17 Self-immolation
◎Though my life is as insignificant as a blade of grass, even a fire can set the whole field ablaze◎
Kong Wei's contempt for the Federation was almost overflowing.
Yan Xunzhi shrank his head, knowing that she was right. His first reaction was to nervously look around to see if there were any cameras.
Oh my god! No wonder they brought her here! What did she hear today?
Any random passage you pick up will result in ten years in prison!
Kong Wei was amused by her reaction. Seeing her looking around twice and then checking a third time, he couldn't help but say, "Don't look. There won't be any surveillance in the special training room."
"What if?" Yan Xunzhi was so nervous that he wanted to scan the entire training room with a scanner. "What if the Federation just likes to spy?"
Not finding the camera made her even more uneasy—it would be better to put it out in the open for her to see, so she could have some precautions! She could only clasp her hands together and silently think that this was all Kong Wei's idea, and had nothing to do with her. She just happened to hear that...
The culprit squinted his eyes and said, "No, don't worry. The removal of the surveillance cameras in the special training room was the result of the Federation almost going extinct. Unless there is another generational extinction due to the lack of surveillance, the Federation will not put the surveillance cameras back."
At least in her lifetime, she had never seen a special training room with a hidden camera installed.
Yan Xunzhi was stunned when he heard her firm tone, "...broken generation?"
Kong Wei knew that she was curious again.
These answers weren't enough to get her to rush out, so she just stood there by the door, feeling tired from standing. She asked Yan Xunzhi to sit on the mental training chair, "Sit down and tell me slowly."
The process of removing the cameras was quite a long one. Initially, surveillance cameras were everywhere, pervasive. Even when we slept, there were cameras watching us. There was no privacy at all. After seventy or eighty years of underground struggle, most of the cameras in daily life were removed, but the tradition of ubiquitous surveillance persisted inside the White Tower.
The high-sounding excuse is: the Baita Military Area is a highly controlled area. To prevent the private transfer of federal secrets, surveillance cameras must not be blocked or removed.
In fact, many senior executives will use cameras to spy on their moves behind the scenes.
If you can survive on the ground for a long time, you are either very lucky and a child of destiny, or you have your own set of life-saving methods that can help you escape when a crisis comes.
Everyone wants to live longer on the ground, but not everyone can summarize such a set of rules, and not everyone can live to the day when they have enough experience to summarize the rules.
If there is no instructor willing to guide them, and they have no friends to make friends with when they arrive at the military district, they can only rely entirely on teaching and luck.
Therefore, the value of underground surveillance is infinitely increased. On the ground, who doesn't want to have several life-saving methods? If one doesn't work, there is another backup.
Secretly recording videos has become a special black industry.
The top brass used connections to copy the forbidden videos using special equipment without leaving any traces. Initially, they copied a small number of copies and sold them at high prices. Later, they discovered that the discs they sold would be cracked again, and they would be re-copied and sold again and again. This became almost a default practice.
Some people just don't want others to make money for nothing... They are the ones taking the risk, so why should they let those middlemen get the advantage!
So they started to produce it on a large scale, taking the route of small profits but quick turnover, and for a time there were piracy surveillance everywhere.
The Federation did not stop this, but only demoted a few senior executives and promoted them secretly, implicitly allowing the industry to grow.
After all, part of their earnings will flow back to the Federation to provide funds for the Federation, and the life-saving methods that flow out and are privately kept by others can reduce the death rate on the ground, so that the Federation has more people available.
It has no losses.
The only ones who lose are those individuals whose money is stolen from.
Who told them not to share? If they don't actively hand it over, they won't get any subsidies.
It's unknown when this started, so it's impossible to say how long this well-known illegal industry has existed. Just as the Federation was preparing to formalize it and force all outposts to publicly hand it over, three consecutive military districts were completely annihilated.
There was a guide named Xiao Mingran, who was famous for his life-saving skills and sold discs to half of the federation. He deliberately taught the wrong skills under surveillance.
These skills cannot be said to be completely wrong - they are useful when dealing with some foreign objects, and are even particularly easy to use. They just require slightly higher technical skills, so they are promoted more in military regions.
No one expected that this was a kind of spiritual bait that would be transmitted and superimposed on each other imperceptibly.
After enough people use it on the ground, the bait is detonated.
The three military districts attacked head-on by the alien wave were completely wiped out, with no one surviving in either the above-ground or underground military districts. The aliens entered the peripheral White Tower area, overturned the above-ground tower, violently broke through the gates, and entered the extensive underground city.
The underground cities are interconnected throughout the federation. At that time, only the central white tower area had a laser protection network. Foreign objects broke into the military area, and they were like fish in water in the peripheral white towers.
The new generation of students had no power to resist and all died. In the end, some even rushed forward with bombs tied to their bodies.
But the mental bait could spread, trapping most of the ground. There were so many alien objects that the Central White Tower initially failed to grasp the severity of the situation. Information flowed slowly, and by the time they received the shocking news of the military zone's demise, alien objects had already entered the peripheral living areas.
The Central White Tower sent out its full force of troops to encircle and strengthen the defenses, but the underground city was too complicated to be completely sealed off at once.
Despite the desperate resistance of the ordinary white towers, many of them still flowed into the living area and eventually stopped in front of the laser network of the central white tower.
The Federation suffered heavy losses, with tens of thousands of cadets and soldiers dying in the alien wave.
The marginal white towers were discontinued, and the ordinary white towers were almost discontinued. The military districts were reshuffled and there was a long-term shortage of manpower.
The impact of this attack will continue to exist. Countless alien creatures are hiding in the underground city, and they live in the underground water network and waterways that are as complex as ant tunnels. They are hidden in the dark and difficult to guard against.
It took the federal government ten years to clean it up - it's not so much that it was cleaned up, as it was that it was impossible to clean it up completely, so they issued a notice and that was it.
Anyway, the underground believed in ghosts and gods so much that the alien wave was completely blocked and forbidden to mention. If a few people died occasionally, as long as the number of deaths was small, they would just assume it was a ghost.
After the alien wave ended, the same mental bait was found in the mental power of the surviving aliens, and Xiao Mingran was immediately arrested.
The trial was not open to the public, but surveillance was pervasive at the time, and the trial simulator was replaced with a real one... In front of the courtroom, Xiao Mingran was as calm as usual, and his indifference seemed to be just a post-war report.
Kong Wei laughed when he said this, "...Is this considered a boomerang?"
The Federation used surveillance to steal their means and information, and ultimately stole their own secrets.
Yan Xunzhi listened to the story with great interest. He really stopped to think about the question carefully and said, "Forget it."
Kong Wei looked at her and his smile deepened.
Yan Xunzhi was a little embarrassed by the "You're so cute" clearly written all over her face. His ears turned slightly red and he turned away silently. "...and then?"
"Then……"
Xiao Mingran doesn't regret her actions. Standing behind her ID badge, she calmly stated, "The federal government has been constantly monitoring my personal privacy 24/7, treating me like an object rather than a human being. This has consistently violated Article 3 of the Federal Code, which states that citizens have human rights, and Article 57, which states that citizens' private lives and personal information should not be illegally accessed, used, or disclosed by others, and should be protected by law."
"If the Federation doesn't understand human rights, then I will personally teach the Federation through my actions. We are human beings and have human rights. What's wrong with that?"
"If the Federation doesn't treat us as human beings, as citizens, then I shouldn't be sitting here. Just like you never try accidental guns, foreign objects that kill people, or natural people on the ground."
It’s really… Yan Xunzhi was about to sigh when his thoughts were suddenly interrupted by a new word that popped up, “What is a natural person on the ground?”
Kong Wei was silent for a moment. "Actually, it's also classified as a foreign object... You can't know it now. I'm telling you it's against the rules. Wait until later. Someone will tell you later."
“…”There are so many federal rules.
Yan Xunzhi felt that it was not difficult to empathize with Xiao Mingran's bombing of the Federation.
She admitted to the actions, not the crime. With so many people dead, it was the greatest man-made disaster since the founding of the Federation, so naturally she was executed.
"But she's not dead." Kong Wei said, "The Federation is wary of her."
The Federation didn't dare let her die. Many high-ranking officials wondered what would happen if Xiao Mingran were reincarnated if the ghost story was true.
One devastating disaster is enough.
So they gave her drugs that put her in a coma, gave her long-term nutrient injections, and connected her to monitoring equipment to ensure that she would not die but could not wake up.
The industry that rigged the discs was bankrupt, and those who survived were afraid to buy them, fearing they might trigger another wave of foreign material. Occasionally, those who were bold and selfish enough to buy the discs would be reported to the police, fearing they would be implicated.
Complaints from the federal government poured in. The secret recruitment scheme had already sparked public outrage, but at the time, it ultimately benefited the majority of lower-level soldiers, keeping the situation relatively stable. The federal government could be said to be taking the overall situation into consideration.
Now it has completely collapsed, and the entire federation is resisting surveillance.
Moreover, with Xiao Mingran's lead, those scouts who had long been dissatisfied with being monitored would always follow suit. The Federation could continue to strike, and they could also continue to figure out new methods from the strikes.
If surveillance is not stopped and the cameras are not removed, this struggle, once started, will never stop.
Xiao Mingran was a rare genius, a true genius. Kong Wei knew that even if he had some power and had climbed to the top, he was still just an ordinary person in comparison, not even a fraction as good as her.
Perhaps there will never be another Xiao Mingran in the Federation until its collapse, and perhaps there will never be such a genius in the next era.
But the Federation didn't dare to take the gamble.
Having suffered heavy losses, they dare not gamble whether there will be another Xiao Mingran.
Eventually, a special education training room was opened where special teaching and training could be completed. Different federal personnel took turns scanning with machines every day to ensure that there was no surveillance and no secret recordings.
This is a path that was truly fought for with blood.
The Federation protected the lower-class citizens, increased their survival rates, and indirectly promoted the development of the Federation. However, Xiao Mingran caused the deaths of tens of thousands of innocent citizens and set back overall development by ten years or more.
So it's just a path. There's no good or bad, right or wrong in a path; it's just a new, accessible path, giving future generations the possibility of traversing it.
In the third year of Xiao Mingran's coma and imprisonment, the Federation's primary post-disaster reconstruction was completed, some of the White Tower's less seriously damaged communications were repaired, and personnel were redeployed.
It was an ordinary day, and everyone was busy with their lives and post-disaster construction.
A post suddenly exploded on the federal forum.
Xiao Mingran used the monitoring equipment connected to her to intrude and crawl back into the network. With her identity card, she used her mental power to send her last message in this world:
I light the fire by self-immolation.
But I will live forever.
【Author’s words】
Pickled Fish (Put your hands together: Thanks to Senior Xiao, I don’t have to be imprisoned for ten years!
Kong Wei: ...
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