It was only before going to sleep that Wang Luan reacted, realizing that she probably shouldn’t have asked Yan Qiongyu that question.
He likely hadn’t seen Snowfield Star either. As an Omega, Yan Qiongyu was even less free than the original Wang Luan.
Searching through the original body’s memories, Omegas who hadn’t come of age and didn’t have an engagement seemed unable to even leave the school gates freely. In Wang Luan’s view, Omega-exclusive schools were more like detention facilities than places of learning.
ততততততততততত
The Sky Garden travel flight ship stood quietly at the spacious docking area of the Wang family estate. It had been delivered late last night. Early this morning, when Wang Luan arrived beneath the ship together with Yan Qiongyu to prepare for boarding, she was stunned for a moment by how unimaginably massive the ship was.
When she bought it yesterday, she hadn’t looked too closely, nor had she chosen the immersive experience preview of the ship’s scenery. At Yan Qiongyu’s suggestion, she had only checked the price before clicking purchase. Now that she saw it, it truly was worth every bit of its cost. This enormous, beautiful flight ship was worthy of its high price.
The flight ship was manufactured in the shape of a diamond. The very top level was the origin of its name: Sky Garden.
Beneath a translucent, crystal-like enclosure lay a lush garden forest. And the lower portion of the “diamond” housed areas such as the main control room and resting quarters.
When the flight ship was activated, the gleaming, diamond-textured outer walls slowly became invisible, allowing one to see the distant blue sky and white clouds through the hull. Only the top-level garden remained, as if truly suspended in midair.
The steward didn’t personally come to oversee them, only dispatching one male and one female personal steward, dozens of servants, and several hundred bodyguards to accompany the two of them onto the flight ship.
The ship’s maintenance personnel had already been replaced with people from the Wang family, but because time was a bit tight, the Wang family hadn’t yet carried out internal modifications to the ship.
Wang Luan suppressed that feeling of Liu Laolao entering the Grand View Garden, maintaining her usual silent and indifferent demeanor. But the faintly gleaming eyes she couldn’t quite restrain still made it obvious that she was interested in this flight ship.
Yan Qiongyu boarded the ship with her and had long since noticed her expression, secretly finding it amusing.
A dignified young lady of the Wang family, so delighted just by seeing a flight ship—how thoroughly the Wang family had ignored her in the past.
In fact, the original Wang Luan had ridden a flight ship before. That was back when her mother hadn’t yet passed away, and before she had been deemed a “waste” and abandoned by the Wang family head. She had once traveled beyond the star systems by flight ship.
Unfortunately, that had all been when she was very young. The memories were vague, and what was left to the present Wang Luan were only one or two small fragments of playing aboard a flight ship.
For the current Wang Luan, this was truly her first time personally experiencing such technology, which could be called fantastical.
Inside the flight ship was an entire built environment, nestled among mountains and water. It looked no different from the outside world, like a miniature boxed universe.
Not far away was a floating staircase that looked thrilling and dangerous, stretching straight into the sky. That was the “Sky Ladder” leading to the top-level Sky Garden.
Everything inside the flight ship showed no sign of artificiality to the naked eye—the realism was maxed out.
She was still studying the stretch of white clouds at the junction between the Sky Ladder and the top-level garden when Yan Qiongyu suddenly spoke softly beside her, “Do you want to go see the flight ship’s main control room?”
Wang Luan: Is that even a question? Of course she wanted to see it.
“Let’s go,” she said.
The main control room of the flight ship was beneath the ground-level buildings. From the central plaza of the complex, one could directly take a transporter similar to an elevator to enter it.
The Wang family servants they’d brought went off to organize the luggage and prepare the rooms they would soon be staying in. The large group of bodyguards moved to their respective posts. The only ones left following closely behind Wang Luan were a single personal steward and four bodyguards.
The group arrived at the main control room. The flight ship’s structure was complex, and the control room was larger than that of ordinary flight ships, divided into several areas, each with its own dedicated person in charge.
Seeing Wang Luan observing the control screens, the person in charge assumed that this young lady was merely acting on a moment of curiosity, not believing that she could actually understand anything.
Mechas and flight ships were two completely different systems. Alpha-exclusive mechas could be independently manufactured by an Alpha and required a mental-power link to operate. But a behemoth like a flight ship was jointly manufactured by tens of thousands of Betas and didn’t require mental power to pilot.
“Miss Wang Luan, come take a look at this.” Yan Qiongyu had, at some point, left her side and stopped in front of a control area.
Wang Luan came back to herself at the sound and walked over, seeing that it was a control area for real-scene simulation. In this area, one could control the scenery inside the flight ship, adjusting the appearance of buildings, mountains, and waterscapes.
“Let’s try changing the outside scenery to something else, shall we?” Yan Qiongyu looked full of enthusiasm.
Seeing his “innocent and carefree” look, Wang Luan fell silent, thinking to herself what he was planning to pull this time.
Wang Luan was undoubtedly a qualified teammate. No matter what she was thinking inside, she would never undermine a teammate in public. So she reached out and directly opened up this control panel.
The operator responsible for this control panel hesitated, wanting to speak but stopping himself. There was no way to stop what these nobles wanted to do, but if they accidentally broke the flight ship, the ones who would end up scrambling to fix it would still be staff like them.
A colleague in charge of a neighboring work area shot him a look that said, “Shut up, step back, and let this young lady do as she pleases.” At the end of the day, this was her property. If she broke it, she wouldn’t feel any pain over it herself. They were just paid workers—why bother caring so much?
Fortunately, this control area wasn’t that important anyway. At worst, if it broke, the outside scenery just wouldn’t look as nice. It wouldn’t affect the flight ship’s normal operation, so they left it alone.
When Wang Luan got her hands on the console, at first she really was just trying some simple operations, changing the external environment a bit. Gradually, after the control area supervisor and the steward behind them stopped paying attention, Yan Qiongyu swiftly opened a window under her hands, revealing a data port, and inserted some kind of chip.
Wang Luan was startled by his brazen movement, but saw him casually withdraw his hand and say, “It’s not that fun anyway. I’m a bit tired, shall we go up and rest?”
You really do your thing and then retreat immediately.
Wang Luan was a little worried that his little move would be discovered later by the on-duty staff. She shot him a look: Is it really fine to just leave like this? Did you clean up properly?
Yan Qiongyu flicked his fingers. Taking advantage of the fact that no one else understood what he meant, he drew a checkmark in front of her eyes, indicating there was no problem.
Leaving the main control room and returning to the ground-level buildings, the scene here was no longer the original green mountains and clear waters. It had just been set by Wang Luan to a vast grassland. Meadows full of wildflowers stretched from the doorway all the way into the distance, and on the distant hillside there was even a flock of white sheep.
Sheep… were those sheep real? Wang Luan thought.
Seeing her staring at the flock of sheep for a long time, a personal steward waiting by the doorway thoughtfully suggested, “If Miss Luan would like to try some lamb, we can have someone slaughter one and send it to the kitchen. It can be eaten right away.”
Wang Luan: “…No.”
She directly took Yan Qiongyu into the room and requested to be alone with him. Once everyone else had left, Wang Luan immediately asked him, “What was that?”
Yan Qiongyu of course knew what she was asking about and said, “A hidden chip. It can monitor the flight ship’s status.” When necessary, it could also temporarily control the flight ship and cut off its external information transmission.
“Luckily this is a newly purchased flight ship, and the Wang family didn’t have time to do their own modifications yet. Otherwise, it wouldn’t have been so easy to implant this kind of chip.” Yan Qiongyu sat down. “Don’t worry, it won’t be discovered. After all, this is your flight ship. I’m just adding an extra layer of insurance.”
Wang Luan was half-convinced by his explanation, but too lazy to dig deeper with him, ending the topic with a single “oh.”
Yan Qiongyu: As expected, she didn’t pursue it to the end again.
He stood up and poured Wang Luan a cup of tea, asking gently, “The flight ship is about to arrive at Transfer G Star and will stop there for thirty minutes. Does Miss Wang Luan want to rest here, or go up to the Sky Garden to take a look?”
Wang Luan chose to go to the Sky Garden. Since they were out to have fun, of course she wanted to see the scenery. It was rare to be able to get out for some air—never mind whatever tricks her teammate wanted to pull.
Taking the sightseeing Sky Ladder up to the Sky Garden, Wang Luan was stunned the moment she lifted her head. Standing amid lush, vivid blossoms, above her was an endless starry sky. The stars wrapped around them and the garden together.
“Come on, it’s even better up ahead.” Because she had suddenly stopped, Yan Qiongyu, who had already walked ahead of her, turned back and said to her, “Transfer G Star isn’t as prosperous as the Imperial Capital Star, but viewing the cosmic starry sky here is extremely beautiful.”
He wore a shirt, vest, and long trousers, like an elegant, noble little prince. Walking through flowerbeds beneath the stars, the scene was overwhelmingly romantic, making Wang Luan think of the Little Prince and his rose.
The personal stewards hadn’t followed them up. In this vast garden, there were only the two of them. All kinds of flowers bloomed fiercely ahead, seeming to have no end, shifting like a kaleidoscope as they walked.
Wang Luan walked forward in silence. Looking at the figure ahead of her, she saw that he, too, was lifting his head to gaze at the sea of stars.
“The starry sky truly has an eternal charm that makes people look up… I should also thank Miss Wang Luan. During this period of time, you’ve treated me with such tolerance, allowing me to see scenery like this now.”
Wang Luan couldn’t see his expression, nor did she know whether the words of thanks he spoke came from the heart or were deliberate coaxing. But she knew that when Yan Qiongyu gazed up at this sea of stars, he must have been thinking, “Freedom is like these stars, as if within reach.”
Because she was thinking the same thing.
The two of them stopped in a slightly lower patch of flower bushes. The view here was more open, allowing them to see a wider expanse of the starry sky.
Wang Luan recalled a gift she had received as a child—a music box crystal ball. Inside the glass sphere was a small house. As long as you turned it upside down, the white granules inside would float around in the crystal ball, as if a snowfall were happening inside.
She felt that she now seemed to be standing inside a garden crystal ball, gazing up at the world outside the crystal sphere.
Her thoughts drifted for a moment, and then she became puzzled as to why Yan Qiongyu had suddenly stopped and was standing there without moving.
Yan Qiongyu checked the time, estimated that it was about right, and then reminded her, “Look up.”
Wang Luan subconsciously lifted her head and looked for a while, but didn’t see anything. She thought to herself, this guy is at it again. Just as she was about to shoot Yan Qiongyu a look of reproach, a streak of starlight suddenly swept across her vision.
It was a meteor streaking past at high speed.
Starting from this meteor, with the sea of stars as the backdrop, countless stars flew past before their eyes, leaving her dazzled.
After a brief few minutes, the meteor shower ended, and Wang Luan still couldn’t come back to herself for a long time.
Only the word “dreamlike” could describe everything she had just seen.
“The Xianma meteor shower—it was announced a week ago,” Yan Qiongyu sighed. “Watching it from a transfer star really is more beautiful than watching it from Imperial Capital Star.”
He turned his head to look at Wang Luan, starlight still lingering in his eyes. “Do you like it?”
Wang Luan: “………………”
Wang Luan’s feelings were hard to put into words. Simply put, it was like seeing a high school student’s self-proclaimed handsome romantic scene—but she wasn’t sixteen.
“Don’t say it as if you deliberately brought me to see the meteors,” Wang Luan remained unmoved.
Yan Qiongyu: “…I originally wanted to say that, but before saying it out loud, I guessed your reaction might not match my expectations, so I didn’t say it.” Sure enough, it wasn’t the same as what he had expected.
“Why does my appearance never get the reaction it deserves with you?” The beautiful youth like Narcissus sighed. “It seems looks aren’t an all-powerful weapon either.”
Wang Luan folded her arms and gazed deeply at the flickering stars. “You haven’t entered society yet. You’re too naive. In this society, there are all kinds of people—there will always be people you can’t understand.”
Yan Qiongyu, who had been putting on a sigh, was choked by her world-weary words. Hadn’t entered society yet… what kind of expression was that?
