My Ability Pool is Superior-Chapter 67 - 66: There Seems to Be Something Wrong With This World
Lv Bai followed the siblings across the bridge, taking in the sights along the riverbank.
The water under the steel bridge was clear and slightly blue, looking nothing like a river should in a city.
Along the path, there was a bench every so often, but there were no tourists, and any passersby walked hastily, with almost all the benches remaining empty.
There were no strolling old folks, nor any anglers.
Under these circumstances, a figure in a white dress sitting alone on a bench naturally caught Lv Bai’s eye.
But he only glanced twice before turning away, as she seemed inconsequential, probably just waiting for a friend.
...
Squeak～
The door let out a creaking noise from years of neglect.
However, neither Lü Ziyi nor Lü Yan seemed the least bit surprised.
"Finally back," Lü Yan kicked off his shoes and collapsed onto the worn-out sofa.
Lv Bai was the last to enter; he gently closed the door and began to survey the room’s various furnishings.
The layout was a standard one-bedroom unit, the living room no more than ten square meters, suggesting the bedroom wouldn’t be much bigger.
A section of the living room held some cookware and an induction cooker, evidently carved out as a kitchen. What little space remained also had a dilapidated sofa, making things feel even more cramped.
Items were neatly organized, but with such limited space, no matter how orderly, it couldn’t look good.
A small square table by the wall, likely meant for dining, had a photo frame standing on it.
In the photo, a woman with three children was beaming.
Lv Bai scanned the room and found no signs of a fourth person living there, so either the woman had left or was dead.
Judging by the woman’s appearance, Lv Bai leaned towards the latter.
But unexpectedly, Lü Ziyi’s gaze turned noticeably colder upon noticing Lv Bai’s stare.
It was clear that her resentment was directed at Lv Bai.
She said nothing further because, in her mind, it wouldn’t matter what she said; Lv Bai would react the same way.
So she packed her bag, tossed out a remark, and pushed the door open to leave.
"I’m going to work."
Lv Bai watched her depart.
When he turned around again, he found Lü Yan, that little rascal, already sitting up unexpectedly.
With a prematurely wise tone, he remarked, "That’s just how sister is."
Lv Bai’s eyelid twitched.
However...
Forget it.
Those matters can wait; the priority now is to understand what kind of world this is.
He took out the cell phone borrowed from Fan Ding and sat down at the small square table.
The upside of modern society is the greatly lowered barrier to obtaining information, though the downside is the information became so abundant that it is difficult to discern truth from false.
Thus, Lv Bai opted to check news and past documents and announcements directly on the government website.
The content was overwhelmingly complex, but fortunately, Lv Bai was in no hurry and read the information patiently.
Originally, he focused on news about the Deathmatch, but unexpectedly his attention was drawn to something else.
"Holographic sky equipment further adjusted for a more realistic visual experience"
"Underground City No. 9 has achieved strategic cooperation with Underground City No. 3"
"Total population of the Underground City surpasses 200 million, experts urge optimization of population structure"
Underground City?
Lv Bai remembered hearing Xue Yin mention the term "sanctuary" in the Death Arena, though at the time he hadn’t understood its significance.
Now it seems...
The city is actually underground?!
No wonder the sky seemed so oppressive, no wonder the flowing river seemed so abrupt, no wonder the houses along the way looked as densely packed as beehives.
Lv Bai spent a whole hour piecing together the information on this topic.
As he suspected, the people in this world all live underground.
Not out of choice, as evident from the government’s efforts to restore surface ecological environments; it was out of necessity.
The reasons must be traced back several centuries.
At that time, humans were just entering the 21st century.
Global warming caused the climate to become increasingly erratic; initially, people didn’t pay much attention, though occasionally specialists warned of entering a Little Ice Age in the 2030s, with the warming being the prelude.
But in the end, a Little Ice Age occurring every four hundred years wasn’t terrifying to modern humanity, given technological and productive capabilities far beyond those of feudal times.
As the Ice Age arrived, power grids were damaged, small power systems gradually became widespread among communities, and changes in Earth’s water cycle even led to increased marine produce, not entirely bad.
Reflecting on Earth’s history, during the five major glaciations, the first and second intervals were about 1.3 billion years, the second and third about 200 million years, with subsequent intervals measured in tens of millions of years...
Though the overall trend was that intervals between major glaciations grew shorter, mainstream opinion on a million-year scale didn’t foresee the sixth major glaciation arriving so soon.
However, cooling persisted, each year colder than the last.
People gradually became frightened, realizing this was not a Little Ice Age; humanity had, unprepared, entered a glacial era.
Regrettably, despite climate changes due to nature, humans who fancied themselves masters of all things were powerless to stop it.
The underground sanctuary idea was proposed first, followed by myriad technical challenges that made the concept a "lifeboat ticket" for only a minority of elites.
In desperation, the Deathmatch System appeared.
Like a deus ex machina, this bizarre literary setup entered humanity’s reality.
Whether an alien conspiracy or a divine gift.
People didn’t have excess energy to care; they simply fixated on this sudden lifeline.
Lv Bai queried many sources, but regarding the time between the Deathmatch System’s appearance and humanity’s official shift to underground city living, all records were vague.
All in all, humanity quickly mastered heavy element fusion technology, self-sustaining ecological technology, along with significant advancements in material strength and engineering technology.
With these "black technologies," history returned to normalcy, the United Government was formed, and constructing sanctuaries became prioritized.
Worldwide, hundreds of underground sanctuaries commenced simultaneously.
To be precise, those numbered within 100 should be called underground cities. 𝒻𝘳ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝒷𝘯ℴ𝓋ℯ𝘭.𝑐ℴ𝑚
Since each could house populations over ten million.
The lower the number, the more enormous the scale...
At this point, Lv Bai looked up towards the window.
He couldn’t help but rub his slightly aching eyes, murmuring, "I can’t shake the feeling something is amiss..."
