234: Chapter 235 A life-saving meal must not become a contract of servitude.

A-Lu had not finished eating the flatbread in his hands.

The non-professional birth page in his hands suddenly grew hot, and a circle of light gray lines floated up along the edges of the paper, as if something were trying to open a new column on it.

[Assistance recipient has received basic food rations]

[Recommended to enter the Wuye population integration process]

[Pre-registration direction: Low-level labor]

[Explanation: This occupation can improve resource allocation efficiency and reduce long-term assistance costs]

A-Lu froze completely.

The flatbread, which had smelled so good moments ago that he couldn't bear to bite it too fast, suddenly felt like it was burning his hands.

"I ate the meal."

"Does that mean I have to become a low-level laborer?"

He Chunlian pulled him tightly into her arms, her face frighteningly pale.

"You won't."

"Grandma won't let you become one."

Yet the non-professional birth page on A-Lu's chest was still burning hot.

Not just him.

Inside the Wuye City reception point, the pages of over a dozen people who had just collected their dinner lit up simultaneously.

[Assistance received once]

[Recommended to enter basic drainage]

[Medicine received once]

[Recommended to enter temporary treatment assistance]

[Enter dry berth registration]

[Recommended to enter low-risk handling]

The South Bank Pump Station was also in chaos.

A young man whose fever had just broken stared at the grayish-white page on his wrist, his voice trembling.

"I just took my medicine."

"It wrote fringe district patrol for me."

Things were even worse over at the Dead Water Well survivors.

Liang Yan was still lying on the temporary medical bed, his chest sealing edge unstable, yet the system beside him popped up:

[Discarded page survivors must participate in the restoration of occupational order]

[Recommended direction: Discarded page cleanup assistance]

Shi Nan abruptly stood up, not even caring that the wound on his shoulder was torn open.

"He can't even sit up!"

The system replied calmly:

[Can enter future pre-registration]

[Not immediate placement]

"Not even in the future!"

Shi Nan's voice cracked.

"He just came out of the mud!"

In front of the black cabinet in the old warehouse, Lin Jin gripped his new tool tightly, without a trace of a smile on his face.

Those brand-new occupational pre-registration pages were neatly stacked in the cabinet.

Every single one of them was clean.

Clean as if they had never seen the dirty water of Wuye City, the fevers of South Bank, or the black mud of the Dead Water Well.

[Wuye population integration plan]

[Objective: Gradually incorporate assistance recipients into the basic occupational order]

[Advantages: Convenient for statistics, convenient for rationing, convenient for training, convenient for dispatching, convenient for management]

Chen Ye stared at the last four words.

"Convenient for management."

"To put it bluntly, it's not locking down the food before sending it out, but putting an occupational leash on people after they've eaten it."

Zhong Minglin's voice was frighteningly cold.

"No wonder the warehouse was willing to open."

"It had already prepared the second step long ago."

Some city channels hesitated, however.

[After binding to a basic occupation, it is indeed convenient for long-term resettlement]

[The Wuye population has no skills; arranging low-risk occupations first might not be a bad thing]

[Assistance cannot continue indefinitely; they have to work eventually]

[If they are not integrated at all, who will bear the management costs?]

These voices were not entirely malicious.

Many people were truly afraid.

Afraid that assistance would become a bottomless pit.

Afraid that the gap could never be filled.

Afraid that after the Wuye, unoccupational, and discarded page crowds were rescued, the world would have no way to catch them.

Thus, the old system provided a seemingly gentle answer:

Give them the lowest-level occupations.

Let them "integrate."

Let them "become self-reliant."

Let them "be managed."

Lin Jin looked at A-Lu's page.

"Stop that pre-registration."

The system replied:

[Low-level labor is a low-risk basic occupation]

[Can help Wuye children integrate into society in the future]

He Chunlian said in a trembling voice:

"He wants to learn to read first."

"He said so, he wants to learn to read first."

A-Lu also mustered up his courage and whispered:

"I don't want to be a laborer right now."

The system flickered.

[Recording future direction, does not affect current life]

Shisan spoke coldly:

"Old things love writing about the future the most."

"Writing and writing, tomorrow they'll claim you already agreed to it."

Ye Guizhou's seal came down heavily.

[A-Lu's personal statement received]

[Receiving assistance does not constitute consent for occupational pre-registration]

Luo Wensheng recorded:

[Eating, taking medicine, sleeping on a berth, supplementing birth pages, and receiving rescue shall none of them be retroactively deduced as accepting future occupational arrangements.]

He Zhibai added:

[Assistance costs must not be recovered in the form of occupational binding.]

The black cabinet shook violently.

The system threw out its core definition.

[Assistance recipients long-term occupying public resources should bear corresponding social functions]

Lin Jin raised his eyes.

"Bearing social functions can mean working, studying, mutual aid, paying taxes, caregiving, and participating in the community in the future."

"It doesn't mean that because they eat a bite of food today, you get to write them down as low-level laborers."

Teacher Xu Wenzhou's 002 fell from the side.

Click!

[Assistance = Future occupational binding basis] disconnected.

The pre-registration pages inside the black cabinet flipped rustlingly, trying to crawl out through another path.

[Basic occupations are merely management labels]

[Non-mandatory work]

Teacher Song Qing's voice came from Qinghe County.

"Management labels are even more dangerous."

"If a child is labeled as low-level labor, the school will manage them according to labor standards."

"The Hospital will dispense medicine based on low-level occupations."

"The future Awakening Hall window will default to assuming they already have a direction."

Fang Ning also continued:

"If a patient is written down as temporary treatment assistance, the next time The Hospital is short of people, they will say he has a pre-registration."

Zhou Heng said coldly:

"Family rosters also start from 'just a registration'."

Shen Tingxue said indifferently:

"Bloodline inheritance does too."

Gu Changye added a sentence:

"Failed samples were also just labels at first."

Every sentence was like a nail, hammering into the black cabinet's "merely for management."

Lin Jin wrote new rules in front of the warehouse door:

[Assistance Isolation Zone]

[1. Receiving food, medicine, housing, medical care, drainage, identity re-recording, and educational access must not trigger occupational pre-registration.]

[2. Personnel after disasters, disappearances, discarded page subsidence, Wuye re-recording, and emergency rescue shall enter an occupational choice cooling-off period.]

[3. During the cooling-off period, they may study, rest, receive treatment, migrate, look for relatives, and supplement materials, and must not be assigned an occupational direction.]

[4. If a person actively inquires about occupations, explanations should also be provided first, and pre-filled pages must not be directly generated.]

[5. No institution may label assistance recipients with low-level occupations under the pretext of convenience of management.]

Ye Guizhou stamped:

[Assistance Isolation Zone established]

Luo Wensheng recorded:

[Assistance is assistance, management is management, and occupational choice is occupational choice; the three must not be mixed into a single form.]

He Zhibai wrote:

[Long-term living support costs should enter the public accounts and must not be disguised as future debts of the rescued.]

One by one, the occupational pre-registration pages in the black cabinet lost their ability to attach automatically.

The non-professional birth page on A-Lu's chest finally stopped burning.

He lowered his head to look at that page, confirming that it still only contained his name, the black mole on the sole of his foot, He Chunlian's caregiving relationship, and "may enter the Awakening Hall window in the future, or may temporarily not."

There was no low-level labor.

Only then did he dare to continue looking at the flatbread in his hand.

Yet he didn't eat it immediately.

He Chunlian patted his head.

"Eat."

"This time it really isn't a contract."

A-Lu took a cautious bite.

But his tears fell.

Lin Jin didn't look for long.

He knew that this bite of food shouldn't have been eaten with such fear.

In front of the black cabinet, the system was still searching for loopholes.

[If pre-registration is completely prohibited, how should adult assistance recipients actively seeking employment be handled?]

Zhong Minglin said coldly:

"Job hunting is not pre-registration."

Shi Nan also spoke up.

"If someone wants to learn discarded page identification, they can sign up for a class."

"It's not automatically writing down discarded page cleanup assistance."

Pang Xiaoman raised his hand.

"I want to run the South Bank route in the future, can that be written down?"

Lin Jin nodded.

"You can write down an intention."

"But an intention is not an occupation."

Teacher Song Qing immediately created a new form:

[Personal life and study intention page]

[Can write: what you want to learn, what job you want to find, what you temporarily don't want, what your body cannot do, what help you need]

[Prohibited: automatically generating occupations, ranks, post obligations, future obedience]

[Can be modified at any time]

A-Lu thought for a moment and wrote on the edge of his page:

[Want to learn to read]

[Want to know where Grandma used to live]

[Temporarily don't want to go to the camp]

He Chunlian wrote:

[Want to cure my leg]

[Can count packages]

[Don't want to carry heavy objects]

Pang Xiaoman wrote:

[Want to continue learning route maps]

[Won't enter toxic wells]

After Liang Yan woke up, Shi Nan helped write for him:

[Sleep first]

[Don't illuminate the road]

When those three words were stamped by Ye Guizhou, many people among the Dead Water Well survivors turned red-eyed.

Sleep first.

For them, even this unexpectedly needed to be confirmed.

The "Wuye population integration plan" inside the black cabinet began to be unsealed.

Not for execution.

But as evidence.

Luo Wensheng recorded page by page, discovering that this plan had been designed very thoroughly long ago.

First use assistance to contact the crowd.

Then use temporary pages for statistics.

Then assign them to basic occupations based on age, physical strength, and the degree of weakness in kinship relations.

Finally, use rationing, housing, education, and medical channels to consolidate occupational attachment.

It even had an annotation.

[After low-level occupational binding, the group's resistance will drop significantly]

Chen Ye punched the wall.

"They even calculated whether people would resist after they were fed."

Inspector Han Su's Shizhi Blade slightly slipped out of its scabbard, the back of the blade chilling.

"This plan enters accountability."

Looking at that line "resistance drops," Gu Changye said in a very soft voice.

"The old system was never afraid of people living."

"It was afraid of people living yet not belonging to it."

The black cabinet was sealed.

[Assistance-bound occupational plan: Frozen]

[Must not be executed]

[Must not be copied]

[Must not be restarted after renaming]

[Involved institutions and fund pools enter the explanation period for accountability]

Outside the warehouse, the first batch of food and medicine continued to be distributed.

But a very large sign had been added to each distribution point.

[Receiving assistance does not equal accepting an occupation.]

[Receiving assistance does not equal owing a future post.]

[Receiving assistance does not affect the status of temporarily not awakening, withdrawing, shifting, or being without an occupation.]

[If someone asks you to exchange occupational binding for assistance, you can knock on pipes, stamp seals, or report work orders.]

This sign was not elegant at all.

It was even a bit wordy.

Yet the people of Wuye City looked at it for a very long time.

The people of South Bank looked at it for a very long time.

The Dead Water Well survivors also looked at it for a very long time.

Because previously, they had never seen the meaning of "not owing an indenture contract" right next to food.

Just as the Assistance Isolation Zone was gradually spreading out, the system suddenly popped up a new statistical notice.

[After the occupation-bound assistance plan is frozen, management costs rise]

[Need to add: non-professional archivists, intention page counselors, assistance dispute witnesses, cooling-off period gatekeepers]

[Existing manpower is insufficient]

This time, no one immediately grew tense.

Because they had already learned: a shortage of people is not a reason to snatch people.

Teacher Song Qing was the first to speak:

"I can train intention page counselors."

"The course is three hours, no occupation required."

Ye Guizhou said:

"Witnesses can rotate from various places."

"But the rotation must have written boundaries."

Zhong Minglin said:

"Wuye City will provide two cooling-off period gatekeepers."

"They will only guard the Wuye population, not represent everyone."

Pang Xiaoman whispered:

"My younger sister is better at reading than me, can she audit the archive class?"

"Audit, but no active placement."

Luo Wensheng nodded.

"Yes."

A new work order was generated.

[Assistance Isolation Zone maintenance post]

[Nature: Public service task]

[Must not automatically generate occupations]

[Trainable, rotatable, withdrawable, and paid]

The gap was still huge.

But this time, it didn't immediately turn into a burning page on some child's wrist.

Just as Lin Jin let out half a breath, the last black cabinet deep inside the warehouse suddenly opened by itself.

Inside was only a thin booklet.

The cover of the booklet read:

[Final disposal after the failure of invalid population integration]

Everyone's heart sank simultaneously.

The booklet opened automatically.

The first page had only one sentence.

[If assistance, pre-registration, and occupational binding all fail, their long-term non-occupational choice should be respected.]

Chen Ye was stunned.

"Isn't this quite normal?"

But the second page immediately lit up right after.

[However, long-term non-occupational groups must not approach the core areas of occupational civilization.]

[Recommended for resettlement in the fringe autonomous region.]

The third page.

[The fringe autonomous region is not included in the scope of complete public services.]

The fourth page.

[When necessary, it can be used as an experimental field for system shutdown.]

The temperature in the Old Awakening Hall suddenly dropped to freezing point.

Zhong Minglin's face turned deathly pale in an instant.

He understood.

Wuye City was not an accident.

It was not a slip through the net.

It had once been the experimental result of this exact plan.

If assistance is not bound, isolate them.

After isolation, halve the services.

And finally treat them as an experimental field for "whether the non-occupational can survive independently."

Lin Jin slowly raised his head, looking at the last line of the booklet.

[Occupation Blank Zone Zero: Initial experiment successful]

Inside the Wuye City channel, there was silence for a long time.

Afterwards, Zhong Minglin said word by word:

"Successful?"

"So many of our people died."

"And you call that successful?"