Evolution - Chapter 99
Chapter 99
“Name.”
“Ji Changqing.”
“Manslaughter?”
“Yes.”
“Inmate 220702, Zone Four, Cell 1011! Go change your clothes, get your hair cut, and come back for a photo.”
Ji Changqing took the prison uniform and changed in the designated area, pinning the numbered badge to the required spot. When she opened the door, two guards armed with live ammunition gestured for her to walk to the right.
The barber’s hands were deft. In less than five minutes, he had given her the standard prisoner haircut—hair no longer than the ears, forehead completely exposed.
An aesthetic particularly favored by the elderly.
Ji Changqing glanced at the familiar yet strange face in the mirror. Recalling the saying that a buzz cut was the true test of good looks, she thought her reflection looked quite dashing.
The only flaw was that after being detained for over three months, she felt like her brain had turned to mush from the confinement.
Her photo was taken and uploaded, a new file was generated and printed, and with a loud thump, a prison official stamped it for confirmation.
This meant her prison sentence had officially begun.
The prison where she was to serve her time was named Huantu. It specialized in housing inmates with a physique level of seven or higher and was located on a mining planet. The daily routine for the prisoners was mining.
Only the strongest inmates could withstand such high-intensity labor.
In this prison, a physique level of eight was at the bottom of the food chain.
Huantu Prison had thirty-six zones. Those with blood on their hands, whether from intentional murder or manslaughter, were all in the first nine zones.
Zones One through Three were for serious offenders serving sentences so long they would likely die before their term was up.
Zone One was for Alphas, Zone Two for Betas, and Zone Three for Omegas. Each zone was further divided into male and female blocks.
The standard procedure for inmates in these three zones was to be escorted daily to the most dangerous jobs. Nothing was required of them, and nothing was expected; they were simply to be exploited to the fullest.
Zones Four through Nine housed those with sentences under one hundred years, who were certain to get out alive. Zone Four was for female Alphas, Five for male Alphas, Six for female Betas, Seven for male Betas, Eight for female Omegas, and Nine for male Omegas.
The Alliance still arranged for people in Zones Four to Nine to attend classes, focused on indoctrination with skill training as a secondary goal. The main purpose was to prevent them from going down the irreversible path of retaliating against society after their release.
Beyond Zone Nine were the remaining twenty-seven zones, which housed criminals with a certain flair, many of whom were white-collar offenders. These zones also included serious offenders serving life sentences, but the key difference was that they didn't have blood directly on their hands, which is why they were separated from the first nine zones.
A country bumpkin like Ji Changqing, of course, had no idea that Alliance prisons were also stratified. Huantu was among the top tier.
Its annual death rate was consistently high.
At this time, the inmates were out mining, so the prison block was empty. After attending a class on prison regulations and another on miner safety procedures, Ji Changqing was sent to her cell.
The only empty bunk now temporarily belonged to her.
The guard locked the door from the outside. She silently made her bed, folded her blanket, and put her things away.
Then she lay down flat and went to sleep.
She was a miner now. Just the thought of being exhausted to death every day as a manual laborer was enough to make her deeply appreciate the bliss of “stealing a half-day of idle leisure.”
The moment the cuffs were on, she knew her path in the military was severed. For now, she had no idea what she would do, or could do, in the future. She was just living in a daze, one day at a time.
If she had held a sliver of hope at the beginning, it vanished after the reporting deadline passed and the Peace and Development Special Investigation Department remained silent. Her heart was now as still as water.
Prison was a brutal arena where the strong preyed on the weak. Stepping inside, she didn't know if she would earn a sentence reduction for good behavior and get out early, or if she would sink deeper and deeper into this place.
After all, she wasn't the type to swallow her pride and let others bully her.
When she was bullied in school as a child, her solution was to roll up her sleeves and fight, not caring if she ended up bloodied and bruised.
If she encountered prison bullies now, she could certainly keep fighting!
Lost in pessimistic thoughts about her future in prison, she drifted off to sleep.
She was awakened by the mealtime bell, which echoed throughout the prison block, making it impossible to stay asleep.
All the cell doors opened.
Ji Changqing rolled out of bed and rushed to the cafeteria at the speed of a forced march.
The inmates of Zone Four had returned from their shift.
Long lines had formed at every window in the cafeteria, surprisingly more orderly than the one at the military academy.
The overworked drones were weary from a long day, their faces numb and indifferent. Their clothes and shoes, however, were clean and fresh, and their hair was damp.
Apparently, the miners showered and changed after their shift.
She wasn't sure if this was a sign of decent welfare or just a way to reduce the prison's cleaning workload.
After her first prison meal, Ji Changqing slowly walked back to her cell.
In the cafeteria and the hallways, the inmates she ate with or passed by merely shot her a cool glance before ignoring her.
Standing out like a crane among chickens with her vigorous spirit amidst the exhausted drones, she was clearly a newcomer who had yet to be beaten down by harsh reality.
Whether she was worth socializing with would be determined in three days.
After one meal, Ji Changqing had roughly assessed her fellow inmates and concluded that her survival environment was precarious. The entry barrier for this prison was incredibly high: level seven was the minimum, with Levels Seven, Eight, and Nine making up about two-thirds of the population, and Levels Ten, Eleven, and Twelve accounting for the other third.
There were even some above level twelve, who would be considered skilled fighters in the military.
This prison was truly unforgiving.
She wasn't afraid of level nines, and she had the courage to grit her teeth and fight a level ten. But why were level elevens and twelves so common?
Cell 1011 in Zone D was an eight-person cell, housing only those imprisoned for manslaughter. As soon as Ji Changqing entered, she found herself, as expected, the pathetic one.
Of the eight people, one was level eleven, one was level ten, four were level nine, and she and another were level eight.
The level eleven was either injured and weakened, or she had the rank but lacked real combat strength.
She sat quietly on her bunk alone, eyes closed in meditation, her face a mask of indifference.
As for the level ten, she occupied the best spot, and even had others fetching her tea and water.
It was clear that in this cell, the level ten was the unspoken leader. The four level nines and one of the level eights clustered around her, following her lead.
Ji Changqing lowered her eyes, having no interest in engaging in any cellmate diplomacy, and leaned quietly against her bunk.
She ignored them, and they ignored her.
At eight in the evening, the seven overworked drones rolled out of bed with expressions devoid of any will to live and shuffled out of the cell like soulless husks.
Ji Changqing followed them out.
It was time for the daily ideological education class.
Inmates from all the cells came out and stood against the walls, staring blankly up at the projection on the ceiling, painfully listening to the lecture droning on.
There was no roll call, but anyone who remained in their cell after eight would be hit by a precise high-tech strike. Getting caught meant having to make up the class and take a test individually. Rather than being forced to listen to a lesson three times as long, it was better to get it over with quickly.
At nine-thirty, the projection went dark, the lights came on, and an announcement told everyone to wash up quickly for lights-out at ten.
On her first day in prison, Ji Changqing appeared calm, but her nerves were still on edge. It was always like this in the TV shows: the inmates' attacks often came after the lights were out and everyone was in bed—getting dragged out for a beating and such.
She didn't meditate to cultivate her mental power on her bunk as usual. Instead, she remained vigilant, ensuring she would wake instantly and react to the slightest disturbance.
When the morning reveille sounded, Ji Changqing opened her eyes, still in disbelief.
Where was the inmate attack? The prison bullying? The middle-of-the-night dousing and beating?
The night had passed without a single incident, completely calm?!
Were inmates these days really so civilized and polite? It was almost unbelievable!
Today, Ji Changqing had to go to work.
The prison grounds were vast, and the mining area was part of it, though it was some distance from the inmates' living quarters.
It required a drive of about twenty minutes.
If it weren't for the fighter jets circling overhead, guarding the prisoners on their way to the mines, Ji Changqing might have mistaken this for a closed-management mining company.
And why not? Every morning, the drones woke up, did their exercises, ate breakfast in the cafeteria, and then took the company bus to the office to start their workday.
The resemblance was uncanny.
Ji Changqing felt that escaping from this prison would be extraordinarily difficult. Besides the prison guards, there was also a dedicated military garrison at the mining site.
You'd be turned into a sieve in minutes.
Upon arriving at the mining area, they changed into special work clothes, storing their clean prison uniforms in their personal lockers. Then, they put on their helmets and went down into the pits.
The work for people from Zone Four was slightly less strenuous than that of the serious offenders. While both went down into the mines, the serious offenders did the actual digging. The people from Zone Four handled the second step: using small, handheld machines to grind away the layer of impurities encasing the raw ore.
It was a bit like cutting and polishing a stone after a gem gamble.
Ji Changqing tried it. It was a full-body workout, which meant she could secretly continue her cultivation while she worked.
She had already learned to absorb and retain the primordial energy at sunrise. Although she could only keep less than a third of it, and it had to be used for cultivation within twelve hours, it was still a great advantage. She was in prison, after all; could she really expect them to set aside time for her to cultivate?
Though her future was a complete blur, being in this brutal arena with so many people stronger than her sent her sense of crisis skyrocketing.
Even though the drone-like inmates had ignored her yesterday, and her cellmates hadn't made any moves, and the night had passed peacefully, it didn't stop her from assuming the worst about her fellow convicts.
The road ahead was still unknown, but for now, she would absolutely not allow herself to become a victim of bullying.
The work of cutting and polishing wasn't done in a group. Instead, each person was assigned to a mining tunnel. When a miner filled a small cart, they would push it out. The people from Zone Four would then cut and polish the ore, place the finished stones into their own work cart, and once it was full, push it to the next processing station, where a receiver would note the quantity next to their inmate number.
She cultivated quietly while she worked. Cultivation was time-consuming, but Ji Changqing's pace wasn't slow. For one, cultivation could effectively replenish her stamina and alleviate physical fatigue.
She wasn't stupid, either. She couldn't finish a day's work looking refreshed and energetic while everyone else was exhausted to the point of collapse.
Therefore, she used a small portion of the energy cultivated from the primordial qi to relieve her body's fatigue, while the majority was used to assault her acupoints in order to store more energy.
Breaking through and opening an acupoint felt like being stabbed by knives and needles each time, which made her pale, swaying appearance at the end of her shift look incredibly authentic.
Ji Changqing passed three days as a miner in peace. It was so calm that she began to suspect the TV shows were all lies.
Doing manual labor all day, being unable to meditate and cultivate her mental power at night, and having to remain constantly vigilant was quite exhausting.
Ji Changqing made a decision. She would observe for a week at most. If nothing happened by then, she would assume that her fellow inmates were simply too drained from their daily toil to have any energy left for troublemaking, resulting in a very harmonious and friendly environment.
On the fourth night, hearing a noise, Ji Changqing swiftly rolled away, dodging her cellmates' sneak attack. She jumped down from the top bunk and, in an instant, accurately positioned herself at the cell door.
By the faint light from outside, she saw the level ten leaning lazily against the wall, casting a disinterested glance at them. The other level eight was cowering in a corner, seemingly trembling with fear, but the occasional look she shot over glinted with malicious light.
The four level nines grinned silently, their voices low. “You’re so clueless. Looks like you need a good beating!”
Ji Changqing sighed internally. It had finally come.
Just as she thought. The TV shows didn't lie. The brutal arena of prison bullying might be late, but it would never be absent.
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