Sberg had originally thought he was finished for sure.
His boss, Weijia, was bound to bribe people inside the prison so he would walk in on his feet and leave feet first.
Yet what he never expected was that his fellow workers didn't abandon him. They encircled the prison gates, even alarming the militia.
The convicts inside watched the spectacle, whispering curiously among themselves.
"Great Horned Deer God above... I've never seen anything like this."
"What do they want?"
"Better if they start fighting!" A hardened outlaw with blood on his hands clenched his fists excitedly, ready to seize the chance to break out.
Sitting in the corner, Sberg coughed softly.
"They won't fight... probably not."
Everyone turned to look at him.
Shrinking back a little in fear, Sberg whispered, "It's... it's in the story I read to them. Boer the Awakened knew that killing Stephen wouldn't solve anything..."
The convicts exchanged glances.
Though they didn't know what was going on, their intuition told them that the crowd outside probably had something to do with the scrawny fellow before them.
The outlaw walked over to Sberg, squatted down, and stared at him for a moment.
Just as Sberg's nerves stretched to the breaking point, the man suddenly spoke.
"Boer? Stephen? Who are they?"
Sberg blinked. "...Th-that's a long story."
The outlaw sat down cross-legged on the floor and waved a hand. "No rush. Take your time. You're not getting out anytime soon anyway, and neither am I... We've got plenty of time."
Seeing the convicts staring at him with curiosity, Sberg swallowed hard and nodded hurriedly.
"Alright... Then I'll start from the beginning."
Boer was born in the slums at the foot of the Great Wall, an out-and-out country bumpkin from the outer city.
Yet who had belonged to the city from the start?
Boulder City wasn't built in a day, after all...
In an engaging, conversational tone, he began recounting Boer's story. Soon, he noticed that not only the convicts, but even the guards by the door were leaning against the railings to listen.
It was the story of a nobody.
Just as the noble lords said, a mere Awakened couldn't amount to anything.
Yet here, who wasn't a nobody?
After he had spoken for a while, the commotion outside quieted down, and the prison was packed to capacity.
Then factory owners arrived one after another, putting on hypocritical displays, trying to fetch their workers back, but the workers refused to leave with them.
"Go home, my children! The conditions here are dreadful—it's gloomy and freezing! Come home with me first, and whatever demands you have, we can sit down and talk... How about I play Mr. House's radio broadcast for you? Your favorite station!"
The paunchy fellow put on an ingratiating smile, which amused all the watching workers. None of them had ever seen such a pleasant look on his face before.
"Home? You mean that lousy factory of yours?"
"Hahaha! I'm not going back with you!"
"Exactly! It's warm in here! Not only is it not gloomy, but there's no draft, and there are stories to hear!"
"Why don't you come inside too, boss?"
The boss grew frantic.
Why were these people completely impervious to reason?
Thinking of the delivery deadline, he cried out, "Are you out of your minds?! If I can't fulfill the orders, the factory won't have any money! Those IOUs in your hands will turn into actual worthless paper! You're only hurting yourselves in the end! I can just dust off my rear and walk away, but you'll get poorer and poorer until you can't even afford nutrient paste!"
No wonder they were poor!
Stupid, lazy, and despicable!
"Then just consider us crazy," a young man said, looking at him with disdain. "We don't care anymore. No matter how rich you get, you won't give us a single dime. In that case, we'd rather you be poorer—maybe then you'll love us a bit more."
"Haha, even now he's still trying to reason with us!"
"Save your breath, pal! Go check the top of the tower for us and see if the wind is blowing hard!"
Rounds of mockery drowned out the boss's feeble arguments.
Having reached this point, nothing he said mattered anymore. Even when he painfully offered to pay a portion of their wages, nobody paid him any heed.
He didn't regret issuing IOUs, though—that was the greatest invention ever. He only regretted not buying a few slaves for emergencies.
Boulder City permitted the slave trade, but slaves were too stupid and kept breaking machinery. Over time, nobody wanted to use them. In contrast, free survivors worked more diligently and had phased out slaves ages ago. He simply hadn't anticipated such a violent, unexpected calamity occurring today.
In truth, fewer than two hundred workers had gathered outside the beer tavern initially, but within a single afternoon, workers from half the industrial zone had become members of the Workers' Association.
Everyone sat on the prison floors.
Seeing that they weren't causing trouble and were only listening to stories, the warden turned a blind eye to Sberg's storytelling. He even allowed them to leave the cells and walk around freely... After all, the cells couldn't hold so many people, and logging all their names would take until tomorrow, so they were permitted to make do in the corridors for now.
It was crowded, but also warm, with electric lights and even nutrient paste.
"Brothers, this is practically paradise!"
"We should've come here sooner!"
"If the noble lords want to arrest the whole city, they'll have to build a prison as big as Boulder City itself!"
"Hahaha! Maybe they'll renovate our homes for us!"
Though it was making the best of a bad situation, doing so together meant it wasn't bitter at all—in fact, it was full of fun.
Together, they discussed what should happen next in the story, unanimously agreeing that Boer the Awakened's tale was missing a Kent. They clamored for Sberg to write that ridiculous clown into the narrative.
Sberg faintly felt that humiliating a comrade who worked alongside them was going a bit too far. So he persuaded the impassioned crowd to leave Kent some dignity by dropping a syllable and changing his name to "Ken," annotating him as "someone who loved spitting and rubbing his backside against Lord Stephen's whip."
This was a compromise.
Everyone nodded in agreement. Bullying a fellow rat in the same nest was genuinely pointless. Even if Kent didn't care for them and hated their filthy selves from the bottom of his heart, beating him up wasn't right either—that would only turn more hesitant kids into Kents.
They just needed to hold themselves to their own standard.
They didn't have lofty ambitions; they only wanted what was rightfully theirs.
During these days, Sberg had an unexpectedly decent time in prison, as he was the only one who could provide entertainment to the people there.
Sberg had a faint feeling that although their warden always wore a stern face, he was actually sympathetic to them at heart.
The warden had neither a black card nor chips; in the end, he too was a nobody who couldn't skim much profit. Besides, chips had gradually become unable to buy much lately, and before long, everyone would be equally poor.
Later, during one storytelling session, the warden chimed in seemingly casually with a teasing tone, asking the workers whether "a prison guard counts as a worker."
Before the others could reply, Sberg answered on the spot, "Anyone who earns a wage counts."
The warden made no response at the time, but afterward, the meals across the entire prison improved slightly—at least the nutrient paste was no longer watered down.
Another week passed like this. By mid-December, the weather grew colder and colder. The warden procured a batch of cheap scrap materials, and the carpenters and blacksmiths teamed up to build a stove for the prison using the scrap. Not only were the workers spared the freezing cold, but the guards who refused to squeeze in with the workers also stayed much warmer.
Sberg secretly wrote a letter and asked an acquaintance among the guards to deliver it to the Alliance embassy, addressed to his editor, Miss Dolly. He requested that *Survivor Daily* convert his royalties into silver coins to buy corn and send it to Boulder City Prison. When he saw the mountain of corn and sacks of radishes and potatoes piled in the prison courtyard, he was utterly stunned.
He hadn't realized that his modest royalties could purchase so much!
Later, a worker from the flour mill fashioned a tool for grinding flour, while workers from the canning factory cooked stew for everyone. With full bellies, they needed something to do, so an engineer from a repair shop began teaching classes, and a master from a chemical plant lectured on chemistry...
They had everything here. It hardly felt like a prison anymore, resembling a welfare house instead, and no one paid any attention to the bosses' pleading. Though there was an element of stubborn spite in it, they had truly proven through their actions that without Lord Stephen, they could live even better!
Since he didn't have to work on an assembly line, Sberg also had more time to polish the story of Boer into a proper tale.
At this time, someone proposed establishing rules—or rather, a program. After all, even gangs outside the Great Wall had rules; they needed them too.
Swarming forward in a mob and then scattering in disarray was just mischief. In the end, it yielded nothing but a mess, only giving the real bandits and thieves in prison a laugh.
The Workers' Association had to discuss things together, consult every worker's opinion, rely on communication instead of threats, and clearly define what they wanted, how to demand it, and what constituted victory—just like fighting a war... Only then could there be genuine solidarity.
Someone suggested making Sberg the president, but Sberg waved his hands frantically in refusal, saying he wasn't cut out for it. He would be fine as a secretary; they should raise hands to elect someone who could truly lead.
However, he felt everyone was right, and he was immensely glad that he had written that day in the tale of Boer the Awakened:
"...Giving Stephen a beating solves nothing, even if you unbuckle your belt and piss on him. Killing a fat rat merely adds a corpse to the street and draws a few more flies."
"...A single person is weak and helpless, but so long as we stand united, Stephen will fear us—every Stephen will!"
Perhaps his earlier intuition had been right.
This winter wouldn't be too hard to bear...
***
One day, after finishing his story, Sberg yawned and headed back to his cell to sleep.
The Workers' Association had long since separated the snorers from the non-snorers to help everyone rest. They had also courteously assigned him the solitary confinement cell—a dark little private room—so he could write his stories in peace.
Yet unlike usual, when Sberg stepped into the dark room and closed the door, he discovered someone else was already inside.
The person was short, almost diminutive, with green, wolflike eyes that startled him.
As if not at all worried Sberg would run, the man examined him with a gaze like a flicking snake's tongue and spoke leisurely.
"Someone wants you dead."
Sberg felt his limbs go icy cold.
This guy...
might very well be a genuine Awakened!
His Adam's apple bobbed, and he spoke. "Who..."
"Some big shot. I don't know either."
"I'm asking for your name," Sberg swallowed, staring at him nervously. "You know mine, but I don't know yours."
The man twirled the dagger in his hand and said nonchalantly, "Xiaodao. Ever since I can remember, people have called me that... What's the point of knowing my name? Plan on settling scores with me after you go down there?"
Sberg shook his head. "No... When a person dies, everything ends. There is no Great Horned Deer God, and probably no afterlife either, though I only learned that recently."
"Uh-huh?" Xiaodao didn't care much, nor was he in a rush to finish the job.
The wasteland was a lonely place. A settlement was a jungle, and outside it was a jungle too, filled with the murmurs of beasts inside and out.
Letting this fellow talk wasn't bad. Most people only spoke like human beings right before dying. He liked his employers' money, and he also liked hearing the last words of the dying.
Sberg paused, then continued, "But... even if there's no afterlife, when a person dies, their name continues to live in the memories of others. So a name is important. It's definitely not meaningless."
"Are you stalling for time?" Xiaodao yawned. His eyes darted around, then fixed back on Sberg as he continued, "No need, really. To tell you the truth, another big shot paid me too. He wanted the exact opposite—didn't want you dead so fast. Told me to beat you half to death, chop off your hands and feet, mute your voice... in short, just leave you with a breath of life."
Sberg felt cold all over.
He had no doubt the man before him had the ability to do so. Just as Boer could beat Lord Stephen to a pulp, an Awakened remained overwhelmingly strong compared to an ordinary human.
"Tsk, tsk, tsk. You're just like the rest, a coward. The only difference is you haven't pissed your pants yet," Xiaodao muttered disappointedly, staring at his face, then quipped, "I really don't get what's so special about a nobody like you that so many big shots are revolving around you. First time I've ever taken two bounties on the same head... Oh, right, I heard that big shot in the northern suburbs even invited you over as a guest?"
A look of interest suddenly crossed his face, his venomous gaze flickering across Sberg's face like a snake flicking its tongue.
"Tell me... if I bring you to the northern suburbs, would that Administrator reward me with a chiliarch position?"
Sberg gave a soft cough.
"Cough... That lord might give you some money, but he probably won't make you a chiliarch. Those are two completely different things."
Xiaodao looked at him with disappointment.
"What a pity... though money isn't bad either."
Pausing, he continued, "You haven't answered my question... What secret does a fellow like you have that so many big shots are keeping an eye on you? Do you know something, like the location of a black box, or some hidden valuable treasure?"
"No."
"No?"
"I'm not lying to you," Sberg said, staring fixedly at the dagger in his hand. "I'm just a nobody who reads newspapers... How could I possess something like that?"
"Heh... I believe you."
Xiaodao smiled, got up from the hard wooden bed, walked over to Sberg, and spun the dagger in his hand.
"Fine. I'll give you one more chance to live. Write a letter to that big shot in the northern suburbs. If he's willing to pay up, I'll consider selling you to him... Oh, right, I only take dinars or Cr."
Of course, he would only consider it.
After all, the other two lords hadn't paid poorly either. He could kill this guy afterward and collect the bounties from all three big shots.
The wasteland was vast, and he could escape anywhere. He was merely a wandering wasteland nomad with no interest in this twisted settlement.
Yet to his surprise, this useless coward before him rejected his proposal without hesitation.
"I won't write it."
Xiaodao looked at him in surprise. "Are you sure?"
Though terrified to his core, Sberg did not back down, looking right into the man's eyes.
"If it were begging Lord Weijia for mercy, I could do that... But if you want to use me to threaten that lord, put that thought out of your head right now."
Without question, he was just a nobody. For over twenty years, he had lived like a rat, and he couldn't fathom why so many people were interested in his head. But if he had to die, he would rather give his life for that lord.
No special reason.
He simply felt it was worth it!
"Why? There's got to be a reason, right?"
"...Dignity."
"What is that?"
"Someone like you wouldn't understand. Do it!" Sberg clenched his fists, prepared to fight to the death—at least to be a brave man and die like a hero.
Xiaodao curled his lip, wasting no more breath on the man, and thrust his dagger forward cleanly.
Seeing a sharp weapon lunging toward one's head, prey instinctively raised their arms to protect their head, which played right into his hands.
He planned to disable this guy's two arms first, then slice his tendons, mute his throat... He had done jobs like this countless times and was fully confident he could execute it neatly.
However—
This time, he missed.
The dagger struck as if hitting a transparent wall. Sweating cold bullets, he tried to pull it back, only to find the dagger stuck as if wedged in solidified air.
Sberg was dumbfounded as well.
He had just raised both arms to block when ripples spread across the air before him, gradually revealing a figure.
"Damn it—who are you?!" Xiaodao shrieked, staring in horror at the figure emerging like a ghost before him.
A pitch-black visor and helmet concealed the person's face. She appeared to be a woman, or perhaps not even human at all.
She calmly gripped the dagger's blade. Etched into her slightly curving chestplate was the designation X-16, which, paired with the Boulder Military Industries insignia, seemed imbued with some extraordinary significance.
She seemed to have been here for a long time, entering the room even before either of them, yet neither had noticed her presence.
Optical camouflage!
A flicker of terror flashed through his beastly eyes. Xiaodao let go of the dagger, drew the short blade strapped to his leg, and slashed ferociously at the figure before him.
There was no metallic clang.
Before he could even see what she had done, he was sent flying like a broken kite, slamming heavily against the wall on one side of the solitary cell.
"Ah..."
Several ribs were shattered!
His spine felt broken too; his lower limbs wouldn't respond, and urine leaked out...
In that final instant, he wanted to beg for mercy, but before he could make a sound, a dagger nailed through his throat.
He could only watch helplessly as the figure approached step by step, casually grasped the dagger, and withdrew the bloodstained blade along with his consciousness.
The fight had lasted only two seconds, yet blood sprayed everywhere.
Yet standing in the pool of blood, the person acted as if nothing had happened.
Having never witnessed such a bloody scene, Sberg felt his legs were filled with lead and his back burned like fire. Only after a long while did he manage to squeeze a trembling sentence from his stiff throat.
"You... killed someone."
Stowing the dagger casually, X-16 ignored his question and turned to look at him.
"Someone wants to see you."
Sberg swallowed.
"Who..."
"You'll know when we get there."
Hearing this, a bitter smile crept onto Sberg's face.
To dare kill so freely in this city, and inside this prison no less, it could only be a big shot from the inner city.
Truth be told, he didn't want to meet such a dangerous person, but he likely didn't have the right to refuse.
After all, he had just seen with his own eyes how she executed an Awakened as easily as crushing a grasshopper. Taking his life would probably take less than a second.
"Can I... say goodbye to my friends?" Sberg asked in an inquiring tone.
From behind that pitch-black, icy visor drifted words that came as no surprise:
"No."
***
River Valley Province had been snowing continuously lately.
And heavily, at that!
To prevent snow from collapsing the roofs of farmers' homes in the West District, Dawn City organized a group of players and local residents to clear the snow.
Though the pay wasn't high, there was regional reputation to earn, so players interested in public affairs shouldered ladders and went without hesitation.
Conveniently, they had plenty of strength to spare.
In winter, the number of mutants in River Valley Province plummeted as many beasts retreated into hibernation. Before the arrival of the spring Tide, Chu Guang had to find things for these energetic little players to do, lest they get bored and cause trouble everywhere.
Seeing the shelter residents rolling up their sleeves to help, Dawn City residents joined in as well, some steadying ladders and others passing shovels.
This winter was indeed much warmer than the last.
Aside from the Alliance's internal affairs, Chu Guang kept a close eye on their neighbor next door.
Not because he was scheming to scavenge opportunistic gains, but because he feared the cesspool would blow up in their faces.
Currently, there were around two hundred players in Boulder City, occasionally posting their observations on the official forum.
These players were like eyes planted throughout Boulder City. Chu Guang had instructed Xiao Qi to compile and organize these posts into reports, filtering out leads with high credibility.
According to the intelligence compiled by Xiao Qi, the situation in Boulder City was far more exaggerated than he had anticipated.
If the Alliance's foreign debt was expanding exponentially, Boulder City's inflation was nearly spilling over its towering outer walls.
Without a doubt, Melvin could no longer keep a lid on the inflation.
Ever since that disturbance in the industrial zone, the false prosperity had erupted like an avalanche, and the fuse Chu Guang had predicted was ultimately ignited.
Facing this crisis with no visible source, Melvin wasn't entirely idle, but he truly had few cards left to play.
At his wit's end, after exhausting all his tricks to no avail, he could only drag Dulong from City Hall along to intervene in the industrial zone's production using clumsy administrative measures.
For instance, forcibly intercepting a batch of goods meant for delivery to the Alliance, routing intermediate products down their own supply chains, or sending finished products directly to stores—all to prioritize filling Boulder City's shelves.
The Alliance's factories didn't care.
The Alliance's Ministry of Industry had issued an early warning, advising everyone to prepare ahead of time for an "earthquake," accelerate industrial substitution, and procure intermediate products from outside Boulder City as much as possible to avoid a chain reaction caused by defaults.
The factory owners in Boulder City's industrial zone, however, were suffering terribly.
To begin with, the detention of massive numbers of skilled workers in prison and the collective passive resistance of the laborers had virtually brought their assembly lines to a halt.
Now the lords finally remembered where the goods on store shelves came from, yet refused to use their brains, resorting instead to crude makeshift remedies that treated symptoms rather than causes.
They could certainly halt deliveries of Alliance orders and prioritize stocking Boulder City's shelves, provided someone paid the breach-of-contract penalties on their behalf.
Unfortunately, neither President Melvin nor Director Dulong seemed willing to cover those penalties or make up the difference in raw material inflation. They even demanded that factories sell their manufactured goods below cost, all while refusing to pause the repayments on loans previously taken out to expand production.
It was outright robbery!
The owners already had meager margins left; now they had to sacrifice their remaining profits—or even pay out of pocket—to suppress the runaway inflation born of the "overheated economy" for Lord Melvin.
While the Alliance sheared its own factories like chives as well, they did so with clear rules, organization, and discipline—at least they didn't hack away blindly and indiscriminately.
Forced into a corner, the profiteers in the industrial zone each used their own tricks. Those with connections pulled strings to bypass City Hall's regulations and secretly smuggle restricted goods to their neighbor; after all, neither President Melvin nor Director Dulong dared intercept Lord Xide's goods.
Those without connections could only take the hit, but taking the hit didn't mean swallowing losses meekly—the means of production were in their hands, after all. If they couldn't sell milk, they dumped it; if forbidden to dump it, they slaughtered the cows for meat; if forbidden to slaughter with knives, they starved the cows to death or hauled them straight over to their neighbor's backyard.
Nor did Dulong's intervention truly take effect. He and Melvin had fundamentally underestimated people's "greed" in times of crisis.
Shelves were quickly wiped clean. Once the crisis was triggered, it became like a black hole—no matter how many supplies were poured in, they vanished without a trace.
Goods that should have been sold at regular prices became subject to favoritism and highest-bidder auctions. Those who acquired large volumes of supplies at high prices weren't satisfied with mere short-term sustenance; they hoarded half a year's worth of consumption and retained surplus to resell and recoup their capital.
Even squirrels knew to hoard pine cones many times their size for the winter, let alone greedier humans. Soap and sausages were the first to become hard currency, followed closely by cigarettes and alcohol. Those who couldn't get their hands on hard currency exchanged their unspendable chips for other assets, like bonds or surging S-coins.
The chips circulating within the Great Wall exceeded the total value of all goods inside by countless times. The hot money with nowhere to go scurried everywhere like cockroaches.
Naturally, no investment compared to the stable silver coin.
Outside the Great Wall, food peddlers suddenly appeared in numbers. They were all Alliance traveling merchants who refused increasingly inflated chips, accepting only silver coins with stable purchasing power.
The wealthy of Boulder City often had to visit the black market first, trading a pocketful of chips for a few silver coins, before heading to the outer city gates to purchase potatoes, corn, and daily necessities.
Those figures pushing handcarts became a ray of light in the heavy snow, illuminating countless longing faces.
Underneath the shadows untouched by that light, hurried figures were also active.
They often wore clean padded cotton jackets, looking neat and respectable like businessmen. Upon spotting merchants from the Alliance, they would approach and slip out a booklet.
Listed inside were "good things" usually unavailable anywhere.
They were brokers.
They dared to sell anything, and they bought anything.
Some were subordinates of minor inner-city nobles or factory owners; others were simply militiamen in plain clothes.
In the hands of these resourceful minor figures, a thousand cotton coats could buy a loom capable of producing ten thousand meters a day; a few bottles of high-proof liquor could fetch a nine-tenths-new military exoskeleton; if hard liquor was lacking, several crates of beer or canned food would do.
Others pulled out black cards, claiming that as long as they were given enough silver coins, they would guide them into this "Grand Casino" to indulge in pleasures unavailable in the Alliance.
The casino was still running normally, the Death Lottery held daily draws, and Melvin was still doing everything in his power to fight the fires, yet the flames burning upon the kindling blazed higher and higher.
Everyone inside this casino had gone more or less insane...
And just when Chu Guang thought this was the limit, a piece of bad news arrived abruptly from his Minister of Foreign Affairs, Cheng Yan.
After listening to his report, Chu Guang's expression changed slightly.
"That Sberg... is dead?"
Chapter 537