Chapter 480: Don’t Be Too Harsh

Opening one’s arms and letting the other person check how many weapons they carried was a form of trust and friendship in the lair.

Many of the trades, negotiations, and discussions could also be completed secretly with this gesture hidden under the cloak.

Just as Meng Chao expected, after groping about for a while, the two laughed simultaneously, pulled open their cloaks, and hugged each other in a warm embrace.

“Sharkie, you’re not dead yet!” The handler used a force that could kill a tiger and struck Zhou Chong’s shoulder.

“Tengu, even if you died, I wouldn’t!” Zhou Chong returned it by tightening his squeeze. It could crush a spine.

This meant that they were old friends.

To hunters, the lair had a unique significance.

The most popular superhuman occupation in Dragon City was the hunter.

They could join a superhuman squad or fight alone in the wild while dancing about dangerous situations. They were not limited by anything and just used their fists, legs, weapons, passion, and smarts to earn their living. As long as they were strong and had a bit of luck, they could become famous overnight and rise to the top. It was a free and amazing life!

The Supernatural Tower had to manage a large number of carefree hunters, so they set up the Hunter’s Association. It was in charge of training, testing, categorizing hunting regions, and distributing missions. Naturally, they also regulated the different conflicts between superhuman squads. When they encountered large-scale battles or saw Apocalyptic Beasts in the city, they could even organize a few or hundreds of different superhuman squads to fight.

However, the most important task of the Hunter’s Association was still to collect money.

“Superhumans might be strong, but without the Red Dragon Army providing firepower and logistic support and without the support of tens of millions of Dragon Citizens, it’d be impossible for them to survive and fight in the wild with just their own strength. So, a large portion of the hunters’ gains should belong to all the Dragon Citizens.”

Due to this logic, whenever a hunter killed a monster, they had to hand over one-third or half of the gains as hunting tax, special resources recollection tax, Hunter’s Association management tax, Supernatural Tower construction tax, Red Dragon Army construction tax, unique national responsibility, and other taxes. The higher their cultivation realms were, the higher their tax rate was. The Deity Realm superhumans’ tax rate would easily go over 70%.

Recently, Dragon City had been organizing projects to upgrade the old residential areas and to provide three nutritional meals for the youngsters. What is meant for the superhumans was that the hunters who had been fighting at the frontlines had to pay even more taxes.

Besides that, the materials of many monsters, especially the rarer Hell Beasts and Apocalyptic Beasts, were definitely unique tactical resources, which meant that the hunters could not just sell them to whoever they liked. The Supernatural Tower would buy and use them based on the needs of the departments and the projects, along with their importance.

This sort of method that monopolized the resources usually did not provide the hunters with the market price, and the hunters, who had been risking their lives, did not feel satisfied.

For the overall development of Dragon City, having superhumans pay high taxes and monopolizing resources was logical and necessary.

Human civilization was a unit whose parts couldn’t be separated from one another. Without the large number of citizens and the Red Dragon Army being a powerful shield, the hunters could not possibly win against the monster civilization.

But the hunters had to risk their lives, be covered in wounds, perhaps even watch their comrades die tragically in the mouths of monsters. They might also get a lot of hidden injuries. Yet after they finally killed the monster, they had to give up half of the materials for nothing, so they felt that it was unfair. That was only logical.

As time progressed, some people decided to test their luck.

When it came to materials that were large, heavy, but quite cheap, like Demonic Halberd Pig and Iron-armored Rhinoceros’ flesh, they would not care about it.

But if hunters encountered valuable materials that were smaller but worth cities, like the monsters’ crystalized neurospheres, heart of blood, eyeballs, spinal bone marrow, and other parts, they would usually not report them to the Hunter’s Association.

Instead, they would sneakily bring them to the black markets in the lairs in exchange for the resources they wanted.

Sometimes, they would also exchange them for betting chips in the monster coliseums in the lairs and gamble their way into oblivion.

It did not matter whether they lost or won. The most important thing was to make sure that the betting chips all came out clean, so when the Supernatural Tower assessed the superhumans next year, they would not be troubled by the huge source of income that came out of nowhere.

This gray industry that was formed by the smuggling of monster materials was one of the important economic pillars in the lair.

The Survival Committee and the Supernatural Tower knew about this trick, of course.

But if they were too harsh and decided to be stern on punishing the act of smuggling and black market trading, it would severely weaken the hunters’ enthusiasm, so they would not work hard while they went off to hunt and do it in a carefree manner. The Supernatural Tower could not do anything to change human nature.

The other reason was that if the hunters did not come to trade in the black market, the gambling, eating, and alcohol industry in the lair, which was a prospering tertiary economic sector, would die.

It has to be known that most of the one million lair citizens relied on the tertiary economic sector to survive.

When the pressure from the zombies and monsters increased or the people got really miserable, they would run to the lair to release their pent up emotions. That was the only way they could continue struggling to survive in the brutal Other World.

There was no benefit to destroying the only venting channel of the citizens at the bottom of society and one that provided a few hundred thousand job positions to the current Dragon City.

Hence, as long as the hunters and gang members in the lair did not take things too far, the Survival Committee and Supernatural Tower was willing to turn a blind eye.

In truth, the government also took this into consideration when it chose which veteran hunters to send as the first batch of captors.

Man-eating Shark Zhou Chong and the rest were regulars in the lair’s black market in the past, so they had close connections there. They were friends with plenty of the gang members and had pretty good teamwork when they worked together.

They finally let go of each other, and Zhou Chong asked Tengu, the handler, “What’s the situation now?”

“Yesterday, Golden Tooth’s Red Brows Su Lun saw Mr. Jin’s message, he said that hundreds of vermin had run into Golden Tooth Lair. Some people have also secretly set up illegal pharmacies here. Once the vermin eat the illegal drug, they act like they’re crazy and become really strong,” Tengu said.

“Be it Golden Tooth or the other gangs, everyone hates those vermin who don’t honor the code of brotherhood, especially people who are nutty because of these illegal drugs.

“Everyone is working in society and just want to earn money, so we should work together in harmony. Yet these bastards are causing trouble in Golden Tooth Lair and are trying to destroy everyone’s livelihood. They even want to destroy the hunters’ channel to sell goods, right?

“Besides, even Mr. Jin, who has not appeared for a long time, has personally sent his word. So, all gangs naturally mobilized their members and started a full-on dragnet investigation over all of Golden Tooth Lair.

“This is what we’re thinking: since they committed hundreds of robberies outside in one go and stole so many cultivation resources, they must want to sell them in the lair’s black market.

“If they don’t sell it, then they want to use them as raw materials to create that new Deification Capsule or whatever it’s called.

“And if they want to create large quantities of Deification Capsules, they naturally need a workshop or factory that is quite big, or at the very least, they need a fully-equipped lab.

“Based on our experiences when creating all sorts of gene medicine, during the process of creation, you will produce a lot of exhaust and liquid waste. You will also use up a lot of spirit energy.

“So, we investigated the hundreds of black markets, labs, and private workshops in the lair, no matter their size.

“We paid special attention to the areas with a cluster of private pharmacies. We’ve also been sampling the underground water there to perform analysis. In the end, we discovered three areas with underground water that contain properties similar to the Deification Capsules.”

There were plenty of mad scientists lurking in the lair, along with cultivation maniacs who tried to use gene medicine to break their limits.

The pharmacists here were more professional than what the world outside thought.

“Due to your reminder for us to not alert the enemy, we didn’t dare to search in an ostentatious manner. We also didn’t dare enter deep into these regions,” Tengu continued. “As of current, we only know that these regions belong to the Three Unmanaged Areas of each gang, because it’s where our territories overlap.

“There have always been plenty of lone wolves who don’t belong to any gangs here. At most, they form groups of two or three people and build a small underground lab or illegal workshop. We’re not certain just which illegal workshop hides your target.”

“It’s fine. You’ve already helped us out a lot by reducing the search area to this extent. Let us handle the rest!” Man-eating Shark Zhou Chong said. “Everyone, get ready. Bring out the neural tactical data link interactor and search the area to locate the two identified targets.”

Meng Chao did the same thing as the other veteran hunters: He moved his eyeballs, contracted his pupils, and focused.

As the neural data intersected with each other, the walls around the garage seemed to have become invisible. Their gazes were able to smoothly and easily see through them and check what was outside.

The layers of illegal buildings looked like wooden blocks children stacked together randomly; they stood in all directions in a mess that reached out to devour the sky. There were only small ventilation spaces that were smaller than impluviums.

The mottled buildings were covered in graffiti made with all sorts of colors. Quite a number of the graffiti was even made with neon paint that was mixed with monster blood. Under the dim light, they had an enchanting charm, as if they were monsters that were about to jump out of the walls.

To get business, practically all the buildings had neon lights and sign boards outside the buildings. It was either this or alluring strokes drawn in the shape of seductive human bodies. Some also played the bloody and exciting clashes between monsters and how they ended up having their guts ripped out.

Many teenagers in cloaks and monster masks zipped through the alleys at lightning speed on their roller skates. No one knew what they had under their cloaks. It could be smuggled materials, bloodstained betting chips, lethal weapons, or crazy illegal drugs.

Some people laughed loudly at the entrance of coliseums and tossed a small number of betting chips skyward. When the chips fell, they made tinkering sounds.

Some people wept silently by rubbish dumps. After they shed their final tear, they clenched their fists tightly, rose up with fierce gazes, and walked into the darkness.

The countless lustrous scenes had a distorted, bewitching vitality that could not be ignored.

It was the lair.

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