“What's wrong with society these days? I finally play a game, and I still get flamed by my teammates. People's hearts aren't what they used to be.”

Li Ang frowned, put his phone face down on the table, and continued to AFK.

This was a hot pot restaurant.

It was a rare weekend, and Li Ang and Wang Congshan came out for a hot pot meal.

The latter, citing weight loss as an excuse, insisted on eating clear broth.

Helpless, Li Ang had to choose a yuanyang (divided) pot with clear and spicy broths as a compromise.

He also told the class monitor a spooky story about the yuanyang pot being equivalent to a yin-yang pot, earning him a glare from Wang Congshan.

These people are doing everything they can to stop out-of-town diners from only eating the clear broth. They're too wicked.

While waiting for the waiter to bring the dishes,

Wang Congshan leaned on the table, her left arm extended, her index finger pointing at Li Ang, who was sitting across from her.

She wore an expression of utter exhaustion.

"What's wrong? You look so drained."

Li Ang calmly took a sip of orange juice and said casually.

"Haa..."

Wang Congshan let out a long sigh from her throat, slowly straightened up, her eyes vacant, muttering to herself, "End of term... mock exams... first mock... second mock... third mock..."

As a top public high school in Yin City, the academic pressure within Experimental High School was naturally considerable.

With the end of the term approaching, the students about to enter their senior year were facing rounds of mock exams.

They already had heavy workloads and had to take time out each day to exercise and strengthen their bodies.

Now, they were facing exam week, grinding through test papers until they were sick.

"Someone like you will never understand..."

Wang Congshan's eyes gradually cleared, and she looked at Li Ang with jealous resentment.

This guy either slept during the day,

Or hid behind a wall of books, playing eraser wars, reading comics, making small things with a pencil sharpener, and blowing spit bubbles.

But his grades were as solid as an iron egg. She never saw him panic.

Despicable!

Wang Congshan gritted her teeth, held two chopsticks, stuck them into her mouth one on each side, and gnawed on them back and forth, like an angry wild boar.

"Aced."

The sound of a team wipe came from Li Ang's phone.

The five opponents worked together to push down the crystal. As the crystal shattered,

The match ended, a match where, from the hero selection phase, someone on their side had been spewing abuse, cursing the teammates for picking heroes blindly.

"Oh, it's over."

Li Ang picked up his phone and pondered for a moment, then suddenly rubbed his forehead and said sadly, "That player has retired. His figure will never be seen on the field again.

My youth has ended. What's the point of keeping this game?

Let everything go with the wind.

I am a remnant of the old era. There is no ship to carry me in the new era."

With that, Li Ang pressed the phone icon.

Uninstall Wan Jia Xiong Meng (Honor of Kings)?

Yes.

???

Wang Congshan across the table blinked, hesitating to speak.

You can even uninstall crookedly?

Wasn't it you who maxed out the Great Wilderness Starfall at level one, teleporting and flashing to grind down the tower skin?

Forget it. Anyway, she's too busy to play this game now. Deleted is deleted.

"Ding, your order has arrived."

A silver-white delivery robot drove over with the hot pot ingredients. The waiter took out stacks of ingredients from the robot's compartments and placed them on the table.

These delivery robots now only serve to make the restaurant look cooler and more high-end; they haven't replaced the waiter's job.

But it's said that Europe and the United States have begun to apply robot labor on a large scale in various industries:

Restaurant internal delivery, restaurant external food delivery, taxi drivers, long-distance truck drivers, accountants, insurance agents, bank employees, farmers, construction workers....

According to the predictions of some American think tanks, over 50% of jobs worldwide could be perfectly replaced by robot labor.

For 60% of jobs, 30% of the workload could be done by machines.

Human workers who tire and retire are already at a disadvantage compared to robot labor.

And even those professions that most require creativity and human interaction (such as artists and nurses) will be significantly impacted.

Originally, this painful, frictional business transformation process should have been completed within a 10 to 30-year timeframe.

But the pressure of the Killing Game accelerated everything.

Businesses need to save costs, and factories need to expand and upgrade production lines.

The entire industry also needs to transform and upgrade, improving productivity.

That Prometheus Labs company once again played a special role, mass-producing all kinds of robots and promoting robot production lines.

This caused widespread opposition and hostility from people in Europe and the United States, who believed that Prometheus Labs had stolen their jobs and wanted to smash the robot production lines—

Just like the workers in Great Britain who smashed textile machines two hundred years ago.

But Prometheus Labs also issued a statement—the wave of robot workers was not intended to seize all jobs.

On the contrary, the robot wave would push workers to the tertiary sector and create more new types of jobs.

They seemed to be right. The United States and some European countries have launched a new round of infrastructure construction,

In addition to super-giant buildings and their supporting facilities that can accommodate the population of an entire city,

There is also the construction, renovation, and expansion of railways, highways, industrial and civil buildings, and other projects.

The upgrading of vehicle and ship production lines.

Civilian ships are launched one after another.

Military shipyards are expanding their factories and recruiting workers in full swing.

Contractors across the United States are constantly receiving orders for military bases, and key laboratories are producing a large number of new papers every day.

War. They are preparing for a large-scale war that may come at any time, but whose opponent is not yet certain.

The hot pot simmered, and the aroma of food spread.

The diners in the restaurant chatted casually, talking about their painful jobs, annoying bosses, and the pressures of life, noisy and lively.

The streets outside the window were still busy with traffic.

A ray of slanting sunlight shone through the gaps in the steel jungle, illuminating the window and rendering the glass a warm and lazy orange-yellow.

"Put the food in. What are you blanking out for?"

Wang Congshan picked up a plate and poured the ingredients into the hot pot. Her dipping sauce dish only contained vinegar, soy sauce, and cilantro. In her words, it was a "classic combination, perfect match."

In this respect, the two had quite similar tastes.

"Oh, right."

Li Ang scratched his head, took out a blue ceramic cup from his backpack, placed it on the table, and pushed it to Wang Congshan.

"What's this? Sending me a 'beiju' (homophone for 'cup' and 'tragedy'), implying a tragedy?"

The class monitor took the cup and looked at it. She found that it contained some soil and pebbles, and a very small green succulent plant was growing in the soil.

It seemed to be a rainbow jade.

"This is..."

"I'm giving it to you to grow,"

Li Ang said solemnly, "I saw some experts on TV claiming that computer screens and mobile phone screens generate electromagnetic radiation every day, and the signals emitted by 5G base stations can even cause cancer.

Although a Russian friend of mine said,

Foreign 5G base stations, no good!

Yin City's 5G base stations, good!

But it's best to take protective measures."

"Are you watching British TV channels?"

Wang Congshan squinted and retorted. She fiddled with the succulent for a while, smacked her lips, and muttered, "Wouldn't it be better to give flowers?"

She very honestly packed up her schoolbag, carefully wrapped the succulent in a paper towel, and put it in the side pocket of her bag.

It's rare for Li Ang to give her something, so she'll reluctantly accept it.

Hmph.

She didn't notice that at the bottom of the succulent pot in the side pocket of her bag, slender roots were stretching and wriggling in the soil.