Chapter 679: A New, Rare Resource
If Meng Chao was drinking water, he would definitely end up spitting all that water in his sister’s face.
“Wait, I can understand that there’s the slightest bit of sense when it comes to the misunderstanding that I’d be together with Lu Siya, but what’s with Su Mulian?” Meng Chao asked. “I remember that she just came to our house once, and I wasn’t even the one who brought her here, it’s Lu Siya who did. No matter how anxious Mom is, she can’t just pair me up with any random girl, right?”
Meng Chao admitted that lately, he had been in frequent contact with Su Mulian, but that was because both he and Lu Siya agreed that she was to be the lair’s spokesperson.
They had no other way about it. The lair’s image of being a chaotic and messy place was already rooted deeply in the people’s minds.
If they wanted to use the chance of reconstructing the lair to completely shake off the rigid impression of the lair being a chaotic place where gangs did whatever they wanted, an image spokesperson who appeared to be innocent, kind, pure, pitiful, and filled with boundless love would naturally set a good impression among the people.
They could not just ask a ruthless person like Phantom Bear Xiong Wei to become the image spokesperson, that man had a hideous face and was too built!
Then, who would be willing to invest in the lair and come to the entertainment places in the lair to spend their money?
That was why, over the past half a month, while Meng Chao was killing monsters and harvesting them, Lu Siya helped him build Su Mulian’s image and brought her to meet quite a number of influential investors and people in control of the media.
Meanwhile, bringing her to Meng Chao’s family was due entirely to Meng Chao’s personal desires.
After all, Su Mulian had amazing healing abilities. She was so gifted in it that she could make the dead come back to life.
Meng Chao asked Su Mulian to help check his parents’ bodies and to see whether there were any problems with his mother’s biochemical joint transplants as well as whether there were any hidden illnesses.
He also asked her to check his sister. Over the past two years, Meng Chao worked hard to stuff her with an astronomical amount of cultivation resources, and he wondered whether it formed some sort of ridiculous chemical reaction with the Night Demon Blood in her and whether there were any side effects in her. If there were, he would then ask Su Mulian to help heal her.
That was how Bai Jiacao got to know Su Mulian.
“It’s not ‘any random girl’, I feel like this Ms. Su has a special relationship with you!” Bai Jiacao said seriously. “How should I say it? There’s a very similar presence in both of you. It’s as if you have the same thing in your eyes. Then, when I mentioned you, Ms. Su’s reaction was really strange.
“She seems to be a little scared of you but wants to get closer to you to understand you. She asked a lot of stuff about you from Dad, Mom, and me, and she seems to be really concerned about you.
“But when I was talking with her, I felt like she is very familiar with you when it comes to certain aspects. In fact, it’s like she knows you even more than I do as if she has known you for decades.
“Also, even though Big Sis Lu Siya brought Ms. Su Mulian here, I feel like their relationship is really strange, it’s like there’s this vague sense of hostility between them. But that doesn’t make sense. Before the accident in the lair, they’ve never met each other before, and now that I think about it carefully, the reason must be because of you.”
“You’re overthinking things, I might be a hero who has captured plenty of girls’ hearts, I’m not that popular,” Meng Chao said with a stoic face.
Meanwhile, his heart let out a thump.
This was the third time someone felt that there was something strange about Su Mulian’s att.i.tude toward him.
The first time was Meng Chao himself.
When he first saw Su Mulian, he felt that there was a profound, unexplainable relationship between them.
The second was Lu Siya.
He seemed to recall that Lu Siya once mentioned that Meng Chao and Su Mulian were the same types of people.
Of course, she also mentioned that Su Mulian once wanted to kill Meng Chao, but gave up on it at the last moment.
Now, it was Bai Jiacao.
Meng Chao believed that his sister would not say things randomly.
She had the Night Demon Blood in her, and perhaps like the Spirit Sensor Lu Siya, she could sense things that normal people could not sense.
The problem was, no matter how hard Meng Chao thought about it, he just could not figure out how he was connected to Su Mulian in his current and previous lives.
In his previous life, Su Mulian had clearly died during the fire in the lair!
How could she have known him for decades?
Meng Chao buried this question deep in his heart.
He decided that he must figure out Su Mulian’s secret after he reconstructed the lair, expanded his forces of power, became a five-star superhuman, and finished dealing with all the other matters.
“Stop making blind guesses, Ms. Su Mulian and I are really just normal friends.” Meng Chao pressed his fingers together and brought his hand down to firmly show his stance.
Bai Jiacao swiftly caught the loophole in his words.
“Got it. So you’re ‘really’ just normal friends with Ms. Su Mulian, but ‘fake’ normal friends with Big Sis Lu Siya!”
“…Do the relationship between humans really have to be so vulgar?” Meng Chao did not know whether he should laugh or cry. “I already told you that I don’t have those intentions right now. Besides, they’re normal human girls, and I’m not… Forget it, pretend I didn’t say that. In any case, what I’m saying is that we’re currently at the start of a vast new era, and an exciting world is waiting for us. There are countless chance encounters, countless challenges, countless exciting and heart-pumping matters around that are much more stimulating than the matters between lovers.
“But it’s only through cultivation and the continuous improvement of the self that will allow you to overcome the limits of your life and even human limits. That’s the only way you can control your own fate and become the player of the game. You will then be able to enjoy this excitement and success. Otherwise, you will just be toyed around by others.
“So, I won’t think of this problem for the time being. I suggest that you stop being so nosey and stop wasting so much time on boring relationship matters. You should focus on cultivation, your national college examination, and awakening to supernatural abilities.
“If you run into a boy you like, then just fool around with him. Don’t actually fall in love with him for real, and don’t let it affect your cultivation, understood?”
“Wow…” Bai Jiacao was stunned when she heard this. “Big Brother, I didn’t expect that you’d be so open-minded. But I feel like you sound like sc.u.m when you said that.”
“I said it for your own good. You’ll understand in the future.”
Meng Chao thought. ‘My pitiful sister, you don’t know that you have the Night Demon Blood in you. The weak boys in your school are like lambs. They can’t handle you when your hair turns purple and burns while dark flames surround your entire body.
‘If you swear to be together forever with some boy but suddenly awaken to your Night Demon Blood, that boy is going to run away terrified, and you’ll be traumatized even more, and the chances of you being corrupted will go through the roof!’
But Bai Jiacao’s words reminded him of something.
“Then, you can just tell Mom that I’m sc.u.m.” Meng Chao told his sister seriously, “Say that I’m immersed in the feeling of being surrounded by millions of female fans and am currently living a debauched life. For the time being, I don’t want to give up on all the fish in the sea for one single fish.”
“Got it.” Bai Jiacao nodded. “That sounds much more reasonable compared to your spiel about not thinking about creating a family when our enemies aren’t completely destroyed yet.”
For the time being, he managed to solve the problem with his mother.
For the next period of time, Meng Chao used all his resources to advocate the reconstruction of the lair.
First, he carefully created an image for Su Mulian and promoted it heavily to the people.
He had to admit that Su Mulian’s elegant and sacred image still fit her image of someone looking at heaven despite being in h.e.l.l.
Meanwhile, to save the suffering villagers in Leprosy Village, she transferred other people’s pain to herself repeatedly. This unbelievable and shocking healing method also accurately struck the softest parts in the Dragon Citizens’ hearts.
As a result, millions of citizens turned into Su Mulian’s fans overnight.
Through Su Mulian, they also understood the environment in Leprosy Village and the villagers’ living conditions.
The citizens were shocked and angry.
“The Survival Committee has been created for decades, and there are still places like that in Dragon City?!”
“What are the government and mega corporations doing?! Why can they tolerate the existence of these illegal workshops?!”
“Are our labor protection laws and other related laws just empty words and talk?”
Countless citizens left their remarks under Su Mulian’s videos and social media account.
The trending topics of other major media platforms were all related to the truth about Leprosy Village and the descendants of the zombie infectees in the past.
More donations poured into the charity account Su Mulian set up for Leprosy Village.
Meng Chao’s predictions were true.
The current Dragon Citizens no longer had much trouble in accepting Leprosy Village’s villagers.
At the end of the day, when it came to personal morals and society rules, all of them were related to resources.
The Dragon City in the past suffered from a lack of resources and s.p.a.ce. Naturally, everyone sought their own interests at the cost of others, and their hearts were filled with resentment.
When they saw deformed people like the zombie infectees’ descendants and saw that they were different from normal people, they naturally picked up their weapons and persecuted them. They wanted to chase them into Leprosy Village so that they could save up on more resources and s.p.a.ce.
Now, however, the monster civilization had practically crumbled, and the fog was gradually dispersing. Dragon City’s s.p.a.ce was increasing daily, and they were facing a new trend where they could get ten times and even one hundred times the number of resources compared to the past. Providing for all the villagers was no longer a problem to them.
The light of humanity, tolerance, and awareness to help each other naturally woke up in the normal citizens’ hearts.
“To prevent the tragedy of Leprosy Village from happening again, Dragon City must invest a large number of resources to completely change, upgrade, and reconstruct Leprosy Village, the lair, the slums, and old residential areas so that tens upon millions of normal citizens can enjoy the benefits of winning the Monster War and having Dragon City grow swiftly.
“It’s only through this method that Dragon City can be more united when pushing out of Monster Mountain Range with our chests puffed out.”
With the rampant discussions brought by Su Mulian, such voices kept appearing and gradually formed a trend.
Of course, Broken Star Club, Blue Home, and Home Party politicians also pushed the discussions forward from behind the scenes.
But this did indeed adhere to Dragon City’s current development and changing of the main conflict.
It must be known that in the past, since Dragon City was surrounded by fog and had monsters all around them, s.p.a.ce and resources were always lacking, and they could not create enough living s.p.a.ces and jobs for people of suitable working age.
Leprosy Village, the lairs, and the slums of various sizes were a symptom of this problem.
The unemployment rate was always high, and economic development faced restrictions everywhere, so it was already an achievement for them to stuff a few ten million people into dense cement boxes piled on top of each other like a hive and for these people to not starve to death.
The luxurious lives of the billionaires and the powerful elites did indeed make the people living at the bottom level of society unhappy, but even if they lived frugal lives and were selfless, they could not solve the root cause for the conflict caused by population, s.p.a.ce, and resources.
Ever since Meng Chao returned to the past and Dragon City won the northern offense, Dragon City’s main conflict started changing subtly.
The pitched battle this time also destroyed the monster civilization’s main force and caused the prime problem for Dragon City’s development to go through a 180-degree change.
They no longer faced a lack of resources and s.p.a.ce.
Instead, they now had a lack of manpower in the market, especially people who were strong, were willing to work hard, had a certain degree of fighting power and chances of cultivation.
The person who could hire a sufficient number of skilled workers and throw them all into the construction happening rapidly in the new areas outside Dragon City were the ones who could get a larger territory and be ahead of the others.
Under this sort of new development, changing the living environment and work conditions of the people at the bottom level of society as well as attracting and building more good-quality laborers became something necessary.