Just as he was lost in thought, a foreman had already approached with a rubber baton, raising his hand and striking his body.

"You lazy bastard, who told you to stop?"

The stinging pain on his body reminded Jiao Ao of his "character" setting.

A worker at the Chicago reaper factory, working 16 hours a day, with a daily wage of 1.5 US dollars.

What?

What does it mean to have a daily wage of 1.5 US dollars while working 16 hours?

Damn it, even when he was in the Chaotic Blade Association, lazy as he was, he earned more than that, how's he supposed to get by?

1.5 US dollars couldn't even buy a glass of water in Night City (He hasn't learned about inflation, and the local name for Orokin is European Dollar)

The aching pain from various parts of his body told Jiao Ao that his body was at its limit.

Yet the foreman kept hitting him with the baton, urging Jiao Ao to work faster.

Meanwhile, Jiao Ao also understood the current time

The time was July 1886

He was a factory worker who had participated in multiple demonstrations and protests, demanding better wages and conditions from entrepreneurs, but were invariably brutally suppressed, and every protest ended in failure.

Buying off traitors, causing internal collapse among strikers, employing cops for armed suppression, bribing the media...

Everything was eerily similar to what was happening in Night City and throughout the entire cyber era.

Under the effect of the neurological regulator, a sense of anger began to bubble up inside him, and each strike of the foreman's baton added fuel to this fire.

"I'm done!"

It was Jiao Ao speaking, yet it wasn't Jiao Ao, rather the worker he was portraying, but at this moment, their thoughts were the same.

"For just this amount of money, and you want us to work overtime day and night? Why?"

Jiao Ao's words quickly resonated with many workers; obviously there were long-held grievances, everyone was complaining to some extent.

The foreman, who had just been fiercely intimidating, saw he couldn't control the situation anymore and immediately pressed the alarm button, and the production team leader in the office skillfully dialed the police to call for help, as if this had all been rehearsed thousands of times before.

The police quickly arrived on the scene, and after a brief standoff, they opened fire on the strikers.

One dead, four injured.

This confrontation was swiftly suppressed.

The next day, led by Jiao Ao, more than two hundred workers followed him to the streets for a protest speech, hoping to rally more people to join the march.

Here, Jiao Ao was surprised to find out that it was what two hundred years of the United States actually looked like.

There were more horse-drawn carriages than cars on the street, no prosthetics, everyone was gnawing on bread, many wearing soft caps, and the relationships between people were much closer than those in Night City.

However, this speech did not last long before the police who had come to inquire surrounded them.

The conflict was already sharp; one side yelled "mob," while the other side shouted that they were "capitalist lackeys," and the atmosphere escalated amid the shoving.

Until Jiao Ao saw a guy hiding in the crowd, he took out a homemade bomb from his arms, lit the fuse, and threw it into the crowd.

With a boom

The scene ignited.

Triggered police fired frantically, worker after worker fell, moaning in pools of blood.

The crowd began to scatter in panic, more and more workers cried out in pain.

At this moment, for the first time, Jiao Ao felt a sense of remorse amidst the chaos, but more so, he was filled with anger towards his inability to change the situation.

This was nothing like any Mewtwo he had previously used.

It lacked those short-lived pleasures and was instead suffused with an oppression that carried a heavy historical weight.

Finally, the casualty statistics were released: over a hundred workers were dead or injured on the scene, but actually, many more workers were so afraid of being arrested that even when wounded, they dared not go to the hospital.

And media blamed the bloodshed during this conflict on unscrupulous anarchists like Jiao Ao, saying it was their instigation and incitement that led to the workers' deaths.

In newspapers, they referred to Jiao Ao as a murderer, a hooligan, a beast, guiding public outrage to vehemently attack these strikers.

Damn it, Jiao Ao now wished he could explode with these bastards.

At this moment, the companies in 2076 perfectly matched the identity of those in 1886.

The court trial for this tragedy soon began.

Twelve jurors and a judge unanimously attacked Jiao Ao and other speakers and labor leaders in court, finding the police not guilty, and Jiao Ao and others were arrested and imprisoned.

The charge was: aiding and abetting murder.

But the bomber was not among them, and in truth, four of the eight accused were not even on the scene; the charges were completely fabricated and not even attempted to be concealed.

Damn! Damn! Damn!

This Mewtwo was not fun at all!

Jiao Ao now wished he could spring out the Mantis Blade and chop these idiot judges and cops into pieces, but in the Mewtwo, he could only watch everything happen.

Soon, Jiao Ao was taken to the gallows.

Angry? Without question, he was angry.

But Jiao Ao's heart was exceptionally calm; looking at the more and more people in the audience who were awakening because of this slanderous trial, he suddenly found that death seemed not so unacceptable after all.

As the noose was placed around his head, a series of images began flashing before his eyes.

Just a short distance from the gallows, workers were organizing another march and strike, and workers, farmers, students, and even police were joining this strike.

Their numbers filled the streets, paralyzing traffic, raising flags high, chanting

"Eight hours for work, eight hours for rest, and eight hours for what we will."

Tens of thousands strong.

[In 1889, to commemorate this great Chicago demonstration and those who died, the Second International decided to establish May 1st as International Workers' Day]

[The following year, to celebrate this holiday, workers across Europe and the United States took to the streets in marches and protests]

[In 1916, the United States passed the Adamson Act, establishing an eight-hour workday for railroad workers]

[In 1917, the Soviet Union was established, instituting an eight-hour workday]

[In 1918, Germany enacted laws for an eight-hour workday]

[In 1919, France enshrined the eight-hour workday into law]...

Scenes of strike after strike flashed by, singing the same phrase, the same song, the same demand in different languages.

The half-century struggle by workers finally bore results, though not perfect, it represented the power they possessed.

This scene made Jiao Ao's spirits soar, realizing that his death wasn't meaningless, the grievances he endured would become a driving force for successors in the future, everything was worthwhile.

Together with the three standing beside him, including himself, Jiao Ao suddenly began singing "La Marseillaise" loudly. Facing death, he felt no fear whatsoever.

It's not because the Mewtwo was an illusion, but because he was fearless for the cause he had fought for.

The strength of that belief made the real Jiao Ao yearn.

Just then, the man named Spieth beside Jiao Ao shouted

"One day, the silence of our death will be more deafening than the screams you stifled today!"

All previous pent-up oppression, along with the fear of death, vanished like smoke.

At this moment, Jiao Ao only hated his clumsy mouth, unsure of what to say together, and just then the Mewtwo's constraints were lifted, he was no longer that character, but himself.

"Damn company! Sooner or later I will burn your nest to the ground! Just wait, I'll hang you all from the streetlights!"

For some reason, those Horizon Mercenaries always liked to say this, so Jiao Ao picked up a few words.

But saying it felt indeed satisfying.

As the plank beneath his feet gave way, Jiao Ao only felt the rope tightening around his neck, with a crack, he lost consciousness.

The Mewtwo performance ended right there.

Awakening again, it was already approaching dusk.

Around him sat a group of people, all members of the Chaotic Blade Association who had come from Dragon Field, all wearing Super Dream Headbands.

So much so that even passersby were curious about what they were watching.

The Fujian people, who had been keeping vigil at his side, took a bottle of water from a box and tossed it to Jiao Ao.

"So, do you still think what you're doing now is troublesome?"