"Old Adversary" (Happy Mid-Autumn Festival / Extra-long chapter, please vote with monthly tickets)

Desert's edge · Wilderness Wanderers Camp. Night had fallen, and bright lights shone on the crowds coming and going through the camp.

He Ao stood outside a small shop, gazing at the brilliant lights in the darkness.

This Wilderness Wanderers Camp was unexpectedly prosperous.

Unlike the widespread abandonment of Wilderness Wanderers Camps in the east, those in the west were rather more active.

The reason was simple. In the east, especially within Dawn City's sphere of influence, almost every wilderness wanderer who could move into a city had chosen to do so.

After the civil war began, every city within the New Federation's territory had passed the Wilderness Wanderers Act in tandem, even before the New Federation was founded, further absorbing the wilderness wanderers around them.

Most of those still living in the eastern wilderness now were people who could earn more out there and were better suited to life in the wild.

And according to a report Bode had read, these people did not necessarily lack urban residency status. They simply lived in the wilderness.

For them, being a wilderness wanderer had become an occupation rather than an identity.

Of course, in the west, especially near Vetland, wilderness wanderers still existed in great numbers, and the Federation's overall order remained largely unchanged.

However, He Ao was already at the southern boundary of the Nisk Desert. According to the map, a little farther east lay the Forest Corridor.

In theory, wilderness wanderers living this close to the passage between east and west should also find it easier to travel east and join the New Federation.

The Wilderness Wanderers Camps near Visen, for example, had become much more deserted.

Yet the camp He Ao had reached showed no sign of population loss. It was exceptionally thriving, looking more like a large