Extreme Cold Era: Shelter Don't Keep Waste-Chapter 615 - 579 Isolation Review

The improvement of the compressed biscuit formula had consumed part of Perfikot's energy, but after the first snowstorm, she still found time to come to the city wall, where she saw the outer city residents gathering near the gate connecting the inner and outer city districts.

"When did they start gathering here?" Perfikot asked the city official beside her, her expression somewhat indifferent.

She was wrapped in heavy furs, not feeling cold herself, but looking at the starved and shivering outer city residents wearing only simple clothes, her heart felt a chill.

"They started gathering when the snowstorm weakened. Most of them are residents from surrounding areas; because they're close, they arrived relatively quickly. The earliest arrivals could have been here since last night," the city official explained, having earlier asked the soldiers stationed nearby for information.

After all, the city officials in the inner city still regard the outer city residents as people. Although the outer city poor are typically at the bottom of Langton's social hierarchy, they can still be referred to as Langton's people.

Moreover, from a pragmatic standpoint, the poor of the outer city are still labor power, and there is much work to be done in the inner city, with a shortage of labor everywhere.

Although there are still hundreds of thousands in the inner city, not everyone among these hundreds of thousands is part of the labor force.

The elderly, women, and children, though many have died previously, are not completely absent.

According to government statistics, among the 800,000 people in Langton City's inner city, there are approximately 300,000 women, children, and elderly, which is a relatively low proportion.

It should be noted, under normal circumstances, an adult male might have a wife and two to four children, meaning the proportion of women and children far exceeds that of adult males.

Currently, counting the elderly, they make up less than 40% of the population, which is already considered very low.

But even with roughly 500,000 adult males, the inner city is still in a state of labor shortage.

Maintaining each Energy Tower requires manpower, shelters also need personnel to keep running, and even more, damaged shelters require repair, and the city needs people to clean the debris and aftermath of the tsunami...

The tasks are genuinely numerous, and indeed, there are not enough people.

If disasters weren't continually piling up, leaving everyone in constant worry for tomorrow, and if Perfikot hadn't promptly declared an emergency state, alleviating many problems, it would likely be a significant issue for Langton City's operations.

At the root, the operation of a city requires many people, resources, and departments to work together to maintain functionality.

Especially now, when significant disasters are striking in succession, all departments in Langton City Government are working nonstop, even clerks in the archives are pulled out to do various clerical registration tasks, breaking several pens from writing; the workload is evident.

To emphasize, every civil servant in Langton City Government, even a dog has to work overtime to exhaustion.

By the way, this isn't an exaggeration. Langton Police Station's police dogs have indeed worked overtime until they were exhausted.

With such circumstances, there's additional population in the outer city? Bring them in quickly to work!

Not to mention that outer city's poor were previously those workers of Palu; even if they're not, in the current environment, who isn't a Palu?

In the upper city, many with noble titles are worked like tops, one noble who used to have a waist as large as three pregnant women now slimmed down to the equivalent of two; all this weight loss is from being busy.

After all, regardless, even the most basic literacy and writing tasks expected of a noble, they could do, at least in this era, having good education on average, they can understand basic speaking, reading, and writing.

Don't think this is something ordinary; in the original world, aside from a developing country with a basic education rate of 95%, even the world's leading superpower had an illiteracy rate of 21%!

And this is in a world where economy, technology, and education are highly developed. In this world, which has just entered the industrial era, being able to read and write already qualifies as talent.

Thus, whether Langton City Government or Perfikot, upon discovering labor shortage, immediately pulled these idle noblemen to work like mules.

Frankly speaking, while these people are usable, they truly can only do mule-level work.

Most noble folks allowed to stay in Langton lack any legitimate work capability or experience, though literacy counts as talent, their holdover bad habits often lead to issues.

Therefore, crucial work is still done by original Langton public officials, and these people are assigned to assist them.

Perfikot took special measures by extracting a batch of Judges from the military to oversee, and if anyone was found not working seriously or causing trouble, they would be dealt with under military law.

With such strict measures, the situation was indeed stabilized, but the issue of labor shortage remains unresolved.

Therefore, even though Perfikot knows most outer city residents are connected to the Evil God Sect, she still had to personally come to the city wall and consider how to accommodate them.

Previously, Perfikot didn't deal with this aspect partly due to being busy and partly due to apprehension about infiltration of the Evil God Sect from the outer city into the inner city this way.

Perfikot can't stay indefinitely in Langton. After aiding Langton through the initial phase of crisis, she must return to the Northern Territory.

After all, the Northern Territory is the current core of the Empire, and in the perspective of Langton's population of less than a million to the Northern Territory and New Continent combined population near tens of millions, the importance is clear.

Therefore, Perfikot can't stay long in Langton.

In fact, her presence until now has already been a deviation from her original plan.

According to Perfikot's original plan, she was here to test the Godslaying Armor, and incidentally, use it to clean up the outer city's dark elements before returning to the Northern Territory.

But looking at Langton now, she couldn't bear to ignore it.

"Notify the church to send a Judge here, everyone entering from the outer city must be reviewed by the Judge, and only those without issues can enter the inner city." Perfikot looked at the trembling residents huddled against the city wall amid the snowstorm, pondered, then said, "Set up a quarantine area here at the wall, allow people to enter, prioritize healthy laborers for review, send them straight to work if cleared."