Chapter 2814 Zahra's Holiday

He strolled aimlessly along the street. His uniform, the braid on his cuffs, the medals on his chest, and the NCO's sword at his waist all drew the attention of passersby.

Being the center of such attention—especially the admiring gazes of certain young ladies—filled him with pride. This was the realm he had once fought to protect. Before, he hadn't truly understood when the Senators proclaimed that "the people's realm must be protected by the people themselves." His thinking had been simpler: Isn't this realm the Senate's? We carry rifles just to get paid. But after many battles and witnessing how society had transformed, his understanding had deepened. "The Senate and the People"—these weren't empty words after all.

Bairen had grown more prosperous than ever. He marveled silently at the changes. In just two years, countless new shops had appeared, filled with goods he'd never seen before. Some items were so novel he couldn't even guess their purpose. Truly, if you neglect your studies for three days, you fall behind the times...

Just as he was lost in these reflections, a small commotion stirred on the street. Tan Shuangxi, soldier though he was, still possessed that traditional Chinese fondness for spectacle. He quickened his pace to catch up.

What he saw was a foreign girl waiting at the public carriage stop. Her attire marked her clearly as a Senator's "maid." Though Lingao had grown ever more prosperous over the years, and "ghosts" from East and West had multiplied through "capture," "trade," or "employment"—common folk had grown quite accustomed to seeing them—female "ghosts" remained rare. Women of this era, whether Eastern or Western, seldom traveled far from home.

The exotically featured maids of the Senators had long been an enduring topic of fascination in Lingao society. Every public appearance drew crowds of curious onlookers.

As one of the senior veterans of the First Battalion, Tan Shuangxi had performed security duty at major events many times and had been temporarily assigned to guard Senator residential areas and offices in Bairen City. He had seen the "ghost girl" maids around the Senators on more than one occasion.

Yet despite his curiosity, he never thought "ghost girls" were pretty. To his eyes, their multicolored hair, blue or brown irises, and sharply defined features made them look "like ghosts." This wasn't his view alone; in private, soldiers had all expressed "incomprehension" at the Senators' peculiar tastes.

Of course, the Senators were unfathomably profound beings; to naturalized citizens, they were nearly demigods. Such strange preferences could only be attributed to the simple explanation that "Senators simply aren't ordinary people."

The maid before him struck Tan Shuangxi as somewhat familiar. He believed he'd seen her multiple times while on guard duty at the Data Center. Another soldier on duty with him had mentioned that this ghost girl was Persian.

Persian—Tan Shuangxi had heard the name before. Village elders, when telling tales of antiquity, said the earliest to arrive by sea for trade weren't the yellow- or red-haired Franks, but Arabs, Persians, and Indians. They also said that hundreds of years ago, many such people had lived in Fujian, only to be massacred.

But that was merely "old tales." A living Persian—a woman, no less—appearing beside him still struck Tan Shuangxi as quite astonishing.

With the jingling of coach bells, two tall black horses pulling a carriage slowly entered the platform. The coach was impressively large and double-decked. The upper deck was open-air, perfect for sightseeing and riding in the breeze. Tan Shuangxi had long wanted to ride this coach. The platform attendant blew a whistle and waved a small flag, calling out sternly: "Line up! Line up! Stop crowding!"

People reluctantly formed a queue. The coach had two doors—the front for boarding, the rear for exiting. No exceptions.

Seeing Tan Shuangxi in the queue, the attendant immediately called out: "Make way for this military comrade!"

Though the rule granting military personnel priority on public transportation had long existed, Tan Shuangxi still felt somewhat embarrassed. He waved his hands hastily: "No need, no need. I'll board in line."

Fortunately, not many were waiting. Many passengers had disembarked at the Bairen Town stop, so the coach wasn't crowded. Tan Shuangxi climbed easily to the upper deck and took a seat. Glancing around, he noticed the Persian maid had also boarded and was sitting near the front, gazing at the street scenery, unaware she had become part of the scenery herself.

Zahra, riding the public coach, was oblivious to the stares around her. After the slave market in Basra, no gaze could make her feel shy anymore. The coach started with a crisp ring of bells. This route traversed all of Bairen Town, offering views of the streets and the many buildings inside the once-mysterious Bairen City, now accessible since its opening to the public. It could be called the quintessential route of Bairen Market and had become a popular sightseeing line for visitors.

On the far side of the road, a bustling construction site was underway. The old East Gate Market, now known as Bairen Town, was expanding rapidly. The extension project for the Lingao Urban Rail was proceeding accordingly.

Two thick iron rails were being laid atop a gravel foundation and wooden ties. Zahra knew this was the railroad that Senator Xu had once taken her on, now being extended outward. Like most ordinary people, she found the train the most incredible thing she had witnessed in Lingao. These giant steel dragons were like the Senate's ruling power itself—utterly invincible and overwhelming.

The coach dropped Zahra off at the junction between East Gate Market and the old Bairen City entrance. Though old Bairen City no longer existed in name, some important buildings still remained behind high walls and guards, inaccessible to ordinary people. From the coach's upper deck, however, one could glimpse the Data Center's quite prominent red-brick truss building. Regarding this building's purpose, natives and naturalized citizens had imagined countless theories, from a treasure vault to a torture chamber. The Persian girl knew Senator Xu worked here—but she no longer possessed a pass to enter and could only gaze from afar like everyone else.

East Gate Avenue, stretching from the Bairen City entrance to East Gate Market center and East Gate Train Station, was the most prosperous commercial stretch in all of Lingao. The bamboo sheds erected at the city's founding had completely vanished. The two-story trade halls that once stood out like cranes among chickens had been crowded nearly out of sight by the four- and five-story buildings that had since risen around them.

These new buildings, uniformly planned by commercial departments, generally adopted an arcade design. Their ground floors featured high ceilings with continuous colonnades and recessed large glass display windows. Between the colonnades and windows ran a stone-paved pedestrian path wide enough for three or four people abreast, forming the arcade structure common in old-timeline southern cities. The arcade corridors connected one to the next; even at the alleys separating different buildings, connecting awnings usually bridged the gaps. Theoretically, even in rain, pedestrians could walk the entire stretch without getting a single drop on them.

This design had been very popular in old-timeline Guangdong, Guangxi, and Hainan, with similar structures common throughout Southeast Asia—a proven commercial building design for tropical and subtropical southern regions.

The road itself had been repaired and widened. To support the traffic rule separating fast and slow lanes, the center of the road was divided into two fast lanes for automobiles and carriages, while two slow lanes flanked them for rickshaws and bicycles. Similar to the old timeline, flower beds and shade trees had been constructed between the fast and slow lanes. Unlike the old timeline, the slow lanes were no less wide than the fast lanes, accommodating Lingao's current reality where slow vehicles still predominated.

Beyond these visible changes, much hidden infrastructure had been added. Gas street lamps were uniformly relocated into the flower beds and among the trees. Their frames were reinforced, and iron crossbars were added between each pair of facing street lamp frames for hanging the Senate's latest slogans and advertisements for nearby shops. Beneath the pedestrian path's stone slabs lay a reserved utility tunnel.

To avoid the old-timeline blight of cables strung everywhere and roads constantly torn open, this renovation planning resolved from the start to do things correctly by using pre-installed utility tunnels for all piping. Thus, pedestrians walking above remained unaware that beneath their feet ran water supply pipes, drainage pipes, and gas pipes crisscrossing in an underground network, with telephone and power cables to follow. The street-facing buildings would connect in sequence according to regulations, enjoying these services while paying the corresponding fees.

Since the agreed time was still ample, the Persian girl found herself in a leisurely mood. Senator Xu had a twenty-four-hour marathon shift today. The children had all been taken to Lingao Corner Park by Xu Shanshan. With nothing demanding her attention, she could leisurely enjoy this rare holiday. Perhaps meet a friend or two. She admired the passing shops. Even having visited many times, this street still overwhelmed her, stirring endless desire to buy. Before coming to Lingao, she had seen the dazzling array of foreign goods in Basra's markets. She had never imagined a world could contain so many different types of products, displayed in such resplendent ways.

In the new round of commercial district planning, the Commercial Department had introduced the old-timeline concept of targeted merchant recruitment. Shop categories and types along the street were consciously classified to benefit market prosperity and differentiated competition, while also balancing Senate-owned enterprises against private outside shops. On one hand, flagship stores for various departments were centrally opened; on the other, capable outside trading houses were actively recruited.

Take the Meimei Department Store that Zahra was now passing—a flagship store jointly opened by the Commerce Committee and Light Industry departments. Like its old-timeline counterpart, this was a department store targeting beauty-conscious women, with clothing, undergarments, bags, and accessories as its core offerings. Li Mei had originally proposed the name "Women's Products Store" at an internal meeting, but some Senators thought that sounded too rustic—like a sanitary pad specialty shop—so it was changed to this more refined old-timeline name.

(End of Chapter)