Chapter 987 - 13: Waterworld
Qu Ruiqing often wonders why the Empire looks down on the people of the Swamp District, yet continues to use the things they produce. Why can’t they do without the goods made by the people of the Swamp District? Many parts are produced by the people of the Swamp District and then transported to the Empire.
She once saw a video call between the head of a Swamp District factory and the person responsible for dealing with the Empire. The head of the Swamp District factory was bowing and scraping with a forced smile, reporting the number of delivered products. The representative from the Empire didn’t even look him in the eye; the disdainful expression suggested that even a glance was a contamination.
After the people of the Swamp District delivered a large amount of products, the Empire’s representative gave them the exchanged materials. The head of the Swamp District thanked profusely, with a smile.
Qu Ruiqing looked at the quantity of those materials and then at the products. She fell silent immediately. The value of the materials exchanged for the Swamp District was not even one percent of the value of the products they delivered.
What is this?
Exploitation, oppression, and yet they trample on the other’s dignity.
Is this right?
Qu Ruiqing doesn’t know.
So she has always wanted to find an answer.
But she hasn’t found it yet.
One day, out of curiosity, she quietly followed her father into a secret room in the royal library and found an old book. After carefully photographing it completely, she started reading it in her bedroom. What she saw made her begin to question her situation.
The book tells the history of the Empire from five hundred years ago.
The ancestors Qu Fengbai and Zhou Chaoyang defeated the aliens and saved humanity. They led people to create a new world and start a new life.
But is the world now what the ancestors hoped for?
Qu Ruiqing feels probably not.
Since then, Qu Ruiqing would sneak to the Swamp District.
Because the ancestors of the Swamp District people also participated in the construction after the end of the apocalypse.
Why did the world eventually split into two?
She has been secretly going to the Swamp District for some time now.
Every visit, what she sees and hears shakes the beliefs she was born with.
Since she could remember, she was always taught that the people of the Empire are noble, and the people of the Swamp District are lowly. It’s their honor to work for the noble.
What was originally used to distinguish the noble from the lowly?
Who initiated such a standard?
Qu Ruiqing wants to know the answers.
She also wants to know if such distinctions are right or just.
After arriving in the Swamp District, Qu Ruiqing changed her clothes and wandered aimlessly on the streets of the Swamp District. The streets of the Swamp District are always damp, and the sky perpetually overcast. They have currency here, but unlike the Empire where electronic coins are stored in bracelets, they use paper money.
Here, the people of the Swamp District don’t have bracelets. Bracelets are a sign of noble status. People of the Empire have bracelets documenting their identity from birth, and the bracelets adjust in size with their wrist and accompany them till their death.
That’s why Dr. Zhong Hong immediately concluded that Kong Hou wasn’t from above because Kong Hou didn’t have a bracelet.
...
Kong Hou sat in the clinic’s office, swinging her two short legs on the chair, reading a newspaper.
"Little Kong Hou, can you understand it?" Dr. Zhong Hong asked with a smile.
"Yes." Kong Hou knew many kinds of characters, and she naturally knew the characters of this world.