A year had passed, and Meng Chao had already gotten rid of most of the paths that would make Bai Jiacao turn into the Dark Witch.
Based on his parents’ reaction, his little sister had also been behaving like a hardworking, normal middle school student.
But her corruption did not lower in the slightest!
This matter was a problem that persistently bothered Meng Chao. He still had no clues about the X-shaped eyes he saw in his mother’s notebook.
Now, Bai Jiacao had become really observant. With just one glance, she figured out what was going on behind why Superstar was able to take in Spirit Creation Creatures.
No matter what, her intelligence far surpassed the standards of a normal middle school student.
Meng Chao did not know how he should approach the topic. He could only beat around the bush. “Little Cao, have you been recently… having some really strange thoughts?”
Bai Jiacao was puzzled. “Huh?”
Meng Chao elaborated. “You know, thoughts that suddenly turn very dark and evil for no reason, and you feel like taking revenge on society when you think about them.”
Bai Jiacao was even more puzzled. “W-What are you saying?!”
Meng Chao elaborated even further. “For example, do you have instances when you suddenly have undeniable urges that make you really bloodthirsty or make you want to step on me?”
“I don’t feel any bloodlust, and I don’t want to take revenge on society, but I think about stepping on you every day.”
Bai Jiacao could not help but add, “Big Brother, I should be the one asking you those questions, don’t you think so? I feel like you’ve been really weird lately. How should I put it? Sometimes, when you come home and curl up in a corner to relax, you become really thoughtful and mysterious. It’s as if there’s a thick, black fog surrounding you that no one can see through.”
His little sister was right.
Meng Chao could also sense that the greatest change brought by the training from the abnormal beast research department and large increase in his contribution points was not reflected on his body, but in his soul.
The memories from his previous life had been scattered everywhere, but now, he remembered them one by one, and they were reconnected. Gradually, they formed the full picture of many “major events” of his previous life.
At the same time he awakened the skills of his previous life, he also came to realize how he himself, his little sister, Dragon City, and his comrades had changed.
The incredibly tragic future did not begin on the day the apocalypse descended on them.
It was the opposite. The arrival of the apocalypse was like a release. It drew the curtains on the dark fate that Dragon City faced, and the entire show ended with a sigh.
Meng Chao finally came to realize why he could not awaken all his memories when he had just returned from the past.
They were like a black poison. If he awakened to them while still in high school, even if he did not end up burning all of his brain cells in half a second, his personality would have become twisted and completely devoured by that of the Meng Chao from the apocalypse.
Then, Dragon City would end up with a killing machine that was callous, cunning, and had no human emotions. That killing machine would then be unable to change the future and crush the apocalypse.
Over the past few months, his body had certainly changed a lot. He had grown half a head taller, and his shoulders became broader.
Due to the stimulation from secret techniques, his muscles were not bulged up and swollen. Instead, they looked like iron rods wrapped up in rubber. They looked soft but also firm. The two qualities blended well with each other.
When he just awakened to spirit energy, he faced the problem of spirit tattoos appearing randomly while his spirit energy spilled out. But now, it was no longer the case. He could absorb spirit energy into his pores and his capillaries, then deliver it to his branch meridians.
Even if he tensed up his muscles and squashed all his nerves and spirit meridians until they were like springs pushed to the limit, he would still look like the average normal citizen.
Due to the spirit energy tsunami at Raging Waves, all the new superhumans who were nourished by spirit energy at the northern frontlines increased their fighting strength and cultivation realms by leaps and bounds. They became known as the golden generation.
The students who did not know Meng Chao found it very difficult to believe that he was the most outstanding one among them.
Only a handful of people who were really close to him or were unique existences, such as his little sister with Night Demon Blood, could sense the deepest and most authentic part of his soul.
Lu Siya was another one.
She did not just sponsor the Broken Star Club, but also threw in real cash when Superstar bought over Spirit Creation Creatures’ assets to help Meng Chao. She was also his instructor in one-third of his classes, so they spent a lot of time together.
As a Spirit Senser, she could naturally sense the sinister aura that came from him after he awakened to the malicious skills and memories from his training in Ghost Tribe and his life in that incredibly tragic future.
“Do you know it?” she had asked him one day.
“Know what?” Meng Chao threw the question right back at her.
“You’re very dangerous,” Lu Siya said while staring at him. “I can smell an incredibly dangerous presence from you. If you walked behind me quietly at night, I would definitely feel chills down my spine. I’d even scream. Damn it, I’m already at Heaven Realm and even Captain Ye doesn’t give me this sort of… feeling, as if I can’t read him and can’t control him.
“It’s just a few months of incomplete training, so how could it make you into a completely new man?
“When normal superhumans join the special training from the abnormal beast research department, they are polished until they turn into jades.
“But you don’t need to be polished at all. This training is just giving a light tap against your disguise and making it crack. We’re peeling off the outer layer and making you reveal your true colors.”
Meng Chao had nothing to say to that. He could only scratch his head and smile like an idiot.
“Looks like you know.” Lu Siya sighed. “Promise me one thing. Don’t put on such an honest and innocent look while in front of me anymore, alright?
“You have no idea how you look with that expression. I feel like looking at an Apocalyptic Beast that still has meat stuck between its teeth while wearing a harmless and stupid grin. It doesn’t do anything to help ease the awkward atmosphere, but makes it even more terrifying, you know?!”
In any case, his training, the expansion of the Broken Star Club, the purchasing of Spirit Creation Creatures’ assets for Superstar’s use, the training from the abnormal beast research department, and the awakening of his past memories took up all his time. Even if he was busy for three days and nights, he might not find the time to sleep for even two hours. Time flew by, and in the blink of an eye, the summer holiday passed by like lightning.
When the training came to an end and they completed buying Spirit Creation Creatures’ assets, they began renovations for the new headquarters of the Broken Star Club. At that moment, Meng Chao could finally stop and catch his breath. It was also only at that moment that he realized he was already a month into being a sophomore!
He was not the only one who had been busy. Dragon City seemed to have been dragged on the expressway. Quite a number of major cases had happened one after another.
First of all, once they gained full victory on the northern frontlines, Dragon City managed to preserve many soldiers with great fighting experience compared to Meng Chao’s previous life, and it could throw those soldiers to the expansion of other frontlines.
The superhuman squads formed a golden team with the Red Dragon Army that wiped out the enemies effortlessly in the east, south, and west of the city. They took a few strategically important places in a row.
Wherever humanity’s soldiers went, the fog disappeared.
The monsters only knew how to make noise and bare their teeth as they rushed over. Their only victory was wasting some bullets by taking them with their flesh.
Compared to the minerals and resources hidden under their feet, that bit of ammunition was nothing.
Quite a number of monsters mutated or evolved just like Meng Chao remembered they would. They awakened to more talents and abilities when they were about to die, which created some trouble for humans.
But Meng Chao had already spread the Ultimate Style, Future One Hundred Saber Techniques, the future versions of the three great force execution methods, and other future martial arts that specifically targeted the mutated monsters through the Broken Star Club, Yan Organization, and other organizations.
The superhumans who had been baptized by the spirit energy in Raging Waves were also more powerful compared to those in Meng Chao’s previous life.
Even though there were still bloody battles that ended up with corpses strewn all over the place when humans fought against mutated monsters, at the end of the day, humans were always able to gain a pretty satisfactory victory. They could then set up sturdy bridge towers and stage bases in the areas around Dragon City that were originally shrouded by fog.
During the few battles where they won effortlessly, the broken-star superhumans had good results against the monsters.
The future fighting methods Meng Chao taught them increased their killing efficiency by quite a lot.
This meant that the status of many broken-star superhumans increased in their squads, forces of power, and companies.
The number of broken-star superhumans applying to join the Broken Star Club also increased day by day. There were even some low-grade superhumans who had awakened through normal methods who came to ask for information about what sort of organization the Broken Star Club was and how they could join it.
When faced with humanity’s fierce offense, the monsters naturally launched a counterattack. Since the abnormal beasts had outstanding intellect, they did not choose to attack humanity’s steel defense lines head-on.
Instead, they took the initiative to enter Dragon City when the space-time rifts opened. Starting from June, Dragon Citizens could clearly sense that the monsters who entered Dragon City when the fog descended were much smarter.
In the past, whenever the fog descended, the monsters were absolutely confused by what was going on. They would gather together and be attracted by the lights and smoke. Then, without any sort of order, they would attack various communities and skyscrapers.
This would result in them being surrounded by the electromagnetic towers, machine gun towers, 3D intersecting flame nets, and citizens who had been waiting for them. Then, those monsters would be killed by everyone working together.
Not only were they unable to cause great destruction, their flesh became raw materials used to build Dragon City and keep the human civilization running.
But now, when the fog descended, even if there were still a large number of monsters who rushed forward like in the past, there were quite a number of monsters who crawled into air vents, sewage systems, various ruins, and all sorts of dark and narrow corners.
When the Battle State was declared off and the citizens returned to their normal life, like going to work, school, and just going about their daily lives, they would jump out from the dark corners bite through the important underground pipes, attack citizens who were alone, destroy important infrastructures that affected people’s livelihoods, and used other methods to create trouble.
When humans sent their exploration and hunting teams to search for these destroyers, the monsters seldom chose to face the humans outright. Instead, they used the complicated ruins and the underground network of pipes to play hide and seek.
But even if they were forced into a corner, they did not fight normally. They would secrete a special type of adrenaline to turn themselves into biochemical bombs, so they would deal much more damage than any claws or teeth ever could.