"So that's the reason why the marriage rate and birth rate in Sunshine City have been so high for three consecutive years," Bai Liu said, deep in thought. "It turns out it's because of the existence of this [Sunshine Seedling] loan."
Mu Shicheng was horrified. "Using children as collateral? If these children find out they were used as collateral when they grow up, won't they run away?"
The old grandmother sighed and shook her head. "They can't run away. As long as you have come to Sunshine City, there is no way to leave until you pay off the loan."
"From the day my old man and I started our loan to buy a house until today, we haven't left this place for sixty years." The old man looked at the high-rise buildings blocking the outside of District E, where only a sliver of sunlight could penetrate. His eyes revealed a fleeting longing. "Sometimes I want to go outside and take a look, but as long as I take a day off, the job will be gone."
"I really hope that in ten years, when the loan is paid off, we'll have some spare money to live and see the world outside."
"In Sunshine City, I've lived to such an old age and haven't even seen the whole sun."
The old man spoke softly, as if sighing, but before he finished, he covered his mouth and started coughing violently. Large mouthfuls of blood and pus surged from his mouth and nose.
The old grandmother, accustomed to this, pulled out a small handkerchief from her chest to wipe him clean while nodding apologetically to Bai Liu and the others. "Pardon the scene. Both he and I work on construction sites. The dust is too heavy, and our respiratory tracts have always been bad. It's an old ailment."
"The medical expenses every month are a huge burden. When we were young, we really should have worn protective gear properly. We shouldn't have rushed to grab work just for that bit of time." The old grandmother patted the old man's back, visibly reproaching him, and sighed deeply. "Look at it now—everything we had was spent on seeing doctors, right?"
Tang Erda took out a bottle of water, slowly fed it to the coughing old man, and asked with a frown, "Is this an occupational disease caused by long-term work? It counts as a serious work-related injury. Does your company not provide compensation?"
Both the old man and the old grandmother looked slightly confused when they heard this. "What work-related injury? What compensation?"
Tang Erda wanted to explain, but recalling the bizarre systems here, he realized that company compensation for occupational diseases was an overly extravagant thing in the midst of these bizarre systems. So the words he had just opened his mouth to say were swallowed back down. In the end, he merely said stiffly, "Nothing," and brushed the topic aside.
Instead, the old man drank two sips of water slowly and, after catching his breath, pondered Tang Erda's words. He seemed to find it funny and shook his head. "Oh, young man, after working on a construction site for sixty years, everyone my age gets this kind of disease. How could the company manage that? Medical expenses are so expensive."
"They opened the company to make money, not to do charity." The old man waved his hand. "Take care of sixty years of medical expenses for you? There's no such good thing."
Bai Liu walked side by side with the old man at his slow pace. "I noticed that there are many new citizens in Sunshine City. Are you a local of Sunshine City or an immigrant?"
"Both my old woman and I are immigrants." The old man looked at Bai Liu. "There have been fewer immigrants to Sunshine City in the last twenty years. There were many more in my batch of immigrants!"
Bai Liu continued to ask, "Why were there so many immigrants to Sunshine City in the early years?"
"Because our batch had a loan project called [Sunshine New Home]." The old man's memory didn't seem very good. He stopped and pondered hard, trying to recall. "I don't remember the specific terms clearly. Anyway, it was something like this: if you came to Sunshine City and were prepared to buy a house, you could simultaneously introduce more than twenty people from out of town to come to Sunshine City to buy houses. Then you could get a housing subsidy of almost three million."
"At that time, what everyone bought were mostly 30-square-meter houses, with an average price of 200,000. That basically meant a 50% discount!" The old man had a hint of luck in his tone. "Although the salary level wasn't high at the time—maybe only one or two thousand a month—it was still very cost-effective!"
The old grandmother nodded in agreement. "Deciding to grit our teeth and buy a house back then was the most correct decision we ever made."
"At the time, we didn't even want to come." The old grandmother remembered and couldn't help but cover her mouth and laugh. "We were so anxious that we shouted to the other side, 'If you're a brother, help me slash three million off the price!'"
"Right. At that time, my old woman and I were also lured over by friends because the other party needed twenty outsiders to come here and buy houses to enjoy the [Sunshine New Home] loan service." The old man lifted his head slightly, recalling the past. "Since I was someone who valued loyalty, I gritted my teeth and bought one. Later, in order to enjoy the [Sunshine New Home] service, I also called twenty friends to come and buy houses."
The old man waved his hand proudly. "Of course, they are very grateful to me now. Otherwise, according to the current house prices, they would absolutely not be able to afford a house."
Bai Liu's eyes flickered. "Yes."
No wonder there were so many new immigrants in Sunshine City. It turned out to be this kind of pyramid scheme-style strategy of pulling people in.
One person comes here to buy a house and take out a loan, which drives twenty people to come here to buy houses and take out loans; twenty people buying houses drives four hundred people to come over. And once they buy a house and take out a loan in Sunshine City, they can't leave. This way, wave after wave, people become completely trapped in Sunshine City.
"Is this [Sunshine New Home] loan project still available now?" Bai Liu asked softly. "I see quite a few immigrants coming over."
"It's long gone." The old man shook his head. "Now, Sunshine City's population grows quite a bit every year just from births alone. It doesn't need to bring in outsiders anymore. The immigrants who come now are probably not well-informed and don't know that [Sunshine New Home] was canceled long ago. They didn't catch the ride."
The old grandmother sighed. "This batch of young people came too late. If they had come a little earlier and caught the good times, they could have bought a nice house of about 20 square meters just by pulling people in."
"Eh, house prices are really high now. It's no wonder you young people are forced to live in tomb houses." The old man couldn't hide his sigh. "Once you move into the houses in your hands, you're basically dead people. You have some nerve, actually daring to buy them to live in."
Bai Liu quickly grasped the keyword. "Tomb houses?"
The old man looked at Bai Liu and the others strangely, his tone rising as he questioned, "You don't know? Road 444 on the 18th Avenue of District E is the public cemetery of Sunshine City."
Mu Ke paused for a moment. "But the property deed says the 18th floor. How could it be a cemetery?"
"That's right." The old man explained naturally, "Our cemeteries here are also multi-story buildings, hollowed out underground and built upward. The ones closest to the ground are the first floor of the cemetery, and the higher up you go, the higher the floor. Generally, each cemetery building has eighteen floors. What you got is the top floor, which can also be said to be the lowest cemetery level. It's the worst cemetery floor."
"The bottom floors are all large-sized cemetery units, usually capable of holding the corpses of an entire family. They have 3–5 square meters, and after removing the shared area, they still basically have over 2.7 square meters. Most of them have already been bought by wealthy first-class citizens. The top ones generally only have 1–2 square meters, and after removing the shared area, they only have about 1.5 square meters. They can only hold one corpse and are not very easy to sell, so they are still available now. Yours, at over 2.5 square meters, can be considered large."
"An eighteen-story cemetery built upward?!" Even Mu Shicheng felt a little dizzy hearing this. "What the hell is the difference between this and the eighteen levels of hell?"
The old man laughed when he heard it, thinking Mu Shicheng was joking. "This is a feature of Sunshine City. Cemeteries, like residential buildings, are high-rise buildings. Otherwise, one grave occupying a piece of land would be too expensive. No one could afford it."
"However, you must not buy this cemetery house to live in." After laughing, the old man became serious. Leaning on Bai Liu's shoulder, he urged solemnly, "I know some young people are greedy for the cheapness of these cemetery houses and buy them to use as living quarters, but never live in them."
"If you can live in a haunted house, why can't you live here?" Bai Liu raised an eyebrow and asked.
The old man lowered his voice, leaned into Bai Liu's ear, and said, "There is no elevator in the cemetery building. When you get off work at night and want to return to the cemetery house on the 18th floor to rest, you can only walk up floor by floor yourself, and you will pass through all the cemetery rooms."
"But this is a place for the dead. They come out to be active at night."
"If you live in a haunted house, you will only meet one ghost. But if you live in a cemetery, you will meet a whole floor of ghosts. You can hide from one ghost, but where can you hide from an entire floor of ghosts? You won't even have time to run back to the ground floor."
The old man coughed slightly and patted Bai Liu on the shoulder earnestly. "Living in a place for the dead will really make you a dead person. Young man, you'd better work hard to earn money and strive to buy a house above ground in Sunshine City."