Chapter 488

After rubbing his nose, which had been itchy lately, Leon, dressed in a dark tailcoat, raised his hand to turn off the carriage window and complained to the female journalist sitting opposite:

“Who knows what the Road Administration Department was thinking, planting so many winter cypresses by the road. This… ACHOO! These days, they’re all blooming, and after a gust of wind, the pollen can cover half the street. It’s really troublesome!”

“Just bear with it a little longer and it’ll be fine.”

After taking out a handkerchief and handing it over, the female journalist, also dressed formally, consoled him:

“The airship to Crocodile Kingdom has already been arranged. Once we board, there won’t be as much pollen.”

“I hope so…”

Looking at the winter cypress trees on the side of the road, their branches full of small red fruits due to the warming climate, Leon couldn’t help but sigh with a headache.

Among his siblings, though they had no real blood relation, everyone sneezed like crazy when encountering pollen, surprisingly similar.

And because their residence was near the street, since the capital city’s winter cypresses started releasing pollen these past two days, the Lane family’s sneezing hadn’t stopped from morning till night. Except for Anna who could still adapt, his own and the two brats’ noses were always red, truly suffering quite a lot.

Something seems a bit strange…

Looking at Leon covering his nose with the handkerchief, appearing finally a bit better, the female journalist across couldn’t help but blink, her expression revealing a hint of confusion.

The kingdom planted winter cypresses along the roadsides, the species should be Alleson Kingdom’s ball-flowered juniper, a very common urban green plant in Black Forest, Morne, Alleson and other Western Nine Countries, with a cultivation history probably over a thousand years.

After living together with this plant for more than a thousand years, most ordinary people in the Western Nine Countries have become accustomed to the pollen of these trees. Generally, only people from the three eastern countries across the sea would suffer from uncontrollable sneezing upon encountering winter cypress pollen due to unfamiliarity.

“Leon.”

Having some guesses in her mind, looking at Leon’s black hair and eyes, the female journalist couldn’t help but ask:

“Are you…?”

“Bu…”

Just as the female journalist was about to say something, the carriage they were riding began to slow down slowly, and the melodious whistle sound above the water tank drowned out her voice.

“What’s wrong?”

When the steam carriage came to a complete stop and the whistle stopped, Leon, covering his nose with a handkerchief, asked curiously: “Were you going to ask me something just now?”

“…”

“Nothing…”

Hearing Leon’s inquiry, the female journalist hesitated slightly, then shook her head and said: “I just wanted to tell you that there are no winter cypresses in Crocodile Kingdom, not even many plants. Once you get there, you won’t have to worry about hay fever anymore.”

Still don’t mention it yet. Judging from being allergic to winter cypress pollen and having black hair and eyes, Leon indeed resembles someone from that country, but there are also people in the kingdom who meet these two conditions. Relying solely on hair color and hay fever to deduce his background is somewhat rash.

And according to her understanding, due to the Aquarius Director’s experiment, Leon not only lost his original life, but even his memory is gone. This is probably the pain he will carry forever in his heart.

If she could find out his original background through these two features and help him regain his lost life, it would naturally be a win-win situation.

But if it’s just her overthinking or even if her guess isn’t entirely wrong but still can’t confirm his original identity, it would mean tearing open the wounds in Leon’s heart that have healed, making him feel hopelessly disappointed again, which is truly too hurtful.

Not knowing that the female journalist was pondering helping him find his parents, and never imagining how much thought one case of hay fever had sparked in her, Leon let out a long breath of relief upon hearing her say that Crocodile Kingdom had no pollen.

Following closely, he got out of the car with a grateful look, entering the boarding tower with the envoy group’s people, while curiously asking in a low voice: “Nicole, the Crocodile Kingdom is generally not allowed to enter, so there aren’t many records about it in the kingdom. Can you tell me what it’s like?”

Crocodile Kingdom?

The female journalist following behind Leon, upon hearing this, tried to recall, then frowned and began narrating:

“I’m not quite sure how to describe it, although Crocodile usually looks round from the outside, it actually doesn’t have a fixed form. If I must say, it’s like a huge magic cube made purely of steel and earth.

Oh, right, a magic cube is a toy with six faces, each face consisting of nine small blocks of different colors, which can be twisted around. The children of Crocodile play with this from a young age.”

“Hmm… I’ve seen a magic cube before.”

Upon hearing this, Leon couldn’t help but blink, then continued to inquire: “I remember you mentioned before that the core buildings there are separate honeycomb-like blocks connected by slides and docking rails, capable of moving up and down via floating crystals at the bottom.

So where is the palace of Crocodile Kingdom? Is it at the center of this hexagonal honeycomb magic cube? And where is Apheta 01 located? Which block is it in?”

None of the content within 69 Book Bar!

“All these districts change, so specific locations cannot be determined.”

The female journalist shook her head:

“The blocks in Crocodile Kingdom are not in a ‘parallel’ relationship; they can stack on top of each other. These districts are roughly divided into six categories: living, scientific research, residential, production, administration, and military industry.

In the absence of large-scale movement, these hexagonal small areas are evenly distributed throughout the kingdom in the direction of the twelve clock pointers, with an average of six types of blocks in each ‘time zone’.

Adding the other half of the city that is permanently stationed in the upper layer by floating crystals, with a distribution direction opposite to the lower layer, the entire Crocodile Kingdom should have thirty-six districts multiplied by twenty-four time zones, totaling eight hundred and sixty-four mobile blocks.

The Crocodile Kingdom Royal Palace and the place storing the true self of Apheta 01 should be respectively among those 144 ‘administrative’ blocks and 144 ‘scientific research’ blocks.”

“…”

Turns out it’s a one-in-one-hundred-and-forty-four choice question, and you have to do it twice… How am I supposed to find anything?

After listening to the complex district layout of Crocodile Kingdom that brought despair, Leon, who boarded the airship, couldn’t help but rub his eyebrows and complained sarcastically: “Is the person who designed this thing insane? There are over eight hundred districts, and they keep changing positions. How do you people in Crocodile Kingdom recognize your way around?”

“What’s so hard about recognizing them?”

Looking at Leon strangely, the female journalist replied:

“These blocks are numbered, such as the location of Gemini Division is Administrative Zone No. 38, and I lived in Residential Zone No. 19 at that time.

Every day when I go to and from work, I just need to press the number of the district I want to go to on the machine responsible for guiding the way, then follow the instructions and go straight.”

“…”

(End of Chapter)