Chapter 3104: Carmen Field's Hometown
"You can go live in another district," Xu Huo said. "The welfare homes in many districts aren't as good as Zone 025. Many children have no one to take care of them."
Ms. Qi shook her head. "I only have one child. Loving him used up all my strength. I have no strength left to love other children."
Xu Huo was silent for a moment, then stood up and left the villa.
Ms. Qi only sat there for a short while before getting up. She went to the kitchen, rummaged out some dry bread, stuffed a couple of bites into her mouth, then opened her terminal and logged into an underground channel.
"I killed someone today." She aimed the camera at the bodies on the floor and began narrating how she had killed these people.
This kind of grotesque, bloody underground channel was repeatedly banned but never truly eliminated. Ms. Qi lived at the bottom of society, so she naturally knew about it. She knew many people enjoyed watching others kill, so she filmed the appearance of the corpses. The channel wasn't interrupted; in fact, more and more people came in to watch.
Watching the numbers in the channel grow, she pulled a few names she had secretly copied from the lawyer earlier out of her pocket, folded them, and stuck them to her chest. Then she turned the camera around, letting her blood-smeared face appear on the screen, and said, "After killing them, next is myself."
As soon as she finished speaking, she unfolded the paper on her chest, leaned against the table leg, and slit her own throat.
Every second of her death was broadcast. Even though the names on the paper were immediately detected and blocked by the AI system, the images had already spread.
Stories tinged with tragedy always strike a chord more easily. As the information spread, the contents of the paper naturally began to ferment from the fringes.
Ms. Qi's identity was quickly uncovered by those who were interested. Previously, Yangtao City hadn't made her disappearance public, but at this critical moment, the lawyer released a letter she had written earlier to the media personnel staking out the City Government Building.
The letter didn't mention Xu Huo or the Player's Home. It simply recounted her feelings as a mother wanting to avenge her son, confessed that her only wish before dying was to kill the enemy with her own hands, and finally posed two questions to the district government.
"My son was killed while investigating the truth behind his friend's death. Why didn't the government help him investigate?"
"I want to investigate the truth behind my son's murder. Why won't the government help me investigate?"
There were no overly resentful words. It was as if two lives, two destinies, could ultimately only be reduced to these two questions.
Ms. Qi was already dead. Although the video of her death couldn't be publicly released, people would be curious about what words were written on the paper she left behind. So many people went to search on the Message Collection Terminals.
But the search results for those names either came up empty or failed entirely.
However, Zone 025 could control its own district, but it couldn't control the Under Dimension. Many people tried their best to search on the game platforms. The more they searched, the more people naturally knew. Eventually, players from other districts would leak the matter of Zone 025, and other players would spread those names to other districts. Especially when a list appeared on the Under Dimension, supposedly indicating the districts where these people were located.
Of course, it was hard to distinguish truth from falsehood. Many people fabricated information upon hearing the news.
So ultimately, these names would have to appear in Zone 025's official documents to be conclusive.
For matters like this, district governments generally just needed to take a cold approach. Especially for other districts, no matter how much the locals talked, it was useless. No one would be so delusional as to think they could deal with people from other districts.
But at this moment, a player family in Zone 025 publicly demanded that the district government send official letters to other districts, requesting them to cooperate with the investigation or conduct their own investigations into the people on the list, and give Zone 025 a clear explanation.
This was practically defying the world's conventions. But the family head of this player family was very firm in his stance, refusing to change his mind even when his own family members tried to persuade him.
Whether a family member of his was involved in this unsavory player business, or he had other motives, in any case, someone had publicly raised the issue. Some citizens began to follow suit and protest. They believed that other districts had no right to cause trouble in Zone 025, let alone treat the people of Zone 025 as consumables. Why should they?
At this point, it was basically impossible to just erase those names as if nothing had happened. The storm began to blow towards other districts.
Xu Huo couldn't concern himself with what happened next. To avoid being pursued by the Enforcement Team, he left Zone 025 first and boarded a train at a nearby station.
He used a temporary pass, so he didn't need to use a ticket slot to board a B-Class train.
A-Class players were rare on B-Class trains. Because he deliberately revealed some information, the other players on the train only thought he had boarded using a low-level ticket and didn't dare to provoke him. Thus, the journey was relatively stable.
During this time, he also paid attention to the districts and families associated with the names on the list. But he didn't know if they were real names, fake names, or aliases used by others. In any case, no major uproar was stirred up.
But it always takes time for waves to gather into a storm.
The two-day journey passed quickly, and Xu Huo arrived safely at B02-001.
Zone 001 at the B02 wormhole point was a rather special district. It was said to be the birthplace and hometown of the late Carmen Field. There were many stories of his upbringing here. Statues of him were everywhere, along with legends, and various buildings, foods, and even flowers named after him.
Even though he had fought a district war before his death, causing heavy losses to the district and the wormhole point, his hometown district completely ignored these wounds, simply passing down the story of Carmen Field from generation to generation.
As soon as he walked out of the station, Xu Huo saw a huge gemstone statue in the square ahead. It depicted a man gazing into the distance, with the words "Mr. Carmen" engraved on the base.
He stopped to look for a moment. "Doesn't look like him at all."
The statue was vastly different from the Carmen Field he had seen in the Chaos Space of Zone 014. It seemed that due to some force, images, photographs, paintings, and other depictions of Carmen Field were not widely circulated on the Under Dimension, as if someone was deliberately downplaying his existence and influence.
Unexpectedly, even the sculptures made in his hometown were all different.
Which one was Carmen Field's true face? Probably only his relatives knew now.
"Sir, would you like a Hero Snack?" a simulation robot asked as he passed by. "To commemorate the hero Mr. Carmen Field, this snack is free."
Xu Huo looked at the pastry shaped like the Field Clan emblem. For a moment, he couldn't tell if it was commemorating the hero or disgusting the Field Clan.
Still, he took it and bit the Field Clan emblem in half in one go.
"Sir, would you like a small drink?" Just as he finished eating, another simulation robot appeared at the right moment, handing him a small cup of beverage. "To commemorate the hero Mr. Carmen Field, this small drink is also free."