Why it never ends

Chapter 1053 Data
This observation was confirmed when I went out the next day.

It wasn't just the woman they met last night. In fact, wherever Victoria and Zoe went, they fully felt the hateful gazes, and the same was true for Versin.

The only one who survived was Hesta, but when the mountain people found that Hesta seemed to be very close to Victoria and the others, their eyes towards her quickly became hostile.

This really puzzled Victoria at first, but after Welsin pointed out to her, "How can you expect people here to treat the people from the Third District well?", she finally realized the reason - the reinforcements from the Third District had advanced southward several times, and perhaps these working mountain people had also encountered the troops from the Third District.

Along the way, Zoe remained silent. She kept a straight face and avoided everyone's gaze, but Victoria knew very well that Zoe was probably even more depressed than she looked.

Victoria understood that this was probably because she had witnessed Eunice climbing the mountain at a high speed last night. For a mercury needle like Zoe who had high self-requirements, this blow was huge - it was like suddenly throwing a talented and hardworking person into a new reality where everyone could attack her at a lower dimension.

What's more, Verxin's words intentionally or unintentionally implied that all mercury needles were defective products that were transformed and weakened by AHgAs. And these people living in the mountains and forests are undoubtedly a more natural and more powerful population.

This kind of imagination is probably more tormenting than the difference in ability, because it not only shatters the vague sense of superiority that has long been prevalent among the Mercury Needles, but also fundamentally shakes the Mercury Needles' confidence in self-defense: after all, how can a Mercury Needle, which is constrained by time, beat an opponent with unlimited bullet time?
But after much hesitation, Victoria still did not intend to tell Zoe about her observations last night. Before the matter became clear, she decided to temporarily focus all discussions between herself and Hesta to prevent the news from leaking.

"Where are we going now?" Hesta asked Boheng who was leading the way.

"School." Bo Heng replied, "We have built a new middle school here. It's almost there, very close."

In the dense forest, a well-traveled path led from the place where the mountain people lived to another flat land. Hesta first heard the laughter of children playing, and then saw a group of buildings that were consistent with the style of the wooden house where they rested last night.

Most of the buildings here are made of local materials. They look like ordinary wooden houses. However, everyone who walks into this residence for the first time will be surprised because the furnishings inside the house seem a bit advanced compared to the primitive appearance. Each partition here is made of alloy steel as the skeleton, with smooth and clean gypsum board as the skin, and then coated with smooth putty and various colors of paint. Standing in any room and looking up, you will see huge wooden beams across the height. They are regular and full of geometric beauty.

Apparently the same is true for the buildings over at the school.

Everyone quickened their pace, but when Hesta thought he had finally seen the school playground, what he saw was not the children running and playing as he had imagined, but a group of middle-aged men with nothing to do. More than half of them were shirtless, sitting on the ground chatting, picking their feet, and basking in the sun.

"…Why are these people sitting on your school's playground?"

"Well, this is not the playground," Bo Heng explained, "The school playground is on the other side, they can't get in."

"who are they?"

Bo Heng just smiled helplessly, then quickened his pace: "... Come, this way."

Although Boheng's repeated avoidance made Hesta feel a little unhappy, she still followed. Hesta glanced at Boheng, who was looking forward, with a joking look: "Are you going to wait until later?" "No, right now," Boheng turned around, "Look."

Several people had already walked to the corridor on the other side of the classroom. Hesta listened outside for a while. The teacher in the first classroom was teaching the history of District 12 in the common language.

She looked inside through the window, and the scene immediately reminded her of several public classes at the Industrial University in District 14. The room was full of students, sitting in the seats, in the aisles, and even in the empty seats next to the teacher's podium.

There were no children in this classroom. The youngest student looked to be about eleven or twelve years old. The oldest looked very similar to the gun-wielding woman they encountered last night, only not as strong. She had a colorful plaid scarf braided in her gray hair - many women here had this hairstyle.

Hesta took a quick glance and saw that most of the people in the room were women. Among the nearly one hundred focused faces, there were less than ten boys who looked very young - probably about the same age as Eunice.

Victoria turned around and said, "When you mentioned middle school, I thought most of the people here were teenagers..."

"In the beginning, it was," Bo Heng replied, "but the women here give birth at a relatively early age. After the children came over, the mothers followed, and later the mothers' sisters also came over...there were more people."

"Are those people outside their husbands?" Welsin suddenly asked.

"...Yes." Bo Heng said, "There are other relatives, such as..."

"What's wrong with you?" Weierxin looked at Boheng, "Let a group of old men at the school gate--"

6◇9◇Book◇Bar

"This is convenient for them," Bo Heng said, "otherwise they would have to rush back to cook at noon. Now they can cook and eat together, which actually saves more time..."

Zoe took a deep breath and said, "So those people outside are sitting there waiting for dinner!"

The sound in the corridor reached the classroom. The teacher and students who were discussing suddenly became quiet. The teacher frowned and looked outside. Hesta and the others looked apologetic and bowed slightly towards the classroom at the same time, then quickly walked to the next classroom.

"The District 0.7 Children's Aid Organization has previously released data," Bo Heng said softly, "For women in the south, for every additional year of education they receive, the age at which they give birth to their first child will be delayed by 37 years, and the probability of dying from various infections before adulthood will be reduced by %—"

“What’s the average age for women giving birth to their first child here?”

"Four years ago, it was 13.7. At that time, we had a very limited number of schools and the students were mainly from urban areas," Bo Heng said softly, "but now it has risen to 15.2."