Chapter 219: What Is This Place?

There are rules for starting a killing vendetta; you can't just randomly find something and slaughter indiscriminately. In Bai Lang's experience, you have to kill people who have a name, a surname, and a status in the world's simulation. Those famous ministers, great generals, kings and emperors are the most suitable targets, such as the Qianlong of the previous world or the gang leader, for example. As for this world, who are those important figures? That is the question.

Bai Lang stood outside the city, watching it; it was bustling, with pedestrians and carriages coming and going on the roads. "We're already more than ten li from the city gate and it's still like this… Looks like I still need to gather some information first."

He sat at a roadside tea stall, fished out a handful of copper coins for change, ordered a pot of tea, and struck up conversation with the old man running the stall. "Old man, by the way, what year is it this year…?" After a few perfunctory exchanges, Bai Lang sensed something was off. "Why is there no precise year at all? In just these few minutes, not only the stall owner but also the passing tea‑drinkers have mentioned five or six era names. The crucial point is I remember they each said different era names, yet I didn't catch any of them!"

It wasn't just the era names; the city in front of him was called several different names by them, and none of the people seemed to find it strange. Bai Lang only listened, speaking occasionally, "Aside from these things, everything else is normal." He gulped down the tea in his bowl, stood up, and prepared to leave.

This world has high officials like Admiral Li and top dignitaries such as Empress Dowager Xi, yet the emperor, according to their descriptions, seems to be a Han‑Tang‑style ruler. In short, it's a mishmash—essentially, in Bai Lang's view, it's a collection of foolish fan‑fiction and foolish foreigners' notion of mainland China. The place speaks Mandarin and writes Chinese without doubt—it's definitely China—but some people's names are oddly constructed, as if a few impressive‑looking characters were just strung together into two or three‑character names.

There's no doubt this is the style of foolish Japanese…

The problem is that Bai Lang has never heard of any Japanese existing in Great Yan—there are indeed countries across the East Sea, but they seem to speak Mandarin rather than any Japanese. He saw this in a travelogue he obtained at the Weiwei Office, and occasionally heard Ma Rulong mention it in idle chat. Speaking of his few teammates, Bai Lang thought he could guess why they never showed up: "They probably didn't die; perhaps that Adventure Hall didn't want to send them to die in disgrace—if they haven't entered the Innate stage, they're unlikely to withstand this distortion."

It's said that the Adventure Hall, whether a thousand or ten thousand times, is a pyramid scheme, not one that simply throws gathered workers to die for nothing—and such deaths yield almost no reward; you enter and you die. Bai Lang thought that if they hadn't stepped into the Innate stage, entering might not kill them but would certainly warp them—but on closer thought, there's hardly anything worse than being constantly conscripted by the Adventure Hall.

Bai Lang still couldn't think of a way to break the stalemate. "Who to kill? Admiral Li or Empress Dowager Xi? Where to kill them? This place looks like Guangzhou, then Chengdu, maybe Shanghai… Though wherever I look, it damn well doesn't look like any of them!" He shook his head and prepared to enter the city again—out in the wild there's no way to break the stalemate. This time Bai Lang's cultivation surged, a light breeze swirling around his body, and in his mind the armored white tiger widened its eyes, on high alert.

Bai Lang's Innate steel qi firmly kept the "abnormality" outside his body, while his true qi circulated endlessly within—only an Innate Expert can do that; a non‑Innate cultivator's combat power could not be guaranteed. This time Bai Lang observed the city more closely, "Overall it's normal… except for people's identities shifting." Then he saw the abnormal thing.

It was a steam car; the black‑painted boiler and the white‑smoking chimney made it obvious. The four‑wheeled vehicle's front exposed the entire boiler system, with many pipes—though it looked dirty, it was extremely precise upon closer inspection. On the rear seat sat three foreigners, one of whom steered the car with a wheel on the street. Bai Lang wasn't surprised; he wasn't an unsophisticated country bumpkin—nor did the others present seem surprised.

"A small steam engine, but where's the coal? Is it running on heavy oil?" Bai Lang had no love for steam engines, nor for steampunk, so he merely glanced and ignored it. Yet the next moment a squad of Iron Men marched up, astonishing him—people wrapped in tin cans, and behind them a power machine with two chimneys; they wielded large axe spears and, slung on their waists, what looked like a huge‑caliber blaster.

Overall it resembled a toilet; the thing clanged as it came forward, with pistons roaring behind it. "Steam Toilet?" Bai Lang found it amusing. "Martial arts, steam machinery… glowing dishes and roaming 'exotic beasts', why does it feel so odd to mash these together?" Mostly the art style didn't match. As for martial arts, Bai Lang could now wield his full power; he didn't think these Steam Toilets could withstand an attack from a master like him.

If that's the case, developing these things seems of little use. Power belongs to the self; with such martial arts, what else is needed? Unless steam machinery has its own "specialty." On that point, Bai Lang thought he might give it a try. "Steam, martial arts—could there be talismanic spells and magical incantations? I think so; this mixed‑style art would be strange without me."

The steam machinery moved forward with Bai Lang, opposite the steam car and the steam‑toilet‑like guards, and he saw more and more. A street lamp that hadn't appeared before showed up on the roadside—"gas lamp." He stood beneath it, examined it for a while, and recognized it. By then the sky had grown dim, and a robed figure carrying a long pole topped with fire came over and lit the lamp.

The symbols of the steam age are the machines seen earlier and the street lamps now, perhaps also the sharply different buildings lining the roads. Yet the pedestrians remain the same mix of Chinese and foreign folk—cow‑tail braids and hair buns side by side, Confucian robes and Western dresses alike—making it impossible to tell what era this is.

Bai Lang kept walking deeper; the houses gradually turned into garden villas, and the streets grew more desolate—speaking of the roads, Bai Lang suddenly realized that ever since he entered the city, every road had sidewalks, curbs and even sewers, which he had taken for granted and never noticed. "No factories in sight," he muttered, preparing to turn away, when he heard some strange sounds that made him look up at a three‑story western building by the road.