The collapse of Punishment City hadn't caused much of a stir on the Jixin Terminal. Plenty of people and devices across the city had captured the collapse and the tsunami, but the Enforcement Department reacted quickly. They blocked the relevant videos and immediately offered an explanation.
Blaming the attack on Outer District Players would damage their image, and revealing the truth was out of the question. So their public explanation was that an experimental subject had escaped from Punishment City, causing the collapse. As for the tsunami, it was an emergency measure taken to stop hazardous substances from spreading further, and the relevant city government departments would cover the losses.
Of course, people who knew what was really going on weren't likely to believe the Enforcement Department's story. What's more, some people, eager to watch the drama unfold, posted clips from underground livestreams on the Jixin Terminal.
Before long, people who didn't know the circumstances traced the clips back to their source and figured out that they were snippets from certain underground livestreams. Clips like these weren't new; they'd circulated on a small scale before, only to be swiftly removed. They'd always existed in a gray area, and few people cared enough to investigate. But now that the clips were linked to the timing of Punishment City's collapse, it was easy to suspect a clash with Outer District Players.
Player battles were no ordinary affairs, so it wasn't surprising that an underground livestream like this had gone wrong. Besides, most of the dead were Outer District Players. It wasn't a big deal.
What truly set the public ablaze was a snippet from an underground livestream that had suddenly cut off. The person in the clip was none other than Toven Smith of Black Sea Technology Company. He sat alone in