Chapter 88: Expelling Professor Wu

Although they were prepared for a long war, the people of Golden Ridge City acted at once to avoid any delay that might breed trouble. They launched a fierce assault on the territory held by the enemy, steadily gnawing away at it bit by bit.

Compared with the intense fighting at the front, the work on the Joint Investigation Team’s side was far duller, though no less hectic. They had been assigned to receive and sort through a batch of materials originally provided by the future city at Golden Chicken Ridge.

Faced with mountains of data and documents, Long Ge was utterly overwhelmed. Though he had been secretly studying to make up for lost time over the past two years, he had neglected his education for so many years, and his memory was nowhere near as sharp as that of younger men. He simply could not keep up with brothers who had bachelor’s degrees or even master’s degrees. With no other choice, he could only help out with the odd jobs.

The others focused diligently on sorting everything according to the requirements. Planning diagrams of the Golden Chicken Ridge base, experimental projects and data, population statistics... everything was categorized and organized. As for some materials concerning the structure of the dark organization and its headquarters, the Joint Investigation Team did not dare touch them and turned them over directly to their superiors.

Everything seemed to be slowly getting back on track, and in truth, that was indeed the case. Under the powerful offensive of Golden Ridge City, Wu Jianxue and the other forces unwilling to accept a peaceful transition gradually found themselves unable to hold on.

The front line moved from a stalemate into its final stage. The enemy’s strongholds had been nearly entirely swallowed up, and those who still stubbornly resisted no longer insisted. Some chose to surrender; others chose to flee. Little by little, the former territory of the Golden Chicken Ridge base came fully under the control of Golden Ridge City.

Though they had lost their fixed stronghold, the enemy had not vanished entirely. Instead, they moved underground and began carrying out sabotage, disrupting public order in Golden Ridge City. Broadly speaking, it was much the same as what the Nationalist forces did after 1949.

Golden Ridge City had long since prepared for this. Everyone here was registered, unlike the outside world. The information kept by the old Golden Chicken Ridge base was exceedingly detailed: height, weight, fingerprints, blood type, body measurements, and even medical history were recorded with complete clarity. Thus, with Golden Ridge City’s population numbering fewer than three hundred thousand, temporarily drawing in outside personnel and carrying out one-by-one checks soon exposed the criminals hidden among the masses.

The relevant departments in Golden Ridge City interrogated the captured enemy agents overnight. None of them had much resolve; before long, they had spilled a long string of names, even giving up Wu Jianxue’s hastily assembled command center.

The police and the military joined forces and immediately began arrests and clearance operations against the hidden enemy. In the end, Wu Jianxue still managed to escape, but this joint action, the first after the formation of Golden Ridge City, could still be counted as a complete success. After all, the situation was now fully under the control of the municipal government. The people living here had finally thrown off the shadow that had long hung over their heads.

As for Wu Jianxue, the man who had organized the resistance, he had long intended to slip away. He had only been testing the waters to begin with; if he could not seize power, he had nothing to lose. If the operation failed, he had already prepared an escape route during his stay in Golden Ridge City. So when the situation suddenly turned against him and the revolution from the bottom up began in Golden Ridge City, he was already preparing to withdraw, to the point that even the people around him did not know when the esteemed Professor Wu had vanished.

By the time anyone noticed, Wu Jianxue was already cheering them on from afar.

For the people living in Golden Ridge City, it was finally over. Life returned to peace once more. Under the organization of the new municipal government, housing, employment, and other arrangements were gradually put in place. Compensation for the victims also began to be carried out piece by piece.

Among all the victims, the hardest to place were those who had survived the illegal experiments by sheer luck. Many of them were weak and needed long-term medication. Some suffered from physical disabilities, and others carried psychological wounds that would not heal easily; these could not be resolved in a day or two.

According to data gathered through more than a year of follow-up observation in the Great Wilderness District of Sandbank City, many disaster survivors had developed varying degrees of depression, and the cumulative suicide rate had already approached twenty percent. There had even been a vicious assault. For a time, people viewed the experiment survivors with hostility, which left the authorities deeply troubled. They feared that panic might spread and trigger unrest.

Unlike Black Mountain, the experiments carried out in Golden Ridge City had mainly focused on animals. After taking over the city, they had begun dealing with these unnatural creations. As for the human victims, most had been enslaved laborers and gladiators. With counseling from psychologists, the problem should not be too serious. Many of them quickly emerged from the shadows; some joined volunteer associations and began new lives in the reborn Golden Ridge City.

The most difficult cases were the victims of the merfolk transformation experiments. The first group rescued earlier was still temporarily housed in an ocean world. For their safety, nothing had been made public.

But Golden Ridge City was different. Nearly everyone knew that merfolk existed. After driving out Wu Jianxue and the others, the most urgent problem facing the municipal government was how to resettle them. How could they be ensured a life of independence and self-reliance, like ordinary people? How could they be protected from harm by ordinary people?

There was no outside experience to draw upon, and Golden Ridge City had never considered such a problem. After all, no one had ever imagined things would come to this point. Under the old arrangement, these merfolk were sold to aquariums and displayed for viewing, like sharks or whales.

Just when everyone was at a loss, the person in charge of the merfolk transformation experiments submitted a proposal. According to him, after performing so many surgeries, whether voluntary or forced, he always felt guilty. He often woke in the night tormented by remorse. So he and several colleagues with architectural training quietly designed a city suited to the merfolk’s way of life. There, waterways would run everywhere, and handrails would be found throughout...

The proposal, still only in the planning stage, was unanimously approved. And so, in a mountain hollow to the northeast of Golden Ridge City, such a waterside district was truly built.

The waterside district was about to break ground, and for once, Jin Ming had nothing much left to do. The ordinary affairs of Golden Ridge City were handled by the relevant departments, and he, the mayor, was almost becoming a mere mascot.

Life as a mascot was not as leisurely as one might imagine. It was not that anyone restricted his freedom, nor had anyone demanded that his rights be stripped away. Rather, in recent days he had the persistent feeling that someone was following him. At first he thought the Joint Investigation Team did not trust him and was keeping him under surveillance. That left him somewhat depressed.

Later, however, what happened made him understand that the ones who would not let him go were not the Joint Investigation Team...