Chapter 739: Mortals
Protective bracelets are a unique feature of the Geocentric Grand Prison, and also its strongest anti-escape device.
The entire Geocentric Grand Prison is shrouded in an extremely peculiar spiritual corruption. Ordinary people without a protective bracelet would go mad from this pollution within half a minute, at most.
Even high-tier cultivators cannot entirely resist this corruption; at best, they can merely endure it for a longer period.
Thus, the Geocentric Grand Prison has a rule: everyone must wear a protective bracelet upon entering and exiting.
Furthermore, the prison holds the power to remotely control every inmate's bracelet, capable of deactivating it at any time in the event of an emergency.
"A bunch of mortals, to actually require Sir Tie Xin Mie Jue Zhe's main body for escort..." After Tie Xin Mie Jue Zhe hastily departed, Deputy Warden Mi La muttered, putting away the whip in her hand.
Regarding these particularly fragile small prisoners, she worried that a careless brush of her whip might accidentally take off one of their limbs.
After all, for every inmate brought in, their life and death are recorded on a life card in their file. The jailers could torture them, but they absolutely could not let them die before their appointed time.
If a guard mistakenly killed an inmate, they would directly become a prisoner of the Geocentric Grand Prison themselves, and one whose sentence started at ten years.
"What's wrong with mortals? Are mortals not human? Calling us 'mortals' day in and day out, as if you're so noble. A hundred years ago, who wasn't a mortal?" In the line of inmates, a sharp-eared girl seemed to have caught Mi La's grumbling and immediately retorted.
"This isn't your home, and I'm not your mother." She decided to teach this foul-mouthed and foolhardy wretch a small lesson.
She deactivated the girl's protective bracelet.
Ten seconds later, the bracelet was reactivated.
The girl's eyes had already lost their light.
No one knew what she had experienced in those ten seconds.
They only knew that she had stood rooted to the spot for ten seconds, and then her legs seemed to lose the strength to support her body, and with a "thump," she fell to her knees.
When others helped her up again, she had already become dazed and vacant-eyed.
"You're just asking for trouble, only becoming compliant after a good beating.
Remember, this is a prison."
"You!"
"Hmm?"
A nearby boy, unable to stomach the sight, was about to retort but was immediately scared back by Mi La's death-stare.
"And you brats, you want to learn to rebel like others?"
The reputation of the Mundane Empire had even reached the Geocentric Grand Prison, a place extremely isolated from information. They were, without a doubt, the Federation's most renowned opposition organization.
The organization's initial manifesto was extremely radical: eliminate superhuman tyranny, the world belongs to mortals!
However, after decades of protracted struggle, the original extremists one by one perished in battles where the disparity in strength was immense.
Even with the aid of some cutting-edge weaponry, a mortal body was still insufficient to contend with high-tier superhumans. Head-on clashes inflicted heavy casualties on the extremist faction, which never recovered from then on.
The remaining, relatively moderate members then proposed a new, more feasible manifesto: mortal self-determination.
They demanded that the Federation hold a referendum, allowing mortals who wished to leave the nation to establish their own independent countries, each living their own lives. This was in stark contrast to the current situation, where superhumans, making up less than five percent of the total population, had blocked all avenues of advancement, leaving the remaining ninety-five percent of mortals to forever grovel at the bottom.
Compared to the initial, unrealistic pursuit of eliminating superhumans, the manifesto of mortal self-determination found a considerable market among the Federation's lower strata. For nearly a century, everyone had witnessed firsthand how ordinary people had been almost entirely isolated from the ruling apparatus; without special connections, a village chief was their absolute limit.
No matter how much they strived, no matter how talented they were, this was their ultimate fate.
Continuously developing technology, coupled with basic welfare, indeed ensured that everyone in the Federation was fed, and entertainment was cheap; a small amount of money could buy a day of happiness.
But ultimately, people still harbored dreams. Their willingness to remain at the bottom, like salted fish, was often simply because there truly was no path upward.
Items that could enable mortals to cultivate immortality weren't nonexistent; it was just that their prices were generally exorbitant. Even the most common Xuanhuang Fruit cost hundreds of thousands of Federation dollars.
It wasn't that the Federation didn't want to achieve mass production; the rapidly expanding Federation also lacked superhumans for labor. However, the core manufacturing ingredient for Xuanhuang Fruit was a superhuman's Spirit Hub, their Spirit Energy organ.
Currently, the vast majority of its annual output relies on low-tier superhumans being organized to "donate" for a fee, much like blood donation, exchanging a considerable sum of money for their voluntary "donation" of a portion of their Spirit Hubs.
This process significantly impacted subsequent cultivation, so generally, only old cultivators who had completely given up on cultivating further would choose to "donate" some when considering their future affairs.
This "donation" thus became the greatest cost of the Xuanhuang Fruit.
As for other types of spiritual materials or "optimization fluids," their prices were even higher than the Xuanhuang Fruit, which itself had considerable side effects, so there was even less to say about them.
Compared to the century-old problem of the Xuanhuang Fruit, it was the marrow-cleansing pills for extending lifespan that first achieved technological breakthroughs and mass production. One couldn't help but wonder if their tech tree had been developed incorrectly.
Aside from conventional methods like spiritual materials and fruits, the Federation naturally had no shortage of more peculiar and darker paths to power, such as human body modification.
Wizards, in particular, were exceptionally skilled in this technology, offering modifications ranging from the genetic to the organ level. However, among these human modification techniques, some immature ones were prone to accidents, with people dying directly on the operating table or transforming into something neither human nor ghost.
Furthermore, mature modification techniques were generally not cheap, with a single surgery easily costing hundreds of thousands, also beyond the reach of ordinary people.
...
"So what if we're brats? A single spark can start a prairie fire! We are the ones standing with the majority!" Some individuals, unyielding even within the prison walls, retorted.
"A bunch of idiots brainwashed to the point of losing touch with reality." Mi La looked at these starry-eyed brats, losing even the will to argue. She knew that only after reality slapped them a few more times, and they truly grasped the disparity between mortals and cultivators, would they possibly awaken.
Currently, the Federation's most advanced power armor, when equipped by a mortal, could barely contend with a Five Tiers superhuman. But only Five Tiers, of course; this excluded outlier star-destroying weapons like the Blazing Sun.
Although the Blazing Sun possessed formidable offensive power—a direct hit could reduce a Six Tiers superhuman to ashes—striking a Six Tiers individual, who could move at supersonic speeds, was incredibly difficult.
After all, the Blazing Sun was ultimately designed as a star-destroying cannon, not for swatting mosquitoes.
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