Resurrection Empire

Chapter 1123 435: Morality and Law_3

There is a mayor who has achieved Level Six Citizen status, and on the surface, he enjoys a similar reputation to that of Ma Dafu. This person's disguise runs deep. To uncover his true nature, Ma Xiaoling even had to invite Wen Lei, Yujin, and Ou Youning to form an investigation team. Wen Lei, Yujin, and Ou Youning all originate from the lower-class scavengers, familiar with the life logic of true lowlifes, and can easily blend in with the locals by masquerading. After careful probing, the investigation team finally uncovered the mayor's trump card. It turns out, for a long time, the mayor has been using his authority over temporary scavenger quotas to covertly coerce and lure individuals into the ultra-high workload factories of a subsidiary of the Bas Group. Once one enters that factory, it may seem like a soaring success on the surface, but in fact it's an entry into a devil's den, where one can barely survive for half a year. The mayor's actions bear quite a resemblance to those of Yang Bingzhong back then. Ironically, each person he introduced to the factory had given him a voluntarily signed employment agreement, and with the cover of the Bas Group's subsidiary, this actually established a pretty good reputation for the mayor. In the end, when Ma Xiaoling dragged him out with her team, a spectacle unfolded with tens of thousands of people petitioning to spare his life. Meanwhile, the Bas Group also sent representatives to plead with Ma Xiaoling for leniency. But ultimately, Ma Xiaoling presented ironclad evidence and systematically unraveled the entire matter from start to finish. The scavengers who had been deceived for nearly twenty years in that small town finally realized they had been thoroughly duped. Those who had gone to the factory under the Bas Group and supposedly enjoyed life, even abandoning their families, had actually long since perished.

Apart from the above two typical representatives, there are many more cases.

Level Five Professionals who mimic the Paradise of Humanity, creating underground duel arenas with human blood for scavenger professionals to indulge in...

Handlers who lure and kidnap underage scavenger boys and girls to satisfy the perverse desires of some lower-class citizens and high-rank scavengers...

Malignant citizens who deceive and lure scavengers using their servant quotas...

A foreman of a small factory workshop who, utilizing his meager power, extorted over a million Starfire Coins in bribes, and also enjoyed toying with others' wives, resulting in countless family tragedies, the beast...

Traveling merchants specializing in selling counterfeit or expired military goods...

Intermediaries lurking on the fringes of the Pu Cha system, exploiting the Pu Cha system to amass wealth, while secretly collaborating with the Mengdu Group, scouting towns as guinea pigs for the Mengdu Group, double-dealing and indirectly causing the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people by lowering town survey scores...

Survey officers holding significant power yet lacking private virtue, just like Brown Jonathan back then...

The head of a county-level Tianlong High-tech Branch, who leveraged food distribution rights to control several towns and took pleasure in torturing others to death...

Such human scum, Ma Xiaoling's Moral Committee has uncovered nearly ten thousand in the past six months.

Bear in mind, this is still in the relatively "bright" First Continent.

The sins of these people vary in severity, but without exception, they all share one common trait: showcasing the darker side of human nature to the fullest.

Sometimes, Ma Xiaoling was even provoked into taking action herself in anger.

At other times, although they uncovered evidence, it mostly consisted of victims' verbal testimonies, with no images or videos, lacking material evidence aside from witness accounts.

Strictly following the "Moral Trial Standard" formulated by Ren Zhong, it was insufficient to administer justice to them.

This cannot be attributed to Ma Xiaoling's incompetence, but rather to the cunning nature of her opponents.

In such situations, Ma Xiaoling would exert the power of her position as the woman Chief.

She would abandon reason, directly striking down the old master with a flurry of blows, apprehending the individuals on the spot, sending them back to Starfire Town, then placing them into the "Fake Net" base established by Hua Yuelan and Sun Miao.

Of course, Ma Xiaoling was not without her faults.

There was an instance where she went to arrest the criminal according to the victim's testimony.

This person had already been sent to Sun Miao's laboratory.

Yet, when he was sent to the lab table, he continued to plead his innocence vehemently, never admitting guilt.

In such a case, Sun Miao personally requested Xiao Xingyue, who happened to be visiting Starfire Town, to conduct a psychological examination.

This investigation uncovered a problem.

This person was innocent, and the guilty ones were the "victims" who colluded to lie.

Ma Xiaoling was shocked, unable to comprehend how she could become a tool for others' malice.

However, Ren Zhong hit the nail on the head with one remark.

"In any era, under any policy, there will always be those who exploit loopholes. Just get used to it. Besides, you can't catch all the criminals; what we truly need to do is to be a 'deterrent.' With 'deterrence,' there is the rule of law. Laws can take effect. In a sense, law is the baseline of morality. What we do is to help others maintain this baseline, making wrongdoers pay the price, or at least have the expectation of paying a price, and that's enough."