Chapter 333: 2D Civilization

Meng Chao looked through the photos in his hands and said nothing for a long period of time.

“We observed them for a few years,” Ye Xiaoxing continued. “The new generation of Dragon King Town has a couple characteristics. They’re all men, or rather, they resemble men. In truth, due to them reproducing asexually, the concept of gender has long since disappeared in Dragon King Town.”

“Wait.” Meng Chao frowned and said, “Even if all the women who transmigrated from Earth died, the new generation born in the Other World should have a relatively balanced male to female ratio, right? This asexual reproduction should at most last for only one generation. How could all of them be men?”

“You’re smart, so you must have guessed that the Divine Tree does not give the humans the chance to reproduce on their own; otherwise, how would they continue to have a symbiotic relationship?” Ye Xiaoxing said.

“We don’t know what sort of method the Divine Tree used. It could be genetic modification or something else, but in any case, it decided the gender of the new generation of humans and ensured that humans lost the concept of gender and ability to reproduce themselves so that they would rely on it to pass on their genes.

“Similarly, through genetic modification, the Divine Tree carved a large amount of machinery and civil engineering knowledge into the genes of the new generation humans so that they don’t need to learn but are born with a lot of knowledge and skill. This allows them to be excellent workers and fighters.

“But if the disadvantage of this is that they know how to use those skills, but don’t know the reasoning behind it. The humans it created no longer have creativity. Their skills are simple imitations of their fathers and grandfathers’ skills. They don’t know the principles behind them at all. Of course, to them, it’s enough if they can use simple machines and skills for civil engineering.

“One more thing about them, this new generation of humans has also lost the ability to directly digest food. After they hunt monsters, they cut them up and bring them to the roots of the Divine Tree so that it can enjoy the juiciest parts of the monster first. Then, the Divine Tree excretes a substance that is similar to nutritional fluid, and the new generation humans survive on the juices of the Divine Tree.

“In time, the new generation humans’ digestive system changed because of that. They became really weak. Aside from the Divine Tree’s juices, they can’t digest anything else. You can see a new generation human’s mouth in this photo. Their teeth have degenerated pretty badly. They practically lost the ability to bite.

“Naturally, the new generation humans worship the Divine Tree. They treat it as the giver of life. The entire civilization is based on the Divine Tree, if you can even consider their small world as a civilization.

“After the Divine Tree modified their genes, they forgot the glorious past on Earth and their identity as Earthlings. They treat themselves as the citizens of the Divine Tree. It is their queen ant, their master, and their God.

“Meng Chao, do you think that these Dragon King Town members are still real humans and our comrades?”

Meng Chao had nothing to say to that.

He pointed at a picture and asked, “What are these people doing? Peeing?”

In the photo, a row of Dragon King Town members had their backs turned to the camera. They stood facing the Divine Tree with their loincloths removed. They seemed to be peeing.

Ye Xiaoxing was silent for a while before he shook his head slowly and said, “No.”

Lu Siya coughed softly by the side and Meng Chao looked at her.

Lu Siya met his stare with an expressionless mask.

Meng Chao then instantly understood.

Truly... humanity had become distorted, and morals had died!

“What is this?”

Meng Chao pointed at another photo.

It depicted something like a funeral in Dragon King Town. One of the humans had died, and the other town members were digging a shallow pit near the roots of the Divine Tree to place him there.

By the looks of it, they wanted the Divine Tree to completely digest and absorb the corpse.

They lived in a world shrouded by fog where resources were limited. In order to survive, even corpses were valuable resources. They could not waste even a single bit of them.

Meng Chao could understand and accept this sort of burial custom.

What he could not understand was why the deceased’s corpse had a huge poster on it with a cute anime girl.

Based on the bright colors of the poster, it was impossible for it to be a product from before the transmigration. It was something that had just been printed.

This meant that even though Dragon King Town had become completely different decades after transmigrating and the new generation humans had forgotten the glory of Earth’s civilization, they still had the ability to print large posters of cute 2D anime girls?

This was too strange!

“This is a unique belief and custom among the new generation of Dragon King Town members,” Ye Xiaoxing explained. “Since their world was nearly destroyed by women, they hate and fear women in reality. To prevent the appearance of new women, the Divine Tree also strengthened this hate and fear in their genes.

“‘Women are demons’—this is a psychological brand printed in the hearts of the new generation Dragon King Town members.

“But a heterosexual’s longing for someone of the opposite sex cannot be completely wiped out by any psychological brand.

“Besides, to maintain some degree of fighting strength so that they would hunt more monsters, the Divine Tree needs to maintain the androgen levels of the new generation humans at a rather high level. But that inevitably leads to people having wishful thinking.

“Coincidentally, Dragon King Town had a few institutes of machinery and civil engineering. Many of their students liked anime girls.

“The women in reality are witches and demons who can cause men to kill each other, which led to the near destruction of Dragon King Town, but anime girls are different. They’re gentle, cute, and harmless.

“Of course, reality has a different art style from anime. Even if the Divine Tree placed psychological brands, they can still tell that anime is fake.

“But humans are amazing at deluding themselves. Since they live in a world filled with despair, anime girls turned into their solace.

“In the unique views of the new generation humans, the anime world is heaven.

“As long as they fight bravely for the Divine Tree and bring back more monsters, once they die, they can enter an anime world and be surrounded by countless anime girls... I believe that’s what they believe.

“Now, there are all sorts of anime products in the current Dragon King Town. This poster is one of them. There are also vivid dolls. They’re practically the only mental support and entertainment of the new generation humans.”

“Got it, Captain Ye. I agree with you. These people are completely different from us.” Meng Chao frowned. “But is Dragon City going to watch Dragon King Town continue to fall and do nothing about it? We should save our comrades from the evil rule of the Divine Tree!”

“How are we supposed to save them?” Ye Xiaoxing demanded. “Dragon King Town is too far away from Dragon City. If we want to go there, we have to pass a few mountains infested with monsters. We can’t spread out a large army through the area either.

“More importantly, the humans over there have already formed a symbiotic relationship with the Divine Tree, and it cannot be broken. Right now, all of the Dragon King Town citizens are born from the Divine Tree. If Dragon City sends powerful fighters to destroy the Divine Tree, they’re going to fight against us to the bitter end.

“Also, don’t forget what I just said, the digestive system of the humans in the town is very weak. They can’t digest anything besides the juices of the Divine Tree.

“We suspect that there is a mysterious substance that we don’t know in the juice the Divine Tree excretes. It can’t be replaced by any high-nutritional fluid. If we destroy the Divine Tree, we might end up starving all of the town members to death.

“Even if they don’t starve to death, they have lived in that sort of environment their whole lives. Their culture, morals, customs, states of mind, and beliefs are centered around the Divine Tree. If we destroy the Divine Tree, their minds will break, and they will suffer a pain worse than death. Would that be saving them?

“Regardless of whether or not we’re willing to accept it, when Dragon King Town was nearly destroyed, the Divine Tree’s arrival saved the survivors.

“It doesn’t matter whether it’s original goal was to look for a group of qualified worker ants and soldier ants. In the end, it helped Dragon King Town preserve human civilization, albeit in a very deformed and twisted way.

“If it weren’t for the Divine Tree, Dragon King Town would have been destroyed decades ago in the hands of humans themselves.

“If you look at it from another angle, crudely labelling the Divine Tree as an enemy isn’t suitable, especially when we already have so many enemies to handle.”

Meng Chao thought about it carefully. He had to admit that Ye Xiaoxing made sense.

If he treated survival as the most important thing for a civilization, the Divine Tree did allow Dragon King Town to survive.

Over the decades, it had provided shelter for the humans and helped them reproduce. It even helped humans fend off against monster invasions as well as provided raw materials and gave them a way to pass down their intelligence.

If Dragon City recklessly destroyed the Divine Tree, they would only bring Dragon King Town’s destruction. All of the townspeople might die with the Divine Tree.

Even though Meng Chao thought that the current Dragon King Town was deformed and twisted, this was not a good reason to destroy them. The new generation of Dragon King Town’s people were not the men who had killed each other in the past. Loving anime was not a crime!

“So, what is Dragon City going to do about Dragon King Town?” Meng Chao asked.

“For the time being, we’re only going to observe them from afar,” Ye Xiaoxing said. “Once we absorb the fruits of the northern offense and steadily expand Dragon City’s territory as well as upgrade our technology and fighting power, we’ll handle the situation appropriately.

“Fortunately, the Divine Tree isn’t an Other World creature with high offense and desire to expand its territory. It’s satisfied by just staying in Dragon King Town and controlling this small colony. Besides, after observing it for a long period of time, we noticed that the Divine Tree doesn’t have any intelligence or consciousness. It just has instincts which are familiar to those of a queen ant or queen bee.

“But not all Other World creatures are like the Divine Tree. Many of the high-grade monsters are incredibly offensive and possess high intelligence, or at least, they have the ability to eventually possess super intelligence.

“Think about it, if another satellite city similar to Dragon King Town ended up in the hands of a highly intelligent monster that is much more aggressive, and to survive, formed a symbiotic relationship with them, would this also give birth to a brand new civilization after decades of development?”