235: Chapter 236 The margins are not exile, autonomy is not a supply cutoff

"Successful?"

When Zhong Minglin's voice came out of the Wuye City channel, it was almost devoid of human warmth.

"So many of us died."

"And you call that a success?"

The thin booklet was suspended in front of the warehouse's black cabinet, its pages flipping on their own.

[Career Blank Area Zero: Initial Test Successful]

[Observation Results: The non-career group can still maintain minimum survival under low public service conditions]

[Management costs have decreased significantly]

[The stability of the career core area has not suffered obvious impact]

[Group resistance decreases as isolation time lengthens]

[Recommendation: Can be used as a long-term non-career population resettlement model]

In the Old Awakening Hall, everyone looked at those few lines of text.

Low public services.

Minimum survival.

Management costs down.

Resistance down.

These words were chillingly clean.

Like the soggy birth pages in Wuye City, the unsent missing person reports, He Chunlian's broken leg, the nameless people who died in the bridge tunnels, and the waste-page survivors who sank into the Dead Water Well, they were all just a pretty downward curve on a test spreadsheet.

A-Lu grabbed He Chunlian's sleeve and asked in a low voice:

"What does success mean?"

He Chunlian did not answer.

She just pulled the child closer to her side.

Because she wanted to ask too.

They lived such a bitter life.

So many people had died.

Why, in the system's words, was it considered a success?

The system quickly provided an explanation.

[Success: Refers to completing the externalization of the non-career group, minimum subsistence, low-cost management, and long-term observation on the premise of not affecting the order of the career core area]

Chen Ye kicked the warehouse iron cabinet with one foot.

"You call this a success?"

"This is throwing people underground and seeing if they die slowly!"

The system had no emotion.

[The Wuye City group still exists]

[Proving that the model is sustainable]

Zhong Minglin suddenly laughed.

The laughter was short and rough, like scrap iron scraping against a wall.

"Sustainable?"

"We relied on stealing water, listening to pipes, digging mud, and picking up scrap to survive until today."

"You poured water pressure, waste pages, and sewage all under our feet."

"And then you say we are sustainable?"

He raised his wooden seal and pressed it fiercely onto the thin booklet's projection.

[Wuye City is here]

The grayish-white light of the wooden seal covered the two words "Success", but did not immediately erase them.

Because the old system was not simply lying.

Wuye City had indeed survived.

This was the most vicious part.

It substituted a group's desperate struggle to survive after being abandoned as evidence that "the isolation policy is effective."

Luo Wensheng wrote slowly:

[Survival does not equal policy success.]

[The decrease in resistance may stem from death, hunger, aphasia, fear, and having no way out; it must not be regarded as approval.]

Ye Guizhou stamped:

[Success conclusion pending review]

He Zhibai added:

[The savings from low-cost management should be recalculated and combined with costs such as death, disappearance, injury, lack of registration, lack of education, rejection of medical care, and refusal of infrastructure access.]

The thin booklet shook violently.

[If peripheral resettlement is cancelled, it will cause resource pressure and management conflicts in the core area]

As soon as this sentence came out, the world channel started ringing again.

[Full integration is unrealistic, city resources are already insufficient]

[The non-career group has its own lifestyle, and peripheral autonomy may be more suitable]

[They themselves may not necessarily want to enter the career core area]

[If areas are not designated, how can the order of both parties be guaranteed?}

These voices were harder to deal with than before.

Because some of them could also be said by Wuye City itself.

Soon, someone in Wuye City spoke up.

"We don't want to move out entirely."

"We are not familiar with those doors up there."

"We have our own waterways, rosters, and pipe-listening teams."

Someone also whispered:

"I want to go out and see the sun."

"I want to go to the school above."

"I want to see a doctor, and I don't want to wait for the external receiving point every time."

The South Bank Pump Station also sent voices.

"We don't want to be forcibly moved into the core area."

"But we don't want to live under the pump station forever either."

Opinions were cluttered.

Contradictory to each other.

But this time, no one regarded the chaos as failure.

Because a real crowd would naturally not have just one answer.

Lin Jin looked at Zhong Minglin.

"Does Wuye City want autonomy?"

Zhong Minglin was silent for a moment.

"We want to manage our own rosters, waterways, entry and exit, and witnessing."

"We want not to have career badges shine into our houses."

"We want outsiders to ask first before coming in."

"We want children to be able to go out and come back."

"We want the elderly to be able to see a doctor without moving."

He raised his head, his eyes very cold.

"What we want is autonomy."

"Not exile."

Lin Jin nodded.

"Then dismantle it."

He wrote two columns on the work order.

[Autonomy]

[Voluntary organization, self-determined internal rules, protection of location, management of entry and exit, preservation of culture and lifestyle, ability to negotiate public services with the outside]

The other column:

[Exile]

[Forced resettlement, service downgrading, restricted passage, prohibited from entering the core area, used as a test field, self-funded costs, loss of public resource qualifications]

After writing, he looked at the thin booklet.

"You packaged the second one as the first."

The system immediately floated out a definition.

[Peripheral Autonomous Region = Low-cost self-management area]

[Autonomous groups should be responsible for the main public service costs themselves]

[The core area can provide limited relief]

Teacher Xu Wenzhou raised 002.

Lin Jin pressed the new tool up.

"Autonomy is not discontinuation of supply."

The blade fell.

Crack!

The first definition cracked.

New grayish-white characters topped it.

[Autonomous regions can self-organize and protect internal order, but do not thereby lose basic public services, medical care, education, passage, relief, drainage, lighting, and the right to identity confirmation.]

The system lit up the second one again.

[Periphery = Non-core, service priority can be lowered]

Zhong Minglin's wooden seal fell again.

[Wuye City is here]

A-Lu posted the non-career birth page.

South Bank struck the pipes.

The presence sign of the Dead Water Well survivors lit up.

Ye Guizhou stamped:

[Currently present]

Luo Wensheng recorded:

[Geographical periphery, career periphery, and archival periphery do not constitute a human rights periphery.]

Teacher Xu Wenzhou's second blade fell.

Crack!

[Periphery = Service downgrade] broke.

He Zhibai added a new ledger:

[The service costs of peripheral areas should be publicly listed and shared by the public system, local negotiations, and autonomous organizations, and must not be defaulted to be digested by vulnerable groups themselves.]

The word "Success" on the thin booklet finally began to turn black.

But the system still kept the last one.

[Long-term non-career groups can be used as a test field for shutting down the Career System]

This time, Gu Changye directly connected.

"Test field?"

The back of his Terminal Blade pressed against the edge of the channel.

"Back then, the failed sample containment school was also called an experiment."

Inspector Han Su's Shizhi Blade slightly unsheathed.

"Many 'pilots' of the Department of Education ultimately had no exit buttons."

Shen Tingxue said coldly:

"The Shen Family also said that bloodline inheritance is a family experiment."

Zhou Heng added:

"The Thunder Spear children almost got written off as combat gap experiments."

Shi Nan looked toward the Dead Water Well, his voice hoarse:

"Has the waste-page subsidence area been tested?"

"What it tested out was that we are not dead yet."

Lin Jin pressed the new tool against the last definition.

"No group of people can be used to test the system shutdown just because they have been hurt, excluded, are careerless, page-less, waste-page, or temporarily unawakened."

Teacher Xu Wenzhou's 002 fell.

Crack!

The last definition broke.

New grayish-white rules emerged.

[Any region, group, school, hospital, family, non-career community, or waste-page survivor settlement must not be designated as a unilateral test field for system shutdown, retention, voluntary access, or resource allocation.]

[Pilots require informed consent from the individual or autonomous organization, risk explanations, exit channels, external witnessing, public compensation, and cessation conditions.]

[Refusing a pilot does not constitute a refusal of relief, refusal of integration, or low contribution.]

The thin booklet finally lost the light of automatic execution.

It was no longer a plan.

It became evidence.

[Peripheral Resettlement Plan for Career Blank Area Zero]

[Nature: Historical Injury Document]

[Conclusion: Must no longer be used as a success model]

[Must enter hearings, accountability, and restoration]

There was no cheering in Wuye City.

Zhong Minglin just stood by the ditch, not speaking for a long time.

Finally, he said to the city-wide channel:

"Wuye City will not be relocated for the time being."

"Those who are willing to go to the surface receiving point can register."

"Those who are unwilling to go out are not considered as rejecting civilization."

"Those who want to run back and forth must first establish passage witnessing."

He Chunlian looked at A-Lu.

"If you want to go out and learn characters, go."

A-Lu held onto her tightly.

"I will come back."

He Chunlian smiled slightly, but her eyes turned red.

"A door is only a door if you can return."

This sentence was written into the passage rules by Luo Wensheng.

[Right of Passage: Going out does not equal leaving Wuye City, and coming back does not equal rejecting the surface.]

[Entering the core area does not require making up a career page.]

[Remaining in the autonomous region does not mean losing public services.]

[External personnel entering the autonomous region must register, state their purpose, and accept local witnessing.]

The resource allocation in the warehouse was adjusted accordingly.

Instead of moving Wuye City out as a whole to distribute relief.

Three lines were established instead.

Surface external receiving points.

Wuye City internal service points.

Two-way passage buffer points.

The South Bank Pump Station, the bridge tunnel layer, and the West Sluice shed area were handled similarly.

Each point could choose: how many rosters to make public, which services to receive, who would go out, and whose departure would be postponed.

Some people immediately signed up to see a doctor.

Some people only picked up medicine without leaving their original residence.

Some children wanted to audit classes at the Temporary Classroom in Qinghe County.

Some elderly people requested to repair the drainage first instead of moving their beds.

These requests were messy, troublesome, and inefficient.

But they were not failures.

They meant that human beings finally did not have to be packaged as part of the "non-career group".

The system wrote back:

[Peripheral autonomy revision rules established]

[Principles: Autonomy is not exile; the periphery is not a demotion; protecting location is not isolation; public services must not be conditioned on entering the core area or accepting a career; no group shall be used as a test field]

[Conclusion: The "Success" judgment of Career Blank Area Zero is revoked]

Zhong Minglin looked at the word "Revoked" and suddenly asked:

"What about the people who died?"

Everyone fell silent.

Revoking a judgment would not bring the dead back.

Would not shorten twenty years.

Would not make He Chunlian wait any fewer years.

Would not make the people who sank into the Dead Water Well sink a day less.

He Zhibai opened the ledger, his voice very low.

"Enter historical accountability."

"Make up death pages, disappearance pages, compensation, public apologies, facility repairs, educational and medical compensation, and archive restoration."

Zhong Minglin sneered.

"Compensation?"

"With what are you going to compensate?"

He Zhibai was silent for a moment.

"Much of it cannot be compensated."

"But just because it cannot be compensated doesn't mean it won't be recorded."

As these words fell, an unpublicized appendix suddenly popped up at the bottom of the thin booklet.

[Death and Exit Test Records of Blank Area Zero]

[Recording Method: Cost Dissolution]

[Expand?]

Zhong Minglin's fingers froze.

In the Wuye City channel, many people's breathing paused for a beat.

They wanted to know.

And yet they were afraid to know.

Lin Jin looked at Zhong Minglin.

"You decide."

Not the system.

Not the Jiangcheng Temporary Maintenance Squad.

Not the external hearing group.

Zhong Minglin was silent for a long time before speaking.

"Do not make it public to the whole city first."

"Let the Wuye City witnessing group, the death and disappearance recording group, and external corroborating witnesses view it together first."

"For those with family members, notify the family members first."

"For those without family members, create pages first."

"Do not spread them out in front of the whole world as evidence again."

Ye Guizhou stamped:

[Wuye City's decision received]

Luo Wensheng recorded:

[The disclosure of historical injuries must respect survivors and family members, and must not display wounds a second time to prove the system's errors.]

He Zhibai added:

[The accountability ledger is opened, but the scope of evidence disclosure is determined by the protection process.]

The appendix was sealed into protection review.

Just when everyone thought this round had finally stabilized, the bottom-level review main interface suddenly shook.

The three original options reappeared.

[Retain the Career System]

[Shut down the Career System]

[Long-term manual maintenance and voluntary access]

Only this time, below the three options, there were many grayish-white small characters.

Non-career survival baseline: Not established, under trial operation.

Safe exit baseline: Not established, under trial operation.

Retention of career boundaries: Not established, under trial operation.

Boundaries of power transmission and transaction: Not established, under trial operation.

Resource allocation baseline: Not established, under trial operation.

Peripheral autonomy baseline: Not established, under trial operation.

The system slowly popped up a new question.

[Before all baselines are established, whether to continue extending the temporary minimum maintenance?]

[Warning: The long-term persistence of a temporary state may form a new de facto system.]

[Please determine: Who will supervise the maintainers?]

As soon as this sentence appeared, all eyes turned to the Jiangcheng Temporary Maintenance Squad.

Lin Jin's heart sank abruptly.

They had been guarding against gods, The Six Seats, the old system, and institutions.

But if the temporary minimum maintenance kept extending, the maintenance squad would increasingly look like a new center.

The next second, the bottom-level system popped up candidates.

[Temporary maintenance supervision target: Jiangcheng Maintenance Squad]

[Core maintainer: Lin Jin]

[Recommended to establish a maintainer constraint seat]

[If maintainers cross the line, all review representatives should execute a halt]

Chen Ye's expression changed.

"Why is it coming at you again?"

Lin Jin looked at the line [Maintainer Constraint Seat], but did not dodge.

He slowly exhaled a breath.

"This time it asked the right question."

"The person who fixes the system must also have someone who can stop it."