Bai Liu opened his eyes.

Before my eyes was a forest of skyscrapers made of reinforced concrete. The top floors of the buildings reached straight into the sky and were completely invisible if one raised their heads. As far as the eye could see, there was no building shorter than thirty stories.

Between the buildings are roads about three or four meters wide or sidewalks one or two meters wide, with low street lamps standing on both sides. Bai Liu is facing an entrance with seven big words arranged in red neon tubes on it: [Sunshine City Welcomes You].

There is a slogan below: [Chase the sun, chase happiness, the future is waiting for you here! ]

Inside the entrance, there was a bustling crowd of people walking on the street. Citizens wearing black, white, blue and gray work clothes walked quickly and numbly with their heads down in this city called the Sunshine City. No one looked up at the sun above their heads which was almost blocked by the high-rise buildings, and no one looked at Bai Liu standing at the entrance of the city.

Bai Liu checked the pocket of his suit pants and took out a citizen ID card.

[System prompt: Detected that player Bai Liu obtained the important identification item Citizen ID Card]

[Citizen ID card, the player's daily income, expenditure, savings, and mortgage deductions are all processed through this card. Each person has one card with one number. Multiple cards cannot be issued, cannot be replaced, cannot be transferred, cannot be destroyed at will, and will be cancelled on the spot of death. It is tied to the citizen's life, property, identification, and travel for life. ]

【Balance on card: NT$2,700】

Bai Liu looked around and confirmed that he was the only one around.

It seemed that the others were sent to another entrance. Bai Liu walked into the passage holding his ID card. A cashier poked his head out with a tired look on his face. There was a bucket of unfinished instant noodles on his table. "Are you going to enter the city?"

"The entrance fee is 1,200." The toll collector waved his hand and said, "Give me your ID card."

Bai Liu paused for a moment and handed the ID card over. The cashier took it and swiped it on the computer. He hummed and turned around in confusion: "You are not a resident of our city?"

"No." Bai Liu smiled politely, "I'm new here today."

For some reason, the cashier's eyes became hostile. He looked Bai Liu up and down and shoved the ID card back forcefully: "We don't welcome outsiders here."

"But outsiders can indeed come in, right?" Bai Liu didn't answer, but pointed to the entry requirements on the toll collector's computer desktop, "I saw that outsiders can register to become citizens here."

Bai Liu looked at the complaint number on the toll collector's license: "If you don't follow the rules, I will file a complaint against you immediately. Your job might be affected. So you won't let me enter the city?"

The toll collector's face froze, and he reluctantly took back the ID card, but his tone was still hard: "...The registration fee is 1,400, a total of 2,600, and you have 100 left."

"You don't own a house in Sunshine City. You are not a formal citizen but a temporary resident. You have to pay a land use fee to live in Sunshine City. It is 10 yuan per hour and will be deducted directly from your card. If the money in the card is deducted and the land use fee cannot be deducted, your ID card will be marked red after one hour, and the patrol team will evict you within 15 minutes."

Bai Liu raised an eyebrow: "Land use fee? What is this?"

The toll collector couldn't help but roll his eyes at Bai Liu's ignorance: "Of course it's the fee for your use of the land."

"Every inch of land in Sunshine City belongs to the five major real estate developers. Every second you stand on it, you are using their land, and you have to pay for it."

As he spoke, the toll collector showed a longing look: "Of course, if you have your own house in Sunshine City, it is your own place, and you don't have to pay land use fees in your own house."

"One hundred yuan. If you can't find a job, you can stay in Sunshine City for a maximum of ten hours." The toll collector swiped Bai Liu's ID card from the computer and handed the card and a notice of "Instructions for Entering the City" to Bai Liu with a look of contempt. "Here, take it and go in."

Bai Liu took the card and looked at it. There was an extra line of embossed words in the lower right corner - [Sunshine City Temporary Resident Certificate].

[System prompt: Congratulations to player Bai Liu for officially entering Sunshine City and starting the main quest - go to the job market today and find a job that suits your heart! ]

Bai Liu went in with his ID card. He could still hear the cashier complaining quietly behind him:

"There are more outsiders coming to the city, competing with us for houses. It looks like the prices of properties launched this week will continue to rise, and the competition for jobs will become more intense. It's so annoying..."

Bai Liu walked into this gray and gloomy Sunshine City, but no pedestrians on the street even glanced at this new citizen who had entered the Sunshine City. They walked quickly on the street, making phone calls or handling various matters. Bai Liu noticed that there were also strangers who had just entered the city and tried to ask these people for directions, but were all dismissed impatiently and indifferently.

After all, it costs ten dollars an hour to stand on the ground outside, and no one wants to waste their time, which is already being paid, to help strangers.

Bai Liu was strolling leisurely on the street with the "Instructions for Entering the City" in his hand. He read while looking at the surrounding scene with his peripheral vision, standing out from the busy crowd around him.

The [Instructions for Entering the City] states that there are three types of residents in the city. One type is those who have successfully purchased a house. This type of resident is called a first-class citizen, also known as a [homeowner].

[Homeowner] type residents can enjoy different levels of medical, educational, social shopping and other public service benefits or discounts based on the location, price and type of their house. The land use fee is reduced from 10 yuan per hour to 5 yuan per hour.

The second type is residents who have paid a down payment and are currently repaying their loans. Because they have acquired a house, they have gotten rid of the title of temporary residents and have become second-class citizens, also known as "house slaves."

Because they have not yet fully acquired the house, the welfare policies for [house slaves] are not as great as those for [homeowners] in all aspects. The land use fee has only been reduced from 10 yuan to 8 yuan. However, [house slaves] have a considerable advantage, which is employment.

The main business of Sunshine City is real estate. Ninety percent of the city’s residents’ income comes from the five major real estate developers, and all the houses in the city also belong to the companies of the five major real estate developers.

That is to say, if you want to buy a house, you can only buy it from the five real estate companies. If you have a proof of residence for a house owned by one of the five real estate companies, the five companies will give you priority in hiring.

The last type of residents are temporary residents like Bai Liu.

The entire "Instructions for Entering the City" is like a real estate developer's promotional advertisement, which talks about the benefits of buying a house and the happy life of homeowners, but does not mention anything about house prices.

Bai Liu turned over and looked at the back of the [Instructions for Entering the City].

On the back of the [Instructions for Entering the City] are warnings:

Prohibitions in Sunshine City: It is prohibited to rent houses in the name of individuals, groups or companies; it is prohibited for individuals to buy and sell houses; it is prohibited to occupy public land in a fixed location for a long time (such as sleeping on the street). Violators will be fined at least 100,000 yuan, and the fine will be determined based on the specific circumstances, with no upper limit.

When Bai Liu saw this, his eyebrows raised.

The ban on private housing transactions by individuals has basically cut off the ability of ordinary citizens to buy houses from channels other than the five major real estate developers, and has also cut off the path for small real estate developers to start their businesses.

This means that if ordinary citizens want to buy a house, they can only buy it from the five major developers.

The ban on all forms of renting also cuts off the options for those who do not buy a house.

Those who cannot buy or rent a house can only find a place to make a living, but the third regulation also cuts off the way out for such people - it prohibits long-term occupation of public land in a fixed location, which is equivalent to prohibiting you from staying in non-housing areas.

Simply put, there is only one way to survive in Sunshine City - buying a house from the five major developers.

Seeing this, Bai Liu basically understood that this was a city completely ruled by open businessmen, or in other words, a city whose survival was monopolized.

What is strange is that, logically speaking, the population of a city that extremely squeezes the living space and has very low expectations should be small, and the fertility and marriage rates should also be very low. When people cannot guarantee their own survival, they have no desire to reproduce.

But on the contrary, the city's permanent population has reached tens of millions, the fertility rate has been rising year by year, and there are also a large number of foreign immigrants.

Moreover, once residents enter Sunshine City, few leave.

Bai Liu looked at the slogan on the [Information for Entering the City]: [A happy city with a marriage rate of over 50% for three consecutive years!]

This was completely against objective laws. There must be something else in this city that he didn't know about yet, affecting its operation.

[System prompt: You have been wandering in the public area of ​​Sunshine City for one hour, and a land use fee of 10 yuan will be deducted.]

Bai Liu glanced at the prompt on the system panel, put it down, and looked at the market-like place in front of him that was so crowded that it was about to overflow, and then glanced at the sign at the door - [Talent Market].

As soon as I walked in, there was a whole row of scanning printers on both sides of the door. On them were written "Facial Scanning Resume Automatic Creation Device" and next to it was written "Swipe card to print, ten yuan per time."

There was a queue in front of the machine. Everyone was anxiously walking back and forth in the crowd, holding their resumes. Some people squatted in the corner of the hall with their heads down, drinking mineral water, and some people stared blankly at the phone waiting for a reply. People in the toilet lined up outside, and from time to time, hoarse cries could be heard from inside:

"I failed, they didn't want me, what should I do, I can't find a job!"

"It dropped to more than 3,000. I passed the written test but failed the interview. They were ready to hire me, but in the end they still wanted someone with a real estate certificate..."

This scene was so familiar that Bai Liu, who had experienced the job market before, felt a subtle... sense of discomfort.