“Efficiency and fairness…are not enemies.”
He paused, his eyes falling on the huge planning map in front of Li Shuo, and his finger pointed at the water supply point in the North Seventh District.
"Need extra manpower to repair the pipeline in North District 7? The South District Heavy Industry Consortium has skilled plumbers, and their families are in a temporary resettlement site on the edge of North District 7. We can mobilize them to repair the pipeline while prioritizing water supply to their families' resettlement site. This is called efficiency, and it's also fair."
His finger moved toward the old West Side reactor.
"Does the Energy Group lack the technical expertise to retrofit cooling for older reactors? Dr. Qin's team, while analyzing the Lighthouse database, discovered a safer coolant formula and simplified manufacturing process from the past. The Medical Mutual Aid Network has basic chemical processing capabilities and can organize production. This is called resource sharing, which improves efficiency and benefits everyone."
Finally, his eyes fell on the defensive gap in the ruins of "Paradise Port".
"The security team is short-staffed? Many of the workers in the South Third District are former low-level Black Scorpion mercenaries. They are familiar with the terrain of the ruins and the remaining Black Scorpion's tactics. Give them a chance and form an auxiliary patrol team. They can redeem themselves from their crimes and protect their new home. This is called trust, and it is also strength."
Lu Chen's voice was calm, without any impassioned rhetoric. He simply laid out clear, concrete paths that defied conventional thinking yet cut straight to the heart of the matter. He seemed not to be proposing a solution, but rather to be sketching out a feasible blueprint that had already existed in his mind. Everyone in the conference room held their breath. The previous arguments and confrontations paled in the face of his seemingly simple yet incredibly sharp solution. Zhou Rui froze mid-advance as he pushed up his glasses, his eyes flickering behind the gold-rimmed lenses.
"Reconstruction," Lu Chenshang's gaze finally swept across the room, landing on the members representing the Disabled Persons' Union with a heavy sense of respect. "It's not about leveling the ruins and rebuilding an identical cage. It's about using our hands and our wisdom to transform the broken walls and ruins into a place where everyone—no matter who they were in the past, no matter whether they are able-bodied or not—can stand up straight and see the sun rise tomorrow."
He paused slightly, and a subtle, yet powerful, force filled his voice:
“This is the light of new life.”
Dead silence.
After a brief moment of dead silence, thunderous applause erupted! It wasn't just politeness, but genuine recognition and excitement! The old woman's eyes welled up with tears, the scarred man slammed his hands on the table, and even the representatives who had previously supported Zhou Rui clapped their hands with genuine admiration. Li Shuo looked at Lu Chenshang, his eyes filled with satisfaction and a sense of relief that "as expected." This young man's battlefield was never just between guns and cannons.
Zhou Rui slowly lowered his hands amid the applause, forcing a formal smile onto his face, but his gaze behind his glasses deepened. Efficiency? Fairness? He chewed on the two words, looking at Lu Chenen's calm figure, yet seemingly harboring the core of a storm. The corners of his mouth hardened.
Compared to the noise and light of the committee room, deep within the ruins of Paradise Harbor lies a quiet and dangerous world.
The sunlight was fragmented by the twisted, fractured metal skeleton, casting eerie, shifting shadows. The air was thick with the scent of rust, stale oil, and an indescribable, sweet, fishy odor, a mix of radioactive dust and decaying matter, as if emanating from deep underground. On the collapsed billboards, the once vibrant virtual images had long since transformed into blurred, distorted blocks of color, like ghostly graffiti.
Wen Shifei, like a nimble civet cat, moved silently through the mountains of construction debris and twisted metal pipes. She wore a lightweight, form-fitting protective suit, a filter mask covering her face, revealing only a pair of alert, sharp eyes. The screen of the portable terminal on her wrist flickered, displaying a constantly updating topographical scan. A blinking cursor pointed to an area deep within the ruins, where energy readings were abnormal.
Three days ago, a scavenger who had narrowly escaped from the depths of the ruins brought back a broken metal part and some incoherent descriptions: glowing walls, strange humming sounds, and... an "invisible knife" that could instantly freeze people. Dr. Qin, from the residual energy signature of the part and the scavenger's chaotic neural signal recordings, detected extremely faint fluctuations that were highly consistent with some of Pandora Labs' early prototypes!
Pandora's shadow hasn't completely dissipated with the destruction of its parent, Zero. Its tentacles, or rather its uncontrolled creations, remain like cancerous tumors lurking in the veins of ruins, threatening the nascent new life at any moment.
Wen Shifei's mission: locate, assess, and retrieve critical data. Eliminate the threat if necessary. She refused Li Shuo's offer of support. The complex terrain and unknown dangers of this ruined area meant more people would be a burden. Her advantage lay in her deep understanding of Pandora's technological system, granted by the Lighthouse's core database, and her intuition honed by countless life-or-death experiences.
She stopped before a gap formed by massive concrete blocks and twisted steel beams, resembling the ribs of a giant beast. The power readings on the terminal spiked, and a faint, acrid smell, similar to ozone, filled the air. The target was inside.
She took a deep breath, lowered her breathing to the lowest level, and crouched down like a cheetah ready to pounce, sliding silently into the depths of the crevice.
The passage was narrow, damp, and winding downward. The ground beneath my feet was covered in thick, slippery moss and an unknown slime. The walls were dotted with the remnants of abandoned, heavily corroded pipes. The further I went, the stronger the smell of ozone grew, and the air seemed thicker, carrying a low-pitched, oppressive hum that made my eardrums swell and my heart race.
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