A not-so-cold piece of trivia: no matter how corrupt and incompetent Boulder City's noble lords were, orderly Boulder City was still a blessed land to the wastelands of southern River Valley Province and even northern Jin River Province.
For two hundred years, survivors had continuously migrated toward Boulder City. Even now, after the collapse of the skyscrapers, that momentum continued.
Because the influx of people far exceeded the limit of what Boulder City's industries could absorb, and the giant walls themselves limited how many survivors the settlement could hold, an entry tax of one to two chips emerged.
Workers with jobs would not casually leave the city, scavengers working in the wasteland would not casually enter it, and the militia stationed at the gates could earn an extra income.
It was killing three birds with one stone.
The vast surplus labor force, along with the unemployment and informal employment it brought, gradually formed one ownerless city after another—the slums.
People here usually survived on the garbage flowing out from the giant walls, helped survivors inside the walls scavenge and hunt in the wasteland, or did jobs that the survivors inside the walls did not want to do or could not do.
Historically, Boulder City had tried to clear away these stubborn stains clinging beneath the giant walls, but every attempt had proven to be more trouble than it was worth.
Building shacks was practically an essential survival skill for every wastelander. Even if they were torn down today, scavengers would build them again tomorrow.
And whenever the annual tide arrived, the nobles of the inner city needed these people to fill the battle lines.
Even the lords who frequently messed around with economic policy understood that pulling manpower from the slums had a far smaller impact than taking skilled industrial