When Meng Chao left Spirit Creations Creatures, the sun had already set west, and the street lights were lit up.
Dragon City shone in glory.
Meng Chao received a call from Ning Shewo, and he invited him to join the gathering of the various leaders in the biochemical modification technology field.
Many people had learned that he helped Spirit Creation Creatures find the missing Giant Sandworm and also discovered crucial evidence while having outstanding performance during the northern offense, so they were incredibly interested in him.
Once they learned that Superstar Resource Recovery Company was his family business, they treated him as the future star who had recently risen to power in the field.
When Meng Chao wanted to agree to the meeting, Lu Siya called him.
He thought about it before he apologized to Ning Shewo and picked up Lu Siya’s call.
“Did you discover anything?” Both of them asked at the same time.
In the end, Lu Siya was the one who spoke first. “I didn’t discover a lot of problems when it came to the transfer and receiving of money in Jin Yongqiang’s account. Right now, a lot of criminals like using high-grade crystals with high purity as their currency. They trade using ‘cash’ straight away, and it doesn’t leave any traces online.
“As for where he went… He kept to a regular pattern over the past half a month. Aside from taking a few trips to Trash Site 4, he also went to a pet shop opened by Spirit Creation Creatures and bought a Contest Tiger. Aside from this, there’s nothing strange. He never went to the company, but he did go to a monster colosseum—”
“Wait.” Meng Chao thought of something and interrupted Lu Siya. “Why did he go to the monster colosseum?”
“To gamble. Didn’t his file state that he’s a gambling addict?” Lu Siya asked. “His favorite way to gamble was betting on monster fights. Of course, this is also the favorite gambling method for most of the gamblers in Dragon City. It’s shocking, exciting, and bloody.
“Jin Yongqiang went to the monster colosseum whenever he was free since a few years ago. Every month, he would go at least eight times. The frequency at which he went there over the past month hasn’t changed.
“Well, do you think that there’s something suspicious about it?”
“Monster colosseum…” Meng Chao sank into a deep thought.
Animal fights were one of the most ancient entertainment types among humans.
After Dragon City transmigrated, they had to live in a small space because they were surrounded by Monster Mountain Range. The people were tense and felt gloomy. As they faced all sorts of strange and powerful monsters, the ancient entertainment of making monsters fight against each other was naturally revived, and it quickly became popular.
There were dozens of legal monster colosseums of various sizes in Dragon City.
There were also countless illegal underground colosseums.
Even though the broadcasting platforms provided livestreams of powerful fighters hunting monsters in the wild by installing cameras on their helmets and shoulders so that citizens could get first person view of the hunt and feel as if they were right there in the fight, trying to satisfy the urge to see the fight by showing it on the screen was just like trying to scratch an itch through layers of cloth. Compared to being near the fight itself and listening to the deafening roars of the monsters while smelling the scent of death in the air was completely different. It was so much more exciting when the monsters killed one another, and their warm blood flew on their faces.
The experience from being near real fights could not be replaced by watching powerful fighters on livestreams, no matter how strong they were.
The Survival Committee also supported having monsters fight against each other as entertainment. They even called it a sport.
First, they said that it could cultivate the citizens’ nature of practicing martial arts and their love for fighting.
Second, they wanted to let the citizens see that no matter how fierce the monsters were, they were not really that terrifying. In the end, they would be captured by humans and turned into tools for their entertainment.
Besides, there was absolutely no harm in letting the bloody fights become an outlet for the citizens’ ruthlessness. Everyone could mingle with each other harmoniously in this narrow living space.
That was what they said, but if something was overdone, it became bad.
As business for monster colosseums grew, gradually, quite a number of citizens found that the fights to the death between normal monsters became normal and stale. They were not exciting enough, and the attractiveness between Nightmarish Beasts started decreasing. Everyone had seen them too many times.
To ensure attendance rate and safety, the people involved in monster colosseums chose to use biochemical modification to modify the monsters they had at hand.
For example, they modified the monsters’ offensive parts to become larger and sharper or made their appearances even more monstrous and ugly. They even fused the characteristics of several monsters together to create frankenstein-like creatures.
The monster fighting squads also injected all sorts of forbidden drugs into the monsters to ensure that they would become the champion of the season. Those drugs could make normal monsters turn into rampaging beasts.
Stimulants were forbidden drugs in competitive sports.
In the field of monster fights, there were also a constant presence of legal and illegal modifications.
Many of the monster colosseums and famous monster fighting squads had their own biochemical lab so they could make all sorts of gene medicine with secret formulae.
In theory, creating mutated rabies was not difficult for them.
Once Meng Chao thought of this, he asked, “Do you know which monster colosseum Jin Yongqiang frequented?”
Lu Siya was silent for a moment before she mentioned a name. “Golden Tooth Lair.”
“A lair?”
Meng Chao sucked in a sharp breath.
Lairs were a unique form of buildings built during the bloodiest and darkest era half a century ago in Dragon City.
It could be said that the people in them were a unique social organization, which had a small but complete world of their own.
Back in the day, the streets and alleys of Dragon City were filled with zombies.
There were also citizens who carried the zombie viruses, but did not turn into zombies themselves. Instead, the zombie virus unlocked the seals in their genes, and they awakened to supernatural powers, which turned them into superhumans.
Unfortunately, the first-generation of superhumans did not have any method to cultivate spirit energy, so usually, once they awakened, they soon experienced spirit energy deviation. Their brains were damaged by rampaging spirit energy, and their personalities became twisted and ruthless, which meant that they turned into human-shaped beasts who did not regard the law with any importance.
Besides them, there were also monsters here and there who tore through the barrier of space to invade Dragon City. Together with zombies and the deviated superhumans, they turned Dragon City into a bloody forest which only operated on the law of the jungle, and the people in it lived under the constant threat of death.
To fend against all that, the citizens had to gather together.
They would block off all the entrances and exits of their residential area and even cover the windows. They only left tiny embrasures for themselves.
Then, they used sharp reinforced bars to turn the outside buildings into steel porcupines.
The modern residential areas turned into dock forts of ancient times.
If they did not have enough living space in the residential area, they solved it by digging underground tunnels and dividing the existing floors on the surface to smaller parts.
A skyscraper with forty floors and the space between floors of more than three meters would usually gain seven or eight floors underground, and the floors on the surface divided into fifty or sixty levels. Each room would be as narrow as an insect’s nest, but it would be good enough to ensure the survivors’ safety.
Gradually, the survivors from different dock forts merged their dock forts together once they connected the underground tunnels between them as they continued digging underground.
The nest-like buildings were then turned into lairs. They were the symbol of humans maximizing the space available to them and the only safe haven during the bloody and dark era.
They were also the last home that everyone worked together to protect, because there was nowhere else to go.
During the peak of the dark era, Dragon City had Ten Great Lairs, and 80% of the citizens stayed there.
At that time, those who dared leave the lairs and wander around outside were either zombies, out-of-control superhumans who experienced spirit energy deviation, well-trained fighting squads from various companions, Battle God Lei Zongchao, Female Battle God Su Jianqing, War God Wu Tiedao, and other such peerless fighters.
But lairs had their own problems.
The buildings were scattered all over the place, and the people built them without caring about the location. It was impossible for them to pass any sort of hygiene and fire protection laws, which meant that fires broke out quite often.
Narrow spaces were also a violation toward human rights. If anyone stayed in one for a long time, their minds would definitely become twisted. Countless people became ruthless, and the lairs turned into a heaven for crimes.
The people living in lairs had to fight against the catastrophe of their world ending right in front of them and the threat of law collapsing around them, so they huddled together and protected each other. They formed all sorts of organizations and gangs. Hence, they usually only cared about the code of brotherhood and not the law. Of course, at that time, there was no longer any law.
When a citizen living in a lair killed someone, they would just hide deep in the lair, because it was like a maze. If anyone tried to find them, it was the same as trying to find a needle in a haystack. It was practically impossible.
Hence, Battle God Lei Zongchao used his peerless and incredible power to intimidate the nine great companies at that time. He also helped War God Wu Tiedao build the Red Dragon Army. After that, he built the Survival Committee and announced brand new laws. Once societal order was reestablished, the Survival Committee’s first task was to change the lairs and restore their hometown to the point where it looked like a city again.
Over the course of the twenty years spanning through the Great Expedition Era and Great Construction Era, Dragon City went through devastating changes.
Countless small residential areas like Blessed Heavenly Garden were built. They might be simple, but at the very least, they gave humans their basic dignity.
The buildings in them were old, noisy, and cramped now, but in those years, countless lair citizens went after them like hungry tigers. Even if they queued up for them, these “luxurious apartments” were not something that they could easily get.
As more lair citizens moved into new residential areas and the Survival Committee proved that they did indeed have enough power to help the citizens fight against the threat of zombies, monsters, and the out-of-control superhumans, the lairs were disassembled and modified into new commercial and residential areas.
Seven of the Ten Great Lairs disappeared like that
But due to lack of time and money as well as other factors, there were still three lairs left.
The citizens who stayed in the lairs either suffered from physical disabilities or had other reasons. They could not look for suitable jobs in the outside world nor pay the rent in public renting houses.
Some of them had also gotten used to their surroundings, since they had lived in the lairs for their entire lives. They were like insects who were used to their own nests.
Some of them, however, had committed crimes in the outside world and were afraid of being subjugated by the Survival Committee and the Supernatural Tower, which was why they decided to rush into danger and flee into the depths of the lairs.
Though there were also some who stayed there because they were paranoid and believed that the apocalypse was right around the corner. They did not believe the Survival Committee and were certain that Dragon City was going to collapse sooner or later, so they treated the lairs as their final fortress.
There were also those who had crazy ambitions and wanted to use the chaotic environment in the lairs to conduct all sorts of illegal experiments, and many of the people Meng Chao had ran into in the life science forum in the deep web were from the lairs. Once they created brand new martial arts, they would wander about the lairs in search of fearless and ignorants lab rats for their experiments.
In any case, the purpose of the lairs had changed throughout the years. In the past, they were safe havens for survivors, but now, they were lawless places that sheltered evil people.