Chapter 349 - Fire and Electricity
Chapter 349: Fire and Electricity
It was hard to imagine that monsters would be willing to turn themselves into walking biochemical bombs if they did not possess higher intelligence.
Meng Chao felt that the Mystery of the Supernatural Entities that was hidden behind the abnormal beasts had risen to the surface two years before what he remembered.
If there really was a satellite city that had been corrupted by the Other World to the point that it had lost its identity, it had all the time to calmly expand and infiltrate the Dragon City in his previous life due to the White Spirit making the Red Radiance Jade mine explode, which dealt a heavy blow to the city. At that time, Dragon City did not have the strength to launch new offenses on outside forces for at least two years.
Now, due to Meng Chao creating the butterfly effect, not only did Dragon City not lose its soldiers, the golden era had come about.
The Red Dragon Army obtained the resources from the developing area in the north, and its firepower was even greater than before.
Dragon City could advance boldly in all directions. Within a short half a year, it managed to expand its controlled territory by 30%. It even set up observation towers at spots that were nearly one hundred kilometers away from the city, so they could monitor an incredibly large area.
If the abnormal beast organization allowed Dragon City to continue winning all their battles and growing, no matter where the distorted satellite city hid, it would eventually be discovered.
So, Meng Chao believed that they had been forced to attack.
Many of the major events that should have happened two or three years later might come within the next three or five months.
This was good.
Based on the White Spirit and Gao Ye’s cases, the secret weapons—the Nine Great Supernatural Entities—had yet to be perfected.
The infiltration of Dragon City might not have reached the degree that Meng Chao remembered, where they were everywhere, either.
If they brute-forced their plan, there was a high chance they would reveal their organization, and Dragon City could destroy them in one go.
The day they solved the Mystery of the Supernatural Entities would be the day Dragon City won the Monster War.
When the monsters’ intellect increased, which was reflected in their actions, all sorts of brand new abnormal beasts popped up. The power of the abnormal beast research department also increased, and it began to recruit people from everywhere and mobilize people from other fields.
Even so, the core members were so busy that they could no longer tell night from day. Each of the high-grade investigators was usually in charge of more than ten cases at any point in time.
Otherwise, Lu Siya would not have had the chance to become Meng Chao’s instructor.
Since they faced a severe lack of manpower and Meng Chao usually performed rather outstandingly, his course completion test was basically just for show, and on the second day after he passed it, he was sent to the frontlines, even though the task was almost entirely beyond him.
He was sent to a garbage power plant near Dragon City’s steel corporations in the north of the city.
After Dragon City transmigrated, it could find almost no gasoline and coal underground. Aside from a handful of solar-powered power supply facilities, the thermal power plants in the city were crippled for twenty years.
Then, humans gradually mastered the technology of using fire-based crystals, electricity-based crystals, and all sorts of monsters to generate electricity. Household appliances that could be seen everywhere on Earth, like TVs, computers, and lights finally returned then.
However, to Dragon Citizens, the most important function of electricity was not to light up TVs and computers.
Instead, it was to provide power to the community defense systems. They were activated by high-voltage electricity and protected normal humans from monsters.
All the communities, regardless of whether they were rich, poor, new, or old, were fortified.
The moment danger arose, the roads were locked down and metal nets were connected to high-voltage electricity.
They used electricity-powered drive gears to set up layers of armor outside the buildings, which covered the doors and windows.
There were also offensive electromagnetic coils everywhere in the communities, along with searchlights that could blind people. All of them needed electricity to work.
If the power grid was crippled, even if they were able to fortify the city somehow, their defense would be compromised, and their defense lines might be destroyed by monsters.
It was precisely because the electricity-based defenses were so important that there were more than one power plant in Dragon City, which had tens of millions of people.
They had built five power plants without caring about pollution issues. One plant could be found in the east, west, south, north, and center of the city.
Many of the important units had their own crystal generators as well to ensure that the electromagnetic towers and searchlights could continue functioning when there was a power outage due to something happening to the external conducting materials.
Normal and old residential areas naturally did not have such advanced technology.
In the last three months, there had been at least five fogs. When the monsters attacked, the power plants encountered mysterious explosions. The power grids were crippled, and residential areas which were going through the fortification process suddenly experienced power outages, so the electrical nets that should have had high-voltage electricity coursing through them were torn to shreds by a gentle tug from the monsters.
Without electricity, the defenses of the residential areas instantly fell.
In the darkness, people’s mental strength indices fluctuated much more, and they were much more likely to be devoured by fear.
Once, five residential areas had suddenly experienced power outages. The monsters successfully broke down four of the defense lines and engaged the citizens in melee combat.
The citizens disregarded their safety and fought while smiling in the face of death, and they were finally able to send the monsters away.
But the citizens also paid a heavy price.
There was not even a need to mention how many casualties they suffered. Most of the buildings in the residential areas were also destroyed. The reinforced bars were melted by the monsters spitting fierce flames, and the buildings began to sway. They could collapse at any moment. Some of them also turned into paradises for pests which had rushed inside to spit acid and venom in the internal structure of the buildings.
Initial estimates stated that more than ten thousand residential apartments were damaged beyond repair
The problem of housing its citizens had bothered Dragon City for years. Up till then, there were still countless citizens who were forced to live in dark, cramped, and humid lairs. And those places had a high crime rate as well.
There were also countless citizens whose three generations were squeezed into a small house of sixty square meters, which meant that there were more than ten people living in that house.
It was also normal for two- and three-layered bunk beds to be placed in houses with only a height of two or three meters.
Yet more than ten thousand citizens had lost their homes in one night, which made the problem of living space in Dragon City even worse.
If they could not solve it properly, the problem could intensify to a dangerous degree.
Perhaps that was the goal.
The abnormal beast research department investigated the data from the past few years.
They noticed that the five sudden power outages were different from the previous crippling of power grids due to the overload of the defense system.
The power companies in Dragon City had performed a full technical upgrade of the power grids in the last year. Even if there were more than one hundred residential areas that had to go through fortification, they could support the electromagnetic towers to release their most powerful attacks.
But the last five times the fog descended, the power plants near where monsters surged out of the space-time rifts experienced mysterious explosions.
Yet those power plants were not surrounded by fog, so they should not have been targeted by any monsters.
“When the fog descends, some monsters must be quietly sneaking into the power plants. They patiently wait under the power plants until the next fog and launch suicidal attacks at the power plants when they have to operate at full capacity so that they can create beneficial situations for the new batch of monsters who have to destroy human apartments.”
This was the theory of the experts from the abnormal beast research department.
Based on the past few battles, the monsters of different species seldom knew to fight together. Sacrificing themselves to create offensive chances for their comrades on different battlefields seemed to be a concept unique to humans.
If the monsters were really able to do it, they had to possess near-human intelligence.
And if they knew how to lurk around and ambush power plants because they were important facilities, it meant that the monsters had come to realize that the human defense system was related to electricity. They also knew that the huge steam towers could provide endless electricity to the humans.
No matter how everyone thought about it, it was impossible for the simple-minded monsters to know these things. They were highly likely to be abnormal beasts who had absorbed human intelligence.
The weather forecast station in the city predicted another fog.
Also, based on the fluctuations of the space-time rifts, the scale of this fog would be the largest in half a year, and it would also last the longest.
It was highly likely that a large number of Nightmarish Beasts and Hell Beasts would enter Dragon City.
In half a year, the speed at which monsters evolved and mutated had increased. Normal monsters like the Demonic Halberd Pigs had gone through more than ten mutations.
Even though the superhumans and Red Dragon City could rely on the Ultimate Style and other new fighting models that targeted the weaknesses of these mutated species to kill them in the wild until there was nothing of them left, it was a different thing to fight in the city.
A lot of normal citizens lived in the city, and many of the important facilities had flammable and explosive products.
And no matter how much the government fortified the citizens’ apartments, it was impossible to make them as sturdy as battle fortresses.
There was nothing wrong with killing monsters, but if the superhumans ended up using a killing move that could destroy the world at a residential area, they would also end up crushing the residential buildings behind the monsters, which would also reduce their residents into mince meat. That would not be a victory.
The difficulty of urban warfare was much higher.
They were also engaging the enemy while in their own homes with normal humans around them, so they had to be even more careful of their movements. They might not even be able to bring out 50% of their total fighting strength.
If monsters crept in to destroy the power plants during crucial moments and crippled a large number of the power grids, the consequences would be dire.
This time, the fog would descend on a total of seven areas on all sides of the city. All the abnormal beast research department could do against it was to send their elites to the five power plants and set up defenses.
Meng Chao and Lu Siya were sent to the garbage power plant in the north of the city.
It employed the newest biotechnology. Instead of Giant Sandworms, it used unique microorganisms that had been modified to handle the trash.
The processed trash would then go through fermentation and turn into a substance similar to chemical fertilizer.
When this substance was mixed with the excretion of monsters as well as powder from fire-type or electric-type crystals like Lightning Stones, it became the best fuel. The energy conversion efficiency far surpassed that of any thermal power plants on Earth and could turn 65% of the heat into electricity.
This was a rather advanced biotechnology, but now, it turned into a major problem. There were nearly one thousand tons of semi-manufactured goods in the fuel fermentation warehouse.
Meng Chao did not want to know just how big the fire would be if the abnormal beasts used secret arts to ignite the semi-manufactured goods.
According to his memories, however, at least three extremely large fires would break out in the next few years.
The worst one would even swallow one-third of Golden Tooth Lair!