The black market was not what Lu Chao had imagined.
The cement roads were pitted and uneven.
Densely packed, low-rise gray cement tenement buildings squeezed against each other. Ranging from six to ten stories, the buildings rose like malformed bamboo shoots, stacked one on top of the other in a chaotic heap.
The iron bars on one old window after another were yellowed with rust. Hundreds of bamboo poles crisscrossed between the floors of the buildings, draped with all sorts of drying clothes.
Black pipes snaked along the gray walls, branching out in all directions.
On the rooftops of some cement buildings, people had used rusted iron poles to construct an even higher shantytown, with only army-green tarps stretched over the top to serve as crude roofs and walls, sheltering them from the wind and rain.
"This... is the black market?"
The patrol car stopped by the side of the road. Lu Chao looked up, a bit dazed by the scene.
