Chapter 463: Teacher of Crime

When Meng Chao reached the Supernatural Tower, it was seven in the morning.

The people’s market in front of the Supernatural Tower was already filled with people. It was full of normal citizens and superhumans who were there to report cases.

The law enforcers of the adjudicator court were known as the secret police. To prevent alerting the superhuman criminals while they were investigating a case and causing them to act in desperation, which would lead to even greater damage, they did not wear uniforms and conducted investigations as well as executions in secret.

But the adjudicator court itself was no secret.

Its headquarters was located in the Supernatural Tower.

In truth, when the Supernatural Tower was first formed, its goal was to arbitrate the conflicts between normal people and superhumans, as well as the conflicts between superhumans.

Up to that date, the Supernatural Tower still had stations to report crimes and boxes to inform the adjudicator court about criminal cases. If the normal people felt that they were harassed by superhumans, they could report the cases directly or do so anonymously.

Ever since the Supernatural Tower had been formed, it had been nearly thirty years since Dragon City encountered a night like this, where order was completely destroyed.

It was no wonder then why the station the adjudicator court set up to report cases was cramped!

Meng Chao had not contacted Shen Yupeng yet. He looked around and saw a lot of Broken Star Club members in the crowd.

The Broken Star Club members also saw him. They squinted and stared at him for a long time before they dared to come up to greet him. While they asked him about his training in the wild, they also told him about what had happened during the night.

While listening to the broken-star superhumans’ descriptions, Meng Chao realized that Superstar was not the only one that suffered major losses. Many of the broken-star superhumans and the middle or small firms they opened were also robbed.

The reason for it was very simple. The middle-grade and high-grade superhumans who came from cultivation families and were Heaven Realm superhumans usually lived in high-end apartments with tight security systems.

Ever since the new zombie virus and Blood Flower spores wreaked havoc, the defense systems of the high-end apartments went through full upgrades, and the residents were all above average elites.

Even if the robbers, who were normal people, ate ten Deification Capsules in one go, it would be impossible for them to break through the defenses of the high-end apartments and rob the powerful fighters’ apartments.

Most of the residential areas where normal people lived in had not been upgraded yet, so they were easy targets.

The problem was, most of the normal people had empty apartments, and they could not get a lot of money from them!

But through the Broken Star Club and the Ultimate Style, the broken-star superhumans had regained hope in cultivating, and all of them were motivated to work hard. They flourished, and they had a lot of cultivation resources accumulated in their apartments and companies.

However, they could not get stronger as fast as Meng Chao. So, if the robbers ate a few Deification Capsules and dared to risk their lives, they would be able to somewhat match the broken-star superhumans.

Naturally, they became fat wallets in the eyes of the robbers.

The Broken Star Club had more than two hundred thousand members.

It was a lax organization that people could join and leave as they pleased, and they were not bound by a lot of restrictions. In other words, it was just a large club house. The Broken Star Club members were essentially no different from supermarket members or public bath house members. Naturally, it was difficult for them to distinguish between who was the good, the bad, the loyal, and the spying.

A day before, a handful of broken-star superhumans with ill intentions had gotten themselves Deification Capsules from somewhere and temporarily gained the power of one-star and two-star superhumans. They turned into robbers and extended their evil claws toward the innocent.

Some of the broken-star superhumans were harmed because of it. It angered the lawful broken-star superhumans so much that they started cussing up a storm. They said that they could not judge a book by its cover and that the rotten eggs destroyed the whole basket. The Broken Star Club had been a good club, but now, it was destroyed by these scum.

Aside from this, Meng Chao also noticed a lot of injured, dejected-looking normal people.

When he spoke to them, he learned that even though they were not the direct targets of the robbers, they were affected by the bombs. The flames from the napalm bombs had burned their bodies or their homes were destroyed during the fights between the robbers and the pursuers.

Just who was supposed to be made accountable for this mess?

The area was noisy and chaotic. Meng Chao waited until noon before he finally saw Shen Yupeng, who came to him swaying and looking haggard.

“Big Brother Peng, are you okay?” Meng Chao was shocked. “You look green in the face. It’s like you’re going to experience organ failure or going to combust at any moment. Do you want to look for a place and enter deep meditation for a while?”

Shen Yupeng made a gesture and said weakly, “Help me out and bring me to a cultivation room, please. The guy confessed. I can finally rest a bit now.”

Meng Chao quickly helped Shen Yupeeng to a cultivation room deep in the Supernatural Tower.

Once Shen Yupeng was submerged in ink green gene medicine and moaned in exhaustion, some color finally returned to his face, and his vitality magnetic field started turning slowly. After seeing this, Meng Chao finally sighed in relief.

“Ning Lang confessed?” Meng Chao opened a high-calorie nutritional fluid and handed it to Shen Yupeng. He asked tentatively, “There were a lot of robberies last night, so they must be connected, right? Could it be that Ning Lang and these robbers belong to some big criminal organization?”

“If we’re talking about connection, there is some bit of connection between them. But Ning Lang doesn’t have any connection with the other robbers. There’s no big criminal organization with a strict order lying around either.” Shen Yupeng looked exhausted. He closed his eyes and contemplated what he knew.

“That’s impossible! These robbers are just chess pieces. There must be an incredibly diabolical chess player behind them!” Meng Chao blurted out.

“There’s a chess player, alright, but there’s no horizontal connection between the chess pieces,” Shen Yupeng said. “In truth, based on Ning Lang’s confession, he’s controlled remotely by this ‘chess player’ online.”

“Online?” Meng Chao’s mind raced. “How was he remotely controlled? The Deification Capsule, the weapons, the meticulous surveillance on the targets, and the bizarre criminal plan all came from the internet?”

“That’s right. It all came from the internet. More accurately, it all came from the deep web.” Shen Yupeng finished the high-calorie nutritional fluid in one go, and his complexion looked a little better. “You know that the materials in the Other World are incredibly unstable. Our computers and internet systems are different from those on Earth.

“We added a lot of monster brain cells and biochemical plug-ins that are imitations of neurons. You can say that they’re the amalgamations of computers and living brains, that’s why we call them superbrains.

“This sort of new data terminal and internet system ensures large scale, real-time information transfer in the Other World, even though it’s filled with spirit energy and materials that are really unstable, but it also provides brand new challenges toward retaining and investigating information, locating the coordinates of terminals, and other things.

“In the deep web, there are one hundred ways for you to perfectly hide your identity and address, then send emails anonymously to have others commit all sorts of dangerous and evil crimes.”

Meng Chao knew this very clearly.

In truth, he had been active on the deep web as the Old Fire Relayer, and even till now, no one managed to see through his disguise.

But… Meng Chao still found it unbelievable.

“The person used an anonymous email to tempt Ning Lang to steal from Superstar’s warehouse?

“That’s not quite possible, right? Based on what I know, Ning Lang is just a hooligan. He wanders about the gray area, and people like him know the boundaries of law the best. Would he risk everything because of one anonymous email and do something so dangerous?”

“He might not have, originally. But when he threw in all his money and even got himself high-interest loans from underground finance companies, then lost everything in the wild and came back with nothing… You can’t really say what he would do after that,” Shen Yupeng said.

“Ning Lang said that he failed his business. After he returned to Dragon City, he was chased by the underground finance companies, and he also had to be accountable to the families of his dead friends. Gradually, he lost himself in the abyss of despair. At that time, if there appeared a burning log that could save his life, he would hold it without a care.

“Coincidentally, at that time, someone sent him an invitation through an anonymous email system in the deep web and asked him whether he was interested in taking part in a huge business.

“Naturally, Ning Lang did not believe it in the beginning.

“Even if he believed it, it would be useless. Because when it came to the big businesses in Dragon City, the legal ones and illegal ones all required you to have awakened to supernatural powers to join.

“In the end, the other party said nothing and just gave him an address. That person did not give any explanation about what it was.

“Ning Lang was conflicted for three days. Once he heard that the debt collectors sent people to his apartment to force him to pay his debts again, he made his decision and went to check out the address mentioned in the email.

“He found that the address brought him to an abandoned factory that was about to be demolished. It was located in the suburbs.

“Then, he received a series of directions in the factory. In the end, he found a Deification Capsule in an abandoned grinder.

“[Eat it.] These words were written on a note stuck to the Deification Capsule.

“There was a bone-chilling air in the entire affair. But Ning Lang had no other choice. He had run into insect hordes in the wild and watched his childhood friends be reduced to skeletons by insects.

“Since then, his mental strength index had not been very stable. His understanding toward life and death became skewed. Not only was he not scared of death, he even had the desire to jump straight into flames like a moth.

“He swallowed the Deification Capsule without hesitation, and for the first time in his life, he experienced what it meant to have supernatural powers.

“Meng Chao, we’re both in Heaven Realm, so we’re already used to one-star superhuman strength. But I think that even if we manage to reach Deity Realm one day, we would never forget how it felt to first awaken to supernatural powers and use them. That peerless excitement and pleasure cannot be described with words.

“Ning Lang got completely addicted to this pleasure. He said that he destroyed the entire grinder until it was just scrap metal, and he felt like he was a God who could do everything.

“Unfortunately, the Deification Capsule the other party gave him was not strong enough. It was probably a test version with really low density.

“Soon, when the effects ran out, he became normal again, and since he was exhausted, he became even weaker than before.

“Ning Lang said that at that moment, he was drenched in sweat and lay on the ground while panting. He could not even lift a finger. The pleasure he had from possessing great strength was completely overwhelmed by a feeling of helplessness.

“There’s a saying, isn’t it? ‘If I had never seen light, I could endure darkness forever.’”

“In Ning Lang’s case, it was if he had never tasted supernatural strength, perhaps he could forever endure a life of normalcy and mediocrity.

“But now, as if he was possessed by madness, he longed to become stronger. He wanted to eat more Deification Capsules and possess peerless power once more. Even if he had to trample on all laws and morals, he wouldn’t care!”