Chapter 1088 Taser Gun (1/2)

Blackstone was a little town in the desert of Phoenix. It had been established with the construction of the prison there. The town was small and the residents there depended on the prison for a living.

The desert was unsuitable for farming or rearing livestock. Hence, the people there ran small businesses to make a living and depended on prison workers and the families of the prisoners as their customers.

That town was widely known in Phoenix as the 'Orange Clothes Town'.

Orange was the main color of the prisoners' uniform, and anyone wearing orange was recognized as one. Most of the residents in Blackstone Town were prisoners who decided to stay behind and live there after being released. Hence, the town was nicknamed Orange Clothes Town.

Like the prison in Miami, Blackstone prison was also meant for prisoners who had committed less severe crimes. Most of the inmates were convicted of offenses like minor theft or fraud and carried little risk to society.

The houses in Blackstone did not have locks, which was unique to the town. The locals would not put up locks in their house because it was useless. Most of the residents had once been thieves. Picking locks was their forte.

The locals understood the situation very well. If someone wished to steal, even putting up locks or having guard dogs would not stop them. In fact, perhaps the thief would even steal the dog.

Hence, the locals did not lock their doors when they left the house. Whoever wished to enter the house could do so freely.

However, there were CCTVs installed on the corners of the streets. If someone dared to trespass and steal, they would not be able to escape easily. It was usually possible to identify the thief from the video recordings.

The situation in Blackstone town was not unique in Phoenix. As the tourism industry boomed across the entire world, as long as a place was special and interesting, tourists would flock there.

The prison and the town have been trying to boost tourism. Just like Pelican Bay and Alcatraz, the town administration was keen to attract tourists to the place by capitalizing on its position as a prison town.

However, it was not easy to develop the tourism trade and earn the tourists' money. The auction would be a more realistic way for the prison to make a profit.

More than two hundred treasure hunters squeezed into the quadrangle of the prison. The place had never been so full.

Initially, the warehouse was located at the back of the prison grounds. However, the prison warden did not want the treasure hunters to go too deep into the prison. They would be able to walk past the prison cells, and it would be nasty if trouble arose.

Therefore, he had instructed the prisoners to organize and bring out the items in the warehouse. The items were then moved to some of the huts in front of the quadrangle.

Those huts used to be prison cells. However, as time passed, they became unsuitable for living. After the government had built new blocks of prison cells, the huts were evacuated and transformed into warehouses.

As the huts had not been inhabited, they looked extremely run-down and out of place. The treasure hunters who glanced at them would have thought that those were the prison warehouses and would not have thought that the warden has moved the items to another spot.

That was an important point. In the process of moving the items, the prison warden had found a bunch of people to help retrieve the more valuable ones. Hence, the items left in the huts were those that had less value.

If the treasure hunters had known that, the auction would lose much of its appeal to them. Many of them might even have sued the prison for being involved in business fraud.

Li Du and Hans were aware of that. The former had gone over the surroundings of the prison to check out the auction warehouses the day before. In the end, after letting the little bug enter the prison warehouse, he had found that it was empty inside.

That was when he guessed that the items in the warehouse had all been moved. However, it was unclear where they were now. The little bug could not discover that.

Although Li Du had not been able to check out the warehouse items beforehand, he was neither anxious nor regretful. As there were so many treasure hunters participating in the auction, Li Du had the time to check out the warehouse thoroughly.

Blackstone Prison had accumulated many things over the years. The prisoners had stuffed the items into the huts and there were more than twenty huts full of various things.