Chapter 162 First Blood!

Ring city, outer city area.

The layout of this city is a traditional fantasy city planning, which is different from the local customs of the Dorne region. The Ring City is a huge city with a black spire in the center and a circular shape on all four sides. The urban planning here is not so modern. It is expanded outward layer by layer, so it is usually divided into the inner city and the outer city. The innermost layer is the residence of the nobles, mainly townhouses, and the town hall is also located next. There are green lawns, well-kept gardens, and manors and villas equipped with various luxury goods. Exquisite statues and gorgeous fountains dot the streets or private courtyards.

Outside is the Elf Street, with high-end shops, parks, arenas, opera houses and other buildings nearby.

The layout planning of the ring city is very interesting, which can be seen from the names of the streets. Many of the streets here are named after races. From the inside to the outside, they are the Elf Street, Dwarf Avenue, Halfling Street, etc. The city planning from the inside to the outside is the college area, garrison area, guild area, market area, cavalry area, red-light district, shanty town, etc.

Various types of buildings are clearly located, dividing the entire city into unbreakable class barriers.

In the Ring City, the slum area covers the largest area. It should be the largest slum in the entire Dagon region, with hundreds of thousands of people living in low shacks. The poorest of the poor live here. Many people cannot even afford to rent a small room in a cheap hotel. They huddle in dilapidated buildings and build small shacks in overcrowded and small spaces, struggling to survive every day.

The residents here are ragged, pale and thin, the streets have been in disrepair for many years, the sewers (strictly speaking, drainage ditches) have been completely clogged with filth, and the whole city is filled with a disgusting stench, even the stench of rotting meat, but it seems that they have long been accustomed to it.

Because there are many half-grown children rummaging through the garbage dump for food and other daily necessities that can be used.

"Sir, do you need any service?" A timid girl's voice sounded.

Xiao En's avatar walked in this filthy city. He disguised himself as a small merchant, wearing a gray robe. He didn't look like a rich man, but he was much better than the poor people who were half-naked. In the alley opposite was a girl about sixteen years old. Her shabby long skirt was stained with filth, and it seemed that she hadn't washed it for a long time. Her hair was also dirty, and you could vaguely see some traces of youth and beauty on her face. She looked at Xiao En timidly, hesitated, looked around, and approached little by little.

The young girl said cautiously, "Only 5 ses. I can serve you, sir."

5 Seth.

In Dorne you could only buy a burrito with meat, but here you could have a young girl selling her body.

Xiao En looked down at the timid and dirty girl in front of him. He was not a saint, but the scenes he saw along the way really made him feel sorry for her. The first big city he went to was Dorne. For a long time, he had always believed that even if other places were not as good as Dorne, they should not be too far behind. But now he completely overturned all of this.

This place is more like hell than Abyss City. At least in Abyss City you can get enough food.

The area around the city gate still looked a bit like human life, but in the slums built on the garbage dump, Xiao En really saw countless numb zombies.

He reached out and pulled out a 1 dinar note and handed it to the girl in front of him.

A hint of surprise appeared in the girl's eyes. She turned around carefully, walked into the alley, lifted her skirt and said, "Sir, I can serve you twice."

"gentlemen?"

When she turned around, there was no one behind her.

Outside the slums is a huge mountain of garbage, with many young children playing in the garbage. Many of them don't even have a piece of clothing, are covered in filth, and are accompanied by flies and maggots. If you give them a little money or food, you will soon be surrounded by them, with pairs of hungry and expectant eyes staring at you.

Further outside are the cavalry area and warehouse area.

The caravans arriving in the city would store their mules and horses here. The streets were littered with animal dung, and in the raised dust one could see coolies with numb and stiff expressions on both sides of the road. The goods would be unloaded here and then sent to the warehouse area, and then transferred to the market area the next day.

Among the flies flying all over the sky, the adult laborers who came from the slums had no expression on their faces. They rarely took the initiative to take work. They just lay there with stiff expressions, waiting for someone to take the initiative to find them to do work.

lazy.

Or they have become completely numb, because no matter how hard they work, they cannot change their fate. They will never have a place to stay here and will always live in dirty shacks in the slums. They will never be able to live with dignity as human beings.

Because they can't see any hope of changing their fate, their hearts are covered with a gray haze, which gradually distorts their egos.

They are like ostriches, burying their heads in the ground and living with a corpse-like body.

“The ritual just makes it more extreme.”

"If there were no rituals, they wouldn't be so lazy due to their desire to survive, but the rituals made their desire to survive disappear little by little."

They are dying a slow death.

These people have been completely domesticated. Even if they live a life worse than pigs and dogs, they do not have the courage to resist, because laziness makes them content with the status quo until death comes.

There is no shortage of labor in the ring city.

Because there are too many people doing low-level jobs here.

A middle-aged man who looked like a businessman stopped the mules and horses, then he turned around and picked out some strong-looking laborers from the corners of the street, just like selecting livestock. Only then would those numb and lazy men stand up on their own initiative.

"You, you, and you." The businessman picked out three coolies who looked stronger.

The other laborers saw this and had no intention of competing for it. After the selection was completed, they squatted in the corner with numb faces, staring at everything in front of them with lifeless eyes. Some of these people have been starving to the point of being skinny because they have not been able to get work for a long time. If they were in other places, they would have been unable to resist stealing and robbing, and would have done something that would have given up their bottom line, but they did not. They would have been lazy until they starved to death. In fact, they would not starve to death, because when they were twisted to a certain extent, they would start to eat other things.

The laborers were bent over by the heavy boxes of goods. They lowered their heads to carry the goods and sent them to the warehouse area. The street was full of such people, who were more obsessed than mules and horses. After all, mules and horses were the merchants' own wealth and needed to be well taken care of.

boom.

A laborer seemed to be in a trance. Suddenly, his foot slipped and the goods on his shoulders fell down. Among the scattered boxes, some expensive goods were scattered all over the ground.

"idiot!"

"What did you do?" The furious businessman raised his whip and whipped him.

A trace of blood appeared.

The merchant whipped the man several times but still seemed unsatisfied, so he kicked the man's storefront, and blood immediately flowed out.

He angrily exclaimed: "You are fired!"

"Get out of here!"

Damn untouchables.

The merchant raised his whip and lashed out again, but this time, the laborer in front of him reached out and grabbed his whip. When he raised his head, the merchant saw a pair of eyes emitting a cold green light. This terrifying look immediately made his heart tremble, and he could not help but think of some recent rumors.

It is said that some people have disappeared in the lower city recently. It is said that a guard patrolling in the middle of the night saw someone going to the sewer to catch rat maggots to eat. It is said that the bodies of some people who were recently buried in the cemetery have disappeared, and so on.

These untouchables in the city have always behaved very docilely. Even when they were so hungry that they had to catch rats gnawing at debris in the middle of the night, look for food in the garbage dump, or eat maggots and rotten meat in the sewer, they dared not resist at all.

But this time, he saw a terrifying look in the eyes of the hard laborer in front of him, as if he was ready to devour anyone!
boom.

The laborer grabbed the whip and lashed the merchant who had been exploiting them for a long time. A bloodstain appeared on the fat pig-like face. Along with the smell of blood, the green light in the laborer's eyes became more and more obvious, and his Adam's apple even moved hungryly.

"What are you going to do?!" The fat businessman was frightened to death. He felt like the other party wanted to eat him. The numb expression gradually disappeared.

The dark-skinned laborer looked at the terrified merchant in front of him, as if he had discovered a new world. He whipped him with his backhand again, and a shrill wail sounded. The fat merchant then remembered something, and the rich man said, "Guards! Guards! Go call the guards!..."

Several figures came running over quickly.

The hunched laborer suddenly laughed wildly. He pounced forward, grabbed the merchant's fat face and started biting it. Amid the gushing blood, the merchant's skin was bitten off by him. The laborer swallowed it without chewing. Then he bit the merchant's neck, holding his neck and drinking the blood. The fat merchant struggled for a few times and then lay on the ground motionless.

A stream of blood spread along the street.

As if they smelled something, the other coolies, who had previously had numb and lazy expressions, raised their heads, and some even dipped their hands in the blood flowing on the ground and put it in their mouths to suck it.

There was enough food in the ring city to feed these people, but that food did not find its way into the hands of the poor.

Gluttony often means waste.

The dark ritual that shrouds the city divides reality into two worlds.

Every day, people here look for scraps from the piles of garbage carried out from the aristocratic district. These garbage also feed the countless swarms of rats and maggots in the sewers.

A team of fully armed guards came hurriedly, led by a fat and sturdy man. He used to be very strong, but now he was fat and strong.

When he saw the scene in front of him, he drew his sword without hesitation and stabbed the laborer who was gnawing at the merchant's neck.

puff!

The sharp sword pierced the laborer's heart directly. The captain of the guard turned over the body, glanced at his slightly green pupils, and said in a deep voice: "Deal with the body."

The peon ate something he shouldn't have.

Two slightly fat guards carried the body of the laborer and walked out. Because of the unexpected incident, the garrison quickly sent a patrol. A sheriff as strong as a pig also arrived quickly. He got off the carriage while wiping the sweat off his face. Ten minutes later, the guards blocked the street.

Over there in the slums.

Three guards were dragging the body of the laborer out when suddenly a cry was heard. A woman came staggering over, followed by a young child. Unlike the other people nearby who were pale and skinny, the woman and the child had a hint of blood on their faces. They looked at the man's body covered in blood and froze in place for a moment.

Sonorous!

The fat guard drew his weapon and slapped the woman who rushed towards him to the ground with his backhand. A stream of blood instantly flowed from the woman's forehead.

A guard stopped the woman, looked at the sky, and said in a deep voice: "Hurry up and deal with the body."

The other two guards nodded, turned around and dragged the body towards the cemetery.

The woman lay helplessly on the ground, watching her husband's body being dragged away. She curled up on the filthy ground, her eyes already blurred by tears.

I don’t know how long it took.

She slowly got up, and with a numb expression, she reached out to hold the crying child beside her, and walked towards the slums with an expressionless face. After passing through a winding and dirty alley, the woman pushed open the door of the shack. This simple little room was only ten square meters, and all the things were piled together. There were pots and bowls on a shabby table, and there were leftover porridge in them, and some leftovers that were obviously picked up from swill.

"Eat."

The woman picked up the bowl and served some food to her young child. She looked with a gloomy look at the neighbors outside who were looking out but had numb expressions.

creak.

She slowly closed the door.

The woman walked step by step to the corner of the kitchen. She reached out and opened the worn-out pottery jar, which emitted a foul smell of blood. When she opened it, she could see some furry animal carcasses with traces of processed food next to them. That was her husband's food. He didn't allow her and her son to eat it, but he ate a lot of it himself.

The woman grabbed the mouse corpse and started to eat it in big mouthfuls. Her desperate and gray eyes were full of pain, and blood flowed from the corners of her mouth.

At some point, she clenched a knife.

"Mom!... Eat..." The young child didn't know what was going on. He tremblingly held a broken bowl and put the food in the bowl in front of the woman.

The woman with blood in her mouth looked up in shock. There seemed to be a glimmer of light shining in her dead and gray eyes.

A foul smell of blood emanated from the dilapidated shack.

Just when others thought that another person could not bear it, the tightly closed door slowly opened again. The woman, holding her young child, knelt in front of the neighbors. With her trembling bloody hands, she forcibly pressed the child's head down, pressing his head into the filth on the ground, and made him kneel in front of these people.

She was seeking a way to save her child.

Necropolis.

The two guards dragged the man's body all the way to the cemetery. They could no longer throw the garbage into the sewer as there was a big problem. There was an infestation of rats, maggots, flies, cockroaches and other creatures. The untouchables in the slums were ignorant of the dangers and some of them went crazy after eating these things.

"Bury it directly? Or burn it?" a fat guard turned his head and asked.

It was getting dark.

Another guard wiped his sweat, untied his armor that was too fat to wear, and said, "Just bury him. What if he gets dug out again?"

"it's getting dark!"

The fat guard said, "Then burn it. Go find some firewood."

Night gradually falls.

At some point, a cold wind blew through the gloomy cemetery. The body of a man thrown casually on the ground suddenly twitched. The next second, he opened his eyes. His cloudy dark yellow eyes were full of bloodthirstiness and madness. He climbed up in an instant, and grabbed the guard's neck with his hands with sharp nails. Blood gushed out, and he opened his mouth full of sharp teeth and bit the guard's thick neck.

"What about people?"

A few minutes later, another guard returned. He looked around in confusion and was instantly knocked to the ground by a foul-smelling black shadow.

Hunger does not disappear with death.

………………

(End of this chapter)