A34-041, Silver District.
Xu Huo walked along city streets that were practically indistinguishable from a barren desert and wiped the sweat from his face yet again.
After leaving the train, he had been dropped into this impoverished little city. Low, dilapidated houses, scrawny, shriveled people, and a suffocating stench overwhelmed his sight and smell. The glaring sunlight washed everything white. After a while, he could not help wondering whether this space, slightly warped by the heat, was a world that truly existed.
"Water, sir?" People along the way hawked small, grimy glass bottles. Their mouths were tightly stoppered, and the water inside was far from clean—some of it was downright murky. Yet every seller gripped their bottles firmly, only holding them up for him to glimpse as he passed.
Ignoring the feeble voices around him, Xu Huo looked at the enormous gray city where the sky met the earth ahead. He walked a little farther before finding somewhere to stop and rest.
He had looked into this district while on the train. Outer District Players all mentioned its enormous wealth gap, but he had never imagined it would be this extreme. How were these people living out in the desert any different from beggars? They were worse off than beggars in many other districts.
Food and water were scarce, and the temperature was so high that even players found it unbearable. It was hard to imagine that places like this covered more than two-thirds of the district.
Districts with harsh natural environments were no better, but for technologically advanced districts, building cities on land like this was hardly difficult. Even districts with average economies usually would not allow themselves to deteriorate to this extent. However much a district developed, as long as its players came from its ordinary population, neither