When passing by a newsstand, the carriage stopped. Mu Anqi used the 100-denomination currency that Miss Bluebird had given her to buy today's newspaper of Upside-Down City and a collection of records of all the missing residents. The newspaper cost only 2, while the collection cost 50. Mu Anqi received four 10-denomination bills, one 5-denomination bill, and three 1-denomination bills.
After putting all these bills into her storage ring, Mu Anqi returned to the carriage and briefly looked through the newspaper of Upside-Down City while it was moving. The newspaper was very similar to the ones Mu Anqi had read in her previous life, with sections on social affairs, sports activities, entertainment and leisure, and missing persons. The social affairs section recorded quite a few conflicts and disputes between residents, all of which were ultimately handled by the police in Upside-Down City. The sports activities section introduced several popular representative anthropomorphized animals in the city, such as the rugby-playing chimpanzee general, the sprinter cheetah, and the acrobatic soaring falcon. It also listed several sports competitions that would be held in the upcoming month, inviting interested residents to purchase tickets to watch at the sports venues during the events.
Mu Anqi flipped to the entertainment and lifestyle section and was immediately stunned by the headline: "Seeing my mother-in-law sleeping with my husband, I got so angry that…"
What the heck, is this really the entertainment and lifestyle section!? Mu Anqi looked closely and realized this was actually the romance novel subsection. She quickly skipped past it, planning to check the missing persons section. After flipping two pages, a familiar animal caught her eye. Mu Anqi froze and flipped back a page.
The one in this newspaper… isn't it just Miss Bluebird from earlier?
Looking at the reports of high-society disputes and all kinds of speculation, Mu Anqi had guessed that Miss Bluebird might be relatively wealthy, but she hadn't expected her to be part of a wealthy family? In Upside-Down City, members of wealthy families actually go out without bodyguards and carry wallets with them? Mu Anqi carefully examined the blue-feathered bird in the newspaper, then thought it might just be a resemblance. After all… if it's only the feather color that's similar, she hadn't memorized any other features of Miss Bluebird, and she tended to think that all blue birds were the same one.
Missing…
The section was divided into two parts: day and night, corresponding to the time of disappearance.
Mu Anqi glanced at the sky. Daytime in Upside-Down City was very strange; the sun could not be seen, yet light still shone through. Moreover, the intensity of the light seemed not to change at all. From the moment she entered until now, the sky appeared unchanged. But to say it was completely still would be wrong—white clouds in the sky were indeed slowly moving.
Those who disappeared during the day included… office workers who left for work in the morning and never returned, flower shop employees who went out to purchase supplies but vanished and whose delivery trucks were only found in the wholesale area's trash heap, white-collar workers who went to the restroom and never came back, and fast-food employees who went out for a cigarette during lunch and completely disappeared…
Most of the night-time disappearances occurred while people were on their way home from work. Among them was even a night-time taxi driver, a cobra driver. Beyond the day and night sections, there was also a section for disappearances with uncertain times. After all, Upside-Down City also had residents living alone or freelancing. Their disappearances were completely silent, making it impossible not only to determine the exact time of disappearance but even the date.
After finishing here, Mu Anqi put the newspaper back into her storage ring. As for the collection of missing persons information, she would look at it later. She got off the carriage and looked at the oversized characters spelling "Experimental City."
The Experimental City was very large and completely surrounded by tall walls. There were several entrances, and inside, there were special vehicles for transportation, while the gates were guarded by special on-duty guards.
How had the residents of Upside-Down City managed not only to survive until now but also to develop reasonably well? At this rate of disappearances, plus deaths from natural causes or accidents, the population of Upside-Down City should be decreasing every day. She couldn't figure it out… Maybe it was like the origin of ghost stories in foreign lands? Every day, large numbers of humans touched the taboos of spirits and died, sometimes devastating entire cities, yet the overall population of the country somehow remained in a delicate balance.
While pondering this question, Mu Anqi approached a boar guard and showed him her temporary residence permit. "Hello, I'm an outsider, entrusted by Miss White to handle some matters. I wonder if I may enter Experimental City to take a look."
"Outsider." The boar guard glanced at her temporary residence permit. The residents here seemed very familiar with this document, and outsiders like Mu Anqi were also well-known, as if every so often someone came to the city to handle matters for the White/Black. "You may enter, but you cannot take anything related to the laboratory with you. If there is any additional loss inside the lab, I will come after you."
"…I know the rules." Mu Anqi didn't really want to agree—what if she was unlucky and something went wrong in the lab? But now that she was at the gate, she thought for a moment and replied in a different tone.
She passed smoothly.
The boar guard didn't make things difficult and let her through.
The laboratory area was very large, and the research focus of each separate building differed. Mu Anqi visited several buildings before realizing she really shouldn't have come to the lab.
Not to mention the experimental projects and data, she couldn't even understand the experimental instruments, and the records kept by the researchers were out of the question. The only takeaway seemed to be… there didn't appear to be any experiments conducted on the residents.
Mu Anqi carefully guided a researcher into a corner. While using blessings to compel the serious calico cat lady to perform various actions, she asked her about different aspects of Experimental City.
"Do you capture residents of Upside-Down City and force them to participate in experiments?" Mu Anqi asked.
"…Why do outsiders like you always like to bother us!" The calico cat lady looked completely exasperated. "We don't do experiments on living people. We have nothing to do with the missing cases. I don't know where those missing residents went or why they were affected by contamination. If I knew, Miss White and Mr. Black would have already made me a trusted aide—why would they still need outsiders like you!"
Mu Anqi felt a little amused watching the cat's fluffed-up tail, but she focused on the matter at hand. "Do outsiders come here only every so often? What exactly does your Experimental City research? Wishing you eternal youth."
"Thank you. Outsiders appear here at intervals. Some live in Upside-Down City for a week and stir up quite a lot of trouble; some disappear mysteriously," the calico cat lady said, thinking Mu Anqi's blessing was genuine. After expressing her thanks, she continued, "As for the laboratory, everyone researches all sorts of strange little gadgets. Miss White and Mr. Black propose the ideas, and we're responsible for turning them into reality."
"My current project is the 'portable candy house.' Under normal circumstances, it's just an ordinary-looking piece of candy. Once activated, it transforms into a candy house that can accommodate one person, and the interior must have appropriate furnishings. Of course, we haven't yet solved the enlargement and reduction technology, so there's still a long way to go before a finished product."
"I may look easy to fool, but I'm not an idiot," Mu Anqi couldn't help but say. "Even if the experiment is confidential, you can't just mess with me like this, right?"
"…My pocket… there's a spray in my pocket, take it out," the calico cat lady said, struggling through push-ups. She felt this was equivalent to her entire year's exercise—she had never worked out like this before!
Mu Anqi hid a paper substitute in her palm and used her other hand to reach into the calico cat lady's lab coat for the spray bottle. The bottle was transparent and looked extremely cheap. Mu Anqi held it, examined it, and didn't notice anything unusual.
"Th-this… this is my previous… research result. To satisfy Miss White's… wish to see a rainbow anytime, anywhere inside the house… just press the spray bottle wherever… but… but… raise it a bit higher…" The calico cat lady seemed on the verge of passing out from doing push-ups.
Mu Anqi felt a little uneasy. "What if this thing is a bomb?"
"…You can come a little closer to me." The calico cat lady really seemed about to collapse. "How many push-ups do I have to do?!"
"Uh, I don't know, maybe fifty?" Mu Anqi moved closer to the calico cat lady just in case. She spoke another blessing to her for safety, then pressed the spray bottle against the wall.
Mist spread out.
As the mist gradually settled and dispersed, a rainbow appeared where the mist hung. However, the rainbow was extremely short-lived, disappearing after about three or four seconds.
…It actually worked.
"Don't be nervous. Since this place isn't like the laboratory I imagined, forget it. Do you know what's going on with the contamination?" Mu Anqi asked. "How can I enter the polluted world?"
"…I don't know. If I knew, I would probably have disappeared too."
This answer… somehow made a strange kind of sense.
Mu Anqi sighed and left the laboratory with a hint of disappointment. She turned to another lab, grabbed a researcher, and asked the same questions. The answers she received were similarly vague.
So this laboratory really was safe and harmless?
This was… never mind. Mu Anqi left Experimental City and walked along the streets of Upside-Down City, her heart filled with confusion and helplessness. Where were the contaminated residents? Could there still be some secret research facility in Upside-Down City? If only Wu Sansheng were here—Mu Anqi didn't want to think at all.
She looked up at the sky, which was as bright as ever. Beneath her feet was a mirrored road, and walking on it felt as if she were walking in the sky…
A mirror.
A mirror? Mirrors seemed to have a different significance in Upside-Down City—whether it was passing through the mirrored gates to enter another world, the "defective products" that emerged from broken mirrors, or finally Miss White appearing from the mirror…
Mu Anqi crouched down and placed her hand on the ground. She made contact with the reflection of herself in the mirror, and the mirrored version of her looked back seriously.