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ArabicArknights: The Holy Son's Leisurely Life — Chapter 19
Chapter 19: The Princess Trapped in a Dead End
Lucian frowned. “What exactly are you trying to say?” He truly had not expected such chilling words to spill from Lin Yuxia’s lips.
Sensing the weight of her own statement, the young woman nervously toyed with the ends of her hair. “Don’t misunderstand me. I really just want to discuss this objectively.”
Lucian offered a helpless shrug. “An objective discussion is still a bit harsh. Driving the Infected out… that sounds exactly like the people of Laterano.”
As a former Holy Son, Lucian had spent his childhood cloistered within the Grand Basilica of Laterano. He had hardly ever seen the true face of his so-called motherland, yet he remained intimately familiar with its rigid laws and unyielding social structure.
The Sankta race was famously inflexible. Every citizen enjoyed absolute rights, but only so long as they complied with a suffocating web of strict rules and regulations. Criminals naturally existed among the Sankta, but the sheer cost of transgression was so devastating that the vast majority were indoctrinated from a young age, never once questioning the rationality of the system.
Woven into those Laterano laws was a singular, absolute mandate: the Infected were barred from setting foot on their soil. It did not matter how high-ranking or devout a Sankta might be. The moment they contracted Oripathy, they were stripped of their standing, exiled from the country, and forbidden from ever returning. It was a freezing, merciless regulation. Yet, in the brutal world of Terra, merely expelling the Infected rather than actively hunting them down could almost be considered an act of conscience.
What Lin Yuxia had just suggested carried the exact same weight. She wanted the slums to adopt the Lungmen authorities’ official policy: a total expulsion of all Infected residents. Catching the faint trace of reproach in Lucian’s eyes, she spoke with a conflicted, heavy tone. “Because after agonizing over this for so long, it is the only direct method.”
The Rat Princess tilted her head back, downing the rest of her soy milk in a single, unladylike gulp. She wiped a smudge of white foam from the corner of her mouth and looked at Lucian with deep distress. “I have been racking my brain trying to figure out how to make the slums truly become a part of Lungmen. You came from the slums, so you know exactly what it is like, right? It has been exactly the same for decades. Everything is just rotting away, and one day, the people will decay right alongside these dilapidated houses and broken streets.”
Lucian slowly began to grasp the true scale of her ambition. “So you want to develop the slums?”
He knew Lin Yuxia harbored a deep interest in municipal management. She had always intended to take over her father’s empire, hoping to finally drag the living conditions of the slums onto the right track. And she was entirely correct in her assessment. Without intervention, the slums would only sink deeper into ruin.
The people living in the shadows were entirely unacknowledged by Lungmen, treated as ghosts haunting the city’s underbelly. There was no community development, no public infrastructure, and no safety net. Every single crisis had to be solved by the slum dwellers themselves. Securing basic necessities like clean water and electricity was already a daily struggle. Because entering the proper city meant risking immediate arrest by the Lungmen Guard Department, the slums relied entirely on self-production and the black market. Anyone with eyes could see that this fragile ecosystem was completely unsustainable.
For the past few decades, these glaring issues had been patched over by the Rat King’s immense power and underground connections. Old Lin ensured the slums had enough smuggling channels to scrape by. But even with his protection, the lives of ordinary people remained bitterly difficult. Children like Xiao Ling and Xiao Xiong were denied a normal education, guaranteeing that the next generation would be trapped in the exact same cycle of poverty. How could they break the cycle? How could the slums ever become a normal, recognized district of Lungmen?
Lin Yuxia had been torturing herself with these questions. She hugged a cushion to her chest, her fingers gripping the fabric so tightly her knuckles turned white. “I cannot think of a single way out. The slums absolutely cannot go against Lungmen. Our smuggling operations are tolerated because we stick to petty daily necessities. The moment we try to move serious, highly profitable goods, that old lizard and that pampered Feline will never let us off.”
“Wait.” Lucian raised a hand, his expression turning serious. “I understand the old lizard part. You are talking about Wei Yenwu, right? But who is the pampered Feline? Swire? Why bring her into this?”
Lin Yuxia rolled her eyes, letting out a breath of pure exasperation. “You make your living in Lungmen, and you seriously do not know this? Wei Yenwu is the chief executive, yes, but his power is strictly at the municipal level. The true lifeblood of Lungmen is held in the hands of that Feline’s family. Capital and commerce are the absolute foundation of this city. If the Swire family ever truly fell out with Wei Yenwu, Lungmen would go bankrupt and collapse within two months.”
Lucian rubbed his temples, feigning a headache. “Sorry, I do not have much of a concept for economics. Is money really that important? The thing I dislike the most in this world is money.”
The heavy, oppressive atmosphere Lin Yuxia had built up was instantly shattered by his dry, deliberate ignorance. She let out a heavy sigh, reaching out to mercilessly pinch Lucian’s cheek. A second later, she blinked in genuine surprise. “Swire was actually right. Your face feels incredible. It is as smooth and tender as a baby’s… Why does a grown man like you have such perfect skin? It is completely infuriating.”
“Are you not taking your frustrations out on the wrong target, Young Miss?” Lucian asked, his voice slightly muffled as he helplessly let her stretch his cheek. Enduring the strange mix of pain and amusement, he guided the conversation back. “I understand why you are worrying yourself sick over the people, and I understand the trap they are in. The slums cannot truly be self-reliant, can they?”
At its core, the slum was just a massive refugee camp where the desperate huddled together for warmth. Precisely because everyone was trapped at the absolute bottom of society, there was no systemic discrimination against the Infected. But that exact tolerance was a death sentence. It guaranteed the slums would eventually be wiped off the map.
Lungmen was expanding at a terrifying pace, driven by Wei Yenwu’s obvious brilliance. The city today was worlds apart from the city twenty years ago. The stagnant slums were being left further and further behind. And as Lin Yuxia had pointed out, they could not develop high-profit illegal industries to catch up, because that would mean declaring open war on Lungmen.
The only way to keep the slums alive, or rather, to ensure the survival of the people within them, was to reach a formal reconciliation with Lungmen. But a massive, brutal reality stood in the way. There was an impossible wall separating the slums from the glittering urban districts, a barrier that the current world of Terra simply could not cross.
Lin Yuxia finally released his cheek, her fingers lingering briefly against his skin. “As long as the slums continue to accept the Infected, even if we only do it in secret, it is impossible for us to ever become a recognized part of Lungmen.”
Aligning with the general prejudice of Terra, Lungmen vehemently rejected the Infected. As a hyper-capitalist commercial hub, the city did not require a massive influx of cheap, disposable labor, so they had no reason to send the Infected into Originium mines like the Ursus Empire did. Lungmen simply had no use for them. Just as the city discarded the poor who could not keep up with its frantic pace, it discarded the Infected, viewing them only as volatile security risks. The official policy was an absolute ban on their entry.
Lin Yuxia had run the calculations a thousand times, and the conclusion was always the same. Drawing a harsh, permanent line against the Infected was the only chance the ordinary citizens of the slums had to climb out of the dirt.
She looked at him, her eyes dark with grim resolve. “The slums are not entirely made up of the Infected. If you look at the population, even factoring in the foreign Infected who constantly smuggle themselves across the border, the ratio of ordinary people to the Infected is seven to three. I know how cruel this sounds, Lucian. But is there any other choice? Even if we somehow maintain the status quo, the day will come when the urban districts run out of space. When those wealthy elites need more land for their factories and their sprawling mansions, they will put the slums right on the chopping block.”
Her expression was steeped in a suffocating despair, the quiet agony of someone completely powerless to change the crushing weight of reality. Lucian gently rubbed his stinging cheek, choosing his next words carefully in the heavy silence.
She took a few shaky breaths, trying to steady her trembling voice. “Wei Yenwu, Swire… they are all enemies of the slums. But aside from surrendering to them and playing by their rules, what other way is there to protect this place? Honestly, if everyone in the slums collectively contracted Oripathy and joined that ‘movement,’ that might actually be a way out. Why don’t they just hurry up and invade Lungmen? It would be perfect if they just slaughtered the old lizard and capitalists like that Feline.”
“Yuxia.” Lucian reached out, his large hands firmly wrapping around her cold, trembling fingers. His tone was quiet, but carried an absolute weight. “That is going too far. Even as a joke, you should never say things like that.”
“…I am sorry.” The young Rat Princess wilted, her shoulders slumping like a scolded child.
Her words had been dangerously extreme. But Lucian knew they were born from the crushing responsibility she felt for her people’s future. She had been carrying this burden alone in the dark for far too long, pacing back and forth until she trapped herself in a dead end. He naturally did not agree with her bleak, black-and-white view of the world.
But if someone were to ask how to force Lungmen to accept the Infected without shattering its prosperity…
Lucian gently squeezed her freezing hands, a soft, teasing light returning to his eyes. “Tell you what. When Ch’en Hui-chieh finally takes over from Wei Yenwu, and you take over from Old Lin, and Swire inherits her family’s empire… the three of you just might be able to set a new precedent.”
“…What kind of stupid nonsense is that, you idiot,” Lin Yuxia muttered softly, looking away to hide her face. But as the tension finally drained from her shoulders, a small, genuine smile touched her lips.