Chapter 224 The Abandoned Land
Where do we go next?
Pandora drove the stolen car around New York City. Because she had tampered with the PR database beforehand, she and He Yu didn't have to worry about being exposed to surveillance or satellite tracking. The only stupid thing was that the car was a convertible, and then it suddenly started pouring rain—what incredibly bad luck!
Whatever, getting caught in the rain won't kill me. If the interior gets damaged, I can just steal another one. If I'm in a good mood, I might even drive a tank around town, as long as those board members' terminals don't get upgraded again.
"To be honest, I have absolutely no clue."
"For example, things like destroying the world from within, or overthrowing an ideal state."
"The happiness they create will never last."
"But some people are willing to continue to sink into depravity, some use it to amplify their desires, and some repeat the same mistakes. No matter where they are, all they get is a tragic life."
"Perhaps what we need to do is start with those groups that are suffering in the same way."
Upon hearing this, Pandora's face contorted like a bitter gourd. She immediately switched to autopilot mode, poured herself another glass of wine, and prepared to get completely drunk—who knows if He Yu was possessed by a ghost? He was speaking in such a literary way, it was so damn weird.
"Tsk, you have no sense of humor."
"I just thought saying it would fit the atmosphere."
"Similar to the opening remarks of a stage play."
"Forget it, just thinking about that idiot Beelzebub makes me angry. Why did he have to rebel instead of choosing a perfectly good data world? He deserves to die."
He Yu pondered for a while, pulled up the holographic map, looked at it for a few seconds, and then set a new coordinate.
"This place will do, N52 block."
Pandora swallowed a mouthful of wine, pulled the screen over to look at it, and was completely unsettled.
"Damn... the red-light district?"
"Are you fucking going to save streetwalkers?"
"What kind of logic is this? We go to that place fully armed, meet a woman, and then indignantly say: Hey, beautiful, do you think your life is happy? We're here to help you escape from your cage."
He Yu's expression immediately turned as if he had drunk a cup of sheep dung coffee. You're a grown man, kid. No wonder you're from Jerusalem. Your thought process is just extraordinary.
“That area is outside the jurisdiction of the Gospel of Heaven because it is too poor, and there are several black communities and homeless settlements.”
“Every day is filled with gang fights, robberies, and murders, and it’s also a transit point for arms and hallucinogenic drug transactions.”
"We still have plenty of time, so we should just wander around in places like this, experience the local customs, and get familiar with the environment."
"Then what?"
Although Pandora didn't understand, she still changed the navigation to block N52, which wasn't far, only fifteen kilometers away.
"Of course, we should rescue them."
“These people at the bottom of society need someone to teach them how to resist, and they need a helper with exceptional persuasive abilities.”
After a moment's thought, He Yu added, "As for the outcome, let them die gloriously on the path of the great cause they aspire to, preferably with more value, even if their deaths are ridiculous and meaningless, it doesn't matter."
"As long as we incite more riots and amplify the impact to the extreme, that's enough."
"That's right, this is the first step in the plan to turn the ideal world upside down."
In the silence, Pandora seemed to want to say something, but in the end she just nodded.
Ah, the ideal state, the so-called paradise of happiness.
Is it really as peaceful as you think, great operative Li Lin?
If things were so stable, how could we possibly awaken?
...
...
The experience of local culture took less than two hours.
For the entire length of the movie, the two drove that convertible around the most chaotic and impoverished black areas of New York.
It's supposedly an unmanaged area, but its actual size is fucking enormous. It's divided into over a dozen additional zones, clearly heavily modified. Li Lin must have lumped together areas with absolutely no exploitable value. It's like mixing blank sheets with blank sheets, newspapers with newspapers—a complete mess. They throw all the substandard stuff, perfect for a hodgepodge, together and let them do whatever they want with it. The social security benefits that Heaven's Gospel Company gives them every year are already enough for these maggots to be grateful for.
They only learned about the local customs, and that was all. Even when they encountered thugs collecting protection money along the way, they readily took out their wallets and paid the money.
Anyway, all the money was stolen from the business building. He Yu had filled several sacks with it, but after several hours... it was almost empty.
Fortunately, these idiots were only interested in money. Perhaps because business was booming in the red-light district, they only whistled when they saw Pandora and did nothing else inappropriate, thus saving him the trouble of taking action.
Because autonomous driving consumes too much energy, Pandora drove back to the driver's seat halfway through, complaining that the road in this godforsaken place was as steep as a cliff edge, and that she was going to be shaken to death.
The good news is that they have finally gained a basic understanding of these dark areas.
At first, Pandora was quite interested, thinking there would be a fierce battle and some massacre of the Black community. But in the end, she found that He Yu, that damned bastard, just sat in the back seat and told her to wander around. Over time, she lost her enthusiasm and found it increasingly boring.
The two parked their car next to a convenience store—calling it a convenience store is already giving them credit, the decor was like a morgue, and the only things they sold inside were instant noodles and sandwiches, the kind without meat, and the lettuce was probably synthetic, as one bite was full of the smell of paint.
"If you ask me, have you noticed any blind spots after walking around for so long?"
Pandora expressionlessly pulled a cockroach leg out of the sandwich, decisively threw it out the car window, and then drank the half-empty bottle of tequila.
"We didn't find any blind spots, but we did find quite a few usable consumables."
He Yu chewed on the bowl of instant noodles, completely ignoring the American cockroach that had already emerged from the bowl, and swallowed it mouthful after mouthful. "In short, it's beyond saving, just bury it."
In other words, if the city center is paradise, then the place where the two are currently is purgatory created by the poor.
The idyllic scenes portrayed on screen are merely illusions; laws cannot fully penetrate the entire city, thus creating a zone where the law cannot take root.
"After all, it was a dream framework that came out of nowhere. Li Lin couldn't completely suppress the dark side of the other operatives, so he chose to extract some of them and leave them in a no-man's-land to fend for themselves."
He Yu kept a cold face, thinking to himself that no matter which stage it was, he really couldn't stand this place.
But we still have to use it when the time is right.
"Project all those siege weapons over here."
"Let's begin with the first step of the plan."
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