LIGHTNOVELONLINE 101: The Pain of Catching Your Friends Up
Following her reveal of sorts, Lin Songmei clamped her mouth shut as she ordered some food. Deciding to just ignore the conversation going on between Yan Mingqing, Han Youhong, and Wang Taigang about how “it’s so unfair” and “why it should definitely be illegal to cultivate that fast,” Songmei finished her order, passing it to Youhong.
“So, I think we’re all clear on the fact that we should probably start taking up missions again.” Taigang shrugged, an encouraging smile on his face as he slipped back into his usual role of team leader. “I know it hasn’t been a long time since we got back from our whole ordeal with the plant. But as cultivators we probably honestly should get back on the grind.”
“True...” Songmei agreed, as Youhong passed the terminal to Taigang to order. “And, to be honest, we didn’t really ‘solve’ the plant incident. More like we found it, then called the right people, and they ax-kicked it real hard, solving most of the incident all at once.”
Sipping some of Songmei’s tea, Mingqing pitched in, “We’re going to have to be working within the city itself, so it might be best if we try and familiarize ourselves with the lords of the districts, yeah? Preliminary knowledge first, then like... actually trying to climb the ranks of the city in terms of influence to actually be able to interact with them.”
“I mean, definitely,” Taigang nodded, sliding over the terminal to Mingqing, “I don’t want to be doing menial labor for the next year or however long it’ll end up taking to clear the plants. Knowing the bureaucrats, it’ll take much longer than how long they say it’ll take.”
“Does everyone know the lords of the districts, though?” Songmei asked, just checking to make sure, “I feel like we gotta start basic...”
“I don’t,” Youhong confessed with a casual flick of the wrist that sent a lychee jelly into his mouth. “Didn’t care enough to learn about them.”
Following Youhong’s confession though, Mingqing and Taigang both nodded to show their familiarity with the lords as Songmei put in the order. Seeing that everybody but Youhong knew, Songmei shrugged, making a pushing hand motion towards Mingqing and Taigang. “You two want to explain? We should probably keep it brief, there’s no need for an immensely in depth explanation right now, lunch will arrive soon after all.”
“Alright, then I'll just start with what I know.” Youhong tapped his chin, “I know that there’s 7 of them, three in Northside, four in Southside. Also though, I have no idea what the north and south are called... I’ve heard them called the north and south districts a lot, but I also see a lot of people saying it's northside, southside.”
“Honestly, I think it’s one of those where both work, they’re synonymous anyway.” Taigang shrugged, “I do believe you’re right though? Since each side has been portioned off into several districts, it probably wouldn’t make sense to have districts inside of districts.”
“Probably...” Youhong trailed off before popping another lychee jelly into his mouth and motioning towards Songmei, Mingqing, and Taigang. “Continue explaining though, I don’t know much else.”
“Well, they’re named after the seven sins against the heavens,” Mingqing started off, leaning back in her own chair and sliding down a little and staring off at some invisible bug on the ceiling. “Pride, envy, gluttony, lust, sloth... and...”
“Wrath and avarice, I believe,” Taigang added, getting a “thank you, yeah” from Mingqing, “their titles don’t mean too much. It’s a pretty common fact that they’re just all vaguely related to what they do.”
“As in...?” Youhong asked, motioning for them to continue, “Brain needs more to understand, dulled by all the lychee jelly.”
“Like, the district that gluttony is the underworld boss of has a lot of food districts in them.” Songmei gave an example, “I think that the envy district is right next to it, having a lot of retail stores and shopping malls. Lust has a few brothels and avarice is the financial district. I’m not really sure about wrath and sloth though.”
“Sloth, I believe, is just because there are a lot of parks in the area, along with being proportionally much more resident-filled than the other districts. Wrath, on the other hand, is where a lot of the judicial stuff is, the courts... well, court, a prison, reformation center. The police headquarters is also there.” Taigang detailed, listing a detailed list of reasons off the top of his head.
Getting three sets of stares from the other people at the table, Taigang raised his hands in surrender. “Don’t judge me, I just did my studying. As in... I read a lot of online wikis one afternoon while I was bored.”
“I do that too. Just on more interesting and more important things,” Youhong fluttered his hand, popping another lychee jelly into his mouth, “Things like, lychee jelly reviews, history of lychee jelly, lychee jelly production lines, lychee jelly manufacturing arms races, that type of stuff.”
Clearing his throat as Songmei, Mingqing, and Taigang all began to adopt looks that seemed to scream “addict,” Youhong got back on topic. “By the sounds of it though, that definitely is not all the things that have to do with this massive city. Where’s everything else? Literally all on the floating island that’s the central district?”
“Nah, all of the names are pretty loosely named. Every district has a little bit of everything. It’s just done in proportions.” Mingqing reassured, reaching over once more to drink some more of Songmei’s tea—to Songmei’s mock horror.
“Ahh, I see. That makes sense, I don’t know why that didn’t occur to me,” Youhong muttered, shaking his head, disappointed in himself, “I’ve definitely gone to eat in every single district already, so why would it only be in gluttony?”
“Anything else you want to know?” Songmei asked, propping her chin up with her hands, elbows on the table and all. “There’s not much to say about them, but there are some things that we could share, I guess?
“I’ll take it all, it’s useful knowledge to have. Might as well learn it well now that I’m deciding to actually learn about them.” Youhong waved, motioning for the three of them to continue with a wry smile. “Maybe then, with this knowledge, I’ll be able to secure even more lychee jelly for myself. So tell me about them, what do they look like?”
Of course it went back to lychee jelly, Songmei should’ve expected that. Trying to pull up some pictures on her terminal, Songmei was interrupted by a flurry of notifications saying that their food had been dropped off at the front desk.
“Oh...”
Throwing her terminal back onto her wrist in its watch form, Songmei pushed herself out of her seat, jogging over to the double doors that led out of the training room. “I have to go get the food, I’ll be back! In the meanwhile, just like... continue telling Youhong about how they’re all apparently really hot and have huge fan bases!”
“Do you want some help?” Mingqing called out, getting halfway out of her seat only to get waved off by Songmei saying that it was fine.
“I’ll be back in half a moment anyway!” Songmei reassured, disappearing through the closing doors, leaving only a few iridescent butterflies where she was standing.
