Piltover's good life had been fought for by Zaunites?
That sounded completely counterintuitive.
"Zaunites and Piltovans..." Vi felt like her brain was about to overload. "Weren't they supposed to be enemies?"
"Yes, yes, exactly—that's it." Li Wei smiled. "Piltover's great conglomerates deliberately created the distinction between Zaunites and Piltovans so that you would all think exactly that about each other!"
According to the history he had learned from Janna:
In the early days of the Twin Cities' split, Zaun and Piltover had not been so clearly separated.
Nowadays, going from Zaun to Piltover across the Canal Bridge was like crossing a national border. There were smuggling inspections and eligibility reviews, while Enforcers stood guard with loaded weapons, watching for every Zaunite trying to sneak across—
The only thing missing was a very, very great wall to completely seal off the border between Zaun and Piltover.
But more than two hundred years ago, when the Twin Cities had just split apart, there were no checkpoints at all between Zaun and Piltover.
Zaunites could cross the river whenever they wanted. They worked in Piltover during the day and returned to Zaun to rest at night.
Rather than two cities, the Twin Cities were more like a poor district and a Rich District separated by a canal.
But later, things changed.
"Because Zaunites could move freely, and poor immigrants from all over the world kept pouring into Piltover, indirectly swelling Zaun's labor force."
"So Piltover's business owners preferred hiring poorer Zaunites who asked for lower wages, rather than Piltovan commoners who 'couldn't endure hardship.'"
"Gradually, some Piltovan commoners without education or skills, who lacked individual competitiveness, began losing their jobs, falling back into poverty, or being forced to accept pay cuts. Some even fell from their original social class and had no choice