Chapter 472: Setting the Rhythm

As for the talk about “we don’t need to go through all that trouble and become tired, we can become superhumans by just taking in the Deification Capsules”, that was an extremely sinister lie.

The current cultivation system had been developed for decades, and it was a comprehensive system that was absolutely scientific.

Gene medicine, high-calorie nutritional fluid, spirit energy magnetic fields, all sorts of meditation and stance techniques, and the constant refinement of the mind and spirit by throwing oneself at the edge of life and death by fighting in blood... all of it was important. There was absolutely no possibility of anyone becoming a peerless superhuman by just taking some pill. Not even miracle medicine could do it.

If one imagined supernatural abilities as a fast race car, the fuel, strength and design of the race car, and the skills of the racer were all equally important. None of them could go missing.

When normal people took in the Deification Capsule, it would be the same as an unmodified car used for groceries by a housewife being injected with super fuel rich with spirit energy and the housewife then trying to race a professional racer.

Since the super fuel was really powerful, during the first few times, the car for groceries would definitely be able to drive at a crazy speed on certain race tracks.

But the car would not be able to maintain this speed for long.

Even if the super fuel could continuously provide energy to the car, the car itself is not strong enough. The slightest crash could easily make it collapse.

And the housewife lacks the skills and mindset of a professional racer. It’s impossible for her to make a car speed down a race track while its engine burns for a long period of time.

In the end, she would definitely end up with the car destroyed and die along with it.

This was the unanimous conclusion that the professional labs from the research department and adjudicator court came up with after they analyzed the Deification Capsule.

If a normal person took the Deification Capsules numerous times, then even if they had a sufficient amount of high-calorie nutritional fluid every single time they used it, their bones, muscles, nerves, and cells would be unable to handle the wild spirit energy fluctuations.

They would become paralyzed, go mad, experience organ failure, and even combust. This was the foregone conclusion for all those who took Deification Capsules again and again.

Using the Deification Capsule to increase one’s strength was basically someone trying to quench their thirst by drinking poison.

The evil drug was absolutely not the hope of normal people. It was just a despicable trap that would bring endless despair.

But when it came to rumors, the moment they started spreading, it required a lot of effort to clear them.

Meng Chao could convince his mother. He could also go out of his way to convince his aunts and his neighbors, but it was impossible for him to use his glib tongue to completely clear the rumors online. There were just too many versions of them, and they were becoming more ridiculous as time passed.

At that moment, Qin Hu came to him and said that some really strange posts had appeared on the official website of the Broken Star Club.

The first post was this.

[I’m a broken-star superhuman. I’ve always adhered to the beliefs of superhumans and fought to defend Dragon City and my comrades. Even if I was injured badly, my spirit meridians withered, my cultivation stopped improving, and I experienced all sorts of complications and sequelae from cultivation, I never regretted it.

[I didn’t expect that the “comrades” that I have been protecting all this while would stab me in the back. After they took the Deification Capsules, they robbed the company that I spent more than ten years building till there was nothing left! They even destroyed the equipment that they couldn’t move!

[It’s all over! My hard work over ten years has been ruined!

[In the end, when I went online to take a look, I saw a lot of normal people complaining that we superhumans haven’t been protecting them. They even said that we’ll abandon normal people and run off to the areas outside the city to build a heaven for superhumans? How ungrateful!]

The second post was similar.

[That’s right. These normal people are greedy, ungrateful bastards. They always say nonsense like “the more powerful you are, the greater your responsibility”. It’s like we must serve them after we awaken to supernatural abilities.

[They should know that the responsibility superhumans bear is already great enough! I’m a hunter in the wild, and I have to offer more than half of the monster materials to the Supernatural Tower whenever I kill a monster so that they can give it to the normal people in the city.

[But look at this! Right now, the government is doing this plan to upgrade old residential areas and a project to provide three nutritional meals. They need a lot of resources for it, so they can only force us superhumans to tighten our belts. Now, we need to offer two-thirds of the materials from the original half.

[Think. We fight with our lives on the line all the time. We’re basically sticking our necks while dancing between our blades and monster fangs. We kill those monsters with our hands, but we can only get one-third of the resources.

[The normal people just stay in the city comfortably and do nothing, but they can get two-thirds of the resources! And they’re constantly complaining about how friggin’ unfair the world is and that we’re always so high-and-mighty and only know how to enjoy our lives. They even say that we want to abandon them! Is that what they should be saying right now?! Is that fair?!]

And there was a third post as well.

[I say, you’re too stupid. Did you really give two-thirds of the materials just because the Supernatural Tower asked you to?

[Hmph. When superhumans protect normal people, it’s out of affection for them, not out of a sense of duty. If the normal people know how to be grateful, then everything is fine. But if they’re going to act like this, why should we send the monster materials back to the city?

[We should just set up secret developing lands and illegal black markets in the wild. After we kill the monsters, we’ll eat them right there, and if we can’t finish them, we can get them to the black market and exchange them for other cultivation resources. In any case, the only thing real is us having to think of ways to increase our strength.

[And if the Supernatural Tower wants to hold us accountable? The law can’t hold a group accountable. If all the superhumans do this, what can the Supernatural Tower do to us?

[In any case, the further we are, the more we will be beyond the control of authority. The situation in the wild has always been complicated, and the internet there is constantly stuttering. If we hunt monsters, eat them, and trade them in secret, no one is going to discover it.

[If you don’t have the courage to do it, at the very least, don’t work so hard when you hunt monsters. You should preserve your life when you cultivate and hunt calmly. That’s still okay with you, right? In any case, even if you hunt many monsters, you’ll just end up sending them back to the city to feed those ungrateful louts! What’s the point in it?!]

There were a few more posts like this.

Meng Chao scowled when he saw it.

“These are all from our members? That’s too extreme!

“People’s aggressive nature has always been much stronger online compared to the real world, but how could they treat the rumors and noise online as something real? In reality, most of the normal citizens still respect and support superhumans. When I walk on campus, a lot of female university students run up to me for my signature!”

“That’s where the problem is,” Qin Hu said. “Our official website requires our members to use their real names to verify their accounts. Each account corresponds to the Broken Star Club members’ club ID. I’ve checked them, and the members who posted the posts yesterday had lost their accounts. They’re not the ones who posted these.”

Meng Chao was stunned. “What?”

“It’s true. These members are baffled themselves. They swore that they never posted these things. Besides, the posts don’t correlate to their identities. Many of them aren’t hunters, and the first guy wasn’t robbed last night. There’s no reason for them to release such provocative posts,” Qin Hu said.

“Our technicians are investigating now, and they’ve already found some loopholes. In truth, when the Broken Star Club created its official website, we never thought much. We just used a template, so it’s very easy for others to hack and steal our accounts.”

“So, you’re saying that someone is setting the rhythm?” Meng Chao came to an understanding.

“Exactly. Most of the Broken Star Club members came from poor families. Even if they’ve already moved out of the old residential areas, plenty of their friends and families are still staying in old residential areas, so they’re very supportive of the plan to upgrade the old residential areas.

“Even if they have to bear even greater responsibility, they won’t complain about it, much less post these things,” Qin Hu said. “It’s obvious that someone is setting the rhythm with these posts. They want to sow discord between the normal people and superhumans.

“By the way, the Broken Star Club’s official website isn’t the only one affected. I’ve discovered signs of someone controlling public opinion in many forums and social media platforms.

“Honestly, over the past half a year, the Survival Committee and the Supernatural Tower have been paying a lot of attention to changing the relationship between superhumans and normal people. They want to close the distance between us.

“Be it their act of announcing the slogan that ‘the blood of the strong flows for the weak’, the upgrades for the old residential areas, the three nutritional meals, the act of having superhumans proactively take part in voluntary work, and creating as well as promoting model superhumans, all of them are to promote Dragon Citizens to work hard and become united.

“Even Lu Siya moved out of her mansion and sold her race car so that she can stroll around the streets with her worn down van every day to help normal people, right?

“She might have ulterior motives, but she’s really doing a lot of stuff and has earned a lot of normal people’s favor. Many of the normal people’s opinions of the rich have changed for the better. Logically, there shouldn’t be this much noise and rumors popping up overnight.”

“You’re right.” Meng Chao massaged his temples. He felt a headache pounding. “Looks like the discordant noises online are the monsters’ new offense toward humans. They want to control public opinion!”

But even if they were now sure of this, it was difficult to fend against it.

Meng Chao told his and Qin Hu’s analysis to Lu Siya and Shen Yupeng.

The sectors related to the research department and the adjudicator court soon used the clues to locate a number of network terminals.

But the people who spread the rumors and sowed conflict were low-class citizens who lived in the slums or squatter areas.

They did not have strength, jobs, or hope, so they were not afraid of any punishments.

Besides, they only saw the rumors online and shared them. At most, they just added fuel to the fire. They were not the source of the rumors, so it was difficult to classify their actions as true crimes.

Besides, when some of the posters were discovered, they still believed that they were speaking on behalf of the general population of normal citizens and defending justice by criticizing the superhumans’ oppression.

Both organizations also discovered a unique email with a vortex watermark in many of their mailboxes.

By the looks of it, they were hypnotized by the Vortex and imagined themselves as the spokespeople of the normal people.

As for the true source of the rumors, they were hidden in the depths of the deep web, and even if the government used all sorts of data mining methods, it was difficult to locate the source in a short time.