step, leading toward the chest of the Buddha. Following behind Qian Duoduo, Zhao Meiyou felt as if he were in the belly of the deep blue—here was the seabed, the mountains, the deep forest. Those prayer wheels no longer turned; the breathing of a great whale rustled through the trees, and the air carried a static hiss like electronic noise.
At the end of the Sacred Way, in the Buddha's chest, was a vermilion gate. Golden beast heads held door rings in their mouths, and eighty-one studs were driven into the wood. Zhao Meiyou expected the doors to be heavy, but as if sensing their arrival, they creaked and opened automatically.
Just as Pillar had once said: "There exists such an escalator in the Metropolis, running from the 1st Floor all the way to the 990th."
Behind the doors was a hall resembling an ancient temple. Where a golden idol should have been enshrined, Zhao Meiyou saw the escalator.
A beam of light struck down from an impossibly high point, projecting onto the escalator's entrance.
It was an utterly surreal scene. The escalator's design was archaic, like a moving walkway from a subterranean department store centuries ago—not stepped, but the flat kind designed to lock shopping cart wheels, with vertical grooves on the surface. Murals were painted on the temple walls, their gold leaf peeling away. And where Arhats should have been enshrined on either side, Zhao Meiyou saw two rows of shopping carts.
The most common kind of supermarket carts, complete with folding child seats.
"Qian-ge," Zhao Meiyou surveyed the scene. "Is that a person hanging there?"
He was pointing at the entrance of the escalator, where the light fell. In the pure white beam, a person hung by the neck, dressed in an astronaut's suit.
Qian Duoduo ignored the astronaut. One of the codes of conduct for an archaeologist was to turn a blind eye to all things grotesque. He pulled out a shopping cart and gestured for Zhao Meiyou to sit in it. Then, he pushed aside the astronaut dangling before the escalator. The treads on the cart's wheels locked into the grooves of the walkway. Sensing the weight, a display sign at the entrance suddenly lit up, and a synthesized voice drifted from nowhere: "Peace in your coming and going!"
"Blessings never come in pairs! Misfortunes never come alone!"
"Today's temperature is 33°C, rain within 87 kilometers."
"Which liposuction doctors have the best aesthetic? Listed below are—"
"All passengers aboard the crashed Sri Lankan airliner have perished..."
"Outside the long pavilion, beside the ancient path, green grass joins the sky..."
"Auspicious App, scan the code to use. Wishing you the best in all things!"
"Celebrate the double holidays, ring out the old and ring in the new, half-price refunds, today only..."
The escalator ascended slowly. Zhao Meiyou and Qian Duoduo were bathed in bright light, surrounded by the cacophony of synthesized voices. The walkway wasn't very wide—at most, four people could stand abreast—and the light came from beyond the handrails. Countless computer monitors were jammed together, stacked into two steep, solemn mountain walls as if carved by axes.
Every screen displayed different content: advertisements, news, music channels, variety shows, dramas... The volume of each individual monitor wasn't high, but the confluence of countless information streams surged like rolling magma, thundering like a flood.
Zhao Meiyou clicked his tongue and stood up to cover Qian Duoduo’s ears.
The noise was too immense; neither could hear what the other said. Qian Duoduo stared at the gargantuan wall of screens. As the escalator rose, he suddenly reached out, and with a burst of strength in his arms, he pried a single monitor out of the wall.
Among the myriad multicolored displays, only this one was a black screen.
It acted like a special switch. Instantly, every electronic screen went dark, and the monitor in Qian Duoduo’s hands began to boot up.
Zhao Meiyou breathed a sigh of relief, his head still buzzing. It took a moment before he could speak. "Qian-ge?"
Qian Duoduo emerged from his state of intense concentration and pressed several acupoints near Zhao Meiyou’s ears. "We’ll likely be on this escalator for a while. Then we’ll reach the 990th Floor—the entrance to Ruins No. 000."
He exhaled, finally relaxing. "From now until we enter the ruins, there shouldn't be any more danger."
Zhao Meiyou gave him a reassuring hug. "Qian-ge, where did you find the instructions for all this?"
"Fragments of the *Shanhai Records* circulating in the archaeologist black market, and some logs of unknown origin," Qian Duoduo said. "Zhao Meiyou, as for what we’ll face after this... I have absolutely no idea."
Zhao Meiyou gave a thoughtful hum.
The monitor finished loading, playing a melody like ancient bronze bells. A genderless, synthesized voice began to sing:
*"The Gates of Heaven open, vast and wide;*
*In solemn ranks they gallop, to the feast they glide.*
*Stars linger at the threshold, the meteor's light is stilled;*
*The purple canopy is bright, with pearls and jade fulfilled.*
*The Great Vermilion path is broad, the hall of leveled stone;*
*With jade-tipped wands they dance and sing, toward the distant throne."*
Along with the ancient melody, they suddenly saw light.
Not the blue light of a monitor, but the real sun.
At this moment, the airtight mountain walls on either side of the escalator seemed to turn into transparent glass. The container-housing clusters of the Lower Zone were already beneath their feet. They were level with the 400th Floor, where the Railway Department was holding a ribbon-cutting ceremony. The red silk snapped, and a hovering train roared toward them—a painless experience of lying on the tracks—as the escalator continued to rise. They could almost see the holographic sky of the 660th Floor.
The Lamp-Bearing Buddha extinguished its lights. In the holographic projection, a giant waterwheel appeared; like a titan swinging a hammer, it splashed golden pond water across the sky, and the entire city was instantly filled with light.
A voice came from the monitor: "The sun rises from the Valley of Brightness, atop the Fusang tree."
They saw the Metropolis at sunrise.
There was a rumor among archaeologists that such an escalator existed, running from the 1st Floor to the 990th, and that from it, one could see a cross-section of the entire city.
"The legend is actually true," Qian Duoduo murmured, watching the distant sunrise.
Zhao Meiyou studied the scene, suddenly finding it amusing. They had spent half the night descending to the 1st Floor, and though they hadn't returned by the same path, they were indeed rising back up.
Where was this escalator usually hidden in the Metropolis?
He saw the University City in the Upper Zone. He and Diao Chan had spent seven years there. The streets and buildings of the Upper Zone were orderly, far more so than the labyrinthine Lower Zone. In those seven years, Zhao Meiyou had explored every inch of the University City, yet he had never seen a trace of this escalator.
"Qian-ge," he asked. "Have you ever seen this escalator in the city before?"
Qian Duoduo shook his head. "I’m thinking of a long poem."
"I’m illiterate, Qian-ge. Just tell me what poem it is."
"The *Divine Comedy* by Dante, the last poet of the Middle Ages," Qian Duoduo said. "Guided by Virgil and Beatrice, the poet descends through the layers of Hell, from top to bottom, only to return to Heaven from the very depths."
Just like their route to Heaven's Gate—a cycle of descending and then ascending.
The synthesized voice from the monitor in Qian Duoduo’s hand spoke again:
*"It ascends from the earth to the heaven, and again it descends to the earth, and receives the power of the things superior and inferior.*
*That which is below is like that which is above, and that which is above is like that which is below, to accomplish the miracles of one only thing."*
Illiterate as he was, Zhao Meiyou couldn't understand what these cryptic, metaphysical sentences meant. He looked at the pensive Qian Duoduo and pressed his index finger to the other man's brow. "Qian-ge, stop thinking. It’ll give you a headache."
When he tried to comfort people, he always liked to use that phrase—*stop thinking.*
If thought and reason were the nobility of mankind, what did Zhao Meiyou’s attitude represent? Was it escapism? Was it just getting by? Was it blind optimism or callous indifference?
It seemed to be all of those, yet none of them. Qian Duoduo looked at him and suddenly asked, "Zhao Meiyou, don't you feel fear?"
"I do. Of course I do." Zhao Meiyou seemed a bit surprised by the question, but he answered nonetheless. "The root of fear is the inability to accept death. Who isn't afraid of dying? Of course, physiological and psychological dread are two different things."
"Then how can you bear not to think?"
"Qian-ge, in the face of absolute terror, people often lose the ability to think."
"But you don't look like you've been scared witless."
Zhao Meiyou pondered this for a moment, pulled out his cigarette case, and lit one.
"Qian-ge, you know, sometimes you really don't need to think so much. My mom used to tell me all the time, 'The road is beneath your feet.' Later, our hospital held a lecture or something, and at the end, they asked everyone how they wanted to face death. Old Man De said he wanted to die in a girl's arms. Diao Chan said he wanted to die at sixteen. Consort—that’s Liu Qijue—refused to answer... I thought about it, and following in my mother's footsteps, just like she went to martyrizing herself with the dawn, I figured if I’m going to die, it would be nice to have someone with me."
Qian Duoduo watched him silently. "And?"
"And, I’m not dead yet, and I already have someone with me." Zhao Meiyou met his gaze. "So what is there to be afraid of?"
Qian Duoduo was stunned, seemingly disagreeing. "That’s just 'drinking today's wine today.'"
"And letting tomorrow's sorrows wait for tomorrow." Zhao Meiyou smiled, the cigarette dangling from his lips. "Qian-ge, if you only ever think about tomorrow, the ultimate tomorrow is destined to be death. Everyone is equal in that; it’s the same for all."
"The road is beneath our feet. We’re already on it; we just have to keep walking. No need to keep thinking about the gas pedal, the brake, the traffic lights, the safety manual... The destination is right there. It’s not going anywhere. Everyone arrives eventually."
Qian Duoduo looked at him. "Do you have no ambition, then?"
Zhao Meiyou said calmly, "If you’re asking about the ambition to floor the gas to eight hundred miles per hour, I probably don't."
"Then what is your ambition?"
"You drive, Qian-ge, and I sit in the passenger seat. When we’re waiting for a red light, you turn your head and give me a kiss."
"..."
"You can't say that isn't a grand ambition." Zhao Meiyou looked at him quite seriously. "Go ask that crowd of archaeologists—who else would dare to try and land Qian Duoduo?"
It took a long time for Qian Duoduo to speak. "Zhao Meiyou, you don't seem like someone who puts love above all else."
"I don't. Before this, I never thought about looking for a 'destined one' either." Zhao Meiyou smiled. "I told you, Qian-ge: live in the moment. And right now, I feel that being with you is the most important thing."
Zhao Meiyou emphasized "the moment." This was truly not the style of an archaeologist. They were a group that explored the past and the future, traversing history and the stars; thus, on the coordinate axis of time, the anchor of "the moment" was inevitably seen as the least attractive point. One couldn't say it was their fault. In the 25th-century Metropolis, the most glorious era of technology had passed, and myths and alchemy had been disenchanted long before, leaving only fragments for them to gather. What was left in the present? The collapse of rites and music, a hodgepodge of mixed civilizations, a nonsensical flood of information, and the eternal silence of infinite space?
Yet here was a man like Zhao Meiyou, living in the Lower Zone like a frog at the bottom of a well.
And he said: live in the moment.
"Every moment constitutes the entirety of the past and the future," Zhao Meiyou said softly, looking at Qian Duoduo. "The 'me' who loves you at this very instant, even if it’s only for a heartbeat, will exist forever in the entirety of my life."
The road was beneath their feet. The road of a saint, the road of a madman, the road of a rainbow, the road of a guppy—whatever the hell kind of road it was, it would be the road they walked together. Whether they sped past laughing or crushed a drunkard under their wheels, they could rob banks, flee the apocalypse, or smash the windows of a jewelry store. Even if they were burned to ash in the flames of a dying star, as long as you drive and I sit in the passenger seat, and you give me a kiss while we wait for the light, then in the instant before the end arrives, I will place my hand in yours.
The sun rose. The sky was bright.
"The yellow light is on." Zhao Meiyou looked at the shimmering city in the distance, then turned to Qian Duoduo. "Are you going to give me a kiss?"
"...A person should have ambition." After a long silence, Qian Duoduo’s voice rang out. "One is too few. You should ask for ten thousand."
"Yeah. I love you too."
***
