She didn't harbor any hatred for the rich. Even if this world hadn't achieved some mythical communism, private ownership was unavoidable. Since she couldn't change its very existence, she could only adapt to it. She simply hid in the shadows of her hood and spied on them. The more flamboyantly dressed these people were, the less likely they were to have used gene stabilizers. She didn't know why they thought mutations wouldn't happen to them.

But Jiang Ling didn't need to worry about them. They would take care of themselves, just as she was trying to take care of herself now. Understanding the world was always a gradual process, and usually only accidents could drastically change the future.

She turned her head, placed her eyes close to the train window, and peered through the glass into the tunnel outside. She had never been so far from home alone, and every second felt like an unknown. The tunnel outside gradually widened, from the single lane she had seen at the station to a double lane, sometimes revealing even more tracks, tracks that stretched as far as the eye could see, and where they led. The tunnel was much darker than at the station, perhaps because the train was moving slower. She always had to count for several seconds before she could see a single dim yellow light. Because of this, she hadn't seen a single person walking in the tunnel since she started. She had always imagined the tunnels to be bustling, even the sidewalks beside the tracks were packed with people, but in reality, many, or even most, tunnels were deserted, filled with only fast-moving maintenance robots. She suddenly realized that looking into the tunnel like this was impossible to see anything else. The brightness inside the train was so different from that outside that looking into a dark area from a brightly lit area would reveal only pitch blackness, and vice versa. Only when you delve deeper into them did they reveal their true nature.

It was her first time riding the subway in this world, and this novel experience kept her excited for a while. Therefore, she was clearly different from the quiet people standing or sitting. Those who hadn't dozed off were secretly observing her. Everyone was a scene, and everyone would become a scene.

The subway felt different. Unlike the bustling stations, the atmosphere here was purer. It was strange. Jiang Ling could even sense the tension of some of the people around her. She hadn't been able to sense other people's emotions so clearly before. Perhaps the excessive noise had hindered her ability to use it.

She tried to understand why, so she glanced around. Those nervous people were staring intently at the train car. She finally understood why they had stopped arguing. With no other support except the train, they instinctively remained silent. After all, beyond the thin train car, lay the suffocating darkness. That metal sheet, less than two millimeters thick, was the only support for the sardines inside.

Hard to imagine? Yet, human creations have always been like this. Those early explorers of the Age of Exploration relied on floating sampans, and astronauts of the pre-cosmic era relied on the thin metal hulls of their spacecraft. This seemingly gigantic train is actually just a moving can of sardines.

The price of rational thinking is the extreme pursuit of cost-effectiveness. If one day in the future, people are no longer afraid of darkness and wind resistance, will they remove this last piece of iron sheet?

Jiang Ling imagined the feeling of being on a super open-top train, then began to feel terrified. She believed that although she was not an absolutely rational person, at least she was not a true monster. She did not pursue humanity because she still had humanity; she pursued rationality because she was not yet completely rational.

Jiang Ling sat motionless on the train the entire time, yet she felt as exhausted as if she'd just finished a triathlon. She now somewhat envied those who could stand with their eyes closed, holding onto the pull tabs, even if they didn't seem accustomed to battling the unknown and fear, but rather numb.

After the excitement wore off, Jiang Ling felt nothing. Except for her body swaying back and forth, like everyone else in the train, with the train's inertia, she felt nothing. She could endure the constant thrills, but she couldn't stand this silence without any stimulation. In the past, she might have chosen to sleep in, even past the destination, but now her physical strength was too good. Once she closed her eyes, she had to control her thirst for new knowledge.

Jiang Ling opened and closed her eyes. To others, it looked as if she was dazzled by the lights in the train car, but she was the only one who knew what she was feeling. Perhaps it was an illusion, but after a while, she seemed to be able to sense something else.

No, it's not an illusion.

The train began to slow down, and her body naturally tilted to one side. Then she felt the change, and her waist muscles began to exert force, trying to resist the inertia.

"Dear passengers, please note that this train, No. XXXX, will only stop at the small station No. XXX for fifteen minutes..."

The train gradually came to a stop, and Jiang Ling finally got a glimpse out the window. It was a small station, similar in appearance to the one back home, and seemingly a newly built one. Small stations don't have their own reactors; all their energy comes from the nearby medium-sized station, so the lights aren't as glaring as at the medium-sized station. She quickly adjusted to the brightness outside. She saw some people leaving the train car, some newer, and some people dragging suitcases outside.

Jiang Ling's destination wasn't here, so she had no intention of moving. She had simply performed a "security check" on the newcomers, and there weren't any surprises. A small station wouldn't have many unusual individuals. She had scanned several enhanced humans, and they appeared to be traveling in groups.

About ten minutes later, a woman in a conductor's uniform walked out of the carriage door. People along the way took out their terminals or passes from their pockets, probably to have their tickets checked.

"The points are reduced by two!" Jiang Ling silently dubbed the machine in his mind. Of course, there was only a "beep" at the end.

After adjusting to the initial novelty, she suddenly felt a bit bored. It wasn't until now that she noticed that these passengers were more or less armed. The two people sitting across from her looked like they were together. They were sitting cross-legged, holding a gun in their hands, constantly cleaning it, over and over again, without getting tired of it.

Jiang Ling didn't recognize the gun they were holding; it wasn't any of the models she remembered. It looked like some kind of rifle, but the entire gun looked like it had been printed out, giving it a DIY aesthetic.

Since the provisional government relaxed weapons controls, she had not observed the weapons used by the people of this world so closely. Before this, she had only occasionally caught a glimpse of the special weapons carried by the "Humanoid Gundams".

She wasn't too optimistic about the weapons these people had, but those were people's own choices after all, and she wasn't entirely sure of their reliability before actually using them. After all, plastic weapons had appeared before, and this world's materials science must have more powerful figures. Perhaps these cheaply printed items could also be quite powerful?