An era always moved forward through twists and turns—at least, that was how Lu PingAn hoped it would be.
But there would always be some unlucky people left behind by the times. They might even believe they had suffered the "cost of the era," coming to resent or even hate it.
".I'm forty. One war ruined everything. In the New Era, it's either AI Drones or superhumans and magic potions. People like us can't even get labor jobs anymore. Those Outsiders are cheaper and more capable than us."
Reality was sometimes too cruel. Faced with such circumstances, neither Lu PingAn nor the Eastern Kingdom authorities had any solution.
They could only keep creating new jobs and provide as much employment as possible. But a life of working on assembly lines and swinging sledgehammers at construction sites could hardly be called good, especially when these people had their happier former lives for comparison.
Most of them could not adapt. Just as one could not expect every elderly person to learn how to use a smartphone for chatting or even work, some people's first half of life had already shaped them. They could not start over.
Longing for the past and raging at the present naturally created sources of social instability.
"Are we being hated too? Even with my reputation..."
On Lu PingAn's side, only PingAn Brand products directly involved ordinary people's interests. Yet even the companies on the surface had suffered numerous attacks.
"They used new technology to plunder our wealth."
"Over ten thousand for a single staff! Selling them so expensively and forcing parents like us to spend money on our children."
Whether it was the authorities or the Professionals, they had repeatedly explained the high costs of extraordinary items. PingAn Brand was already being sold at a subsidized, loss-making