Chapter 118: Whereabouts

The next day, Adam approached Baldie Lin first thing in the morning.

"Hey, can you help me get into contact with someone on the outside? I still don't even know which side you're on. Can you tell me?"

"No."

"I see," Adam replied as a contemplative look appeared in his eyes.

Seeing as Baldie Lin was refusing to reveal the organization that he owed his allegiance to, it was most likely the pawn shop. The pawn shop was constantly maintaining the image of a legitimate business, and they were regularly working with Mechguard, so they had to stay within the boundaries of the law at all times, at least on the surface.

However, the northern congress and the resistance army were different. They were organizations that made the rules, but also ones that broke the rules, and they didn't have to abide by so many conventions and restrictions in their operations.

"What do you want?" Baldie Lin asked as he rolled his eyes at Adam, clearly just trying to avoid trouble as much as possible.

"I want you to contact the outside world in my stead and say that the footage of the incident isn't in Oni-faced Dragon's possession."

"Is that it?"

"That's it."

"Alright, leave it to me. I'll keep you updated."

During the following two days, Adam was constantly waiting for updates. Of course, he didn't just sit and do nothing during this time. Instead, he explored various parts of this underground city with Shae and the others to develop a comprehensive yet general understanding of this place.

Only after developing an in-depth understanding of the city did Adam come to realize just how twisted this place was.

The city was home to a population of over 4,000,000, higher than the population in any of Sandrise City's other 100 areas. One had to realize that the key behind the ability of the other areas of Sandrise City to hold such large populations was the rise of the Internet of Things (IoT) and smart apartments. A single large smart apartment complex could house 1,000,000 people.

However, there were no tall buildings here, nor any convenient avenues to secure food. Furthermore, the entire city was only around 30 square kilometers in size, so theoretically speaking, it shouldn't have been able to hold such a large population.

However, despite the practicalities, the city was able to defy the odds and house this disproportionately massive population. Furthermore, the city received a huge number of visitors, and during peak visit periods, its population swelled to far beyond 4,000,000.

Aside from that, there were two other things that Adam found to be downright astonishing.

Firstly, there were no laws here. The stadium director believed that chaos was the primary motivating force behind human survival, and that any laws would give rise to order, which would in turn create oppression.

The retrofitted mechanical army here was only responsible for defending the city against external threats, and it played no role in governing how the people in the city conducted themselves.

Murder, drug trafficking, sex work, and gambling were all perfectly acceptable here. In fact, there was even an incident where a deranged individual blew around a dozen buildings, killing several hundred people, but the incident wasn't pursued at all.

However, order would always find a way to arise even in the most chaotic places.

If you killed someone, then you had to be prepared for revenge. If you spread terror and panic, then you had to be prepared for others to step in and snuff out the panic and terror at the source.

In the end, the bomb-maker was captured and killed by the "heroic" people of Shadow City.

This chaotic state of affairs was already quite astonishing in itself, but there was something else that Adam found to be even more shocking, which was that Shadow City's natural rate of population increase was higher than that of Sandrise City.

This natural rate of population increase only took into account purely naturally conceived humans without machine surrogacy. What was even more astonishing was that even if mechanical surrogacy births were counted, the birth rate here was still higher than that of Sandrise City.

𝐟𝗿𝐞𝚎𝚠𝐞𝚋𝕟𝐨𝚟𝐞𝕝.𝕔𝕠𝚖

This type of birth rate was already completely unheard of in modern society, yet such a miraculous phenomenon was taking place here of all places. Adam couldn't fathom why this was the case, nor did he care enough to ponder the matter. After developing a rough understanding of how Shadow City operated, all he was interested in was an update from Baldie Lin.

On this day, he and Shae were watching the subway trains in the underground railway system when he received a message from Baldie Lin. It was a very short message, but its contents were extremely encouraging.

"It's confirmed to be true. Come back right now."

"Yes!" A glimmer of hope for them to return to the civilized world had arisen, and Adam gave Shae's back a vigorous thump in excitement before grabbing her and rushing back to the shop.

"Let's go! It's been confirmed that Oni-faced Dragon doesn't have the footage! We have to get back right away!"

The two of them rushed all the way back from the subway station to Uncle Lin's Fire Shop, and upon entering the shop, they discovered that everyone else was already there. Baldie Lin closed the door of the shop, then gathered everyone together in a circle.

"I just received news that Hook... Your name's Hook, right?"

"That's right. It's already been three days, how do you still not remember my name?"

"Because you're ugly," Baldie Lin explained with brutal honesty, then continued, "After the footage captured by Hook was placed into the mechanical delivery bee's parcel box, it didn't fly to its original designated destination."

Baldie Lin pulled up a piece of footage as he spoke, and judging from the angle at which the footage had been shot, it had clearly been captured by Sandrise City's streetside surveillance cameras. In the footage, Hook was in the process of stuffing his video recorder into the parcel box.

"This mechanical delivery bee is one that Oni-faced Dragon intercepted from a legitimate freight company, so it's considered to be an authorized entity, which is why it can fly around the city without being impeded by Mechguard. Theoretically speaking, he must've modified the mechanical delivery bee, which means that the video recorder that you placed into its parcel box should've been delivered to him, right?"

"That's right."

"Logically speaking, that's what should've happened, but there was a point of contention here. This point was already identified back when the footage was first retrieved, but no one paid any attention to it. Take a look here..." Baldie Lin switched through a few images as he spoke. "According to an investigation conducted after the event, this is where Oni-faced Dragon actually was. He was about two blocks away from your vehicle, but the mechanical delivery bee flew away in the opposite direction."

"That could just be because he didn't want to accept the parcel under full view of the surveillance cameras. Who would be stupid enough to do that?"

"That's right. Initially, that was what our people thought as well, so they didn't think much of this. However, after receiving Adam's message, they carefully analyzed the footage to find that after Oni-faced Dragon's car left the scene, it was driven to a certain location, and before it left the area monitored by the city's surveillance cameras, the car was seen driving around in circles in a certain area for quite some time. That can only mean that they're trying to shake off pursuers or have lost their target. Additionally, after accessing more of the city's surveillance footage, we were able to map out the path that the mechanical delivery bee took and determine that it traveled out of the city. Given all of this evidence, it seems that there's a very good chance that Oni-faced Dragon really isn't in possession of the footage."

"If he doesn't have it, then where is it?" Shota Sato asked.

"It's here in Shadow City." It was Adam who replied on this occasion.

He didn't want to reveal his secrets to others, particularly to a member of the Psychic Church like Shota Sato. The Psychic Church itself wasn't a completely unified organization to begin with, so it couldn't be fully trusted.

Hence, he had already prepared a response for when Shota Sato inevitably asked the question of why.

"After sensitive items come out of Sandrise City, where do they most often go? In the small villages and towns outside of the city, everyone knows one another, so it'll be extremely conspicuous if an outsider shows up to accept a parcel, would it not? As for other major cities, that's too far away."

"What you're saying makes sense, but it's a bit of a stretch," Shota Sato said as his brows furrowed slightly.

"Do you have any better ideas?" Nie Yiyi countered.

"At the very least, this gives us some hope!" Hook was also eager to buy into the idea. "Otherwise, what are we going to do? Spend the rest of our lives here in this place?"