Chapter 1925: One-Day Investigation Rule
Although the East District had forcibly expelled most people to the West District, that didn't mean there was no contact between the two areas. Xu Huo had already seen earlier that some polluting factories had been relocated to the West District, which meant there was commercial transport between the East and West Districts. Just like the Divine Fire Supervision Department established in the East District, these were all directly controlled by people from the East District.
Of course, those who came from the East District were all players, possessing overwhelming strength over most people in the West District.
Naturally, players weren't exclusive to the East District; people in the West District could also become players. But this involved a promotion mechanism specifically set up by the East District for West District residents.
First, the East District didn't completely prohibit West District people from entering, but such entry came with conditions—for example, making significant contributions to the East District, possessing exceptional skills that could be used for work in the East District, or being a player. Meeting any of these requirements, after passing review, West District residents could change their household registration status and become East District residents.
This was for special talents. There was also a system for ordinary people: the contribution rate. An ordinary person with no special talents, as long as they lived honestly in the West District for a full ten years, had no criminal record, and came from a clean family background, had a certain chance of being selected as an East District resident. The longer the time, the greater the probability of selection.
Therefore, whether players or ordinary people, those who yearned for a better standard of living would inevitably flow toward the East District. Even if someone didn't care about their own living environment, most people had families, and the more capable a person was, the more they wanted to create better conditions for their family. Moreover, the East District had welfare programs specifically for training players. Most people in the West District had been absorbed from surrounding cities and had no sense of belonging to the West District or Jade Spring City. Thus, if a better place appeared, they could leave without any hesitation.
If the road ahead was endless despair, then fighting desperately once wasn't out of the question. But if a path to heaven was laid out before you—even if that path was very narrow—people would scramble to rush onto it rather than choose the higher-cost option of a desperate struggle.
As a result, the environment of the West District had almost never changed.
As for the Rebel Army, according to information from internal channels within the Supervision Department, its members were very mixed. Some were original residents of Jade Spring City, some were people with high crime rates who weren't accepted by the East District, some specifically targeted the Agor Corporation, and others simply couldn't stand the fact that East District people lived so well... These people gathered together for different purposes to form the Rebel Army, and they would do anything that could cause trouble for the East District.
Of course, because the group was a mix of good and bad, innocent people were sometimes implicated, giving the Rebel Army a bad reputation outside.
Naturally, no matter how bad they were, they couldn't be worse than the Divine Fire Supervision Department.
The East District government had left a path for West District people, but the Divine Fire Supervision Department was a purely violent organization. Although its main purpose was to act as eyes and ears to monitor and control the Rebel Army, in reality, ordinary people were more affected. The West District had no government, and the Supervision Department's power was enormous. For most West District residents, they were openly exploitative oppressors.
Using West District people to manage West District people—West District residents viewed those who became supervisors as traitors, while those who became supervisors wanted to use the department's channels to go live in the East District. The positions of both sides naturally became antagonistic due to the change in identity.
It was worth mentioning that the East District would not send original West District players to manage the Supervision Department. All high-level players in the Supervision Department were definitely from the East District, or people completely unrelated to the West District. They only entered the West District at specific times and rarely interfered in the department's internal affairs. The members of the department's subordinate branches were all ordinary people who had undergone training.
This management method was, of course, a form of information shielding. Without using West District players, ordinary people could leak very little information.
From any perspective, the West District was closer to a hopeless criminal city. This would naturally make people think about migrating to other cities. But according to information on the terminal, the cities at the Hornless Lamb Station were almost all similar to Jade Spring City. Some cities with developed technology had extreme wealth disparity, while cities abandoned by the government and the rich might not even have enough food to eat. They were worlds apart from the district where the Green Sunshine Station was located.
Zone 019 had abundant gem resources, so everyone could live well there. But Zone 035 was never a resource-rich district. Overdevelopment and environmental changes had caused the limited resources to sharply decrease, and the vast majority were held in the hands of the wealthy. This left the lower-class commoners with almost no way to save themselves.
Other than death, the best option was probably to join the Rebel Army.
The three identities given by the instance had no obvious conflicts on the surface, but the tasks assigned based on those identities had clear positional biases. Therefore, players doing this instance would inevitably face opposition. However, because the game had disguised the players, and if the identity differences between players were large, they probably wouldn't recognize each other in a short time. If they wanted to complete the clearance tasks in the West District, players from the same instance would instead become obstacles.
Among the three clearance tasks, "Solve a murder case in the West District" seemed the simplest. Because tracking down the Rebel Army leader's identity was still needed, and that person was likely a player. The "White Blood" in the third task was completely without leads; he couldn't even search for it on the terminal.
There was a murder case right at hand. Xu Huo opened the internal system and checked the records of supervisor murders from the past three days. The earliest transmitted records were mostly captured by aircraft. Because the murdered supervisors often met their end in obscure corners, once the life signs on their watch terminals disappeared, the aircraft would immediately rush to investigate. So what was usually captured was the supervisor's death scene.
Xu Huo watched several videos. The methods of killing were very simple—slitting throats or stabbing vital points with sharp weapons. It didn't look like players were involved, and some scenes showed signs of struggle.
If a player killed someone, finding the real culprit was definitely difficult. For ordinary people, considering the West District's environment—revenge killings, robbery, people hostile to supervisors, or the Rebel Army—all were possibilities. Without footage of the perpetrator, the scope could almost be expanded to everyone.
Screening them one by one was difficult, but not impossible. However, the difficulty of this task lay in the Divine Fire Supervision Department's investigation rules. They basically didn't bother with theft or robbery. For murder cases, the investigation period was thirty hours from the time of occurrence.
Thirty hours, which was one day in Jade Spring City. If the perpetrator couldn't be caught within this day, the case file would be directly sealed and placed into the directory of cases not subject to investigation. From then on, all aircraft and supervisors would no longer cooperate.
(Chapter End)