Master Tian's words went in circles, and in the end, he deliberately added a remark, but Cheng Ye understood the meaning clearly.

Getting in and out of Shelter City is too difficult; one can only struggle within this limited space, with development options painfully narrow.

But this is an unsolvable issue. Once the speed of population movement accelerates, the proportion of infected bodies will also rise, and the current scale of the checkpoint is simply unable to cope.

In the current environment, ninety-nine percent of the shelter cities adopt the same method as Happiness City's Industrial Zone, fully locking down a region's population flow, in order to barely secure some development space.

If entry and exit become frequent, the infection source will naturally be attracted, leading to an outbreak of an infection wave.

As for focusing technological research efforts on screening for infected bodies and unlimited strengthening of checkpoint intensity.

There's no need for detailed calculations; one can immediately understand that the investment and proportion are completely disproportionate.

Not to mention that the sources of infection are still evolving; once any unchecked ones sneak into the city, all the early research investments would drastically shrink, or even become meaningless.

The roaming infection wave is more critical.

This is a calamity that every shelter city cannot escape; without solid hard power, a shelter city could fall apart at any moment when an infection wave strikes.

Further, the resources needed for research do not appear out of thin air; precision instruments require rare metals, drug research needs special biological samples, and even the most basic resources need to be mined outside.

Happiness City couldn't escape this rule when it was first founded; it had to form the Pioneer Corps, and many people were buried in the Wilderness to acquire the initial resources.

It's only in the past decade that Happiness City's industrial level has continuously improved, gradually gaining the capital to siphon talent from the surroundings.

With advantages such as more advanced weapons, more stable material supplies, and more complete industrial facilities, smaller settlements and shelter cities nearby were either absorbed or became vassals providing raw materials.

If not aiming to become stronger, just focusing on defense,

it wouldn't be Happiness City that rose in the Stone Province, but other shelter cities.

"Aren't you thinking of making a move?"

"I'm not thinking about it."

Master Tian quickly shook his head and couldn't help but laugh, "Inspector Cheng, crows are equally black everywhere; even those million-level Super Shelter Cities like Firewood Shelter City are actually not much different from us, just that some people are obstinate, insisting they can make a name for themselves."

"Have you been to Firewood Shelter City?"

Cheng Ye was stunned for a moment. According to the map, there's nearly over four thousand kilometers of direct distance between the two shelter cities, with an infected source-occupied no-man's land in between.

"Not been there, I came from there... Uh, quite a few founding members of Happiness City were from Firewood Shelter City."

Master Tian reminisced, "Firewood Shelter City doesn't divide like us with Buffer Zones and Inner Cities, but has more detailed divisions, like Industrial Zone, Agricultural Zone, Production Zone, Scavenging Zone, Collection Zone, Transportation Zone, Outer District, Inner City... One for dozens of zones."

"Different zones have different distances from the core zone, with varying levels and scales of epidemic prevention means. The Scavenging Zone is next to the outermost ruins, dealing with wandering infected bodies daily, relying on hard battles for epidemic prevention, but if people there survive long enough to earn enough merits, they can apply to move to the Agricultural Zone, at least to stably grow some food, and those in the Agricultural Zone can climb further up to enter the Industrial Zone..."

"Where were you at that time?"

"In the Transportation Zone!" Master Tian patted the steering wheel and grinned, "Driving a big truck back and forth to the mining area every day, it was a bit better than now at least; there weren't as many infected bodies yet, but the mortality rate was still around 20% all year, losing a batch and replacing a batch."

"Eventually, I couldn't hold on and ran, drifting in the Wilderness for over ten years, and finally settled in Happiness City."

"To put it bluntly, all shelter cities follow this same pattern, layer by layer, no matter where you go, there will be the safest places and the most dangerous places, and to get into safe places, you need to fight with others for spots. But in Happiness City, we openly mark the price; it lets you know that as long as you accumulate enough, you can get in and enjoy, while many shelter cities are heard to even hold auctions, arranging for people to inflating the price, even more disgusting."

"You see things clearly."

Cheng Ye couldn't help but remark.

In fact, when he got the shelter city distribution map, he already realized this.

If the concept of any shelter city can truly work, truly stabilize everyone, why would there be so many large and small shelter cities?

"Inspector Cheng, you seem very interested in the outside world?"

"Yes, I need to understand in advance; otherwise, we have to do fieldwork, and we can't just be blind and know nothing."

"That is...born in the wrong era. It was most suitable for people like you when the New Era just began. Now, the pattern has settled, the infected bodies are rampant, and going out is not easy."

As Master Tian spoke, the bus slowly stopped.

But it's not at the starting station, it's at a position about two hundred meters ahead.

"Where do you intend to get off? My bus is running low on electricity; many buses were charging there this morning, and I couldn't charge up. There should be space available during the lunch break now."

"Charging?"

Cheng Ye raised an eyebrow, suddenly intrigued. "Can I come along for a look? I happen to have some business at the Public Works Bureau."

"No problem, the charging area is just a few hundred meters away from the office building."

The bus started again, traveling along the city streets.

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