Chapter 1956: The Future Is Created by You
The rebel army members didn't dare approach the city center, so they got off the car early, but once here, it had no effect on Xu Huo. Outer zone players didn't need permits or ID cards to enter the East District. The game might directly teleport them there, and the East District could do nothing about it—they couldn't possibly start a war with the endless stream of outer zone players.
Therefore, he didn't need to change his appearance or alter his identity information at all. He just had to let the East District players recognize that he was also a player.
So when the car passed a fixed player duty station, Xu Huo nodded from a distance to the people inside.
The East District players seemed uniformly cold. Forget showing friendliness—the way their eyes followed Xu Huo made it seem like they wanted to chase him down and pick a fight right then and there.
That didn't matter.
The city center was much livelier. Many places on the streets had Agor Corporation promotional screens set up, with the words "Celebrating the 50th Anniversary of Agor Corporation" displayed on them.
The car stopped in a bustling area. Enthusiastic citizens boarded to hand out small flags and flyers. "In five more days, it'll be the 50th anniversary of Agor Corporation's founding! The whole city will hold celebration events—all food, clothing, housing, and transportation will be 20% off! Everyone is welcome to shop and spend! Plus, there's a lucky draw sponsored by Agor Corporation! The first prize includes a tour of the headquarters and a chance to work at Agor Corporation!"
The earlier details didn't attract much attention, but the last sentence about the lucky draw got the people living on the city's outskirts on the car all excited. They scrambled to grab the flyers.
"Can we enter the lucky draw at every store?" someone pressed. "How many spots are there?"
The staff member handing out flyers said with excitement and pride, "Every store has one spot! This is Agor Corporation's free subsidy for us small business owners!"
"It would be amazing to hit the jackpot and get to work at Agor Corporation!" the people on the car chattered noisily. "Even just visiting without a job would be great. I've never been inside the Agor Corporation building!"
"You're so out of touch. Agor Corporation opens its doors for tours every so often, but you have to have lived in the East District for five years to apply. Those selected get all expenses covered by Agor Corporation, plus a few days of free play passes—all their entertainment venues are free to enter!"
This touched on ordinary people's welfare. Those who had lived in the East District for a while tirelessly promoted Agor Corporation's contributions to the city to their fellow passengers.
"The future of Jade Spring City is created by you!" A massive holographic projection suddenly appeared above the square ahead. The mayor, representing the highest authority in the city government, faced the crowd and spoke the government's long-standing slogan.
In such a lively atmosphere, many people chose to get off the car.
Xu Huo followed them down.
Now, the businesses in the city center were all preparing for the anniversary celebration. Flying vehicles and robots, replacing human labor, bustled about on the streets. Not only did storefronts need redecorating, but the ubiquitous greenery throughout the city also had to be replaced.
This city was full of mutant plants.
Unable to expand his spiritual realm, Xu Huo could only rely on his spatial power to understand the surroundings. Though not as convenient as spiritual power, it was enough to identify players active nearby.
These freely moving players might be locals from the East District or outer zone players who had lost their game-given identities. None of them were major participants in the East District or rebel army incidents. However, if clearance players didn't deliberately reveal their identities, with the game's help, it was easy to blend into the crowd.
While keeping an eye on his surroundings, Xu Huo logged into a mobile message collection terminal in the mall and browsed the latest hot news in the East District.
The most heavily promoted topic was still Agor Corporation's anniversary. Because it was a big occasion, the city government had cooperated by announcing reductions in daily necessities like water and electricity costs. They also took this opportunity to launch an additional preparatory player training class.
This preparatory player training class was held once a year at the beginning of the year for the entire East District. Any family with children could sign up. These participating children were trained as potential players. Like in other economically developed districts, they would be injected with evolution agents from a young age and supplemented with various medications to nourish their bodies. If evolutionary traits appeared one day, they might naturally become players.
If natural evolution didn't occur, it wasn't a problem. The city government would assess the children's various indicators to determine if they were suitable for evolution, then decide whether to inject them with evolved blood. There was a certain failure rate, but due to technological advancements, this rate had been greatly reduced, so ordinary people were willing to take the risk.
Additionally, children who ultimately couldn't become players still had options. After all, society couldn't function entirely on players. They could work for the city government and Agor Corporation, taking on tasks that players were unwilling to do and robots couldn't complete, thereby improving their living conditions.
Because players were needed, the city government encouraged childbirth. Families with children received substantial financial and educational support, along with psychological counseling to prevent parents from developing mental changes during the child-rearing process that might affect their kids.
From this perspective, the East District placed great importance on its newborn population.
Furthermore, the East District had also introduced artificial wombs. Women who didn't want to carry a pregnancy themselves could still have children through technological means. Of course, the cost was extremely high.
However, based on the East District's total population, the number of newborns wasn't very high.
The message collection terminal had publicly available data on annual newborn numbers from educators. Xu Huo followed the posts to find related papers. The papers mentioned the East District's persistently high miscarriage rate. Many women would naturally miscarry after becoming pregnant. Even after strengthening both parents' bodies, this miscarriage rate didn't decrease. The eventual conclusion was that environmental changes had caused this special genetic self-selection—the naturally miscarried children were those filtered out by nature.
The end of the paper also provided specific experimental data, using mutated animals for testing. It confirmed that most children who could be naturally born were either exceptionally strong or naturally carried a mutant gene that allowed them to bypass natural selection. The few children who were neither genetically mutated nor robust but still managed to be born owed it to luck.
Xu Huo found this laboratory and discovered that both it and the expert who wrote the related paper were under Agor Corporation. He then checked all registered hospitals in the city. Almost every licensed hospital was run by Agor Corporation—private clinics were not allowed.
Monopolizing healthcare wasn't unusual. Many districts took corresponding measures to effectively control population numbers and manage players. However, the East District's persistently high miscarriage rate seemed especially abnormal. The West District had a harsh living environment, with both parents generally unhealthy, yet naturally conceived children there weren't so easily lost. Some small clinics didn't often treat patients or prescribe medicine but instead performed abortions for those unable to afford raising children.
Searching through past government decrees, Xu Huo found no policies restricting population growth—they had always encouraged childbirth.
However, these accessible decrees were all from after the East-West division. Based on information revealed by some people in the game, the East-West division was forced, and afterward, the city government was essentially under Agor Corporation's control. Earlier records couldn't be found on public platforms. (End of Chapter)