Wandering aimlessly through the dilapidated streets, Lu Xin realized that he hadn't taken a good look at this street in a long time. The streets were full of potholes and dust, with stagnant water left from a few days ago. Neon lights blazed everywhere, interweaving into chaotic yet dazzling colors.

After the Red Moon incident, the surviving humans within the high city walls seemed to split into two distinctly different types. One type was extremely busy, hurrying along, too preoccupied to take more than a glance around. The other type was particularly idle, either sitting listlessly on both sides of the street with a bundle spread out in front or setting up a table, displaying wild vegetables, some unidentified meats, crudely sharpened knives, or old ornaments and unknown technological items brought back by hunters from expeditions into the ruins outside the city.

Many more people just gathered in groups of three or five, smoking and whistling at the women on the street. There were still many madmen outside. When the high wall city was first built, there was a time when people couldn't even get enough to eat. But perhaps because the number of people needing food in the world suddenly decreased significantly, resource pressure was alleviated. Or maybe the speed of civilization's reconstruction exceeded everyone's expectations. In just thirty years, famines and starvation within the high city walls had become rare...

To put it simply, it wasn't difficult to fill one's stomach within the high wall city. The difficulty lay in how to make life better!

These people wandering the streets aimlessly were like that. They hadn't even obtained the formal status of the second satellite city, couldn't enter professional technical schools or regular schools for education, and had no hope of ever living in the main city.

So they gave up all pursuits, didn't work, and didn't think about tomorrow's life. They just roamed the streets every day, blankly watching everything that passed by, their eyes empty, not knowing what they were thinking...

Lu Xin walked past them, observing everyone. He was looking for dangerous beings like the clerk from that street corner coffee shop. If he could catch one, he would earn a lot of money and save many people.

His sister's figure kept appearing inadvertently beside him. Sometimes she appeared on the high buildings beside him, sometimes lazily climbing across the wires above his head, and sometimes on the head of some bald uncle.

The siblings patrolled the streets seriously like this. Then they encountered nothing.

"This city is too big..."

After wandering through seven or eight streets and getting sore legs, Lu Xin squatted by the roadside, smoking and eating a boxed meal. He summarized his experience in his mind: "Although there were few people when the high wall city was first built, the population has been increasing over these decades and has exploded. Just in our second satellite city, there are over a million people living. The police always complain about a shortage of manpower. It's very normal that I can't encounter anything by wandering around like this..."

"I'll definitely find something if I patrol more times..."

After finishing the boxed meal, Lu Xin patrolled for a while and then went back to sleep before going to work the next day. He did this for several days in a row.

However, this overly normal city disappointed Lu Xin. Not a single strange incident occurred.

"If this city is too safe and there's no need for me, will Colonel Chen and the others take back my subsidy?"

Lu Xin couldn't help but start to worry. However, he didn't expect that another job of his would encounter a problem first. "Xiao Lu, you don't need to come to work tomorrow." The director, with half of his hair bald but still meticulously combed, pushed a termination contract in front of Lu Xin. "Why?" The director's words took Lu Xin by surprise, and he found it somewhat incomprehensible. He hadn't even been officially hired at this job, and now he was being dismissed. How could he accept this? Although in the world after the Red Moon incident, due to economic instability, it was quite normal to be fired, especially for a job like his that only required sitting in an office and using his brain, without having to rush to the docks or factories to work tirelessly day and night. There were many people vying for such positions, making the competition extremely fierce. But Lu Xin had never thought that this would happen to him. He had always been very conscientious in his work, and over the years, he had never made any mistakes. He was even a model employee, with a banner hanging in his cubicle as proof. Even if someone had to be let go, how could it be him? ... "This matter, Xiao Lu, you have to understand." The director squeezed out a smile on his face, pulled out a cigarette and handed it to Lu Xin, showing his yellowed teeth stained by smoke as he smiled and said: "The company is not doing well right now. For the same job, we can't afford to keep too many people. Comparing you and Xiao Lu, your professional abilities are similar, but Xiao Lu's work attitude is much better than yours. Look at you, recently you've been leaving early every day, and by the time it's time to get off work, there's no one around..." "Lu Cheng?"

Lu Xin remembered the young man who always accompanied him with a smiling face, asking him to teach how to handle work, and fell silent. He also knew what the director meant by saying he left early. In fact, he didn't leave early, he just didn't take the initiative to stay overtime. "Director, can you give me another chance?" Lu Xin had a lot of things he wanted to say in his heart, but in the end, he just asked softly. The director showed a troubled expression on his face: "Alas, you are an old employee, I am reluctant too, but you know our company, we can't afford to keep idle people, when abilities are the same, attitude is very important..." Lu Xin didn't listen to the rest of the words because he knew they were false. When he left the director's office, he saw that his belongings had been packed up and placed in a box. He didn't know who was so kind. "It was Lü Cheng who packed for you, he has been wanting to move next to you..." Next to his partition, Aunt Sun with permed hair whispered to Lu Xin: "Little Lu, it's not that Sister Sun is speaking ill of you, you are just too honest. I've told you before, don't teach everything to others, look, he's taken your job, right? I heard that this kid is amazing, he's dating the director's daughter, and the director is so smart, how could he not give the job to his own family?"

Lu Xin silently looked at the banner in his box, reached into his backpack, and touched the gun inside. But in the end, he didn't pull it out. Instead, he went downstairs first, lit a cigarette, and then slowly strolled around. He remembered what Chen Jing had told him before. If he encountered trouble in life, she gave him three suggestions. The first was to call the police. The second was to call her. The third was to use the gun.