Chapter 626 - Mystery of the Apocalypse
Chapter 626: Mystery of the Apocalypse
Meng Chao and Lu Siya looked at each other.
Meng Chao thought about it, then asked tentatively, “Is your sister’s death related to the tattoo on your chest?”
A’Ji cast a profound glance at Meng Chao, then retorted. “Why do you think it’s related? It seems like you’ve been very bothered by the tattoo on my chest from the start.”
Meng Chao found himself momentarily stunned. He then gave a perfunctory answer. “I just think that this tattoo is really unique and gives off an enigmatic, bone-chilling feeling, so I was just asking.”
“You’re right.” A’Ji lowered his head and looked at the X-shaped eye on his chest. His fingertips trembled. He wanted to touch it, but did not dare to.
Pain appeared on his face, along with fear. He mumbled, “Honestly, this isn’t a tattoo, but a curse. It’s a curse that appeared because of my blood!”
Meng Chao’s pupils narrowed. He asked, “What do you mean? You didn’t receive this tattoo from someone?”
“No.”
A’Ji’s gaze became unfocused, as if he was looking at a spot so far away that no one could possibly measure the distance. It seemed like he was immersed in a fragmented, bloody memory and could not remove himself from it.
After a long time, he mumbled, “After I became young again, the brain cells storing my memories must have withered and died. The brand new brain cells contained a lot of vitality, but I lost many of the memories about what happened during the past few decades, so much so that I only remember the things that left the deepest impressions on Saber Jin Wanhao, along with important coordinates, passwords, martial arts, and other information.
“And these memories are like pearls from a shattered pearl necklace. Each pearl is spread out and spinning madly in my brain. They’re all confusing, and I can’t make sense of them.
“I feel like I woke up in an underground cave the end of which cannot be seen. All I can see is just the water in the cave forming mottled and swaying reflections on the cave’s wall.
“Slowly, I reconnected all my memory fragments together.
“The first thing I did after I left the secret lab was use every method at my disposal to search for information from all parties. I wanted to know just what happened to Dragon City and ‘me’ during the past half a century or so. I also wanted to know about the world I was in and how it turned from the normal and peaceful city on Earth to this.
“Unfortunately, it didn’t matter whether it were the stories from the media, TV, internet, or the grapevine, all of them were not detailed and clashed with the fragmented memories in my head.
“After the Survival Committee was formed, the mega corporations led the citizens to counterattack. They expanded their territory and marched forward boldly. This period of history was recorded clearly.
“The creators of the mega corporations are hailed as heroes, guardians, and Deity Realm elites. Everyone knows about them.
“Even three-year-old children know about how the nine great mega corporations rescued our civilization from the depths of danger and allowed us to rise back to power and conquer the Other World.
“But before the Survival Committee formed was the time when Dragon City had just transmigrated. The zombie virus ran amok, and societal order was gone. The entire city was a bloody place where only the law of the jungle was observed. Very few talked about this period of history. And even if they did, they only did it briefly. They were very vague.
“It’s like an ugly and deformed scar. Even if it still hurts under the scab, as long as we don’t look at it and even cover it up with concealer, we can pretend that it doesn’t exist.”
Meng Chao and Lu Siya were silent.
The first ten years when Dragon City had just transmigrated were ten years that they could not bear to look back upon.
When they had just transmigrated to the Other World, the elites who once protected Dragon City while on Earth faced death fearlessly one after another so that Dragon City could survive the shocking and mysterious viruses from the Other World. In the end, all of them lost their lives within a few short years.
Because of their sacrifice, countless Dragon City citizens were able to live through the disaster that was transmigration.
However, as the elites from Earth died and the old order crumbled, Dragon City soon entered a period of societal upheaval and lawlessness. It was basically the end of the world.
Due to the threats from viruses, zombies, and the lack of resources, no one knew whether they could survive till tomorrow or even the next second.
For a packet of compressed biscuits that was long past its due date or water recycled from urine, hundreds of people instantly turned into raving monsters. They tore at each other’s flesh, ate each other’s bones, and dug out each other’s organs.
In the end, no one cared about the compressed biscuits.
The warm flesh and blood was much tastier than compressed biscuits.
When some of the humans awakened to all sorts of supernatural abilities due to the stimulation of the viruses in the Other World, they occupied territories and proclaimed themselves the rulers of those areas. They formed tribes and gangs, and some form of order finally returned.
But this order was not formed by using the laws and morals from 21st century Earth as a basis. These rules did not treat everyone as equals.
Instead, they regressed to the time before Christ, to the time of slavery. They might even be said to have returned to the time of primitive societies that was far older than the era of slavery and wherehumans still acted like savages.
Those who awakened to supernatural abilities were the powerful, and the powerful could do whatever they wanted to the weak.
The evil nature of these “things” were something that even if all the Apocalyptic Beasts from Monster Mountain Range gathered together and wreaked their brains for ten days and ten nights, none of them would be able to come up with such acts.
That period of time was the most shameful period of time since Dragon City transmigrated.
It was so bad that when the Survival Committee was formed and humans gradually brought back the old order and started acting like civilized, moral people again, everyone unanimously decided to forget about this shameful history.
Even though the people who committed those heinous crimes during the bloody era were not the humans who built the Survival Committee and ruled over the current Dragon City, at the end of the day, they were still humans.
If they were too set upon the details of the bloody era, they would make the people of the current era aware that humans were no different from monsters.
No, there were plenty of times when the creatures hidden under human skin were far more terrifying than Apocalyptic Beasts.
After all, monsters would only kill when they were hungry or their territories were infringed upon.
But humans needed no reason to kill.
“Looks like you have an idea about what Dragon City was like before the Survival Committee was built.”
A’Ji was immersed in Saber Jin Wanhao’s memories, and his tone was completely different from how he usually sounded as the boy from Leprosy Village. It was hoarse and deep, as if it came from a hole that led straight to the center of the planet. “Then, you must know how spirit energy martial arts came to be, right?”
Meng Chao pondered over this for a while, then said, “Based on what the government told us, the first spirit energy martial art was something Battle God Lei Zongchao accidentally understood when he had an epiphany.
“There are still plenty of the formulae, force execution methods, and spirit meridian circulation systems created by Lei Zongchao from when he first created spirit energy martial arts in the museums of Dragon City.”
A’Ji cackled like a crow and asked, “Do you believe what the government said?”
Meng Chao shook his head. “I believed in it fully in the past, but now, I don’t quite believe it. Spirit energy martial arts, or rather, the entire spirit energy cultivation system is profound and covers a lot of areas. Even with the use of countless superhumans’ wisdom, all we understand of it is still the tip of the iceberg. So no matter how talented Lei Zongchao is, it’s impossible for him to have thought of such a… huge, profound, and terrifying entity!”
“That’s right. The spirit energy martial arts created at the start weren’t created by Lei Zongchao alone. In fact, he wasn’t even the creator of the spirit energy martial arts. He was just a research subject.”
A’Ji stopped talking for a while, as if he had made his final decision. He hissed, “Lei Zongchao, my sister, and I were all unwilling research subjects to test out spirit energy martial arts!”
“What?!”
Meng Chao’s heart raced.
The progress for the Mystery of Supernatural Entities increased by 1%, and reached 72%!
Even Lu Siya held her breath.
Clearly, she had never heard of this matter from Sky Pillar Corporation, Lu family, and her grandfather, who was one of the ten supreme elites who created the Survival Committee.
“Based on what I saw from Saber Jin Wanhao’s fragmented memories, the first ten years after Dragon City transmigrated to the Other World was the bloodiest and most chaotic ten years ever since it came here. Order collapsed, and all morals were lost. Humans regressed into monsters, or rather, humans have always been monsters, it’s just that this nature was sealed by the morals and laws on Earth. We used them to conceal our true nature.
“After transmigration, we were just beaten back to our original form,” A’Ji murmured. “But as the brutal law of the jungle eliminated the weak, new order and forces of power slowly took shape. Of course, that was a really distorted form of order, and the forces of power were really terrifying as well.
“Among them, the strongest force of power was known as Blood Alliance!”
Meng Chao and Lu Siya looked at each other at a loss.
There were plenty of gangs created decades ago that were still alive after they changed their image.
Sky Pillar, Universe, Heaven, Soaring Dragon, Thundercloud. Anyone could find these mega corporations’ roots in the gangs created during the first apocalypse.
Gangs like Golden Tooth, Black Bone, and Poison Scorpion did not even bother to change their names and were practically living fossils.
However, Meng Chao and Lu Siya had never heard of Blood Alliance before.
“Today, Blood Alliance is long gone, vanished without a trace. The Survival Committee intentionally locked down the information and wrote it out of history books, so few people have ever heard of the name,” A’Ji said. “But based on Saber Jin Wanhao’s memories, Blood Alliance was the strongest force and the very first one to rise to power in Dragon City during the apocalypse.
“The original gangs of the mega corporations and the gangs in the lair had either not been formed at that time, or submitted to the might of Blood Alliance. They could only hide and tremble in fear before it.
“And Blood Alliance was able to rise to power and dominate over Dragon City because it occupied the ancient ruins under the center of Dragon City!”
Meng Chao and Lu Siya gasped.
Everyone knew that there was a ruin left by an ancient civilization under Dragon City.
Right then, the Supernatural Tower, which was seen as the spirit and symbol of strength of Dragon City, stood above those ancient ruins.
To a certain degree, the Supernatural Tower was a huge lab researching the ancient ruins.
Most of the spirit energy martial arts, runic symbol technology, and biochemical technology that the current Dragon Citizens were in control of came from underground. They just modified it a little after they received enlightenment from the ancient civilization.
Who would have known that Dragon Citizens had discovered those ancient ruins in the early stages of their transmigration and began exploring them.