by <unknown>
The residents of the 10,084th district were not completely ignorant barbarians after all. They still retained the basic language and culture. Some of their magical equipment and rune arrays were still functioning. They also craved to know what the worlds up above were like. Their resources and fuel had to be traded with rock worms. But as it happened, synthetic food prevailed in the upper worlds, and rock worms could not be sold at a good price. Even a couple of rock worms might not be enough to be traded for a standard magazine of bullets.
Even if they gritted their teeth and did not purchase any magical equipment or energy, there was at least one indispensable thing that they had to buy from the towns up above, which was the freshly compressed air as well as the components to repair the air circulation and filtering system.
In the towns tens of thousands of meters below the ground, despite the most enormous and effective ventilation system to introduce the fresh air from the surface of the planet all the time, it was still very suffocating and depressing, filled with all kinds of lethal gases.
If the wastes exhaled by human beings condensed too much, everybody was likely to be choked too.
Therefore, the underground residents could abandon all magical equipment, including the illumination rune arrays above their heads, to become ghosts in the darkness, but they could never abandon the air circulation and filtering system.
Once the air circulation and filtering system broke down, they also needed to release highly-compressed fresh air in time to buy themselves the precious time for maintenance.
A lack of air was even scarier than a lack of sunlight. It would really be a catastrophe.
It was exactly what the residents of the four-digit towns took advantage of. They pegged the relevant components and the compressed air at an extremely high price, and dozens of rock worms could only be exchanged for a tiny can of compressed air.
Therefore, what the residents of the 10,084th area farmed and herded every day was not just what they wore and ate but also the air that they could not live without for one minute!
Chapter 2348: Coup de Grâce |
"The residents of the 10,084th district do not have the concept of working during the day and sleeping at night. They haven't seen sunlight for ten thousand years. So, they work incessantly in three shifts every day."
Li Jialing said with mixed feelings, "Very early every day, they have to get up and fertilize the underground plants, mosses, and mushrooms. The underground world is not home to those plants. They are rather vulnerable despite their genetic modifications and require the feces of the rock worms mixed with pulverized minerals as fertilizers and growth tonics. One moment of carelessness, and they will wither on a large scale, which will be a great catastrophe for the entire town.
"After the vines, mosses, and mushrooms are all grown, they will have to risk their lives to climb the stone walls and enter the crevices to collect the plants, before they ship the plants to the caves and grind them for the rock worms. While the rock worms are eating, they have to work hard to massage the rock worms. The skin of the rock worms is extremely rough, and you can't be too soft when you massage them and have to use all your strength in order to warm up their bodies. The people here have to be busy for more than ten hours without a single second of rest. All of them are exhausted.
"After years of hard work, a rock worm will finally mature and be ready to be sold. But when they carry hundreds of rock worms to the four-digit towns thousands of meters higher, they can only get a few pieces of magical equipment and cans of highly-compressed air that are absolutely worthless on the surface of the planet.
"Leaving aside the problem of not having enough food, due to the serious lack of fresh air, the residents here dare not even be too excited, because crying, laughing, and playing will all intensify the consumption of oxygen and waste the fresh air of the town for no good reason. As time goes by, they all become as taciturn and gloomy as you can see right now.
"Only the carefree kids who are unaware of the preciousness of the fresh air will laugh without concerns and consume the oxygen that is more valuable than crystals to their hearts' content.
"Life without accidents and in peace is already extremely miserable, but if the wildlings or the demon beasts deeper below the ground invades, if the entire town collapses because of an earthquake, or if the magma springs out burning everybody into ashes, they will have no life at all. Those national disasters are swords hanging by a thread over their heads and may fall in the next second, bringing them eternal, ubiquitous pressure.
"Apart from natural disasters, there are human disasters, which are the accidental discoveries of mother lodes or ancient relics!
"Discovery of mother lodes and ancient relics is supposed to be a good thing, but the residents here are simply too weak, and their throats are choked by the upper towns with the supply of oxygen. They do not have the ability to protect themselves at all. Should mother lodes or relics really be found, it is possible that the malevolent, voracious bandits in the upper towns or the Immortal Cultivators on the surface of the planet will be attracted.
"By then, in better cases, they will be captured as slaves and cannon fodder to explore the relics; in worse cases, they will not even have the chance to be slaves and cannon fodder but will either be banished into deeper parts, ending up as wildlings or simply annihilated once and for all. The Immortal Cultivators have a lot of healthier and well-trained slaves that can replace them.
"While such tragedies have never happened to the 10,084th district so far, it is certainly not rare for other five-digit towns. When one town discovers a valuable mother lode or relic, it will always mean the arrival of their doom. As time goes by, most of the five-digit towns have learned the lessons. They just raise fungi and rock worms in their own territory dutifully while strictly forbidding the residents from explorations and adventures. Whoever finds a new mother lode or relic, or even only something similar to that, will often be killed mercilessly to keep their secrets in the darkness.
"Brother Yao, from the Star Ocean Republic to the Imperium of True Human Beings, no matter how politics and society changed on the surface of the planet, this has always been the life that the locals of the underground world have been living. If they had indeed retained intense emotions, the emotions must've been condensed into one thing—'pain'. If they do have desires, their only desire is to survive and continue the hopeless life.
"Brother Yao, you said that I was deceived by Sister Long. I considered it carefully, and I don't think Sister Long's approaches that border on brainwashing are correct. I can only say that, if a lot of residents of the underground world voluntarily accept Sister Long's brainwashing, I find them very understandable, because what they washed is only the pain that can never be resolved and the desperation that will never subside."
Lost for words, Li Yao was deep in thought.
Li Jialing seemed to be venting all his ideas in the past ten days, if not years. He went on, "Brother Yao, I was told that in the Star Ocean Republic a thousand years ago, there was a 'humanitarian' idea that believed that, when someone was caught in the pain that they could never get rid of due to terminal diseases, they had the right to end their own lives. It was known as 'euthanasia'.
"In the Imperium of True Human Beings, the Immortal Cultivators are also encouraged to sacrifice for the pride and dignity of the Immortal Cultivators when they can no longer contribute to the civilization of mankind so that their resources can be saved for somebody else.
"When I received Li Lingfeng and Wuying Lan's excruciating procedures, I thought of suicide more than once. For me at that time, death was not a pain but a relief.
"The most precious thing for a person is life. If we all agree that one is entitled to give up his life when faced with irresistible and unbearable pain, then, is it not an option to volunteer to abandon parts of feelings, desires, and free will? Is it really unethical, unacceptable, and even totally not understandable?"
"They're two different
things."
Thinking for a long time, Li Yao finally said slowly, "I admit that you and me, as individuals, have the right to end our lives when we are bearing irresolvable agony, which is indeed in the spirit of humanitarianism.
"However, it is one thing for an individual to end his own life, but it is a whole other thing that the highest authority above everybody terminates everybody's life on a large scale for them.
"Individuals may waver, surrender, and give up in front of pain, but any responsible authority should not solve a problem by 'massive euthanasia'. Such an approach is not solving the problem at all but the people who are having a problem!
"To put it more simply, faced with the shortage of resources, Long Yangjun or the highest authorities of the Covenant Alliance demand the individuals to repress their feelings and desires as much as possible in order to reduce the resource consumption. Is it any different from asking people to go on a diet when there is a famine? If there is not enough food, just grow more crops. No matter how hard you are dieting, you still need to have food. No matter how hard the Three Fundamental Laws seal everyone, human beings are only the wisest of all creatures because of their feelings and desires!
"Therefore, I can never agree with Long Yangjun or the Covenant Alliance's solution to resource shortage. Their plan is simply too untechnical, irresponsible, and will never solve the root of the problems. Even if the locals here do erase all their feelings and desires, they still need to have food and breathe fresh air, even if the amount they need is less. Then, what's the point even though the inevitable doom is slightly put off?
"Of course, what you said just now is not entirely unreasonable. The tip of the iceberg that Long Yangjun showed me has already made me understand why so many people are willing to be branded with the Three Fundamental Laws. Then, let's just keep on watching.
"We've seen enough of the 10,084th district. Where are Long Yangjun's specific coordinates? Let's go and find her!"
Li Jialing inserted a special chip to Li Yao's wrist crystal processor, claiming that it would connect Li Yao's and Long Yangjun's crystal processors.
Long Yangjun had gone to the deeper parts to mediate in the war among the wildlings and to disseminate her ideas of serenity. Naturally, her traces were unpredictable, and only the chip could tell exactly where she was.
Li Yao suddenly thought of something else. He asked Li Jialing in curiosity if there were still massive wars in the underground worlds.
Li Jialing nodded his head and said yes. In general, the organized towns with civilizational systems barely had massive wars, mostly because the fresh air in the underground worlds was too valuable. Even during the heavy labor where everybody sweated hard, they were often very careful and did not dare to breathe hard even if their lips were blue and they were almost suffocating themselves.
War, on the other hand, consumed oxygen more than anything else. A napalm bomb that could not carry much damage on the surface of the planet was enough to drain the oxygen in a few tunnels and caves. It was needless to say the upgraded temperature and pressure bombs.
Therefore, once two five-digit towns were engaged in a war, it would often be a tragedy where nobody was a winner. Neither of them would earn anything from the war.
However, that did not mean that human beings could completely abandon their nature and stop brutalizing each other.
In the cases of extreme disasters—say, the whole town was collapsed by an earthquake, the magma destroyed all the plantations of mosses, vines, and fungi, or an unexpected plague resulted in the death of all the earthworms—the survivors would have no choices at all except to team up and declare war on the neighboring towns like lunatics.
Such attacks that were launched in a haste would mostly end in brutal failures. When the losers had nowhere to retreat, they could only risk entering deeper parts of the underground world, exploring the areas of darkness and death that were not even numbered yet.
99% of them would end up as dinners for the wildlings and demon beasts. The 1% "lucky dogs" of them would soon forget who they were; their wisdom was gone before they became the new-generation wildlings.
Chapter 2349: Hatred in Darkness |
Of course, most of the so-called "wildlings" were the humans who escaped to the underground world in the Great Dark Age when they could not withstand the tyranny of the demons anymore as well as the demons who escaped here in exactly the same way when the reign of demons collapsed.
That was because the environment on the border of the crust and the mantle was terribly harsh. Not only was the breathable oxygen lethal here, but the temperature was also ridiculously high. Normal human beings could not get used to the wilderness that did not have an air circulation system or cooling rune arrays, and they would be gone soon after they entered the rough country.
Demons, as well as the humans governed by demons in the "Great Dark Age", however, boasted their unique advantages.
Li Yao now knew that the so-called "demons" and human beings were essentially the same thing, and the thirty thousand years of the Great Dark Age were in fact still the cruel oppression and tyranny of humans over humans.
However, that was the age when the biochemical technologies were highly developed. The studies on how to release the power of genes had reached the peak.
In order to excavate the underground mother lodes and to make use of the geothermal energy, many humans were forced to accept genetic modifications, which turned them into demons that required little oxygen and could endure droughts and heat remarkably. Even their forms were changed into bizarre-looking, gigantic reptiles.
The offspring of the human beings whose genes had been modified had a much higher chance of mutation than ordinary human beings did because the "gene locks" inside their bodies had been ripped off. After generations of such "humans" or "demons" escaping to the underground worlds, their progeny further mutated because of the harshness of the environment, consuming less and less oxygen and becoming more and more resistant to drought and high temperature. Some of the variations even grew a layer of dense plants on their skin. The plants would absorb carbon dioxide and exhale oxygen, and demons would absorb the oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide. It was a rather amazing collaboration.
At first look, those demons were like plants that could walk and talk, but actually, they were still just poor folks who were forced to immigrate to such a rough environment.
Therefore, the humans in the 10,084th district, who only descended to the underground worlds during the Star Ocean Imperium, could barely get accustomed to life in the deeper parts without shelter and a civilization. However, for the humans and demons who were born in the Great Dark Age, a tiny part of their offspring could still live inside the darkness as "wildlings".
Besides wildings, there were also other animals and plants. The demon emperors and demon gods in the Great Dark Age, as well as all the civilizations of Cultivators from the Star Ocean Imperium, had tried to colonize the underground world without an exception. Apart from establishing shelters and bases below the ground on a large scale, they had also raised countless kinds of creatures that were used to the poorness of oxygen, darkness, and high heat below the ground by means of genetic modifications and radiation mutations.
They intended to copy the entire ecological system on the ground. In such a way, the living space for everyone would be expanded by a hundred times. However, 99% of the experiments on underground creatures failed. The animals and plants that they produced could only be used in the artificial environment in the shelter and the base at best. They were all abnormal species that could only live their entire lives in a comfortable laboratory like the rock worms.
However, after a lot of shelters and underground towns were destroyed in earthquakes and magma eruptions, 1% of the experimental creatures escaped and survived the difficulties with luck, turning into wild animals and wild plants again!
The wild animals were to the rock worms what boars were to pigs, or what wolves were to dogs.
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Li Jialing told Li Yao that while the wildlings and the animals were aggressive, they would not attack the organized towns such as the 10,084th district without a good reason, because while the shelter system in such places had collapsed, some of the defense rune arrays might still be working. Besides, people here had traded abundant rock worms with the residents of upper levels for a lot of tough attack magical equipment. If the wildlings were not attacking with all their strength, it would be barely possible for them to swallow a town.
Besides, there were conflicts among the wildlings, too. They were divided into different clans and tribes, and their hatred could even be dated back to ten thousand years ago. In most of the cases, it was the wildlings who were fighting the wildlings, and they barely touched the residents of the 10,084th district.
Li Yao asked Li Jialing why the wildlings hated each other.
Li Jialing replied that, according to their origins and the time they entered the underground world, the wildlings had gradually evolved into different tribes. The wildlings of this tribe were the oppressed humans who came here during the thirty thousand years of the Great Dark Age, while the wildlings of that tribe were the demon nobles who were forced to flee here during the rise of the Star Ocean Imperium. Wouldn't such two tribes be mired in a natural vendetta against each other?
While the two tribes were engaged in a fierce war, the Star Ocean Imperium on the surface of the planet collapsed again, and a bunch of people who had just accepted the ideas of the Cultivators escaped to the underground world too. Although most of them stayed in the shelters, some of them did intend to stir trouble by making use of the strength of the wildlings. As a result, more fuel was poured on the fire, and the incessant war in the darkness got more and more chaotic and cruel.