Chapter 913: Chapter 913
[0 years old: You were born, and your grandpa named you Linen, hoping you would become an upright and noble individual.]
[1 year old: You lived in Yilan City, the fourth largest city in the Federation and the largest city in the southeastern part of the Federation, aside from Dawn City.]
[2 years old: Your childhood was very happy. You had an illustrious family background; one of your ancestors was one of the founders of the Federation, another ancestor had been President of the Federation, your grandpa was a Senator of Yilan City, your father was a well-known lawyer in the Federation, and your mother was a renowned doctor.]
[3 years old: You were an only child, so your parents doted on you a lot. You had your own fluffy bed filled with down feathers, as well as several maids dedicated to taking care of you.]
[4 years old: You entered Evis Private Kindergarten in Yilan City, where you met many interesting friends. Some were the grandchildren of the mayor, some were the children of the person in charge of a large Federation consortium, and your teachers were all handsome, beautiful, kind, and understanding.]
[5 years old: Your father gradually became stricter with your education, and you had to do some things independently, away from the maids, like dressing yourself and bathing. Meanwhile, your father hired several famous teachers to tutor you.]
[6 years old: You passed the entrance exam for Nord Private Primary School. The principal of the school was a friend of your father’s and he promised to seriously cultivate you.]
[7 years old: The school had its own playground and garden, and you loved to watch the gardeners trim plants in the garden so much that you would even forget to eat and attend classes. After your father found out, he scolded you severely. It was the first time you saw your father so stern, and it startled you.]
[8 years old: You met many interesting new friends at school, and occasionally you would exchange gifts. You received a gemstone brooch, the most advanced smart bracelet, and a brand new red sports car. However, you couldn’t drive it because of your age.]
[9 years old: Your father often traveled around the country for work, and during the holidays, he would occasionally take you with him. You saw the endless snow and ice in the Northern Borders and the deserted wilderness in the central part of the country.]
[10 years old: Your mother decided to hire an extracurricular teacher for you. She let you choose from music, physical skills, or dance, and you chose physical skills. A muscular fighter became your teacher.]
[11 years old: Because of your father’s work reasons, you had to temporarily move to Vitland and leave your friends at school to transfer to the Stars Private Primary School in Vitland.]
[12 years old: You made some new friends, but it was difficult for you to integrate into the life of Vitland, so you often wandered around alone out of boredom. Once, you accidentally entered a dirty, chaotic area, which was a stark contrast to the splendid city.
A friendly uncle escorted you out and told you that the place was known as the Zhalote District, and the people who lived there were called "Scavengers."
That same year, you passed the entrance examination and entered Welme Private Middle School.]
[13 years old: After only one year of middle school, your father took you away from Vitland, and you moved to the bustling Dawn City in the east. You transferred to Nord Private Middle School located in the Crown District, the busiest city in the Federation with bright lights that never went out all night.]
[14 years old: Your classmates in Dawn City always brought you some fresh and interesting things, such as a gaming robot produced by the Triton Group, or a realistic toy gun manufactured by a company under the Nord Consortium. Your friends were also very willing to listen to your experiences in the north and south of the Federation.]
[15 years old: You continued to study physical skills and became a member of the school soccer team, having led the team to victory as champions of the Dawn City middle school league. Your school email was often filled with letters from girls.
You selectively accepted a confession from a sexy blonde girl, but your first relationship didn’t last long, only three months.
You didn’t dwell on your athletic achievements; you believed that eventually you would become an excellent lawyer like your father, and that year, you were promoted to Nord Private High School.]
[16 years old: As one of the best high schools in Dawn City, Nord Private High School offered a large number of extracurricular practical courses. You enrolled in a volunteer activity to distribute free bread, and in the cold winter wind, you saw the thinly-clothed people queuing up to receive food.
The bread you prepared wasn’t much, and you gave the last small piece to a mother with dry hair who was with her child. Amidst trembling words of gratitude, you saw the long queue slowly disperse behind you.]
[17 years old: You began to help your father with some legal issues and study the law. That winter, you followed your father to the northern mining city of Rock City to assist the local Rock City Mining Group with some legal problems.
While your father was in a meeting, you wandered alone in this cold northern city. The new office building of the Mining Group was splendid, but not far from this building, you could see some messy shacks and people huddling and shivering on the streets.
The director of the Mining Group took you to visit their mining site, where you met a young man with disheveled hair covered in filth, who was organizing a strike among the workers. He told you that they worked fourteen hours a day but couldn’t earn enough to support themselves.
You witnessed firsthand the armed organization of the Mining Group suppress the strike, and the young man was injured and fled into the wilderness.]
[18 years old: You realized that the world seems different from what you had been exposed to, and decided to leave your comfortable family life.
After graduating from high school, you gave up the acceptance letter from Dawn University, choosing instead to serve in the Federal Central Army. Your father didn’t oppose your decision and only asked that you return to your studies after completing your service.]
[19 years old: After boot camp, you became a member of the Federal Central Army’s airborne special forces team. The Federation adopted a voluntary enlistment system, with a minimum service term of two years for the Central Army. There, you saw the Federation’s latest weapons, and your commander, a middle-aged major, took good care of you.]
[20 years old: The Federal Central Army needed to continuously change stations to counter the threat of powerful exotic beasts that might endanger cities, but most of the time, you didn’t need to fight.
Following the movements of the Central Army, you visited many cities and were exposed to extraordinary powers in the military.
With the help of your commander, you obtained an F-level Talent Sequences Secret Medicine, becoming ’Talent Sequences 5: Furious Man.’
In the same year, you retired from the Central Army and didn’t realize that your father and your commander were old friends until your father came to pick you up.]
[21 years old: After retiring, you reapplied for the entrance examination to Dawn University. While waiting for the results, you left without informing anyone.]
You returned to Rock City and conducted a detailed investigation into the lives of the miners there. You met again with the young man who had organized the strike, who had luckily survived in the Wilderness and come back to Rock City.
You shared your investigative report with him, and he told you he had decided to establish an organization to fight for miners’ rights, but hadn’t thought of a name yet. You suggested he choose a simple name.
In the end, you both agreed that the new organization would be called "Miners’ Mutual Aid Association." You followed the young man, known as the "Foreman," witnessing the establishment of the organization and, using the knowledge you had gained in the military, helped them create a more comprehensive organizational system.
You didn’t stay in Rock City, and after being gone for half a year, you returned to Dawn City. The slightly emaciated figure of your father just gave you a hug, and you entered the Law Department of Dawn University.
At 22: You were much older than your classmates, but because of your rich experience and handsome looks, you attracted much admiration. You began dating a girl from clinical medicine.
That fall, under the pretext of an academic exchange, you went back to Vitland, returning to the Zhalote District where the Scavengers lived. You met again with the uncle who had taken you away from there and found out he was the leader of the Scavengers, who taught you some medical knowledge.
During breaks from school, you often visited and your medical skills improved significantly.
At 23: You went to Wint City and saw the raging Storm Sea, and you also took electives in clinical medicine.
At 24: You graduated early after completing your credits, broke up with your girlfriend from clinical medicine, and began pursuing a Master’s degree in Law.
At 25: You started a new relationship with a mature lady who ran a coffee shop outside of school. Her café was located in Aston District, where many wanderers gathered outside the glass windows and occasionally, members of feuding gangs were seen.
You often wrote papers in the café and began providing free legal consultation for wanderers who couldn’t afford a lawyer. You also became a columnist for Dawn Daily.
At 26: In your column, you sharply criticized a labor scandal involving the Nord Consortium. Your column went viral but was soon pulled from the official website of Dawn Daily, and you lost that job.
At 27: Your parents returned to Yilan City, and after breaking up with your girlfriend, you obtained a Master’s degree in Law. However, you realized you didn’t want to become a lawyer and began a journey around the Federation filled with confusion.
At 28: You arrived in Kaye City, an industrial city in the Federal East, where a family-style industrial Consortium named Nolanka Group was gradually taking complete control of the city.
Your father had once provided legal advice for this Consortium, and using that connection, you stayed in Kaye City for a while as a legal consultant.
The head of the Consortium was a quite refined engineer and scholar. You often shared with him the experiences you had in various places of the Federation and provided him many legal suggestions, including increasing employee wages to some extent.
He seemed to accept your advice to a certain degree, and when winter came, you left Kaye City.
At 29: You bought a car and traveled with a caravan in the Wilderness, occasionally using your not-so-impressive medical skills to treat injured caravan members or Wilderness Wanderers.
During a resupply, you passed through Saint Joen City, where countless skyscrapers once again altered your understanding. In this grand granary of the Federation, you saw many people who couldn’t afford bread. On your journey, you had already seen too many such people.
You stayed in a house in the corners of Saint Joen City, whose owner was a sick Elderly lady without medical insurance who couldn’t pay her expensive medical bills. Your rudimentary medical skills couldn’t cure her illness, so you called your father to borrow money and took the old lady to the hospital.
But it was all too late, you were too late, and you could only hold her hand and watch her die in front of you. She had two children; one had died in the factory, the other died of illness at home due to unaffordable medical costs. She had no other relatives left.
Before she died, she gave you her house. Holding the recording of her will, you didn’t know where things had gone wrong.
You sold the house and at the real estate agency, you met someone else who was looking at houses.
You heard he was an Employee of a grain company, so you used all of the proceeds from the house sale, after paying off the remaining mortgage, to buy a large amount of food at a low price from him and distributed it for free to the hungry.
You got along well with this ’new friend,’ who envied your life, but due to family reasons, couldn’t travel with you. It wasn’t until you parted ways that you learned his name was "Cito."
At 30: Your grandfather passed away, and you returned to Yilan City. After attending your grandfather’s funeral, you stayed in the city where you were born.
But you didn’t stay at home, instead wandering continuously around Yilan City, discovering aspects of the city you’d never before seen.
The city had nine million residents, four main districts, but only the smallest in the northeast, Saint Ilan District, boasted a prosperous and beautiful appearance.
This city was no different from the rest of the Federation’s cities, even worse than some.
Perhaps everything could start from this city.
At 31: You decided to run for City Councilor. Your father chose to support you. You formed your own party, and with your excellent oratory skills, you easily gained the support of resources that once belonged to your grandfather, and were elected as a councilor by a large margin, becoming the youngest one in the City Council.
At 32: Life as a councilor was not as simple as you had imagined. You promised your constituents to improve their lives, but it seemed you couldn’t do anything at all. The entire Council was completely under the control of Consortiums like the Yiwis Space System.
Large lobbying groups d enormous amounts of "campaign contributions" to every councilor. This money, which could have fed thousands of people, gathered in the pockets of each councilor, and so, one by one, bills that you thought should never pass, passed.
You felt that you were unable to change anything at all.