“Honestly, many of the middle-grade and low-grade superhumans have opinions about high-grade superhumans as well,” Ye Xiaoxing told Meng Chao. “You should know that most of the Deity Realm elites in Dragon City are considered to be tactical weapons. Unless there are incredibly important battles like the northern offense, they seldom appear and join real battles, right?
“I can reliably tell you that these Deity Realm elites aren’t sitting around doing nothing. Instead, they’re conducting all sorts of explorations in the ancient ruins under the Supernatural Tower. The dangers and importance of this doesn’t lose to any of our battles. Many of the Deity Realm elites have paid a heavy price for it, but they also gained a lot from it.
“We can create a lot of spirit energy magnetic fields now, understand more runic symbols, link many of them together to form different commands to activate all sorts of divine arts with their never-ending variations, and we can even use all sorts of unbelievable ‘sci-fi’ technology, right? That’s all thanks to the hard work of the Deity Realm elites as they explore the ancient ruins.
“But you will definitely encounter failures when it comes to explorations and experiments. There is also a chance that your project will fail even if you dump an astronomical amount of resources into it.
“Also, many of the projects only bring benefits twenty or thirty years into the future, sometimes even later.
“In the eyes of quite a number of the middle-grade and low-grade superhumans, the powerful people are just wasting resources. Instead of dumping their resources into a project that is bound to fail, it would be better to give them to a large number of middle-grade and low-grade superhumans. This would develop more powerful people and we would be able to gain true victory in the battlefield.
“In fact, there are even more absurd beliefs. Some people think that the Deity Realm elites have monopolized a lot of valuable resources and hide under the Supernatural Tower in isolated training. They say that they only care about increasing their own cultivation realm and won’t allow people at the peak of Heaven Realm become Deity Realm elites since it’s only by doing so that they can forever control Dragon City.
“Of course, this is a despicable rumor. But it did cause a new rift between some of the middle-grade and low grade superhumans and the Deity Realm elites.
“This rift is especially prominent among some of the middle-grade and low-grade superhumans working in small and middle-sized businesses and the Deity Realm elites in the nine great mega corporations who monopolize the traditional businesses. They’re competing in the business field and they have a strong desire for valuable resources. There’s a limit to the size of the pie, so no matter how you cut it, there is someone who will be displeased.”
Meng Chao nodded. Many of the problems in Dragon City had the same root cause—the pie was not big enough.
There were many people who wanted resources, but they were limited. No matter how well you teach greedy humans to have noble character, to be united, and to be of one mind, it is useless.
Going out to hunt and bringing back more of the pie was what they needed to do.
The problem was that the “pie” of the Other World was not easy to bring back…
Ye Xiaoxing sighed and shifted his speech to the Red Dragon Army.
The Red Dragon Army itself was fine. The problem with it was that it had no money.
Dragon City was a foreign force, and all the people in it knew how to fight. Their army was larger than that of a country on Earth that poured all its resources into the military.
To encourage everyone to fight against monsters, the soldiers who were still in service or retired and their families were able to enjoy all sorts of benefits and special privileges.
The subsidy for injured and handicapped soldiers and the compensation fees for the soldiers who died also reached astronomical figures.
When normal citizens killed monsters, they could also get rewards. Their achievements were tabulated, and they could enjoy all sorts of benefits.
For example, when Meng Chao killed the Bloody Moon Wolf King in his national college examination, he received medals from three organizations—the military, the Supernatural Tower, and the Survival Committee. Then, because these medals, he was prioritized when he applied for a house, got preferential prices on cultivation resources, and would have been prioritized if he had applied for a position in the army or other related departments where he had to compete against other applicants with similar qualifications, along with many other benefits.
This was very good, and when he ran into monsters next time, he would have more motivation to kill them.
But to the Red Dragon Army, the compensation fees for the wounded and the resources required for the rewards were an increasingly heavy burden.
“The crux of the problem is that right from the start, the Red Dragon Army set the standards of the rewards too high,” Ye Xiaoxing said. “But they had no choice. When Dragon City faced the greatest danger, we weren’t in possession of any advanced tech or cultivation techniques. When we fought against the monsters, we were placing our lives at risk. If good rewards were not set up, the Red Dragon Army would have been letting down the brave souls who sacrificed themselves.
“Besides, at that time, most of Dragon City had fallen into the hands of the monsters. Even when we recovered an area, it was usually a ruin. The collapsed buildings had to be demolished and rebuilt before they could be distributed to the citizens.
“Whenever we recovered an area, we had to immediately build all sorts of houses and distribute them to the warriors and family members who had contributed to the war effort. The war achievement reward system in Dragon City then created a virtuous cycle and allowed the Red Dragon Army to continuously develop.
“But the present is different from the past.
“As of today, we’ve recovered most of the main city areas of Dragon City. Our construction has extended all the way to the border, and the forces of power are all claiming their own territories. They’ve constructed so many buildings in Dragon City that it’s basically saturated in here.
“After a baby boom that lasted for twenty years, our population has also increased by leaps and bounds. Our number of citizens is higher than at the peak of our population while still on Earth.
“We don’t have any more space we can make use of to provide more rewards for the people who contributed to the war effort.
“And when you add together the soldiers who have contributed to the war, were injured, and sacrificed over the past few decades and make a comparison, you’ll find that the number has been increasing. There are one million of them, and the subsidies, benefits, and compensation fees make the Red Dragon Army spend most of their budget on them, so it doesn’t have the money to renew its equipment, develop new technology, or upgrade the fighting strength of the powerful soldiers in its ranks.
“The Red Dragon Army has constantly been bothered by the fact that it doesn’t have the peak fighting power in Dragon City and hope that it can be of better use during the war.
“This is normal. Since ancient times, no army could tolerate the thought of not being the strongest offensive force in the country.
“But if it wants to increase its fighting strength, it needs resources.
“If it wants resources, it has to continuously attack and take the initiative to launch attacks on the monsters.
“The Red Dragon Army is not afraid of fighting, but every time it attacks, it suffers casualties, and the compensation fees cannot be reduced. Not only that, they must continue going up.
“Hence, things are only getting worse for the Red Dragon Army’s budget.
“In other words, the Red Dragon Army is now a dinosaur that is more than five hundred meters long. You can’t say that it doesn’t have any fighting power, but when it bares its fangs, it is crushed under its own weight. Most of the time, it can only drag its swollen body and lay on the ground in resignation.”
Meng Chao nodded with a contemplative expression on his face.
Nations formed through war achievements all faced this problem.
During the development stage, they could stimulate the citizens and make them bring forth the strongest fighting power, which would allow the country to win battle after battle.
But once it developed to the peak and could not find any resources to reward those who contributed to the war effort, the war machine would crumble immediately.
When the Qin state launched the war of unification on Earth, it had defeated other states and armies effortlessly. It was really domineering.
But the Qin Dynasty collapsed after the reign of only two emperors. There were many other factors contributing to its collapse, but it was also related to the fact that it could no longer maintain its war achievement reward system.
Based on Meng Chao’s memories of his previous life, after Dragon City got out of Monster Mountain Range, it lived gloriously for a period of time and shocked all of the Other World as the Extraordinary Disaster.
However, at the end, the apocalypse had still arrived. Meng Chao wondered whether this was related to the fact that the war achievement reward system had become deformed as it was forced to continue growing.
“Right now, many of the grassroots soldiers in the Red Dragon Army are really displeased with the Survival Committee. They’re demanding the Survival Committee to increase the annual budget of the Red Dragon Army so that it can upgrade.”
Ye Xiaoxing smiled wanly and said, “The problem is, the Survival Committee faces too many problems and faces a financial collapse every year. How can it possibly fork out more money?
“In truth, the best plan for the Red Dragon Army is to get rid of some soldiers and replace numbers with quality.
“But no one dares to mention this. Even if we ignore all other problems and just talk about eliminating more than one million strong soldiers who know nothing else besides killing, it wouldn’t end well. There’s already a severe lack of jobs, and the unemployment rate for youths under thirty has always been high with no signs of falling. No one can say what would happen if this suggestion went through.
“At the end of the day, in a world where a superhuman can do whatever he or she wants to fulfill his or her own goals, it’s also hard for a normal human army to figure out how they should continue maintaining its existence, use, and dignity. This is a problem no other army on Earth has ever faced!”
Ye Xiaoxing told Meng Chao that aside from those problems, Dragon City also faced all sorts of other conflicts.
One of them was the conflict between the Colonization Party and the Return Party. One of them believed that they should pour all their resources into expansion and continue with the colonization war until they conquered all of the Other World.
The other party believed that it was a pipe dream for a city to conquer an entire plane; it was an impossible task. Dragon City should stop its expansion once it conquers Monster Mountain Range. Then, they should use a small amount of resources for defense while using most of its resources to figure out how they could control transmigration.
Once they opened the tunnel connecting the Other World and Earth, they would have Earth with its support of ten billion people as well as an endless amount of resources and could think about conquering all of the Other World.
There was also the conflict between the biochemical modification faction and runic symbol machines faction, the conflict between the Ultimate Style and the Overkill Style, the conflict among the four major fighting occupations when it came to which was the strongest, and the conflict among Ripple Force, Reckless Bull Force, and Dragon Force Force. But these were all differences in terms of skill, so there was no need to mention them.
In any case, Dragon City might seem to have reached a peak after half a century and be prosperous and thriving, but under the surface, they still faced internal and external troubles. Their road ahead was made of thin ice and they needed to tread on it while trembling in fear.
“Meng Chao, after listening to me grumble so much, are you a little disappointed in Dragon City?” Ye Xiaoxing asked.
Meng Chao shook his head.
If he were a normal university student living in an ivory tower, his views of the world, his morals, and his sense of self might have shattered after he found out that there were so many problems and conflicts in Dragon City.
But Meng Chao knew that the apocalypse was right around the corner.
Since Dragon City was bound for destruction in his previous life, there had to have been all sorts of problems inside aside from all the powerful enemies they had to face outside.
But he was not afraid of problems, because there were always more solutions than problems.
“Captain Ye, I’ve heard netizens mention this in the forums of the dark web. It’s normal for there to be conflicts. We have tens of millions of people squashed into a small city. It’s impossible for us to not have any conflicts, unless we were all dead,” Meng Chao said. “But what do the conflicts you mentioned have to do with the job of the abnormal beast research department and the matter concerning the White Spirit and Gao Ye?”