Chapter 1480 - 443: Chaos in the North and South Districts

Chapter 1480: Chapter 443: Chaos in the North and South Districts

Chapter 443: [The Chaos of the North and South Districts]

Watching Little Haid savor the mosquito cakes with great relish, Chen Yan couldn’t help baring his teeth.

Even with that built?in Dragon Country People "since I’m already here" BUFF, Chen Yan really couldn’t muster up any interest in trying this local delicacy.

While Little Haid was chattering away in the local Arabic, haggling with a vendor, Chen Yan casually took a fancy to an agate jewelry box displayed on a stall. It looked like a handmade piece with some years on it.

The thing was nice; he might as well buy it and bring it back. Chu Keqing would probably like this little gift. She seemed to really like purely handmade jewelry, not caring much about how expensive it was, but very picky about the design.

After one look, Chen Yan pointed at the box, then waved at Little Haid. The little guy immediately went up to the stall owner with great enthusiasm and started bargaining.

Taking advantage of Little Haid chatting away with the boss, Chen Yan stood by the roadside and looked over this street.

This street wasn’t very far from the place where he’d been targeted and set up for a robbery by the local thugs yesterday, probably only about a kilometer away.

Looking around today, the street still seemed the same as yesterday—bustling and crowded, but also filthy and rundown.

There was a lot of casually discarded trash on the ground, and the air was filled with the acrid smell of vehicle exhaust.

At the same time, Chen Yan keenly picked up on some subtle differences.

There seemed to be some special people on the street.

These people weren’t tourists, but dressed like locals. Yet they didn’t look like they were out shopping either. They stood at the head or end of the street, or in spots with the best view, their eyes sweeping around, as if monitoring the entire street, searching for something in the crowd.

Ever since he came to the South District this morning, walking street after street, it seemed like each one had three or four such people.

There were both men and women, though of course mostly men. Their common traits were local clothing and eyes full of vigilance, spirits on high alert.

There were also some young, fierce-looking guys, with obvious bulges under their clothes, clearly packing some kind of hardware.

Chen Yan thought for a moment and guessed a few things in his heart.

However, the whole morning passed and he hadn’t drawn any attention from these people.

Because... before leaving the hotel this morning, Chen Yan had already made some changes to his appearance.

His build and body shape stayed the same, but his nose bridge was a bit higher and his eye sockets a bit deeper. His skin had also turned into the same tone as an ordinary white man’s. His hair changed from pitch black to short brown hair with a slight wave.

Ever since Chen Yan reached the Celestial Human Realm, he was no longer restricted by the Heavenly Dao, and those Domain Realm Spells could all be used normally again.

The only minor hiccup was that when Chen Yan used the Transformation Technique right there in the hotel room, changing his look from a standard yellow?skinned Asian to that of a white man, he scared Little Haid so badly the kid dropped straight onto his butt.

Little Haid babbled a whole bunch of words at him, and seeing how he was almost about to kneel and kowtow to him, Chen Yan more or less understood that the kid had taken him for a god?

Or for a demon?

But it was all the same. For someone like Little Haid, who had lived on the edge since childhood, god or demon didn’t seem to make much difference.

Who knows—what a god can’t give you, a demon just might.

·

A few minutes later, Little Haid bought that handmade jewelry box for twenty US Dollars—the stall owner’s original asking price had been the equivalent of three hundred US Dollars.

Watching Little Haid pay, Chen Yan couldn’t help letting out a sigh.

Maybe he really didn’t have any talent for bargaining.

Then he led Haid onto another street and, at the same shop as yesterday, bought a bottle of that locally produced dairy drink, sipping contentedly through the straw.

Just then, some kind of commotion suddenly broke out on the street.

The pedestrians wandering around as usual seemed to be startled by something and started flocking quickly toward the other end of the street, more and more people gathering in that direction.

In the air, there came a faint series of muffled "bang, bang" sounds.

It sounded like thunder, but not quite.

Chen Yan, however, understood it clearly—it was explosions going off far away, the sound waves carried over.

Chen Yan patted Little Haid and told him to follow. The two of them moved with the crowd toward the end of the street.

At a relatively open, wide crossroads, a large number of pedestrians had already surged into the middle of the street, completely blocking the road.

But at this point no driver cared; the passing vehicles had all stopped. The drivers jumped out and, just like the people on the street, craned their necks to look north.

The town of Gusanka had no high?rise buildings at all. The tallest building in the entire city was the City Government in the north (formerly the Governor’s Mansion from the colonial era), which was only about five stories high.

As for the other buildings, the tallest were only three or four stories.

With no tall buildings blocking the view, the line of sight was especially wide.

Standing in the middle of the road looking north, they saw that in the city’s northern area, about a few kilometers away, a thick column of smoke was rising into the sky.

The smoke was black, with a faint orange firelight flickering below. After the black smoke billowed upward, a light breeze blew it apart, but the wind wasn’t strong enough; it only spread the smoke out without dispersing it completely, causing the blackened area to grow larger and larger.