"The newspaper date is... This is the newspaper from the first month of this year. The destination is correct. This is the Green Lake area. It is most likely not the Mikaela Blast Furnace City, but the Green Lake City."
Without leaving in a hurry, Shade narrowed his eyes slightly and used the magic of blood echo to look around, and then he saw very fresh bloodstains. Following the bloodstains, he found a place separated by red bricks and stones for pigs, sheep and chickens:
"It's not a pub. Even if a pub sells food, it wouldn't have such a complete set of food. It looks like a storage room of a restaurant or inn, and it's quite large. The ingredients and drinks aren't very high-end. It's not an aristocratic club or a high-end restaurant that requires reservations. But it's very clean, and the ingredients are well sorted, which shows that the business here is doing well."
He summed it up in his mind, used the Red Butterfly Illusion to disguise himself, and then walked towards the exit of the underground storage room. The basement was connected to the upper part by stone steps, but the door connecting to the upper part was not a vertical door like the one in the basement of the Shade family, but a trap door embedded in the ground.
Xia De pushed the door and found it was not locked, so he opened a gap. Looking out from the gap, he saw a storage room on the ground floor. Bacon and peppers were hung on the wall, plates and wine glasses were placed on the shelves, and a bag of soybeans and a mountain of potatoes were placed in the corner.
The room was not very big, had no windows, and the door was closed. So Shade came down to the ground through the trap door again, stuck to the door and listened to the sounds outside, confirming that the door was the kitchen of this restaurant or hotel.
"It does appear to be a hotel."
It is now around 9:30 in the morning. If it were a restaurant, the fire would not even have started by this time.
The chefs who were busy were all ordinary people, so Shade walked out of the storage room generously, and no one could find him. However, Shade did not enter the front of the hotel through the kitchen door, but left through the back door connecting the kitchen to the alley.
The kitchens of restaurants or hotels will have a back door for throwing away garbage, which is the same in every city.
"The door is actually inside the hotel this time. It's not convenient to move around anytime. The business here is pretty good, and I can't just buy the whole hotel outright."
Xia De thought to himself.
When we came to the narrow alley, we saw a row of low buildings. There was gray fog in the air, which mixed with the smell of rotting food residues, forming an extremely disgusting smell. The wanted posters and old newspapers posted on the wall had turned yellow, and the obscene graffiti by someone was covered by various dirt. The brass steam pipe was fixed to the ground by a keyhole. The entire pipe was located in the central axis of the alley. Not far from the back door of the hotel, the pipe buried in garbage was even leaking.
The water vapor mixed with the stench of decay made the environment even more unbearable.
Frightened by Shade's appearance, the stray dogs, like those with ringworms, fled in panic from the garbage dump outside the door. The barking of the dogs startled a large group of crows pecking at the ground in the alley, and the birds flew into the foggy gray sky, leaving behind waves of creepy cries.
Gloomy, dull, and dilapidated, this was Xia De's first impression of the city:
"Although I've heard that Green Lake City's development is not very good, but this is also possible... It's also possible that this is a slum."
The narrow alley even had a curved arc. On the left hand side, you could see the fork in the alley, and you didn't know where the end led to. Not far to the right hand side, the houses on both sides formed a corridor bridge. You could see the tower across the corridor bridge, and the street seemed to be in the distance.
"To the left is a labyrinth of city alleys, and to the right is the main street."
He summed up the current situation, but did not move immediately. Instead, he reached out and knocked on the lid of the metal trash can beside him.
There weren't many places on the lid that could be considered "clean". Xia De had to avoid the dried phlegm and animal feces before he dared to put his fingers on it:
"Is anyone home?"
He didn't get any response, so he opened the lid of the trash can himself. He looked inside and saw a boy wearing a gray short-sleeved shirt in the early spring weather, holding a spotted puppy in his arms, curled up in the trash can, looking timidly at Shade who was looking inside.
The bucket also had a strong odor, and he put a worn-out quilt and some newspapers under himself. Before the boy spoke timidly, it was the weak black and white spotted puppy that barked fiercely at Shade.
Shade ignored the dog and stared at the boy for a moment, waving at him as the boy became more and more frightened:
"Come out, I'll ask you some questions. I'll give you food."
He took a step back and took out a piece of bread and a few sugar cubes from a paper bag from his pocket. The reason why he didn't give money was that Shade didn't know whether the boy had a safe way to turn money into food.
It was not known whether it was because of Xia De's amazing friendliness or because the temptation of food was too great. The boy, whose limbs were as thin as matches, first threw the puppy out of the trash can, and then struggled to climb out himself.
However, he did not dare to approach Xia De. Instead, he picked up his companion, leaned against the trash can, and stared at the bag of bread in Xia De's hand.
"My mood suddenly became bad."
The stranger sighed softly and asked:
"First let's test whether you can speak - where is this place? City name, street name. What is your name and how old are you?"
The boy pursed his cracked lips and waited for five or six seconds before saying:
"This is Green Lake City. I can't read, but people say this is Rotten Bug Alley. This is behind the Green Lake Hotel, and the street outside is Owl Street. My name is John, and I'm thirteen years old."
But his height looks only that of a five or six-year-old, which is a symptom of severe malnutrition.
"Little John?"
Shade nodded, and then searched for the memory of the map of Green Lake City. While thinking, he took out a piece of white bread from the paper bag and threw it to the boy. The boy put down the puppy and caught the bread in a panic. He first tore off a small piece and threw it to the skinny puppy, and then he wolfed it down.
"Do you have any water? I have other questions, don't choke yourself."
Xia De continued, and the boy nodded quickly, crawled back to the trash can and found a wooden cup - it looked exactly the same as the ones in the hotel warehouse, then ran back a few dozen steps, bent down and pushed away the garbage on the ground, revealing an inconspicuous faucet and filled a glass of water.
Most of the external faucets in this alley have special uses. The boy occupied the trash can here largely because of this faucet.
After the boy finished eating the bread, Shade, who had been waiting patiently, continued to ask:
"Have you always lived here?"
"Yes."
It was still a very brief answer. Shad also understood that the other party lived on the garbage thrown away by the hotel, so he gave the boy another piece of bread.
"Green Lake Inn, how is business this spring?"
"It's pretty good, better business than in the winter. They've been throwing out more kitchen waste lately, and I found a fried fish that I only ate two bites of yesterday."
"Good. So, has anything strange happened around here lately? Like strange noises at night, or weird looking trash left out by the inn."
He had actually already asked everything he wanted to know, and he continued to ask questions only because he still had bread in his hand and naturally had to find an excuse to give the bread away.
The boy thought about it, shook his head, and looked at Shade with the new bread, wondering whether he should return the bread because he did not answer the question. Of course, Shade would not do that. He gave all the remaining white bread and sugar cubes in the bag to the boy.
Both the boy and the puppy looked a little scared. Shad didn't say much. He put the paper bag on the ground, waved his hand, and walked to the right side of the alley.
Not only in the alley, but after passing through the alley and arriving at Owl Street, the city was still shrouded in gray fog. But compared to the alley, at least the street finally showed the scene of a large border city.
All you can see are rows of low, two- or three-story old-style buildings, with large tiles on the roofs that look like some kind of ringworm in the thin sunlight. In the distance you can see a few tall buildings, the most eye-catching of which is the church tower. Further away, a solitary chimney spews black smoke into the sky, like an old man who is about to die, unwilling to give up and want to breathe a few more times.
Just looking at the street view, the development here is not as good as most cities that outsiders have visited in this world, and it is not even as good as the "Eternal Night City" on a rainy night.
"Here, it's like dying in this gray fog."
Owl Street is a street in the downtown area of Green Lake, where the library, city hall, chamber of commerce and important functional buildings are located. Going east, you will find the Duin River, which connects Green Lake and spans the Green Lake area from north to south. On the east bank of the Duin River is the Green Lake train station, followed by large slums.
And since the Green Lake Hotel is named after the city, it is naturally the largest hotel in the area.
Shade walked towards the main entrance of the hotel while looking at the street scene in the fog. From the outside, the Green Lake Hotel occupies a larger area than the "Three Cats Inn" in Tobesk and the "Plenty Land Inn" in Randall Valley, occupying about one-third of the area on the east side of the entire Owl Street. The hotel has three floors, with small lattice windows with curtains drawn. From the street, it looks crowded. After looking at it for a long time, it even feels a bit weird.
Considering that he would be here for many days in the future, Xia De entered the Green Lake Hotel through the main entrance and planned to rent a room as his mailing address.