The inner city was eerily quiet at midnight. The poorly maintained street lights flickered, making the streets look like an old movie with frames cut out.

In the dim old-timey film, a car came quickly and flattened the thin layer of snow that fell two days ago.

The noise of the engine motor is much quieter than that of the obsolete internal combustion engine, but to some people with guilty consciences it sounds like thunder.

The sound of brakes, the sound of military boots squeezing against the ground, the sound of violent collisions, and the crying of women and children were heard one after another.

There seemed to be a brief roar in it, but it was soon interrupted by a muffled sound. Just three minutes later, four figures were escorted towards the car.

And all of this, like an old movie, was seen by Mr. Bazel behind a gauze curtain.

His neighbor's entire family was captured by the army.

After watching the last person being put into the car, the captain of the soldiers in charge of closing the door seemed to have sensed something and raised his eyes to look in the direction of Basel.

In the moonlight, those eyes seemed to hold some beast from an old time.

Basel felt his hair stand on end when he was glanced at. The moment the other person looked at him, he stepped back half a step from the edge of the curtain, disappearing from the soldier's sight.

He looked at the clock hanging on the wall -

Three o'clock in the morning.

"dad."

A clear and tender child's voice was heard suddenly, causing Basel to tremble all over in the quiet late night.

He quickly looked around, at his three-year-old daughter.

"Why did you wake up?"

"There was a loud noise over there."

The child said timidly.

Basil suddenly didn't know what to say.

Feeling his daughter holding his hand, he felt a little calmer. Then he sent his daughter back to the bedroom, lit a cigarette on the sofa in the living room, and waited quietly for dawn.

It is now 3:00 a.m. on January 3, 53rd year of the New Era.

Fifty-one hours had passed since the Speaker's victory.

Basel didn't know whether it was necessary to call him Speaker after the Hope Parliament disappeared, but he knew one thing very clearly, that is, the three-day holiday given to the entire Hope City by the other party was not an act of kindness.

The other party made it very clear at the end of his speech, asking everyone in Hope City not to go out unless necessary.

Once this statement was implemented, there were three full days of what was called a holiday but was in fact a state of martial law.

Martial law is not a big deal for Hope City. In this city that could be attacked by a tide of beasts at any time, every household habitually stores some nutritional paste with a long shelf life.

When the beast tide is large in scale, it is not uncommon to impose martial law for two or three days.

For most residents in the outer city, these three days are a rare long holiday. They seldom have such a thorough rest, so almost everyone chooses to stay at home happily during the winter.

But for some residents in the inner city, those 72 hours seemed like 72 years.

The speaker started the action on the morning of the last day of last year, and it took the whole day to purge the top leaders.

And now these three days are obviously just to finish that matter.

Just like the neighbor who had just been taken away, Basel couldn't help but think of the male owner of that house - a fat man with a slightly balding head.

The other party and I belong to the same large department, and we meet occasionally. He is always in the habit of showing off his solid network of contacts on various occasions.

And the vines that helped him climb up eventually became traps that bound him, which was indeed a bit sad.

Thinking of this, Basel took a deep breath of smoke and exhaled slowly, watching the blue-gray smoke dissipate little by little in the air.

He had a feeling that the purge was drawing to a close.

Although there is still a whole day and half a night left, with so many people captured, it will take time to appoint new personnel.

Basel thought about his past twenty years. As a factory manager who was somewhat of a figurehead, he was in charge of areas related to mineral veins.

This is a small department with little revenue, and it requires frequent travel to collect shallow underground samples for analysis.

Feeling that he had done nothing wrong, Basel just stared at the ceiling and fell into a short and shallow sleep.

It was the daytime of January 3rd, and the entire City of Hope remained quiet and solemn. Apart from the occasional vehicles driving on the streets and personnel patrolling at various intersections, there was basically no one to be seen.

Hundreds of people in the mopping-up team felt as if they had entered an extremely long dream.

In the past, they often faced a problem that was somewhat embarrassing, that is, although they found out that someone was problematic, for one reason or another, the arrest operation and investigation would always end up in vain.

But the Speaker who held power let them catch them easily this time. What the Speaker meant was that he came from out of the city and didn't know those relationships, so all those who were found to have problems would be arrested.

As for the backers? Whoever betrayed them would be arrested. Anyway, the ten most powerful people had already fallen completely, and these parasites would take this opportunity to be wiped out.

For the purge teams, this was heaven.

A purge team's car stopped near a residential area in the inner city. Although it was daytime, the fully armed team members still rushed directly into a house and dragged all the people inside into the car like dead dogs.

After giving the order, their captain came to the next door of the house.

“Ding Dong.”

The sound of the doorbell rang in Bazel's ears like a death knell, and he felt his heartbeat stop for a moment.

His own sanity seemed to be scooped out of the bottomless sea of consciousness by an invisible colander.

When he opened his eyes, Basel saw the brightly lit living room, and the hour hand of the wall clock was pointing to "9".

He didn't expect that he had slept for so long.

“Ding Dong.”

The doorbell rang again, and Basel saw his wife coming out of the bedroom, with his daughter peeking behind her.

He waved his arms to drive the two back to the bedroom, opened the door nervously, and saw the uniform that he least wanted to see at this moment.

"Is this Mr. Basil from the Exploration Department of the Factory Office?"

The visitor asked indifferently.

"Yes, what can I do for you?"

Bazel swallowed and shivered all over because of the cold wind outside.

The visitor took a closer look at the frightened face and gave an ugly, stiff smile:

"You don't have to go to the factory office tomorrow morning. Go to the research institute to find researcher Ji Yongxing. He is very interested in some of your exploration results in recent years."

"Okay, okay."

Bazel's tone was a little hesitant:

"Excuse me, is there anything else?"

"there is none left."

The man took a step back and turned away:

“Have a great holiday.”