Soon, the personnel responsible for receiving from the Global Occult Coalition arrived at the Special Affairs Bureau’s outpost.
A group of people boarded more than ten floating vehicles and headed westward across the city.
Along the way, Li Ang casually observed the street views of Mumbai, a city that once claid to surpass Yin City, and found it quite... magical.
The roads were riddled with sunken potholes, stinking gutters, and cow dung pits, with low and crowded shanty houses lining both sides of the streets.
These houses were crudely structured, haphazardly distributed, with poor provision of water, electricity, sanitation facilities, and other basic services,
Even worse than the shantytowns were the vast slums—the real bottom-tier slum houses were basically hastily assembled from rusty iron sheets and pieces of cloth,
packed closely together like coffins,
with only space for one or two people to pass between the houses,
The entire area was filled with flowing sewage, overwhelming stench, and perpetual darkness,
In stark contrast were the towering, splendid modern comrcial buildings and hotel villas not far from the slums.
"People in Mumbai don’t seem too nervous,"
Li Ang remarked casually as he looked with interest at the street views on both sides of the city outskirts.
The floating trains maintained a hovering state, more than three ters above the ground. Looking down, he could see taxis and rickshaws still moving along the streets,
Many Mumbai residents walked the streets with calm expressions,
Occasionally, a cow or two would amble leisurely, shaking their heads and tails, and swagger across the street.
"These Indians have a rather peculiar way of thinking,"
The Special Affairs Bureau’s head of the Indian office turned around and explained to Li Ang with a bit of helplessness, "They only panicked on the first day when they didn’t know what was happening.
But upon realizing it was the legendary Sibi King, they remained unruffled and continued their daily lives—eating, drinking, setting up stalls, going to work,
more composed than us.
They probably believe that the Sibi King, who offered his flesh to feed eagles, is the benevolent monarch of myth,
and entering his Buddha Country poses no life threat, instead offering an early chance at a peaceful and harmonious existence.
There were even people, especially the poor, sneaking into the Buddha Country themselves,
unmoved by advice from various organizations."
As a South Asian nation with a population of up to 1.3 billion, India’s social structure has not fundantally changed with the ergence of the kill ga,
and the lives of the lower strata have not significantly improved.
On the contrary, the Indian caste system and feudal ignorance have intensified even more,
with player qualifications interpreted as divine favor,
while low castes and untouchables are seen as pollution sources,
leading high castes to believe that being around them could cause pollution and result in losing the divine favor they are supposed to receive.
To eliminate pollution and enable India to have more Transcendents and beco great again, they actively promote caste segregation.
They treat those pollution sources even more harshly.
Additionally, since player qualifications are seen as divine favor, and the European Heavy Industry Group publicly sells flawed genetic elixirs that can grant supernatural abilities in India,
many middle to lower-class families are willing to sell everything to buy a vial of flawed genetic elixir from the European Heavy Industry Group,
hoping their children can have a ’chance’ at becoming an immortal,
despite the extrely poor quality control and complete uncertainty of the abilities or side effects it might grant.
If they are unlucky, not only will they fail to beco a Transcendent and elevate their family’s class,
but they might even end up paralyzed or dead on the spot.
Even if they are lucky enough to gain good superpowers, it doesn’t an they can live above others,
as they must then work long-term temporary jobs for the European Heavy Industry Group to repay huge loans and secure subsequent genetic enhancent elixirs.
As their families verge on bankruptcy, parents from these middle to lower-class households have no choice but to carry a small amount of money,
and head to the Ashram, or Indian monasteries, to pray and ditate, hoping their children can quickly ascend and earn enough for the family to live better.
In a sense, so Hindu monasteries also function as nursing hos, where the elderly can live, and their estates go to the monastery after death, not to their children.
If the elderly are bankrupt, the monastery has to cover all living expenses for them.
So unscrupulous monasteries save costs and quickly collect money by deliberately harming the elderly, such as denying dical care, reducing food supply, or even beating them and poisoning their food and water.
Nina, the low-caste Indian girl from the Global Occult Coalition’s seventh group, saw her parents intending to sell everything at ho for money to buy genetic elixirs for her, and then go to the monastery to wait for death.
Fortunately, Nina was lucky to be recruited as a player before that happened.
Other Indian families weren’t so fortunate.
"For them, it might be better to risk going to the Buddha Country of the Sibi King, betting on a blissful afterlife, than to live aimlessly and hopelessly,"
The head of the Indian outpost shrugged, helpless in the face of their choices.
As they spoke, the floating vehicles passed through the outskirts’ slums, reaching the temporary housing area demarcated by the Global Occult Coalition.
In this area, rows of mobile hos were neatly arranged to accommodate so of the people relocated from Mumbai city.
Individual mobile hos were reminiscent of shipping container houses, but more spacious, tidy, and luxurious than ordinary ones,
and when stacked, they resembled hotel apartnts with elevators and hallways inside.
The residential area even included built comrcial blocks, plazas, parks, schools, hospitals, and fire stations,
forming a miniature city—in many ways, a better living environnt than most Mumbai residents previously had.
Li Ang glanced over the temporary housing area. After disconnecting from the Divine Power Connection and Spiritual Energy network, he could faintly sense the presence of many Gene Thieves.
After leaving the urban area and avoiding the tangled and complex electrical wiring, the floating vehicle’s speed accelerated sharply,
quickly arriving at the command center leased by the Global Occult Coalition and other organizations.
The command center temporarily used a high-rise at the edge of Mumbai that had not yet been completed,
finished with the help of a superhuman construction team,
housing the offices of organizations like the Special Affairs Bureau and the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Supernatural Accident Place on various floors,
making this building possibly the most densely populated by Transcendents worldwide at this new stage.
The floating vehicle ascended continuously until it landed on the rooftop of the building,
Li Ang and Xing Hechou were the first to exit the car and, under the guidance of Global Occult Coalition agents, took the elevator to the temporary command center.
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