novelraw Chapter 185 A Rabble
Chapter 185 A Rabble
After Jiang Ran was shoved down into the sewer, the skinny monkey-like man poked his head in too and looked at Sang Biao.
“Boss, are we not waiting for Old Third?”
Sang Biao shook his head. “Since you found the route on your side, that means Old Third’s side is definitely the wrong one. No need to wait for him.”
“Besides, now that we’ve got this kid helping, we’ve got our number up to [three], which is enough to activate the mechanism. No time to waste. We need to move.”
As Jiang Ran climbed down the filthy ladder, he listened to Sang Biao and the skinny man talk.
So they had another accomplice scouting a different path, someone called Old Third.
Then that meant this skinny monkey man had to be Old Second.
That also answered another one of Jiang Ran’s doubts—
During the previous times he had passed by here, even when the time reached 10:39, Sang Biao had still been skulking around outside the wall without making a move.
But this time, he checked his watch.It was only 10:13, yet Sang Biao had already gone down into the sewer.
The reason—
Naturally, it was him.
His sudden appearance had disrupted Sang Biao’s original rhythm and caused them to set out early.
It wasn’t hard to tell that the prerequisite for this [theft] operation was having exactly [three people].
Though he still didn’t know the exact details, from what Sang Biao said, it sounded like there was some mechanism that required three people to open together.
So if he hadn’t suddenly shown up, then even if Old Second had found the correct path ahead of time, they still would have had to wait until Old Third returned safely before regrouping and departing.
That would inevitably push the timing back by quite a bit.
“Good thing I came to join the fun.”
Jiang Ran muttered softly, “Otherwise, by the time it dragged out to 10:39:11, when the virtual world crashed and rebooted, Old Third still wouldn’t have come back—
and Sang Biao would still be wandering around outside the wall.”
Soon, Sang Biao also climbed into the sewer. He put the manhole cover back in place, slid down the ladder, wiped his hands on the skinny man’s back, and said, “Move!”
In the dim sewer, Sang Biao and skinny Old Second walked in front with flashlights, while Jiang Ran followed at the rear, moving closer to Sang Biao as he asked, “Sang Biao.”
“The fuck do you mean Sang Biao!”
Sang Biao immediately started cursing again. “That’s not my damn name! Are you insane? We just met and you’re already calling me that?”
“Ah, sorry. It just slipped out.”
Jiang Ran couldn’t help it.
Back in that future prison, all the cellmates had called each other by nicknames—Sang Biao, Hothead, Bookworm, Little Prodigy, and the like—
But now, because of the butterfly effect caused by Wu Yuanzheng’s death, the future world had changed drastically. Naturally, that prison no longer existed, nor did those years behind bars, nor any of those nicknames.
“Then what’s your name?” Jiang Ran asked humbly.
“You can just call me Boss.”
“Got it, Brother Biao,” Jiang Ran replied casually.
“You little—!”
With a sharp click, Sang Biao chambered a round in his pistol and spun around to glare at him.
“You looking to die?”
…to die?
…to die?
…to die?
The words echoed again and again through the winding, bottomless sewer, lingering like bass from a subwoofer.
“Boss! Boss, calm down!”
Skinny Old Second hurriedly turned around and hugged Sang Biao, forcing down the gun arm in his right hand.
“Boss—we need three people! We can’t do this without him! Just bear with it, bear with it. There’s obviously something wrong with this kid’s head.”
“Sang Biao is fine, isn’t it? What’s wrong with a name like that? I actually think it sounds pretty badass! Both gloomy and fierce! It perfectly matches your melancholy, profound, yet powerfully restrained temperament!”
“Oh? Really?”
Sang Biao scratched his head, suddenly looking a little embarrassed by the praise.
“Knew it, Old Second. After all these years, you still understand me best.”
Jiang Ran narrowed his eyes and looked at the silver-tongued skinny man.
This guy had skills.
Did even a single stroke of the phrase “melancholy and profound” have anything to do with Sang Biao? And yet he managed to soothe the enraged man into acting like a kitten. Old Second really ought to go mediate the Russia-Ukraine war.
“Brother Biao, at least tell me what exactly we’re going to do.”
The three of them waded through the filthy water as Jiang Ran pressed, “Rather than waiting until we get there to explain the plan, you might as well use the time on the way to make it clear now. Saves trouble later.”
Sang Biao smacked his lips and sighed.
“You brat. Do you know where this place is?”
“No.” Jiang Ran shook his head.
“This is the [Human Civilization Memorial Hall] of Donghai City! In the virtual world, every city has one of these, supposedly for people to remember the past.”
“But—among all the Human Civilization Memorial Halls in the world, only the one in Donghai City is special.”
He kicked away a piece of foul-smelling trash tangled around his foot and continued.
“This one alone has never been open to the public. All these years, no one has ever gone inside, and no one has ever known what’s in there.”
“Isn’t that strange in itself? If you build something like a memorial hall, it’s meant for people to visit. Otherwise, why build it at all?”
Following behind Sang Biao, Jiang Ran nodded.
That was true.
There was nothing wrong with that line of reasoning.
If it had only been closed temporarily, that would be understandable.
But from what Sang Biao meant, the Human Civilization Memorial Hall in Donghai had never once opened to the public since the launch of the virtual world—
That really was bizarre.
“So you think there’s treasure hidden inside?”
At Jiang Ran’s question, Sang Biao shook his head.
“It’s more than that.”
The tunnel ahead bent around a corner. He swept his flashlight across it and crawled through.
“There are plenty of facilities in the city that aren’t open to the public. For all kinds of reasons, that alone isn’t strange.”
“But there’s a rumor—that [beneath the Donghai Human Civilization Memorial Hall, there’s a secret room that even Puppe himself has no authority to enter!]”
“You have to understand, Puppe is the creator of this virtual world. All his permissions are top-level. It’s hard to imagine there’s actually somewhere even he can’t get into.”
“A lot of people suspect that room contains the most core secret of the entire virtual world. That’s exactly why the memorial hall has never once been open to the public.”
“And not only is this whole area under strict security, it’s sealed from top to bottom in every possible way by [permission walls]—those invisible virtual barriers that fundamentally prevent anyone from crossing even half a step.”
“So this memorial hall is the most solid fortress in the virtual world. There’s no possibility of breaking in.”
Jiang Ran tilted his head.
“Then what are we even busting our asses for?”
As a computer science student, Jiang Ran understood very clearly that in a virtual digital world like this, the tallest mountain, the longest river, and the most impossible barrier to cross—
was authority.
Because everything here was made of data, governed by rules completely different from the real world. If the program restricted access to an area, then it was absolutely inaccessible.
Like the permission wall Sang Biao had just mentioned, the kind that absolutely prevented crossing even half a step—this was trivially easy to implement in a virtual world.
In the real world, there was theoretically no such thing as an uncrossable wall. Even Mount Everest, the highest mountain on Earth, had long since been conquered by humanity. Even the atmosphere, thousands of kilometers high, could be crossed by spacecraft.
But in a virtual digital world, if a wall of air was defined to be infinitely tall, infinitely long, infinitely deep, infinitely hard, and completely indestructible—
then it was absolutely, literally impossible to cross.
Even if gods themselves came, it wouldn’t matter.
Because in a virtual world, gods were also electronic data. They too were bound by permission limits.
Jiang Ran spread his hands.
“So there’s supposedly a room down there that even Puppe can’t enter, plus permission walls that can’t be crossed no matter what. So what are we still messing around here for? Let’s just go home and eat.”
“Oh, would you relax? I’m not done yet! Can you have a little patience?”
Sang Biao swung his fat arm and cut him off.
“[But today, at exactly 10:00 a.m., all those permission walls disappeared! I was definitely the first person to notice!]”
He let out a cold snort, utterly confident.
“Ever since I started planning to get Puppe’s treasure, I’ve been watching this place every day, trying to find a way.”
“All those days before, it really was airtight. Not a single flaw. But the moment it hit 10:00 this morning, every permission wall vanished!”
“The fully armed robots on the surface are still operating normally, so we can’t break through head-on. But we’ve been mapping these sewage pipes for a long time. I know these sewers like I know my own intestines!”
“Uh…”
Jiang Ran raised a hand, wanting to speak but stopping himself.
In the end, he swallowed the complaint in his throat and decided to accept Sang Biao’s bizarrely apt metaphor.
Still, that timing was extremely interesting.
Today at exactly 10:00 a.m., all the permission walls disappeared—
Wasn’t that the exact moment he traveled through spacetime and arrived in 2045?
Was that another coincidence too?
Could it be that his sudden arrival had not only blown out the long-abandoned servers Puppe left behind, but also shattered the permission walls?
For no reason, a very amusing meme surfaced in his mind.
Two kids fighting, with the caption:
“The two supreme beings battled all the way to the edge of the universe, until even the Great Dao was erased.”
Ahem.
Jiang Ran didn’t think he was capable of anything that ridiculous.
Besides, the number 3911 in Puppe’s suicide note proved that years earlier, Puppe had already calculated the ending of this virtual world—
There was no way he had somehow foreseen the future and known Jiang Ran would arrive today.
That was too absurd.
Because if Puppe truly had the ability to predict the future, he wouldn’t have died in regret, nor would he have staged this entire operation that destroyed human civilization.
So Jiang Ran still instinctively believed—
[The virtual world’s crash-and-reboot every 39 minutes and 11 seconds had nothing to do with his arrival. This world itself was simply malfunctioning.]
“This way.”
Sang Biao pointed toward the sewer bend and kept leading Jiang Ran onward.
“We definitely won’t be the only ones eyeing Puppe’s treasure. So we’ve got to race against time and grab it before anyone else notices the permission walls are gone!”
“Then your luck really is pretty good.”
Jiang Ran glanced at his electronic watch.
“Just so happens the permission walls vanished today, and just so happens you were the one who discovered it.”
“Because I’ve been staking this place out forever!”
Sang Biao snorted.
“That’s why they say the early worm gets eaten by the bird. I’ve been camping here for three whole years!”
“So—heheh, there’s actually one thing I know that no one else in the world does. And it’s exactly that thing that makes me certain Puppe hid treasure down here! Something extremely valuable!”
“What is it?”
Jiang Ran was instantly interested.
“Come on, Brother Biao, what’s the exclusive gossip?”
Sang Biao stopped walking, glanced left and right theatrically, then leaned his fat face close to Jiang Ran’s ear.
“I’m only telling you this in secret. You absolutely can’t let anyone else know.”
“Don’t worry, Brother Biao.”
Jiang Ran spread his hands.
“Right now, inside your intestines—ah no, I mean this sewer—there are only the three of us. No one else can hear.”
“And I’m tight-lipped. We’re not just brothers from different fathers and mothers—we’ve been shot in the head by the same gun and bitten by the same dog. I’d betray anyone before I betrayed you.”
“What kind of nonsense are you even talking about?!”
Sang Biao waved him off, looking at this newly recruited little brother with open disgust, already somewhat regretting how rash he’d been.
But—
There was no helping it.
Like he said before, who wouldn’t want the treasure Puppe left behind? Who wouldn’t want to steal it?
Soon enough, other people would also discover that the permission walls had vanished, so they had to move first.
Under those circumstances, there wasn’t time to carefully pick teammates. Jiang Ran clearly had a screw loose, but he’d do in a pinch.
“Three years ago, while I was staking out the area near the memorial hall, I noticed something that was never made public at all.”
Leaving only his back to Jiang Ran, Sang Biao continued forward.
“[On September 16, 2042—the day before Puppe killed himself—he secretly came here alone. I think I was the only one who saw it.]”
“What?”
Jiang Ran froze, completely not expecting Sang Biao to actually have discovered something this valuable.
“You mean Puppe left here, and then killed himself the next day?”
“That’s right.”
Sang Biao’s voice turned low.
“It was a completely undisclosed trip. No one accompanied him. Puppe landed in the memorial hall courtyard by himself, then went inside.”
“He stayed in there for four or five hours, then drove away looking dejected. At the time I didn’t think much of it. But the next day, I saw the news of his suicide on TV.”
“So if he specifically came here right before killing himself—either there’s some incredibly precious treasure hidden here, or he placed something extremely important here!”
“Tell me I’m right. Otherwise why would he make a special trip here before suicide? This place is far from Switzerland. Sure, with the current transport system it’s instantaneous, but for someone already determined to die to still bother coming here—doesn’t that obviously mean something’s off?”
“It means the secret beneath this memorial hall was extremely important to Puppe! Even as he was about to leave this world, he still had to come take one last look—or hide something important here!”
Jiang Ran listened in silence, thinking.
That reasoning really did hold.
In fact, it only made him more curious about what exactly was hidden beneath this memorial hall that had never once been opened to the public.
Strict security, no one allowed inside—
layer after layer of absolutely uncrossable permission walls—
Puppe himself coming here the day before his suicide—
Beneath such a blatantly suspicious iron fortress, inside that rumored room that even Puppe himself couldn’t step into—
what exactly was hidden there?
“Sang Biao, do you hate Puppe?”
Jiang Ran asked curiously.
From his few trips to 2045, he had felt that everyone in the virtual world revered Puppe deeply. At the memorial square, countless people had tears streaming down their faces, the grief utterly genuine.
And Sang Biao was the first person Jiang Ran had encountered so far who said Puppe’s name without attaching the respectful “Mr.”
Maybe that was just Sang Biao’s personal habit. Maybe the fact that he didn’t add “fucking” or some other profanity before or after the name already counted as the utmost respect this great savior could possibly receive from him.
Still, Jiang Ran was curious whether there were dissenters in this virtual world at all, so he continued.
“Look, today is the anniversary of Puppe’s death. Everyone else up there is holding memorial events. The memorial square is packed shoulder to shoulder, and some people start crying the moment his name is mentioned.”
“But you, on a day like this, are scheming your way over here to steal the treasure he left behind. Is that because you also hold resentment toward the virtual world, and toward the consciousness-upload surgery from back then?”
“I’m curious—what exactly do you think of Puppe?”
Thunk.
Suddenly, Jiang Ran walked straight into Sang Biao’s back.
“Hm?”
Why had Sang Biao suddenly stopped?
Jiang Ran took a step back and looked at Sang Biao, who stood there in silence.
That really was rare.
Faced with this question, the usually crude, foul-mouthed, explosively violent Sang Biao had unexpectedly frozen in place.
At last, he drew a deep breath and said in a low voice, “I admire Puppe.”
“You admire him and you’re still stealing his stuff?!”
The sheer contrast in that answer left Jiang Ran both laughing and speechless.
“So what!”
Sang Biao sounded completely righteous.
“Admiration is admiration! Theft is theft! Those are three completely different things, okay?”
“If I admire someone, I don’t steal from them.”
“Sure, sure.” Jiang Ran clapped in scattered little beats. “You’ve really mastered your own logic system.”
“The truth is, I really do respect Puppe.”
Sang Biao resumed walking forward.
“If it weren’t for him, we’d all have died out there in the outside world a long time ago. I still remember that catastrophe in 2028—the air was full of toxins, and Earth was like a prison. It was completely uninhabitable.”
“Life in the virtual world is actually pretty great. Food, clothing, shelter—no worries. You can do whatever you want, and it’s not hard to have anything you want.”
“Are you married?” Jiang Ran suddenly asked.
“You really talk too damn much!”
Sang Biao immediately started cursing again.
“No, wait.”
Jiang Ran looked confused.
“This is basically a utopian world. You still can’t get married?”
Sang Biao slapped toward him.
“Being a utopia doesn’t mean they hand out wives!”
Jiang Ran stepped back to dodge.
“So—you’re not stealing Puppe’s treasure just so you can get yourself a wife, are you?”
“As if!”
Sang Biao sneered.
“A real man’s ambition lies in all corners of the world. How could he be shackled by romance? I have far greater aspirations than that. Why else would I come steal Puppe’s treasure? I want to become someone like him!”
Jiang Ran froze, suddenly finding the Sang Biao in front of him unfamiliar.
“Don’t tell me you want to—”
“That’s right!”
Sang Biao clenched his fist.
“I’m going to become the [King of the Digital World]! For short—the Digital King!”
Pfft—
Jiang Ran failed to hold it in and burst out laughing.
“No, Brother! What genre did you just wander into? So if you steal Puppe’s treasure, you become Puppe? Why stop there? Why not say if you steal a panda, you become a national treasure?”
“The reason people in this world respect Puppe so much is because he saved billions of lives. The reason he had supreme status and authority was because everyone willingly accepted it.”
“Do you have the wrong era in mind or something? This isn’t the age where putting on a dragon robe makes you emperor. If anything, the moment your theft of Puppe’s relics gets exposed, the police will shoot you dead.”
“Heheheh—”
Sang Biao only smiled calmly.
“Little bro, that’s a pretty immature way of thinking. Think carefully—what could Puppe’s treasure possibly be?”
Jiang Ran stroked his chin and thought.
This virtual world was already a semi-utopian society, so money and things like that weren’t especially important.
And for someone on Puppe’s level—a “creator god,” a “maker of worlds”—the only thing worth caring about enough to safeguard so carefully seemed to be…
[authority].
Jiang Ran narrowed his eyes and gave his answer.
“So you think what Puppe left here is the supreme authority to govern the entire virtual world.”
“In this world, everything is made of electronic data and computer programs. So if someone obtained admin-level authority, they could practically do whatever they wanted in this virtual world.”
“Good boy, you can be taught!”
Sang Biao chuckled and slapped Jiang Ran’s shoulder.
“If Puppe made a special trip here before killing himself, then he must have believed this place was safe enough, so he left the key to all authority here—so that after his death, that power wouldn’t be abused by someone with ulterior motives!”
“But even he never could’ve imagined that after all the effort I put in, I’d actually live to see the day those permission walls failed!”
“As long as I get Puppe’s treasure, as long as I get that all-controlling authority, then if I say the wind blows, the wind blows! If I say it rains, it rains! The whole world will obey me!”
“Don’t worry, little bro, I won’t treat you badly! Once I become the king of this world, I’ll make you some kind of minister or general and let you govern a whole continent!”
“No no no no no.”
“…Wow.”
Jiang Ran hurriedly waved his hands, instantly drawing a clear line between himself and this aspiring dictator.
“I get it now. You don’t want to be some [Digital King] at all. You want to be a demon king.”
“Honestly, Sang Biao—you really are consistent. In every future world, you always manage to be a qualified villain.”
Jiang Ran suddenly felt ashamed of the fleeting expectation he had just entertained.
For a moment, he’d thought he might hear some unexpectedly heroic insight from Sang Biao.
Instead, this guy was exactly as crooked as ever, here purely for the sake of supreme authority.
If this really worked out for him, the virtual world would transform from utopia into a dictatorship in the blink of an eye.
Just hearing Sang Biao’s leering little laugh was enough for Jiang Ran to know this guy definitely had bad intentions.
“But you’re running out of time.”
Jiang Ran raised his wrist and checked his watch.
“It’s already 10:31. We’re still trapped in the sewer. Are you sure your intestinal sense of direction is actually correct?”
“Earlier you said there was some mechanism that required three people. Are we not there yet?”
“We are! It’s right here!”
Sang Biao raised his head and pointed toward a patch of light overhead.
Jiang Ran moved closer.
I see.
The winding sewer route happened to connect directly beneath the memorial hall building.
Now, four or five meters above their heads, there was a drainage grate. As long as they climbed up through there, they could enter the memorial hall interior.
But at that height, with no climbing equipment—
Jiang Ran instantly understood what the so-called “must be three people” mechanism meant.
“Brother Biao, don’t tell me your non-negotiable three-person requirement is literally just building a human ladder here?”
“What else would it be!”
Sang Biao looked at him as if it were obvious.
“Why do you think I drafted you on the spot? Because you’re tall! Old Second only comes up to your armpit. On this point, you’re more useful than Old Third.”
Sigh.
Fine, fine.
Jiang Ran realized he really couldn’t expect too much from Sang Biao’s bargain-bin criminal operation. Everything about it was rough beyond belief.
“Come on!”
Sang Biao braced both hands against the wall, planted his feet, and stuck his butt out.
“Get up here, Jiang Ran. Step on my shoulders—you form the head!”
“Can you stop using body parts as metaphors for everything?”
But they were already here.
Jiang Ran had no choice but to obey the will of the team.
Then the skinny Old Second, being the lightest, climbed up first, stepped onto Jiang Ran’s shoulders, shoved the iron grate above open, and flipped himself up.
“All good! You guys pass it up.”
Old Second was quick with his hands. After fumbling around above for a moment, he tossed down a rope.
“It’s secured! Climb up!”
And just like that, with pulling and shoving, Jiang Ran climbed up with Old Second’s help, and then the three of them worked together to haul Sang Biao up as well.
Only then did Jiang Ran stand up and look around.
There was no doubt about it.
This was the interior of the Human Civilization Memorial Hall.
But it looked nothing like he had imagined.
As far as the eye could see, there was nothing.
Blank white walls on all sides, without a single extra decoration.
It was as if—
as if it were one of those unrendered environments in an online game, where the scene textures had no details at all.
Jiang Ran turned back to Sang Biao.
“Which way do we go?”
“Straight down.”
Sang Biao waved his hand.
“The most secret thing has to be hidden in the deepest place. Let’s go!”
The three of them ran down the glaring white corridor and quickly found an elevator.
Along the way, Jiang Ran paid attention.
There was no security presence at all.
The contrast with the heavily armed drones and combat robots outside the memorial hall was stark.
Clearly, Puppe had trusted those [permission walls] absolutely, convinced that barriers transcending the rules themselves were unbreakable, so naturally there was no need for internal security.
But he never could have imagined that those theoretically uncrossable barriers would simply vanish into thin air at 10:00 a.m. on September 17, 2045—
and because of that, Sang Biao and Jiang Ran had slipped right through the gap.
Ding—
The elevator doors opened, and the three of them stepped inside.
Skinny Old Second stood in the corner.
“Boss, which floor?”
“You idiot! How many times do I have to say it? Obviously the deepest one! However deep it goes, that’s where we go!”
Jiang Ran looked toward the densely packed elevator buttons.
The highest floor was the seventh above ground.
But the lowest—
Holy hell.
The neatly arranged buttons ran all the way down.
B1, B10, B20, B30—
Jiang Ran was stunned.
There was definitely something wrong with this memorial hall.
What kind of normal memorial hall had underground levels this deep?
His gaze skipped past the middle buttons and went straight to the very bottom one.
It read—
[B42]
“Wait!” Jiang Ran shouted.
But it was already too late.
Skinny Old Second had already pressed it. The elevator roared to life and accelerated straight downward.
“What now?”
Sang Biao complained at Jiang Ran.
“Why are you always freaking out? Can’t you calm down for once?”
Jiang Ran pressed his lips together and said nothing.
That mysterious number 42 again.
It had been a long time since he had crossed paths with it.
Yet this time, in the future of 2045, he had seen it again—
and inside an elevator in this eerie memorial hall, no less.
He had no idea what it meant.
Just like every other time he had seen 42, he simply could not interpret its meaning, couldn’t tell whether it signified something right or wrong, similarity or negation.
Whoosh whoosh whoosh!
Whoosh whoosh whoosh!
Whoosh whoosh whoosh!
The elevator descended at terrifying speed, fast enough that it sounded as if the cabin itself was scraping against the air.
The floor numbers flashing on the display changed faster and faster, like a death countdown.
B17—
B21—
B27—
B36—
B41—
At last.
Ding.
With a crisp chime, the elevator doors opened.
Jiang Ran instinctively stepped back, retreating behind Sang Biao.
But Sang Biao and skinny Old Second were already too impatient and rushed straight out.
“What the hell is this?!”
“Waaah what the hellllll!”
Instantly, panicked screams rang out.
Sang Biao and the skinny man stumbled back two steps, staring upward at the cloudless sky and blazing sunlight—
Yes.
The sky. White clouds.
This was supposed to be forty-two floors underground, and yet in the distance they could clearly see wild geese and birds soaring across the sky.
And not only that.
Beneath that blue sky stood a slowly turning Ferris wheel.
Beside it were a carousel, a pirate ship, a roller coaster, a giant pendulum ride, a drop tower—
countless amusement rides filled the entire horizon, stretching farther than the eye could see.
Who could have imagined that forty-two floors underground, there would be an open-air amusement park?
It was terrifying.
Jiang Ran stood frozen in the elevator, staring outside in utter shock.
It was an incredibly strange visual overlap.
He was clearly still standing inside the elevator, yet separated by only a doorway was a vast, radiant world drenched in sunlight.
He quickly turned and looked at the elevator button panel.
At that moment, the B42 button had already gone dark, but the display still held on the number 42, telling him with certainty that this was at least a hundred meters underground.
“Heeheeheeheehee! Heeheehee!”
“Meow meow meow~ meow meow meow~”
“Welcome, welcome~ a warm welcome, meow!”
“Rhine Meow~ Rhine Meow~ Rhine Meow!”
An even more scalp-crawling scene appeared next.
Several gigantic Rhine Cats, so lifelike they were indistinguishable from living creatures, came bouncing toward them.
Each Rhine Cat was about as tall as an adult girl, with enormous fluffy heads and fuzzy paws, vivid down to the last detail.
Singing and dancing, hand in hand, they skipped up to the elevator doors and gave the three of them a deep bow.
“Welcome~~~ to Hangzhou Paradise!”