I'm Trapped in the Block

Chapter 493: Chapter 490: Zhou Chao’s Rant

The entire way, Zhou Chao cursed his captain for being inhuman and unreasonable, for bullying a weak investigator like him by leaving him all alone in such a dangerous place.

Not only that, but he also cursed out every single one of his teammates.

”The quartermaster didn’t leave me any extra food, so I had to forage for wild vegetables and mushrooms myself. I even had to worry about them jumping up and attacking me.”

”Old Tian swore up and down that there were fish on this Sky Island. He said he saw one as big as his arm. All lies! The fish were all killed off by the activated water long ago. There isn’t even a single bug left in it.”

”He also tricked me into thinking the bugs on this island were delicious. My mouth was filled with a bitter taste, and it took me a full three days to get over it.”

Zhou Chao was clearly filled with resentment, and after learning the island’s secrets, he let it all pour out in one go.

He’d been lonely for far too long. Staying on the island hadn’t been his choice, and struggling against the activated pollution day in and day out, it was inevitable that he’d build up some resentment.

Li Luo followed behind, listening, nodding along and stifling a laugh.

That is, until Zhou Chao started complaining about something specific:

”And this stupid electronic screen! Yuanxin Technology must have cut corners. It broke the second the warranty expired. I don’t have any form of entertainment on this Sky Island. I just squat on the ground counting ants all day.”

”I couldn’t even check if the mushrooms I’d dug up were edible. If my luck hadn’t held out, I’d have kicked the bucket by now.”

”Those heartless capitalists!”

Hearing this, the smile on Li Luo’s face vanished in an instant.

”What’s wrong?” Zhou Chao noticed that something was off with Li Luo.

”Nothing. They really are heartless.”

”Oh,” Zhou Chao replied slowly, then went right back to his tirade.

His rant moved from the terrible culture of the investigation team to the decadent materialism of Dawn City, where some suffered in the abyss while others enjoyed life in the city’s towering skyscrapers.

”Do you know what those capitalists would think if the activated pollution actually spread to Dawn City?”

”What would they think?” Li Luo asked, curious.

”They wouldn’t think about how to deal with the activated pollution. They’d think about how to exploit it! They’d use the activated pollution to bring figurines to life and sell them to all the otaku. You know how easy it is to get money from them! Those otaku would probably even be eternally grateful!”

”And another thing! They’d probably activate all the factory machinery so they wouldn’t need electricity anymore. But, if the machines gained consciousness, would they demand breaks? Ask for weekends off? Not that it would do them any good. Even plenty of humans don’t get to rest and don’t have weekends...”

”They’d probably activate water to make it generate its own power, activate fire to make it stoke its own boilers, activate pickaxes to make them do their own mining, and activate corpses to make them come back to work!”

Zhou Chao spoke with righteous indignation, his claims growing more and more absurd.

”Housing prices in Dawn City are so high. You think they’d activate houses in other cities, crack a whip, and make them run all the way to Dawn City so they could sell them?”

Li Luo didn’t know whether to laugh or cry at his ravings. ”Would you buy an activated house to live in? Aren’t you afraid it would eat you?”

Zhou Chao paused, then muttered, ”Houses aren’t activated now, and they still eat people alive...”

”And another thing! And another thing!” Zhou Chao suddenly thought of something else.

”You’ve seen the oxen that plow fields in history books, right?”

”Yeah, I have. Why?” Li Luo nodded.

”An ox plows a field, but it has to eat grass, right? The fodder is a cost. And you have to spend time and energy worrying about the ox’s health.”

”Then people replaced the ox with a machine to plow the field. Now, fuel is the cost. And you still have to spend time and energy on maintenance.”

”It’s the same thing, isn’t it? The only difference is the efficiency is higher. The development of human productivity is a quest for ultimate efficiency, and that’s exactly what capitalists are after.”

”But what’s the most efficient thing of all? Making the land plow itself!”

”Activate the farmland!”

”That way, both the ox and the machine can be optimized away.”

”And it’s the same for any job. Take an office clerk working at a computer, for example. The clerk is the ox. The ox needs grass; the clerk needs a salary. It’s the same principle. Their salary is a cost. Ten clerks mean ten salaries—ten costs.”

”But a clerk’s efficiency is limited. So how do you improve it?”

”Activate the computers! Let the computers do the work themselves. Then you don’t need clerks, you don’t need to pay salaries, and you don’t have to worry about the computers. It’s not like there’s a *Computer Labor Protection Act*. You can just exploit them for all they’re worth, right?”

”The clerks can be optimized away too. Let them go do whatever they want.”

”I’ve got it! Let them go buy houses. After all, those houses that ran to Dawn City on their own still need buyers.”

”What’s that? No salary?”

”They spent all their money on activated figurines? Well, whose fault is that? It’s their own, of course!”

...

As Zhou Chao continued his rant, his resentment slowly began to fade.

He was just an ordinary person struggling in the abyss, inevitably tangled up in worldly concerns. To Li Luo, his words were nothing more than a crazy rant.

It was wildly imaginative, but completely impractical.

Fortunately, the activated pollution was confined to this Sky Island and hadn’t spread. Dawn City was a long way off, so Zhou Chao’s wild theories weren’t going to become reality anytime soon.

”In any case, I won’t let the activation spread one bit. I may complain, but I’ve never regretted staying on this Sky Island. As long as I’m here, the activated pollution won’t take a single step off this island!”

”Weren’t you forced to stay here by the captain? What’s there to regret?”

”Well... my own wishes were part of it, too! The captain couldn’t have forced me!” Zhou Chao explained anxiously. ”I had to agree for the captain to leave me behind, so that counts as my decision too.”

Li Luo listened to his stumbling defense and didn’t press the issue.

In any case, Zhou Chao had indeed remained here.

”I’ll help stop the activated pollution, too,” Li Luo said earnestly.

Zhou Chao stared, stunned. He didn’t know why Li Luo had suddenly become so serious. After a moment’s thought, he could only assume he had been influenced by his own emotional outburst.

He sighed and apologized, slightly embarrassed.

”I tend to ramble. I haven’t spoken to anyone on this island in a long time, so don’t mind me. Just let all that nonsense I was spouting go in one ear and out the other.”

”I think you made some good points. The activated pollution is truly terrifying. We can’t let it spread to Dawn City,” Li Luo said very seriously.

Seeing Li Luo so serious, it was Zhou Chao’s turn to be speechless.

”Uh, right... You don’t have to be so tense. The capitalists wouldn’t really do that.”

”No.” Li Luo shook their head. ”Capitalists really would do that.”