The Ordinary Me is Worshipped as a Deity by the Extraordinary Them - Chapter 147

——“But if the truth was something like this, then this world would be more than just ordinarily damned.”

Entering the city proved to be no great difficulty. After being wrapped in three layers of elements, Su Li walked among the crowd and, compared to those people who bore various animal characteristics, merely appeared as someone who still maintained a complete human form.

Entry into the city required no identity proof like the human passes.

Even after entering the city, the general appearance was not too different from human cities—still the uninspiring Western architectural style.

However, when gathering information, the other three who had positioned themselves as attendants began to wrestle over who would be more suitable to accompany Su Li.

Egbert patted his chest and declared, “I thought you all knew clearly the reason I’m accompanying Lord Su Li on this mission.”

Roy rolled his eyes, “Do you want some face or not?”

Lan Zhe refused to get entangled in such trivial matters and simply said, “If you fail to protect Su Li, or allow even the slightest scratch to appear on him, believe me, even if it requires running continuously for an entire year, I will drag you back to Sadina City so that Castor can tie you to the research table.”

Su Li pinched the bridge of his nose, “That’s not really necessary.”

So in the end, they split into pairs.

Su Li and Egbert walked toward one side of the bustling street, while the other two went the other way.

“Why do we live together in mixed communities? I don’t know either. I only know that when I was living in the Inner City, on a certain day when I awakened my monster beast bloodline, I was suddenly knocked unconscious by someone with vertical pupils, then directly thrown into this city.”

“What good food is there here? Nothing really good. The roasted lamb in the west of the city isn’t much different from human cities.”

“Has anything big happened recently? I know about this one—all one hundred newcomers from the training ground were taken away by people who seemed much more capable than before.”

“Don’t you find the wings on your body bothersome? Wow! I’m not kidding, to solve the problem of these wings interfering with my work, I have to poke two holes in the back of every new piece of clothing I buy. But even so, after putting the wings through properly, the root area still shows. Later, some clever person figured out to put buttons at the tear points. When dressing, you unbutton them, and after the big wings are properly arranged, the exposed root area gets covered when the buttons are fastened again, making everything perfect and neat.”

“What is the training ground?”

“It’s where everyone fights.”

“Why were the top hundred taken away? Speaking of which, when I saw you asking the neighboring shop owner earlier, you were also asking these difficult-to-answer questions. As for why they were taken away? I don’t know either. But I do know that being in the top hundred is proof of strength, so I want to become one of those hundred too. Unfortunately, I can’t do it right now, so I can only wait until this batch of top hundred is taken away, then try to become one of the top hundred when the next training ground opens.”

“What currency is used?”

“Gold coins, of course, but the prices here are much more expensive than in the Inner City.”

After the four reconvened at their separation point and exchanged information, they discovered that the focus was all on the so-called training ground.

“Should we go take a look?” Egbert frowned. His intuition told him it wasn’t a good place, but considering how much the residents here anticipated it, perhaps it wouldn’t be too bad?

“Let’s go.” Su Li nodded. “When those residents told us about things related to the training ground, most people showed envious expressions, but at the same time, some of them were trembling slightly, as if they feared something, yet couldn’t say exactly what they feared.”

Roy shrugged, “That sounds really mysterious.”

“Don’t tell me you didn’t notice.” Lan Zhe was holding an apple he’d bought from a roadside stall. After careful examination, he concluded, “Even if food becomes scarce, we don’t need to worry about starving to death in monster beast society.”

Lan Zhe even had a moment where he wanted to rent a stall and get rid of some of the excess food supplies he’d stored, to free up space.

But that wasn’t the point.

The point was the so-called training ground—the central stage of this city.

Upon arriving at the location, they found a large circular platform with a diameter of thirty meters, in front of which stood something explaining the rules of the training ground.

“First, every resident of Rota County must participate in training once per month. If one fails to enter the top hundred for six consecutive times, they will be directly taken away by the various tribes.”

“Second, each failure requires payment of double the previous failure fee to maintain residency status in Rota County. If payment cannot be made, one will be directly taken away by the various tribes.”

“Third, any resident attempting to escape Rota County will be directly taken away and dealt with by the various tribes.”

After reading these texts, Roy made a pointless observation, “So the place we’re staying is called Rota County.”

Lan Zhe clenched his right fist and mechanically tapped it against his left palm, as if calculating something, saying, “I think what needs more attention is the fact that this city probably has thirty to forty thousand residents.”

“And every six months, a large batch gets taken away,” Egbert added with an ugly expression.

“Those who properly enter the top hundred only number six hundred. Those who don’t make it either can’t provide funds for residency rights and are forcibly taken away, or they’re forcibly taken away while trying to escape. In the end, rather than saying this city needs a major population change every six months, it’s more accurate to say that large numbers of people are being replaced every month.”

“Assuming everyone can pay for six months of residency fees, then every six months, the city’s population would be completely renewed. This means that every year, fifty to eighty thousand people with awakened monster beast bloodlines would appear.”

“Such a number simply cannot exist!” Roy shouted in disbelief.

“With so many people, if the royalty in the Inner City hadn’t discovered anything, wouldn’t their brains be flooded with the entire moat water of the Mercenary City?”

“This number is indeed unlikely,” Su Li said with a frown.

Euphia’s statistics on the Mercenary City showed that during the six months of the reform plan, not a single person with awakened monster beast bloodline had appeared.

“Unless the humans being kept aren’t just in Amikbi.”

“Or perhaps every awakener is brought to Rota County immediately upon showing the first signs of reaction.”

“This way, we naturally couldn’t know these people had come here. We would only think they died from various accidents or went missing.”

“Amikbi’s total population is around ten million, with about 150,000 newborns last year and a death toll of 300,000. To extract seventy to eighty thousand monster beast bloodline awakeners from these numbers seems somewhat incredibly excessive.”

“But it’s not impossible, is it?” Compared to the existence of another breeding area, Lan Zhe thought it more likely that, “After all, as far as we know, Amikbi’s royalty possesses mermaid bloodline.”

“With a king actively covering things up, plus nobles following the king’s orders, even if an additional seventy to eighty thousand people ‘died,’ it wouldn’t be too much of a problem, would it?”

“Looking at these numbers, it just seems impossible.” Su Li even found Lan Zhe’s speculation absurd.

Those weren’t seventy to eighty people—those were seventy to eighty thousand people!

Moreover, since the second and third rules existed at the training ground, this number could potentially be even higher.

How could such a thing go unnoticed?

“Then let’s put it differently. Let’s assume the king knows nothing, and that among the monster beasts there happen to be those capable of manipulating human memories.” Seeing the incredulity filling Su Li’s green eyes, Lan Zhe decisively changed his explanation.

“If this premise exists, when people brought to Rota County disappear, with those around them knowing nothing about the disappearance, the nobles in charge of population records would only classify them as accidental disappearances, wouldn’t they?”

Even Su Li couldn’t refute this second possibility.

There weren’t many good nobles in the Inner City.

Even the destroyed Tross family, upon later investigation, had privately maintained slavery and kidnapped many ordinary people to mine gems…

That place appeared glamorous on the surface but was actually a den of corruption.

Those managing population records, even if they classified disappearances as accidental deaths, and the people around the disappeared knowing nothing of their disappearance, would naturally not generate any suspicion.

Su Li, who had never bitten his nails to the point of stuffing them in his mouth even when facing a dragon, broke his left fingernail at this moment.

More frustratingly, the passersby didn’t give him time to dwell on this cruel number for long.

They said things like: “Tomorrow’s the new round of training. I’m really looking forward to it. This time I’ll definitely make it into the top hundred.”

“What are you talking about? Even if it’s the top hundred, I’m the one who should get in. A weakling like you should just honestly pay the failure fee.”

Such conversations were completely abnormal!

Su Li now had reason to believe what Lan Zhe had said—that monster beasts capable of tampering with memories really existed.

No matter what one did, they would be taken away. The so-called top hundred of the training ground, at this point, seemed very much like tools provided by the Beast, Water, and Winged tribes to improve the survival rate of monster beast transformation.

Or potions?

Otherwise, determining the top hundred would be meaningless.

After all, the final outcome was being taken away regardless.

Rather than determining a hundred people, it was more like the top hundred had earned themselves a higher chance of survival through their own efforts.

Though behind this still lay an unknown mortality rate.

But.

Humans couldn’t help but be curious about the unknown.

In other words, everyone here had either had their memories tampered with, or there was some irresistible force suppressing their curiosity.

Otherwise, there was no way to explain why, despite retaining past memories and knowing they lived under the extreme oppression of the training ground’s three rules, they could continue to maintain such an unknowing, unaware appearance for so long.

Pretense?

Self-deception?

But the very existence of [Madness Disease] seemed to prove that the brains of transformed monster beasts had fundamental problems from the source, not just so-called genetic influences…

Could Rota County be the original starting point that caused everything?

Su Li fell into an unending brainstorm, while the other three, noticing the darkening sky, could only take him to find an inn.

Whatever the training ground and the so-called top hundred meant, that would have to wait until tomorrow.