He Fang stared eagerly at the top of Yuan Zhiran’s head in front of him.
He had still not received Yuan Zhiran’s task. Even though the Chong family brothers had only issued two tasks, at least there had been a target. But now, this strange spiritual window hanging over his head simply refused to show a task. This was truly baffling.
Yuan Zhiran seemed to have finally recovered from the pain, and only then did he lift his head to look at He Fang. His cheeks were flushed bright red from the pain, and the reflexive tears in his eyes gave him a somewhat pitiful look. No matter how one looked at him, he appeared like someone who would evoke endless sympathy.
He Fang choked up.
“Do you have anything else to do today?” He Fang asked.
“Does the City Lord have something in mind?” Yuan Zhiran asked in return.
Spiritual Window: ‘Today’s meeting hasn’t been completed. A large amount of information from various other places still needs analysis. I need to review the soldiers’ current training situation and prepare for the next round of recruit selections for the Armed Forces Department…’
He Fang: “…I—I just wanted to ask if you’re free.”
“I am.” Yuan Zhiran stood up straight. His expression was still a little twisted from the pain, but he did his best to remain serious.
Spiritual Window: ‘Not free. But if it’s a request from the Creator, then even if I’m not free, I must be free.’
He Fang had never imagined that Yuan Zhiran’s inner world could be so, so… noisy.
“Come with me,” He Fang said. He felt that since this NPC had already displayed signs of an NPC task, it usually meant the NPC’s mental state had hit a snag. After going through two NPC tasks, he was sure this wasn’t some randomly triggered hidden mission, but a reflection of a psychological state. If He Fang left this NPC alone now, it might end up ruining the NPC entirely.
He had seen far too many real-life cases where people were silently defeated by psychological issues.
“Alright. May I ask what the City Lord needs me to do?” Yuan Zhiran asked.
“Just follow me,” He Fang said. After a moment of thought, he tucked the corner of his clothing into Yuan Zhiran’s hand. “Just hold onto this.”
A faint blush slowly appeared on Yuan Zhiran’s face.
Spiritual Window: ‘In some media classes before, it was mentioned that holding onto the corner of someone’s clothing is a way of expressing a special kind of affection. Although I might be overthinking it, is there even a one-in-ten-thousand chance that the City Lord… likes me?’
He Fang: “…If you don’t want to hold it, just following me is fine too.”
Spiritual Window: ‘Looks like I was overthinking it.’
“Understood, City Lord.” Yuan Zhiran nodded.
He Fang subconsciously let out a breath of relief. He suddenly felt that knowing what others were thinking might not be such a good thing after all.
He Fang exited the meeting room, and Yuan Zhiran followed behind him. As he walked out, He Fang made a hand gesture toward the people inside. Instantly, everyone else in the room snapped out of their dazed state and all let out a collective sigh of relief.
“Just now, Minister Yuan’s instruction to us was basically to handle all the incoming information on our own from here on,” one of them said.
Everyone was a little envious that Yuan Zhiran had been taken away by the Creator. But in the end, they could only helplessly return to work. After all, it wasn’t their fault they didn’t have the traits that caught the Creator’s attention.
Ah, such is fate.
He Fang opened the system panel and switched to the full map of the apocalypse. He could see the general distribution of the current mobile cities. Judging from their positioning, it was easy to tell which ones were powerful enough. On his map, he had already marked the locations of these mobile cities and identified which city each of them belonged to.
However, renting out the holy land was different from becoming an Alliance City. It couldn’t be entered through the system panel, and He Fang couldn’t find any event statistics from it either. As for the current development of the entire situation, he actually wasn’t very clear.
Earlier, when she was sending people off, Yuan Sanjin had also returned to report what she had seen. It was obvious that someone had tried to stir up trouble, but had failed. Yet now, things were progressing smoothly in exactly the way those people had hoped. If he were told no one had secretly done anything behind the scenes, he wouldn’t believe it.
It seemed Sai Gu had indeed put in quite a bit of effort in all this.
As an NPC, Sai Gu really was very useful.
And now, what He Fang needed to resolve was the crime happening within the city. In truth, the fact that incidents were happening early wasn’t entirely a bad thing. Their City Alliance still wasn’t that large, and the population was still limited. If problems were discovered now, they could still be corrected in time. But once things developed to the later stages, those problems would snowball bigger and bigger, eventually turning the city into a chaotic, foul mess.
He Fang sought out Qi Jingwei, wanting to get an understanding of recent crime trends.
Qi Jingwei, tall and imposing, stood beside He Fang and brought him to the data room. He directly pulled up all the current crime records on the terminal. Although He Fang’s own event statistics did contain crime records, they weren’t detailed. Meanwhile, the records shown here at the police station displayed the full sequence of causes and consequences in complete form.
“This case doesn’t count as a malicious robbery. The target’s initial intention was only the pharmacy. This person had gone to the pharmacy multiple times and had already learned the locations of the medications he needed inside. His objective was very clear. He was after this specific medicine. He smashed the window to break in. However, there was still a clerk in the store at the time, and so what began as theft ended up becoming robbery,” Qi Jingwei explained. “But he was subdued by the shop owner. That’s him.”
He Fang looked at the avatars of the shop owner and the robber. It was obvious that one was a main city NPC, and the other a wild NPC.
It would’ve been more surprising if he hadn’t lost the fight.
He Fang looked at the robber’s reason for committing the crime. They had just arrived in Hope City, but due to their past life circumstances, they had almost no connection to money. Someone in their family had fallen seriously ill, and short-term labor work simply couldn’t cover the cost of medical treatment. What’s more, the cost of such medication was extremely high. Even working outside couldn’t help them gather enough money for the medicine in a short time, and it was a long-term medication, too. In the end, they had no choice but to take a desperate risk.
“This one is a theft case. But it was someone sneaking out at night to steal from a farmer. The patrol guard caught them and threw them into prison. The person seemed to really yearn for life in prison. They walked in beaming with joy.”
He Fang took a look. The person was an extremely thin and weak-looking woman. There was no malice in her eyes, and even in the mugshot taken when she was thrown into prison, she couldn’t help but smile.
“This one is a gang-forming case.” At this moment, another file was pulled up, containing a group of people. Their eyes were violent and gloomy, and their expressions were strange. “They tried to establish their own power within Hope City and had repeatedly made contact with the higher-ups of Hope City, but were eventually discovered.”
Because the higher-ups of Hope City had returned and were willing to continue taking on the city’s administrative roles, though most of the key positions were held by main city NPCs, many of the mixed, lower-level positions were relatively less guarded, making them easier to approach.
“What exactly did they do?” He Fang asked.
“So far, they haven’t done anything concrete. They were arrested for bribing officials. We’re highly suspicious about the real reason they came to Hope City, so we tried to use a lie detector to figure out their intentions. But for the most part, they all just clammed up and said nothing.” Qi Jingwei’s gaze darkened slightly. “If they won’t talk, there’s not much we can do.”
He Fang knew that, because he had explicitly required that law enforcement personnel not be allowed to use violence at will, running into these wild NPCs, who couldn’t even be tracked for background, was indeed a tricky situation.
After reviewing it all, He Fang confirmed that many aspects were indeed still lacking. From the very beginning, Hope City and Angel City, thanks to the support of the main city NPCs, had already pulled far ahead of other cities. So even if prices here were considered “very cheap”, that “cheapness” was only relative to the prices in mobile cities.
Many destitute people can’t even take out a single coin. When it comes to something like robbing a pharmacy, it’s obvious they’ve already been pushed to the absolute limit. It’s likely that before coming to Hope City, they hadn’t even seen medicine before. But after arriving in Hope City, they could receive treatment and even buy medicine freely. Under those circumstances, for the sake of keeping their family alive, people willing to take risks like that would not be few.
Moreover, although it’s often said that as long as one works hard, there’s always a way out, He Fang pulled up the attribute sheet of the second thief and saw a long list of illnesses. For an uneducated, ordinary person to try to work while dragging along such a sickly body, and to do any of the jobs currently available, was a fantasy. So she really had just been stealing food, and she really did want to be caught and taken away.
As for the gang-forming group, their eyes were full of coldness and gloom. He Fang opened up the attribute lists for several of them and saw some very troublesome tags. Things like “deep-seated hatred”, “tragic past”, “life of despair”, and other utterly negative descriptors. Just looking at them made He Fang feel suffocated.
If one were to say that these people were spies, it was possible. But they also might not be. After all, they had passed through the Gate, and the institute’s lie detector hadn’t failed so far. However, it was beyond doubt that they had banded together and were trying to use the upper ranks of Hope City to carry out something.
He Fang rubbed the space between his brows.
Suddenly, he felt that this matter was truly a thorny one.
“Yuan Zhiran,” He Fang suddenly called out to the beautiful NPC, “what’s your opinion?”
“Those who commit crimes must pay the price for their actions. That is only right,” Yuan Zhiran said. His spiritual window and his thoughts were perfectly aligned.
“Then do you think they’ve been punished?” He Fang asked again.
Yuan Zhiran shook his head. His spiritual window read: ‘They haven’t received enough punishment. People’s awareness of crime will grow weaker and weaker. But as long as the Creator is always here, then everything will be resolved. Everyone will voluntarily take it upon themselves to handle anything that troubles the Creator. The Creator is our heart.’
He Fang stared wide-eyed at that spiritual window. He could clearly sense that Yuan Zhiran held absolutely nothing back in his adoration for him.
He Fang thought for a moment.
He directly compiled all the current criminal records. He was going to personally examine each and every one of them.
The law could never truly be perfected. In a world where the times were constantly changing and thoughts and ideologies were in flux, the making of laws was constantly influenced and swayed.
Therefore, suddenly making large-scale revisions would likely be extremely difficult. So far, no particularly sharp contradictions had emerged. The only notable problem lay in the unreasonable punishment measures.
Rather than overhauling the entire legal system, it would be better to first summarize all the currently known crimes, go through them one by one, analyze the causes, and solve the problems with targeted solutions.
He Fang reviewed all the criminal information. In fact, it wasn’t all that difficult. Compared to the time he had once picked out tens of thousands of entries related to Yuan Zhirán from the talent market, this task was much easier. However, since this involved criminal issues, it required more detailed reading and understanding, which was why He Fang spent more time on it.
Yuan Zhirán’s spiritual window: ‘The Creator is thinking seriously. Only the Creator would take it so much to heart. What the Creator worries about is exactly what we worry about.’
Spiritual window: ‘Under the guidance of the Creator, there will never be a collapse of the social system.’
Spiritual window: ‘For the law to be enforced, there must be enough cohesion. The Creator is the cohesion of this world. Once the Creator departs, social order will collapse, human behavior will no longer be restrained, and the city will be destroyed.’
Spiritual window: ‘Once we fall into that situation, demons will roam unchecked. It will be a city of despair.’
Spiritual window: ‘The Creator is justice, is morality, is the standard, is the only centripetal force, is the center of this world. A future without a center will inevitably crumble into scattered sand.’
Spiritual window: ‘We must not let the Creator even consider leaving. We must find a way to make him love this city more. We must ensure the Creator forms deep, essential connections with our world. I’m willing to do good for a lifetime, to become an absolute moral standard, to become whoever the Creator wishes to be—as long as the Creator does not leave.’
While He Fang was organizing the criminal information, he would occasionally look up and see messages constantly flashing above Yuan Zhiran’s head. These messages seemed to contain even more strange things hidden within them. Unfortunately, He Fang couldn’t figure them out.
Originally, He Fang had intended to wait for Yuan Zhiran to issue a task. But he soon realized that any waiting was pointless. The other party truly had no intention of saying anything.
He Fang sighed.
In the end, he set aside all the criminal records. He now had a clear grasp of the current situation.
It wasn’t quite like what he had imagined, such as spies sent from other cities, or garbage deliberately dumped into Hope City. While there were indeed many people who had been abandoned and cast off by other mobile cities, the more likely situation was that these people had been secretly used or exploited.
And a significant portion of the problem came down to social issues.
He Fang thought carefully.
As for criminal punishment, He Fang decided to build different types of prisons, categorizing them by the length of sentence rather than having everyone mixed together as they were now. If any signs of small internal groups from the same city were discovered forming inside the prison, they would be immediately separated and held in isolation, with no further contact allowed. For those guilty of particularly heinous crimes, He Fang decided to seek help from other cities. He would request to borrow prison space in other mobile cities.
By exchanging criminals in this way, Hope City would be placed in a position of “seeking help”, which could help strengthen ties between Hope City and the other mobile cities. But at the same time, it would also serve as a form of “pressure”, a way to make them understand Hope City’s absolute status and foster a sense of apprehension toward it.
Anyone assigned to prisons in other mobile cities would be designated as “exiles”, permanently forbidden from ever re-entering Hope City. This restriction would extend to all relatives by blood, including descendants. This concept came from the modern civil service system.
Indeed, Yuan Zhiran’s original concern was not without merit. Going to another city wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing. However, unlike Hope City and Angel City, which were supported by core city resources, the other mobile cities, even if they were located within the Holy Lands, would need at least ten years to develop. For a long period, life there would remain harsh. And ten years from now, who could imagine what kind of awe-inspiring supercity Hope City might become?
Moreover, mobile cities did engage in warfare. Prisoners could be used as tools of war. Life or death, it didn’t matter. Everyone would come to clearly understand that Hope City was a land of ideals.
If one wanted to stay in Hope City, they had to follow Hope City’s rules.
Some people, however, committed crimes because of forced social circumstances.
Until now, his city had mostly been thriving and prosperous, so he had overlooked this issue. He decided to implement small-scale loans. Once verified by government personnel, those who met the requirements could be approved for microloans. He was even willing to allow private entities to participate, provided that loan ranges were well-regulated. As long as it didn’t turn into usury, it would be fine.
Additionally, he decided to introduce insurance into the city. He Fang would incorporate all types of real-world insurance policies and plans into “Ruins Without Restart” to prepare for emergencies.
He would also bring the main city’s welfare system into Hope City and Angel City to address basic living needs.
Next, he would introduce employment counseling to support those who lacked skills or formal education, helping them find jobs. They could also take out loans for vocational learning, with repayment made in installments in the future.
With this series of measures in place, He Fang handed over all the concepts and materials to the government and the Ministry of Finance, instructing them to make realistic adjustments and begin implementation as soon as possible.
As for those who had already committed crimes, He Fang planned to establish psychological counseling and social assistance services in the prisons. The focus would first be on rehabilitation and help. However, if someone proved incorrigible but wasn’t particularly dangerous, He Fang decided to place a collar on them, allowing them to move about freely. This collar was a device that Zhu Yan had once created for Ye Sheng and others. Following Yuan Zhiran’s original idea, it could deliver pain-based therapy, or… if the person wished to leave Hope City, He Fang would also support that choice.
He Fang decided to observe things for a while, then see whether the crime rate would go down.
After all, he was just an ordinary gamer, not some kind of politician. The fact that he had managed to come up with all this felt like he’d already tried very hard.
“I hope this can at least help ease the current situation a little.” After setting everything in place, He Fang stretched lazily. When he looked up, he suddenly saw Yuan Zhiran standing nearby. He Fang froze.
At first, he had been thinking about Yuan Zhiran. Only now did He Fang remember that today was an NPC task day.
Outside the window, the sky had already gone completely dark. Even though in terms of real-world time, only a short while had passed, an entire day had already gone by inside the game. At this hour, everyone should have already finished work.
NPCs had to go home to sleep. The NPCs in his main city were especially strict about sticking to their schedules.
He Fang looked up at the spiritual window. It was currently blank, but the moment he looked at it, a line of text appeared: ‘The Creator has been busy all day. So exhausting. I want to share his burden. My heart aches for him.’
He Fang paused slightly. This concern from an NPC warmed his heart before he even realized it.
“It’s already past working hours. You can clock out now,” He Fang said. “Come see me tomorrow.”
Yuan Zhiran simply stared at He Fang, then pursed his lips and said, “City Lord, thank you for your hard work. Then I’ll take my leave now.”
He Fang nodded. Yuan Zhiran was still as obedient as ever. But this time, He Fang once again saw the spiritual window above his head going absolutely wild with messages.
