After returning to Kamar-Taj, Shiller gave Oliver a brief tour of the place, but Oliver obviously didn't care much. He wasn't very interested in magic, seeing it, like science and technology, as merely a tool; yet even the best tool is useless in the hands of someone incompetent.
Shiller actually wanted to take Oliver out for a tour, but as Kamar-Taj was short on staff and he had to help out with work, he found some students from the Magic Academy who enjoyed going out, consulted with their teacher, and gave them time off so they could show this bumpkin from another cosmos around Sichuan.
The students immediately cheered, after all, which student doesn't love a holiday? And to travel on public expense was like a pie falling from the sky, wasn't it?
They quickly arranged the itinerary; of course, Chengdu was the first stop, followed by a visit to see the pandas, then Chongqing was a must, and Jiuzhaigou and all that, and finally a trip on the Sichuan-Tibet route to ensure a fully enjoyable trip.
Of course, Shiller also reminded them to register with the relevant departments upon landing. Although he had already notified SWORD, Oliver was still an undocumented immigrant in this universe and needed to be cautious.
Oliver thought they were taking a plane but to his surprise, the students took him on a Sky Train. He hadn't even started to marvel at the flying railway when they arrived.
Indeed, they had arrived in less than two hours, and they had spent an hour and a half just finding their seats, checking tickets, buying snacks, and introducing themselves to each other. They hadn't even warmed their seats before they had arrived.
Stepping off the Sky Train, Oliver had one thought: Where the hell am I? Is this still Earth?
Perhaps Chinese people all have a railway complex, intensely keen on building railways. When building railways on land, they would cut through mountains and divide water, overcoming any difficulty, and now that there were no difficulties in the air, they seemed to want to cover the entire airspace of China with them, like putting a lid on it.
But Sky Trains have their own standards; they can't be built on the same plane but instead must be differentiated by speed and purpose, built at different elevations, and it's better to have cargo go up and down rather than the tracks.
Considering the passengers' experience, the aerial railways couldn't be built like roller coasters, so most of the Sky Train tracks are flat with no rises or falls, except when transferring at stations requires riding an elevator.
This means that platforms can't be buildings on the ground, since almost no buildings are high enough nor would it be safe to build at such heights. Currently, all Sky Train platforms in China are floating islands in the air.
This has resulted in the skies above many major urban transportation hubs truly resembling the Star of Tiantop, with countless floating islands overhead and innumerable tracks and trains winding around them.
For the sake of operational efficiency, many airports and shuttle platforms are also built together with the centralized Sky Train areas, which makes them even busier. Typically, planes fly higher than Sky Trains which fly higher than shuttles. They don't interfere with each other, but take-off requires complicated scheduling, often located close to each other, creating a chaotic yet orderly beauty.
Just coming out of Tianfu Airport, Oliver was dazzled by the sight before him; the usual bus stations, taxi ranks, and car parks near the airport had completely disappeared, replaced by a vast open space bustling with people all looking for elevators to the Sky Train platform.
A few students dragged Oliver toward the bottom of one of the floating islands, and as they got closer, Oliver realized that these were not islands at all but giant Floating Saucers.
And just like in those alien movies, a beam of light dropped from the middle of the saucer to suck people up—this was their so-called elevator.
If it weren't for the lack of any portal-transiting process, Oliver would have thought Shiller had sent him to another planet.
In fact, he was now wondering if the train he had boarded had some kind of time-traveling feature, as this seemed less like 20 years in the future and more like 2000 years later.
While still bewildered, he had already been pushed onto the elevator, Oliver felt nothing and suddenly found himself in front of a door. He instinctively stepped forward and coming out was met with an even more sci-fi scene.
A circular hall, half-shaded with a cover, the other half slowly opening with the bright daylight streaming in, revealing unfamiliar devices as far as the eye could see.
Although he didn't recognize the robots scurrying on the ground or the small drones flying in the air, constantly speaking Chinese, Oliver recognized pandas.
Pandas adorned all the equipment, with bamboo and panda decorations not far off, and as he walked forward, there were pandas, more pandas, and even more pandas.
It was only then that Oliver realized he was in China, as pandas are synonymous with the country.
The students were already chattering away, looking at the route signs, but Oliver pulled out the phone Shiller had stuffed into his hand, a small square on his wrist that could pop out a holographic screen at the press of a button.
Oliver, somewhat flustered, began searching the news, but since he was connected to China's internal network, the search results were all in Chinese, which he could not understand, and the translations made no sense.
Fortunately, Oliver was a native English speaker, so even if the sentences were awkward, he could grasp the gist which was mostly about today's construction of this and tomorrow's construction of that.
Oliver was utterly baffled, feeling as if part of his brain had been clogged, so he resorted to asking one of the students who was fairly good at English. After a lengthy and perplexing conversation, Oliver finally learned that he was indeed in China, and the history matched the East Asian history he knew.
At the start of the 20th century, after experiencing turmoil, the country remained very poor. According to what that student said, even around the millennium, his family were just ordinary farmers, toiling away daily with their backs to the sky, only able to eat meat during the holidays.
Shiller had spent over a decade in both worlds, with DC in the year 1998 and Marvel in 2018, a 20-year gap between them.
The China that Oliver was familiar with was very much like what the student described, where most people were still worried about their next meal. What happened in those 20 years? Had aliens successfully invaded Earth?
For an individual, twenty years is neither long nor short. But for a country, it seems far too brief. Even America, with its relatively short history, hadn't seen any significant changes in the last 20 years, let alone Europe and America.
Oliver felt extremely confused. To him, it was an enormous mystery, because it simply wasn't possible. How could it have developed to this extent in just twenty years?
The rest of his journey could be described as tasteless but too good to abandon. The development here was astonishing, the pandas adorable, and people's lives seemed blessedly faultless.
The only problem was that this shouldn't be possible; it simply couldn't be.
It wasn't that Oliver had any prejudice against this country. With his current perspective and knowledge, he couldn't find any path that would lead to this outcome.
In fact, while researching Mexico, Oliver had noticed countless similarities between China and Mexico, such as their long histories, ancient civilizations, both neighbored by a colossal entity, both had suffered historical intrusions, and both had internal revolutions, including peasant uprisings.
In some respects, these two countries were cast from the same mold. So why were their developments so strikingly different? What was the key difference?
No matter how hard he thought, Oliver couldn't figure it out.
On the way back, listening to several Chinese students reminisce about the past, Oliver suddenly realized that for them, it was history, but for him, it was the present.
In the universe he came from, China had not yet reached the new millennium. It was still the era they talked about, where everyone was concerned about their next meal. Couldn't he just return and see for himself?
Conveniently, his relationship with the Soviet Union in his own universe was good. With the Soviets weakened, the joint pressure against America had led to a honeymoon period. Getting to China via that route wouldn't be difficult.
Oliver made up his mind. He barely stopped to breathe upon returning to Kamar-Taj; he was out the door and through the portal home as if his tail was on fire.
Just then, Clark and Magneto were encountering difficulties—sure, they had made a name for themselves by fighting, but how were they to defend their gains?
Naturally, Clark would suggest farming. Thanks to their powerful deterrence, internal strife never found fertile ground, making agriculture proceed smoothly, and soon enough everyone had enough to eat.
After all, how many people are there in Mexico? Even without Clark and Magneto, anyone could find wasteland and grow enough crops to survive using the most primitive methods; and if Mexico had anything in abundance, it was wastelands.
With the basic problem of survival solved, the two of them were at a loss—yes, they had plenty to eat, but then what else were they supposed to do?
That's a good question because as soon as people have enough to eat, they inevitably start looking for something to do, and then they start getting into trouble from sheer boredom.
Clark and Magneto wanted to give the Bald Eagle a bit of a scare, not set their own tails on fire. Watching as their rag-tag group of farmers started to gamble, vie for power, or feel homesick, they realized they didn't even need a troublemaker; they were quite capable of causing chaos on their own, leaving both leaders somewhat helpless.
After all, neither of them knew much about building infrastructure. Magneto would hardly have wandered for decades if he had any experience with the Mutant Brotherhood, nor would he have failed to establish a decent country in the comics despite having little resistance, only to have it all fall apart mid-journey.
Clark was even less equipped. After all, he was an American. If there was anything he knew about farming, it was thanks to his family farm, and while he could handle running an agricultural enterprise, dealing with national infrastructure was another matter entirely.
Just at the right time, Oliver was on the ground in China with a Soviet inspection team visiting rural areas where China was implementing village connectivity. Like a traveling frog, he constantly sent photos to Clark.
His motive wasn't really to instruct Clark; it was more about reciprocating since Clark had been so eager to share his own photographs, boasting about having found another place to farm while he was on this side. Why shouldn't Oliver brag right back?
Clark realized in an instant, of course. Now that they had food, people, and land, they should connect all these territories to facilitate transportation of their crops.
This would solve the issue of idleness, create a network for resource exchange, enhance regional control to prevent the meddling troublemakers, and the benefits were substantial.
With so many advantages, what was there to debate? Just copy it, and it's done.