Some ordinary people had been poorly informed at the start of the apocalypse and lived too far from official bases, so a portion of them chose to go to small bases like these.
The authorities had been swamped at first and had no way to oversee them. Only a few years later did they free up the manpower to investigate, and that was when they discovered that most small bases were essentially enormous, ruthless sweatshops.
Ordinary people lived worse lives than slaves, and the authorities shut down several of those bases in succession.
But not all of them were like that. Hope Base was quite famous. When the authorities came to investigate, it not only offered no resistance but voluntarily handed over all sorts of records about the base.
For the sake of centralized administration, the authorities wanted to absorb Hope Base as well, but not a single ordinary resident there wanted to leave. They all wanted to keep their current lives.
In the end, the matter was dropped.
These people had probably stumbled into one of those ruthless sweatshop bases.
"We're all from the same ability team. We weren't originally from Proud Sky Base, but their promises of great treatment lured us over. Only later did we find out it was nothing like they'd claimed, but we couldn't leave.
"Big-Head Mei is a level-five dual-ability user, and he has several level-four ability users under him. We couldn't possibly beat them.
"We took advantage of a mission and finally managed to escape here. Guys like us have it easier-the worst that can happen is death. But the women... those bastards are absolutely vile!"
The man rambled on for ages before Bai Yaoyao finally understood what had happened. Things like this were all too common, so she wasn't particularly surprised.
Lulu,