"Nothing else has been found yet." Bo Zijin turned her gaze to Yuan Qingli, signaling her to continue.
Yuan Qingli pushed aside the books on the table and unfolded the folded drawing in her hand.
This is a map, a very comprehensive city map.
The navigation in the app only shows the starting point because the city is too big to see the whole picture.
After unfolding it and looking at the scale, I realized that the city runs from east to west for almost a hundred kilometers.
The map is crisscrossed, with almost all roads running east-west and north-south. Except for the slightly curved road in the middle, the rest are all straight roads.
Looking outwards, the city surprisingly has "city walls".
Yuan Qingli pressed her finger on the edge of the map, where eight dotted lines were drawn to form the city.
"Why would a modern city have city walls? What could they possibly block?"
"Perhaps, it's not to block out the outside, but to enclose the inside?" Bo Zijin's indifferent tone sent a chill down the spines of all three.
"What kind of massive undertaking would it take to surround the entire city?"
Lu Xingyun seemed to be deep in thought. "There are no markings on the outer edge of the map, only four gates. Let's go to the city gates and see what's going on. Maybe we can find some clues."
The nearest city gate is 39 kilometers away from the library.
As they drove there, before they even got close, the four of them felt a chill run down their spines.
The city wall is much taller than eight stories, and you can only see a small patch of sky on the outer edge.
As they approached the city wall, fewer and fewer pedestrians appeared, suggesting that it wasn't a place for them to go.
Lu Xingyun braked. Ten meters away was the city gate, where there were no ordinary people.
Outside the city gate was a sentry post.
The massive barricades and sandbags, along with unidentified weapons, were all aimed at—the interior.
"Let's go, I don't think it's necessary to go and ask."
The sentry not far away stared at the car with undisguised, sharp eyes.
Without a doubt, one more step and it would turn into a six-meter-long piece of scrap metal.
On the way back, none of the four spoke.
Clearly, this is a besieged city, like fish on a chopping board, ready to be slaughtered at any moment.
As more and more pedestrians appeared, Lu Xingyun suddenly braked.
"Hey beautiful, can I ask you something? How do I get to the library?" Lu Xingyun pretended to ask a skeleton by the roadside for directions, his true intentions unclear. It was also unclear how he could tell the skeleton was male or female.
A sincere face paired with a sunny smile can cause intense discomfort to the other person.
"Ah! A ghost!" The skeleton turned and ran, making vomiting motions, even though there was nothing to vomit.
Yuan Qingli smiled and said, "You look terrible now, don't go out and scare people."
Lu Xingyun could only feel helpless.
After wrapping his face with a scarf, Lu Xingyun finally made some progress.
"I asked several people, and they were all born locally. The oldest one was only 30 years old."
They were taught from a young age that the wall was a protective barrier and should not be approached, though they couldn't explain exactly why.
"Have you heard of the origin of morality?" Bo Zijin pondered for a moment, but did not express her opinion.
The three shook their heads.
"The law is the bottom line for doing things, but morality is not. There are many things that the law cannot regulate, but morality can."
“There was an experiment where fifty monkeys were put in a cage with a bunch of bananas hanging in the middle of the cage. But if you touched the bananas, all the monkeys would get an electric shock.”
"At first, all fifty monkeys kept trying to eat the bananas, but after being given dozens of electric shocks, none of them dared to make a move anymore."
"Later, the experimenters took away one monkey and put in a new one. The new monkey didn't understand and went to eat the banana, so all the monkeys were shocked again. Then, the experimenters replaced it with another new monkey. As soon as this new monkey showed any intention of eating the banana, it was beaten up by all the other monkeys until it no longer had any interest in the banana hanging in the middle of the cage."
"Later, the experimenters kept replacing the monkeys with new ones, and each new monkey would be severely beaten for this. Until the last monkey that had been shocked was replaced, the monkeys in the cage had not experienced electric shocks, but they still dared not eat bananas, and, for some reason."
After Bo Zijin finished telling her story, everyone fell into deep thought, pondering it carefully, a chill running down their spines.
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