Darkstone Code

"Where are all these things going to be sold?"

In the factory workshop, a young worker couldn't help but chat with his coworkers. Everyone's faces displayed genuine smiles.

It's hard to believe that just two years ago, whenever they appeared on the production line, they didn't smile and looked as if life held no meaning.

They worked with eyes and movements filled with resentment, producing, complaining, and grumbling.

Now, smiles appear on their faces. Work has become a source of joy for both body and mind. Working overtime is even better!

The smiling workers heard the young man's question, and they didn't mind chatting during work. Someone immediately answered, "I don't care where they are going to be sold. I'm only worried about lunch today."

"Did you know? I haven't eaten bread in about one or two months. I've never realized how delicious bread is. And there's the meat soup!"

"There were three pieces of meat in my meat soup yesterday. I heard you only had two!"

Upon mentioning this, people's attention shifted.

The factory lunch mainly consisted of some vegetables, whole wheat bread, and a bowl of meat soup. Many here hadn't eaten any solid food for nearly half a year.

In the past, they could only eat a supposedly nutritious paste-like meal. It was mush when eaten and the same when expelled, hardly anything to fill the stomach.

The sudden economic downturn taught many families a unique skill: gardening. Growing edible vegetables or plants on balconies or indoors became a survival necessity.

Potatoes somewhat replaced bread and grains in people's lives, although they couldn't replace bread entirely. People still hoped to eat bread.

The factory lunch was mainly bread, hard whole wheat bread. To eat it, one needed to soften it by soaking it in meat soup, and that feeling...

Thinking about yesterday's lunch, they couldn't help but swallow. This was one of the things they looked forward to the most.

No one wanted to answer the young man's question, possibly ignoring it amidst enthusiastic discussions about food.

At lunchtime, the young man learned from the foreman with half a loaf of bread that this batch would be sent to the East Ocean's seaport, loaded onto a ship, heading south towards Nagariel.

Are Nagariel people so rich now?

The young man felt confused, thinking the place advertised as backward and poor shouldn't afford these excellent goods produced by the Federation.

He quickly buried these doubts in his heart, having the burden of caring for his family. The flicker of hope in his heart was too fragile, extinguished without enduring any storm.

He returned to the production workshop and worked hard again. Any unintentional doubts, impulses for exploration, or desires felt were suppressed under life's weight.

Sometimes, halfway between waking and dreaming, he might think of the question again, an answerless question that might never be answered.

A few days later, the first batch of goods was transported by train, arriving at the port the following afternoon, before being loaded onto a ship and leaving.

After four days of sailing, the cargo ship anchored slowly, and brand-new cranes unloaded each container from the ship. Meanwhile, at the passenger ship port nearby, Lynch returned to Nagariel.

"This is a great place for winter!" Lynch said as he disembarked and removed his thick coat. Nagariel's climate was pleasantly warm, with temperatures quickly rising as they left the coldest stage, rapidly transitioning to spring.

"I checked the thermometer before disembarking. It's seventeen degrees now," said Lynch's assistant, unused to being abroad and a bit nervous, closely following Lynch, holding the clothes he had tossed her.

On the sea, the wind felt chill, but once disembarked, everything became serene.

The gentle sea breeze carried a slight local odor along with a vibrant life force, smelling of grass and trees, rejuvenating inside and out.

The city became much cleaner, a vital and correct action Lynch had the Mayor undertake before he left.

Through compensated trash recycling and sufficient penalties, the sanitation issues of the city and the entire province were resolved instantly. With no unbearable stench, people's opinions improved, and some even wanted to visit.

The armed convoy rapidly approached in the distance, causing some first-time visitors to Nagariel to exclaim and retreat to the gangway. Returning visitors looked around and recognized Lynch before feeling at ease.

The convoy came to pick up Lynch. The major parade in Nagariel was essentially suppressed. Sometimes people's changes are both sudden and astonishing.

The young people of Nagariel have started to walk a path completely different from their parents. They're beginning to express their emotions in other ways, which is interesting, but also a bit dangerous.

So the security company directly dispatched a convoy to pick up Lynch to avoid any danger on the road.

Currently, Lynch has thousands of employees under his command. He has become undeniably the "capitalist" that people talk about, and if these people don't want to lose their jobs, they better pray every day for Lynch's good health, that he can eat and drink well, and have many children and grandchildren.

"Mr. Lynch...", the driver of the first car jumped down, stood on the ground, saluted, and quickly glanced at the Senior Soldier, who returned the salute.

Lynch nodded and boarded the modified bus with his entourage. The convoy came quickly and left just as quickly.

Looking at the departing armed convoy, the first impression of someone coming to Nagariel for the first time is Mr. Lynch and his "armed convoy".

"My god, are all these your people?" On the bus, the little assistant didn't even dare to breathe. Both the front and back halves of the bus were filled with soldiers with real guns and ammunition, vigilantly watching everything outside the window.

On the armored vehicles in front and back, two machine gunners were also operating the machine guns. Everything looked like something that would only happen in war movies or documentaries.

Lynch nodded, "You need to get used to this. Nagariel is very safe, but not quite safe. As long as we do our protection work well, it's actually safer here than in the Federation!"

The rampant gun management in the Federation allows anyone to have the potential to become an assassin—chamber a bullet, then pull the trigger.

But in Nagariel, that's unlikely to happen. Ordinary people can't afford weapons, and even if they have money, they can't buy weapons.

Only a few people can buy weapons, and if anything happens, these people will immediately be purged, so it's safer here from a certain perspective.

The little assistant swallowed a bit of spit, nodding with some discomfort, feeling both timid and somewhat curious.

Lynch quickly focused on Asir in the front seat, "Was there any disturbance during the march this time?"

When he received the news, it was already last week, and with the time he spent at sea, he had no idea what had happened here.

Asir hesitated for a moment but ultimately shook his head, "Nothing too major happened, but there were a few young people who tried to rush the Police Station, two of whom were shot dead on the spot, and the others scattered."

"The Director of the Police Station is investigating whether they had premeditated plans to storm the Police Station and investigating their purpose, but there hasn't been much progress."

This might be the only discordant element in the entire march. After hearing this, Lynch just frowned and did not comment on the matter.

He was very clear that, no matter how stupid the people of Nagariel were, they wouldn't storm a violent institution unless there was something they wanted there.

What's in a violent institution?

The police, and the guns in the hands of the police.

"Tell the Director of the Police Station to strengthen weapon management, ensuring officers store their handguns in the Police Station's vault after work, and arrange for someone to guard the vault at night."

Asir reacted quickly. Having stayed in the Federation for a long time, his thinking was more aligned with that of the people in the Federation. He immediately understood the implication in Lynch's words, "You mean someone intends to seize weapons?!"

His voice line twisted a bit. As a local, he knows well that the people of Nagariel are not resistant by nature. The recent turmoil and the just-finished large march were unbelievable for him and many people in Nagariel.

For hundreds of years, they have been accustomed to being oppressed, exploited, and enslaved. No one ever thought of resisting. How could someone suddenly stand up?

When Lynch mentioned that these people might seize guns, Asir's first reaction was impossible. After his instinctual reaction faded, he felt it might not be an impossibility.

Everything is changing. When foreign culture and local society combine, something unpredictable is bound to emerge.

What was impossible before might not be so impossible now!

Then Asir reported some issues regarding the march. After some time of commotion, the people of Nagariel eventually gave up continuing the march. It wasn't because everyone found a compromise point, but because those foreign factories massively fired workers who participated in the march, greatly increasing the costs for people to join the march.

At the same time, some capitalists were making a list; everyone on that list would no longer be hired by them. Under such high-pressure policies, the march quickly fizzled out.

Compared to the money people thought they might have lost, at least if they continued working, they still had money. If they couldn't work, they wouldn't get anything.

That's why people like it here. There's no law, no Workers' Union. If this were in the Federation, capitalists daring to fire those workers who participated in marches would be sued into bankruptcy by the Workers' Union!