Chapter 989: Only Night City
"What a coincidence." Xu Huo responded indifferently.
"Thank you for your help yesterday," Liang Yi hesitated for a moment before bringing up the old matter again, then said, "You absolutely must not believe that Dong Yu. If she invites you to go with her, you must not follow them."
"Have you been to District 002?" Xu Huo asked.
"I have a friend in District 002..." Liang Yi paused, "He mentioned that many players in District 002 are engaged in human trafficking, and some players will lure foreign players on the train. District 002 is not as good as they say it is."
Xu Huo thanked her for her kindness and didn't say much more.
Liang Yi stopped there and returned to her room after speaking.
The VIP lounge had few people, and players rarely came out to move around. The next two days passed very peacefully. Thanks to his powerful self-healing ability, Xu Huo's injuries had mostly recovered. When passing through the daylight zone and welcoming the night, the train arrived at its destination, District 002.
As soon as he got off the train, boundless darkness surged from all directions. This was different from the usual night.
The conventional sense of night is not complete darkness. Although the light from the sky and stars is faint, in the eyes of players who possess abilities, it's not much different from daytime. But the night in District 002 was different. In the pitch-black sky, there was no light source at all. The night seemed to obstruct vision like a physical substance. Apart from the solitary lamps on one side of the street, the streets before and after where Xu Huo stood, the surrounding buildings, and even the entire city were soaked in blackness—this was District 002, where there was no daylight, only night. The famous Only Night City.
Only Night City was the nickname for District 002. As the name implies, it was a city that only had night. No one knew whether it was originally like this or if some incident had caused it to become this way. In short, all information about this place under the dimension mentioned its night.
People living in a normal world might find it hard to imagine what kind of environment this was. Just do a simple subtraction.
In a world with normal day and night, reverse a person's schedule: sleep during the day, be active at night, and never see the sun in twenty-four hours—that doesn't sound too difficult. Then remove most of the natural light at night, such as sky light, starlight, moonlight, etc. That might still be acceptable, because in highly urbanized areas, artificial lighting is the main theme of the night.
But what if you remove that main theme?
From indoor lighting and the faint glow of appliances to building lights and urban lighting, leaving only a small street lamp every hundred meters—doesn't the world suddenly feel quiet?
Not for one-third or half of the day, but day after day, year after year, living like this.
Because there was no daytime, all lighting in District 002 relied on human-generated electricity. Although people still lived according to a certain schedule, the time belonging to "daytime" only accounted for one-third, meaning the daily power supply lasted at most eight hours. In special circumstances or when a large city needed a massive power supply, some small cities would even have these eight hours deducted.
In this environment, the government advocated thrift. Each power distribution terminal could only support a limited number of electrical appliances, meaning people couldn't freely use stored power devices. During the prescribed "night," they had to "tighten their belts" when using stored electricity. The stored electricity could then be sold back to the government, which also served as a family income.
It was currently the "night" time in District 002, so most of the places Xu Huo saw were dark. If not for the reflective materials used on the outer walls of buildings, even with night vision, he wouldn't be able to see very far.
"This is the darkness without light." Xu Huo walked alone on the street for a while, ignoring the two tails following him. He found a place marked "Accommodation" and knocked on the door. The small door hole opened, revealing a pair of eyes that seemed covered in a layer of dust.
Because the people of District 002 had lived in darkness for a long time, their vision had deteriorated, and correspondingly, their eyes had changed.
The other party stared at him, "Two thousand white notes a night."
Xu Huo glanced at the price tag next to him, "Isn't it five hundred?"
"Take it or leave it!" As he spoke, the small hole was about to close.
"Open the door." Xu Huo stopped him.
The boss cautiously looked outside for several seconds before opening the door a crack to let him in. Then came a smooth series of actions: closing the door and locking it. When Xu Huo turned around, three locks had already been fastened on the door.
The boss wasn't interested in his identity. Carrying a faintly glowing fluorite, he said, "You have to leave by dawn tomorrow morning. The keys are on the counter. Pay and take whichever you want."
Xu Huo paid and exchanged for a key, casually asking, "Who are those people following me?"
The boss was startled by this question. He shoved the money back into Xu Huo's hand, snatched the key away, turned to open the door, and directly pushed him out: "Find another place to stay!"
Then the door mercilessly slammed shut.
Xu Huo had no choice but to take back his money.
What darkness bred was not just a perfect power circulation system, but also endless criminal organizations.
With "light sources" that could be destroyed at any time, let alone "night," even "daytime" in District 002 wasn't necessarily safe. As Liang Yi said, human trafficking was one of the more common crimes. Apart from the more developed metropolises, many small and medium-sized cities here were almost under the joint rule of local governments and local black forces. On the surface, the government had the final say, but in reality, the black forces had a wider reach than the government.
So at night, ordinary people basically didn't go out.
But not going out didn't mean safety either.
At distances of two hundred meters, three hundred meters, and three hundred and fifty meters from him, three locations were respectively experiencing home invasion robberies and home invasion kidnappings.
Xu Huo stuffed the map he had taken from the innkeeper's counter into his pocket, lowered his head, and walked into a dark alley.
The two people tailing him saw this and gestured to each other, blocking the alley entrance from front and back. However, when they went in, the person who had first walked into the alley had already disappeared.
After easily shaking off the two tails, Xu Huo went to the home invasion kidnapping scene. He casually tied the two people carrying a sack to chairs, then made a shushing gesture to the little girl who crawled out of the sack. After she nimbly went out and closed the door, he pulled up a chair and sat in front of the two men. With one hand resting on his crossed legs and the other playing with the strings, he said:
"I have a few questions for you. Cooperate."
"Do you know who we work for? Don't think just because you're a player you can..." The one on the left hadn't finished his threat before the flying string wrapped around his neck, lifting him and the chair halfway into the air. Ignoring his reddening neck, Xu Huo looked at the other man, "And you?"
Seeing his companion's face gradually turning purple, the other man nodded frantically and deliberately lowered his voice, "I'll talk, I'll talk! As long as I know!"
"Good." Xu Huo raised two fingers. Only after hearing a crisp breaking sound did he drop the corpse and manipulate the string to fly to this man's neck.
(Chapter End)