Chapter 135: Pollution

The tram hummed along in the barriers. Ren Xiaosu had never been on a bus before, but it was really the first time he had seen this kind of “bus”.

Everyone only needs to get on the bus and put 20 cents into the box at the entrance, and then they can ride to a far, far away place, even from the starting station to the end station is no problem.

Wang Fugui had heard of such things as trams a long time ago, after all, he used to deal with people in the barriers and would always talk about the novelties in the barriers.

So when Ren Xiaosu said that he wanted to tour the Barrier, Wang Fugui said that the tram was the most trouble and money saving transportation.

“Brother,” Yan Liuyuan said as he leaned on the window, “People in this ledge surely don’t have such things as worries, with life being so convenient and safe, all they need to do is some easy work in the ledge, and they can enjoy a life hundreds of times better than that of a straggler.”

“How can a person not have worries,” Ren Xiaosu sat down next to him and smiled, “Even Luo Lan will have worries just the same, this kind of thing won’t diminish with the increase of material base.”

“That’s also true,” Yan Liu Yuan nodded, “Then do you think there is such a person in this world who can have no worries whatsoever?”

Ren Xiaosu said, “There is, dead people.”

Yan Liuyuan slowly turned his head to look at Ren Xiaosu, “On such a festive day, brother, do you think this is appropriate ……”

“Even a fool like Chen Wuxi has troubles,” Ren Xiaosu sighed, at this time Chen Wuxi is sitting in the last row, his face has not yet gone down the swelling, I don’t know where this bastard went yesterday, who received a severe beating ……

On both sides of the streets of this walled city, there is a wide range of people selling breakfast Xiao Long Bao, bean curd brain and so on, and there are also selling hardware and groceries.

There were pedestrians coming and going on the sidewalk next to the street, and occasionally there would be people on bicycles flying down the street as fast as they could.

Ren Xiaosu curiously said, “How much does a bicycle cost in the wall, I feel that this thing is quite convenient for transportation.”

In the past, there was a “village gentleman” in the market town who bought a bicycle circulating in the barriers, and it was stolen the same night. In order to escape from the village gentleman’s pursuit, the thief rode the bicycle to other barriers …….

Bicycles were luxuries in the market towns, the kind you couldn’t buy if you wanted to.

“I’ll go and ask this afternoon,” said Wang Fugui, “It shouldn’t be cheap, after all, resources are so short now, look at those people riding bicycles with more circumspect clothes, it looks like they should all be relatively rich in the barriers.”

“I should have known that I would have asked Jiang Wu more on the way,” Ren Xiaosu lamented, none of them had ever been to the Barrier, but Jiang Wu had grown up in the Barrier.

Only now, Jiang Wu had gone to report to school to continue working as a teacher, and should be in Barrier 13 as well.

……

While on the road, Ren Xiaosu heard someone beside her discussing something: “Have you heard, 113 Barrier has been abandoned, it’s said that the previous earthquake directly collapsed 113 Barrier, and even the people from the Qing Clan Consortium have fled to our Barrier.”

“Really?” Someone said in amazement, “The radio news didn’t say anything about this.”

“The radio definitely won’t tell you about it,” that person laughed, “But I have a friend who has a cooperative relationship with the Qing Clan, and he told me that the bigwigs from the Qing Clan had already arrived at our barriers yesterday, and said that they had brought in dozens of stragglers.”

“Stragglers?” The other man was surprised and said, “Why are the stragglers coming in if they aren’t working properly outside?”

Ren Xiaosu glanced at them and didn’t say anything, only to hear the other man say, “Who knows, and I don’t know if they will bring in diseases and bacteria and pollution from outside.”

“Shhh, look at those people behind us, they seem to be the stragglers!” One person said in astonishment.

After this reminder, the other people in the car looked back at them, and then the more they looked, the more they felt that Ren Xiaosu and the others could really be the stragglers.

Then Yan Liu Yuan was surprised to see that all these people got off at the next stop.

In just one stop, they were the only ones left on the tram, and if the driver hadn’t been driving, Yan Liuyuan felt that the driver would have gotten off the tram!

Ren Xiaosu sized up the six of them, today they had all changed into washed clothes, and everyone had boiled water for a bath, so their faces and bodies weren’t dirty anymore.

But the problem was the style of clothes that the stragglers could buy, or the stragglers’ sun-exposed skin, which itself made a big difference.

“Brother,” Yan Liuyuan whispered, “I feel as if the people in the barriers are not friendly at all.”

No one from these barriers even bothered to ask, just guessing that they were stragglers, they all brainlessly avoided them like the plague.

Just because they might be carrying germs from the outside, because what the barriers had been publicizing to them since they were young was that the reason why the stragglers couldn’t come in was because they were “contaminated”.

Ren Xiaosu didn’t reply, he just calmly said, “Sister Xiaoyu, you go buy two new clothes for each of us tomorrow, so we can all change into the new clothes and look more like Barrier people.”

“I’m not wearing them,” Yan Liuyuan resisted in a low voice, as if wearing these new clothes was bowing down to those wallflowers.

Ren Xiaosu said, “Whether it’s in the wilderness or in a ledge, to survive it’s never about integrating and understanding before you have the ability to fight back, when you can’t change your environment you have to learn to disguise yourself first.”

Wang Fugui froze for a moment when he heard this, he didn’t expect Ren Xiaosu to use his theories that applied to the wilderness to the barriers, so this was treating the barriers like a place like the wilderness?

He only heard Ren Xiaosu continue, “Perhaps we will still leave from the ledge one day, so everyone get ready.”

Yan Liuyuan’s eyes just lit up when he heard this, he who knew Ren Xiaosu the best had already heard that Ren Xiaosu already had the intention to go!

Wang Fugui laughed, “Why don’t we leave tomorrow, I don’t know why, I always feel that the days in the market town are more comfortable.”

“There’s no hurry,” Ren Xiaosu shook her head, “We can’t get out now either, wait until I find an opportunity.”

At this time, the vehicle came to the terminal, Ren Xiaosu and the others planned to take the vehicle back the same way, but then everyone saw that there were many single houses with small yards further ahead of the terminal.

From a distance, this area seems to be not small, but compared to other places, it is a lot more secluded.

At this time, Ren Xiaosu pulled the tram driver and asked, “What is this place?”

“This is the rich area of our walled city,” the driver said, “Only the rich and powerful can live in it, and there are no tram lines in it because all the people who live here have private cars.”

The driver was shrinking back as he spoke, afraid to get too close to Ren Xiaosu.