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Chapter 430: The Social Experiment

"Psycho!" Liu Ru retorted subconsciously, but before he could even utter another word, he was teleported by the System to a labor reform camp, there to contribute bricks and mortar to the grand and vigorous mountain-moving and sea-filling project.

Bai Mo, who occasionally projected his will into the System to conduct inspections, had not the slightest interest in listening to the other party's nonsense.

In these past days, he had seen too many people like this, believing it was mainly because their past lives had been too privileged, and thus they required some stark contrast to awaken them.

Led before a mountain-moving construction site, holding the tools and instruction manual in his hand, and seeing the familiar backs of figures in the distance, Liu Ru recalled the bits and pieces of the past half month.

In the half month since he followed his parents to the Land of White, he had personally witnessed the distortions and suppressions of human nature lurking in every corner of this society.

A portion of the people in the Land of White were like him, resisting this system, which was akin to slavery, from the bottom of their hearts.

They perfunctorily went through the motions with all arrangements, simply muddling through; as long as they completed the minimum requirements and obtained enough points to ensure their survival, they would not exert an ounce more effort.

However, this clearly couldn't deceive the System, which possessed detailed data files on everyone.

After grasping individual data that was even more extensive than their own memories, the System's internal understanding of a single individual often surpassed that of the individual themselves.

In just the two weeks since Liu Ru returned to the country, several people he knew, who shared similar thoughts to his own, had already disappeared. And now, he finally knew where they had all gone...

In the labor reform camp, he exchanged bitter smiles with a few acquaintances.

As for the other portion of people, they were precisely the opposite, displaying a fervent, heartfelt endorsement of the current system.

This group of people, who had always been at the bottom of society and completely without hope, had their destinies utterly transformed by the sudden arrival of the System.

Although they didn't instantly reverse their fortunes and become winners in life by relying on the System, they also no longer faced heavy survival pressure. The burdens on their shoulders had completely disappeared in this almost egalitarian society.

No longer needing to ponder whether they should eat an extra dish or one less because of two or three yuan — for many people in the former Hua-Ya Federation, where the rich and poor were vastly disparate, this was already a form of happiness.

In such a vast country, there were high-ranking cultivators who lived high above in temporary palaces and villas, enjoying the devoted service of countless individuals, and there were also living corpses who could barely be called alive.

For the sake of appearances, people within the Federation certainly wouldn't starve to death, but that was all they could manage: not starving to death.

Property restrictions—this System decree, which foreign media had blasted as "Chains of Despair"—used pure force, causing everyone to lose the motivation to pursue wealth and no longer desperately fight for profit and money.

No matter how much one racked their brains or meticulously plotted, the registered property one could own, excluding real estate and cars, could not exceed ten thousand Contribution Points, equivalent to one million Huaxia coins.

This amount of ten thousand Contribution Points, according to the development paths planned by the System for each person, would on average only take about seven years for an individual to reach the accumulation limit.

Calculating by the minimum age of fifteen at which one could begin accepting work tasks under the new system, the average age for reaching the property limit was merely in the early twenties.

From then on, according to the System's settings, almost all of the time would be for self-actualization, living for oneself; money, as a concept, should gradually fade from the stage.

Thus, like a domino effect, the "Chains of Despair" quickly reversed everyone's views on mate selection.

No one considered whether their significant other had money anymore, because any normal person in this society wouldn't lack money. Of course, there was also no possibility of anyone being a magnate.

Benefitting from various unique spirit materials and increasingly advanced cosmetic surgery technology, appearance also became a secondary factor in relationships, ceding its place to personality.

Because as long as one was willing to spend a sum of Contribution Points on surgery or to exchange for spirit materials, and cooperate with the System-supervised fitness training plan, no matter how unsightly one's appearance might be, they could achieve a moderately pleasing look.

The fitness plans arranged by the System offered no possibility of cutting corners or giving up halfway; after a round of six months of combined training, if they didn't die, they'd all shed a layer of skin.

In order to alleviate the burden on the medical system, all those whose weight slightly exceeded the standard were assigned corresponding exercise plans. Universal free healthcare for over a billion people was simply a nightmare for the existing number of medical personnel.

This monster of egalitarianism began to frantically reshape everyone.

And not only that, in terms of marriage, the Land of White had another, even colder system—the Child Rearing Assessment System.

In order to raise the population's quality from scratch, every couple, before planning to have children, had to pass a System test, proving they possessed the corresponding skills and abilities to provide scientific and reasonable care.

Then, during the period from zero to twelve years old, a corresponding annual assessment also had to be conducted.

As long as the assessment for any single year was not passed, parental rights would be immediately and permanently revoked.

The children would then be transferred to professional centralized foster care institutions or boarding schools for their education; parents would only have one visiting opportunity per week, until the child reached adulthood.

A large number of almost insane orders continuously issued from Tianqing, the capital, which was becoming increasingly fantastical, profoundly changing everyone's lives.

The Land of White, shrouded like a lid by the nano-swarm, in the eyes of foreigners, was as if it had returned to the mysterious aura of several hundred years ago, when the West first encountered the Eastern Empire.

However, with domestic and international network communication, people weren't completely in the dark about many things as they once were.

However, under the internet's new speech monitoring system, only a portion of people possessed the right to speak freely online, and the information obtainable from outside was merely the tip of the iceberg.

Every System user had the freedom to browse all web pages, but to leave a comment or review on any website, they had to pass a System-mandated test relevant to the website's content.

History forums would have history-related tests, natural science websites would have corresponding proficiency tests, and especially political news websites, where originally anyone could chime in, after a round of screening tests, less than a fifth were able to continue speaking.

Those who couldn't pass the test would be marked as having no right to speak, only able to see, not to speak.

To be qualified to express one's opinions, one first needed to prove to the System that they had accumulated knowledge in that area, rather than blindly spouting nonsense out of ignorance.

Bai Mo, with the help of the System, bit by bit implemented on this land things he had conceived over the years that would be utterly impossible in a normal society.

From his sudden inspiration twenty years ago during a geography class, to his disdain for cyberbullying fifteen years ago, and then to the various social problems he would occasionally encounter—every single thought he had once had became a System decree after the establishment of the Land of White.

Because he wanted to know exactly what would happen if his ideas were implemented; it had nothing to do with compassion, nothing to do with right or wrong. He was merely curious, which was why he created the Land of White, this social experiment on an unprecedented scale.