The darkness inside the van lasted only a few seconds.
The moment Lin Yuanxi was pulled into the van by the girl and stepped inside, the darkness abruptly gave way to light—so bright that she instinctively squinted. When she opened her eyes again, she realized she wasn't standing inside a delivery van at all.
She was standing in a very, very long corridor.
Deep-brown wooden railings lined both sides of the corridor. Beyond them was completely open space—no walls, only wind. The breeze carried damp moisture and the faint fragrance of lotus flowers, mixed with a scent she couldn't identify, something like sandalwood but not quite. The beams overhead were carved with intricate patterns, vines and fish shapes twining together. At regular intervals, bronze lanterns hung from the ceiling. There were no flames inside them, yet they gave off a soft, almost liquid white light, as if moonlight had been poured directly into their covers.
Below the corridor—if she looked down right now—there was nothing.
Or rather, there was no visible bottom.
Lin Yuanxi gripped the railing and glanced down. All she could see was layer upon layer of clouds roiling beneath her feet. Now and then, a ray of light slipped through a gap in the clouds, but it didn't illuminate anything. It only made the emptiness seem deeper and farther away. Her heart clenched, and she instinctively took half a step back, bumping into someone's shoulder.
"Careful."
The voice was low, touched with amusement, but it wasn't Liu Zhiqing's.
Lin Yuanxi turned and saw a girl with twin buns hugging a huge stack of neatly folded rags. Wisps of hair clung to her forehead, plastered there by sweat, and her cheeks were flushed as if she'd just run a very long way.
"Are you new?" The girl looked her up and down, then her gaze fell on the bundle of willow branches in Lin Yuanxi's arms. Understanding dawned on her face. "No wonder. You're holding those willow branches way too tight. You'll snap them."
Only then did Lin Yuanxi realize that she really was clutching the branches with all her strength, her knuckles pale. She slowly loosened her grip. The leaves brushed against her arm, bringing a faint tickle, like something alive breathing against her skin.
"Is this..." Her voice was a little hoarse. "Is this inside the Floating City?"
"Of course. Where else did you think you stepped into?" The girl smiled and shifted the rags in her arms. "Come on, come on. Sister Zhiqing should already be up ahead assigning everyone their tasks. If you don't hurry, everyone will snatch up today's easy jobs."
"Sister Zhiqing?"
"Liu Zhiqing." The girl had already started walking, her voice drifting back. "The girl who brought you in. She's lived here the longest, and she knows the Floating City better than anyone. If there's anything you don't understand, you can ask her—but there are some things she won't tell you."
Lin Yuanxi followed, silently committing those three words—won't tell you—to memory.
The corridor stretched a long way ahead, turning several times along the way. Doors gradually began appearing on either side—not ordinary residential doors, but carved wooden ones, each with a small wooden plaque hanging above it. The writing was unlike anything she'd ever seen, resembling some ancient variant script with curves like rippling water. Some doors stood open, with faint voices and the sound of water drifting out from within. Others were tightly shut, weak light flickering beneath the cracks.
"Are these... rooms?"
"More or less." The girl answered casually. "Anyone who's lived here long enough gets a place of their own. New arrivals stay in shared quarters at first. You'll find out soon enough."
At the end of the corridor, the space suddenly opened up. Standing there, Lin Yuanxi got her first real look at the inside of the Floating City.
It wasn't the interior of an ordinary building, as she'd imagined.
Before her spread an entire, orderly garden suspended in midair. Wooden bridges, stone bridges, and vine-woven suspension bridges connected one section to another, forming a three-dimensional structure so complex it was almost a maze. Every courtyard contained a pond, and no two ponds looked alike. Some were filled with layers of lotus leaves, their pale pink and white buds only just poking above the surface. Others were carpeted with tiny white water lilies floating silently on deep green water. Another pond held dozens of little water lanterns, warm yellow light flickering inside them as they slowly turned with an invisible current.
Farther away lay an entire pond surrounded by bamboo. The rustle of bamboo leaves drifted on the breeze, and the water looked especially deep beneath their shadows. On the other side was a pond crossed by a stone bridge, its surface thick with moss. The water beneath it was so clear that she could see dark shapes darting past in a flash.
"This is..." Lin Yuanxi stared blankly at the scene, momentarily unable to describe it. "This is an entire... garden floating in the sky?"
"The Floating City," the girl said matter-of-factly. "Now do you finally understand why it's called that?"
Lin Yuanxi slowly swept her gaze across the landscape. Each pond was separated from the others by different plants and architectural styles, yet the bridges connected them all into a single whole, as if someone had spent an eternity moving every beautiful waterscape on Taiwan Island into the sky, inch by inch.
She suddenly remembered what Liu Zhiqing had said earlier.
"The lotus pond in the south has a golden-tailed fish."
If each pond was independent, then what exactly did Fish Selection involve? Would they have to visit every pond to choose one, or—
A shout interrupted her thoughts.
"Yuanxi!"
Lin Yuanxi looked toward the voice and saw Liu Zhiqing waving to her from the head of a wooden bridge not far away. Only then did she realize that she'd never told Liu Zhiqing her name. Yet Liu Zhiqing had called it out so naturally, as if she'd known it all along.
She froze for a moment, then walked over.
"How did you know my name?"
Liu Zhiqing was busy dividing the willow branches in her hands into small bundles and didn't look up.
"The water in the Floating City tells us certain things." She said it lightly, as if commenting on the nice weather. "Don't worry about it. You'll get used to it soon enough."
"The water in the Floating City... can talk?"
"Not exactly talk." Liu Zhiqing finally raised her head and glanced at her, her eyes holding a depth Lin Yuanxi found impossible to describe. "It's more like... water remembers everything that passes through it. Your name, your appearance—even every road you've walked over the past seventeen years. The water remembers it all."
Lin Yuanxi's breath caught.
"Then..." she said with difficulty. "Does the water remember who saved whom?"
Liu Zhiqing's hands paused for an instant, so briefly that it might have been an illusion.
"Why do you ask?"
"Nothing." Lin Yuanxi shook her head, suppressing the inexplicable flutter in her chest. "Just wondering."
Liu Zhiqing studied her for a long moment before handing over the willow branches she'd finished bundling.
"Take these. Go with the others to Liu'an Pool and clear out the dead branches hanging into the water." She spoke briskly. "The Floating City gets cleaned once a month. Especially before the full moon—all the ponds have to be cleared out, or the water spirits will get upset."
"Water spirits?"
"You'll see soon." Liu Zhiqing smiled. There was a hint of mischief in it, along with a trace of pity Lin Yuanxi couldn't understand. "Some things won't sound believable no matter how I explain them. It's faster if you see them for yourself."
Lin Yuanxi carried the bundle of willow branches and followed several girls toward Liu'an Pool. Along the way, she overheard fragments of their conversation, piecing together more of the Floating City's nature. Apparently, every pond had its own temperament. The water spirit of the lotus pond was gentle. The one in the water-lily pond was easily startled. Shadow-Bamboo Pond was the most difficult to care for; if its water was dirtied even slightly, the entire bamboo grove would turn yellow and wither for a full month. Water-Lantern Pond was the strangest of all. The water lanterns floating on it weren't placed there by people—they "grew" out of the pond itself, and no one knew why.
"So the Floating City isn't an ordinary building," Lin Yuanxi murmured.
The girl walking beside her heard and turned to look at her.
"You're only figuring that out now?" she said. "The Floating City is alive. It breathes, it chooses which way to go, and it even hides when it senses danger. Didn't you notice that the bridge beneath us has been gently swaying this whole time? That's not the wind. It's moving on its own."
Only then did Lin Yuanxi notice that the wooden bridge beneath her feet really was trembling with an almost imperceptible rhythm, rising and falling like a heartbeat, as if she were walking across the spine of some gigantic creature.
A chill crawled up her spine.
By the time they reached Liu'an Pool, night had completely fallen. Only the enormous moon hung above the Floating City, bathing the entire pond in a layer of shattered silver. Willow branches drooped into the water, swaying gently with the ripples. Several girls were already crouched along the bank, efficiently pulling out the dead yellow branches and leaves piece by piece.
Lin Yuanxi crouched down and copied them, reaching for a dead branch tangled in the water.
The instant her fingertips touched the surface, she froze.
The water was warm.
Not cold, as she'd expected, but warm like human skin—so warm it was almost comforting. She stared blankly as her fingers slipped beneath the surface. Tiny ripples spread outward in circles, vanishing into the depths of the night.
Just then, she noticed something move far below.
It wasn't a fish.
At least, it didn't look like any ordinary fish she'd ever seen. The shadow was huge, far too large for its shape, floating silently at the bottom of the pond like a mass of darkness denser than the night itself. Only a pair of eyes—or whatever they could be called—glimmered with the faintest golden light as they stared at her without moving.
Lin Yuanxi jerked her hand back.
"What is it?" the girl beside her asked casually.
"N-nothing." Lin Yuanxi stared at the surface. The black shadow had vanished completely. The pond was calm again, reflecting the full moon and the willow branches, beautiful as a painting.
Yet she couldn't make her heartbeat settle.
The way those eyes had watched her wasn't like a beast sizing up prey, nor was it simple curiosity.
It was more like... someone who had waited and waited at last seeing the thing they'd been waiting for.
Lin Yuanxi sat at the edge of the pond, not reaching into the water again for a long time.
At some point, Liu Zhiqing came over and stood behind her, silently gazing at the same stretch of water. Her expression was so complicated that it was impossible to read.
"You saw it," she said. It wasn't a question.
Lin Yuanxi looked up at her.
"What was that?"
Liu Zhiqing was silent for a long time—so long that Lin Yuanxi almost thought she wouldn't answer. In the end, she only murmured a few words.
"Something that's been waiting for you."
"Waiting for me?" Lin Yuanxi frowned. "But we just met for the first time. How could it possibly have been waiting for me?"
Liu Zhiqing didn't answer.
She only lifted her head toward the nearly full moon overhead, her voice so soft it sounded like she was speaking to herself.
"The full moon is three days away."
"When it comes, you'll understand. Some of the things waiting in the Floating City have been waiting far longer than you can imagine."
The night wind swept across the willow bank, stirring the branches. The moon's reflection broke apart into glittering ripples across the water. Lin Yuanxi lowered her gaze to her palm. The skin that had touched the pond still held a faint, lingering warmth, refusing to fade, as if something had finally, after twelve years, reached across the years and brushed against her once more.