Chapter 465 - : Double-edged Sword (2/2)

“The path of cultivation is an upstream. If you don’t improve, you fall back. If you get more of such criminal cases, you won’t have any time to train at all, and you will be left far behind by the hunters, pathfinders, and explorers. Meng Chao, don’t you think that their choice makes sense?”

Meng Chao scratched his head.

When he thought about it, it made sense.

During his three-month training in the wild, he spent every second focusing on killing monsters, harvesting, and eating valuable materials. His cultivation improved by leaps and bounds basically every day.

If he spent those three months investigating and monitoring superhuman criminals, he would have been lucky if his fighting strength did not decline.

“The secret police has never been a good job. It could only attract talented people through good benefits. But we face real troubles in this regard too.” Shen Yupeng shrugged. “Why is hunting such a popular job among superhumans? It’s because when hunters form a superhuman fighting squad, they can enter the wild to hunt monsters and gather a large amount of resources.

“If we speak using business terms, hunter squads are the first line of business of the industry, and they create direct profit.

“While hunters hunt monsters, they also harvest resources from monsters. They distribute those materials on the spot and eat them. After something’s digested, no one can say anything. First, because it’s hard to examine what anyone does in the fog. No one knows just how many monsters hunters have killed and how many they brought back. Second, when they create profit for their companies, it’s impossible for the companies to create many clauses to restrict them. The more they eat, the stronger they become, and the more game they can bring back. There’s nothing wrong with that.

“We can use the same logic with schools like Agricultural University or the four research centers. Even though they don’t receive direct benefits from the hunter squads, they produce large amounts of research results and create a lot of companies with their alumni. They even work together with the Red Dragon Army to organize pathfinding and hunting trips. From it, they can also get a lot of cultivation resources so that the people in these organizations can live comfortably.

“But it’s different for the adjudicator court. We’re a law enforcement organization. We can’t go into the wild to hunt monsters and create direct benefits. We can only rely on the Survival Committee to give us funds.

“And due to the unique nature of our job, it means that we can’t have side jobs or create our own business. If a secret police officer captures superhuman criminals while having his own business, it’ll sound odd no matter what, right?”

Meng Chao thought about it and nodded. “It does sound off.”

“But this is how we operated in the past,” Shen Yupeng said expressionlessly. “If we relied solely on the funds from the Survival Committee, it’d be impossible to satisfy the cultivation needs of every secret police officer.

“Besides, the lost people are not normal criminals. They’re superhumans with supernatural abilities. If we want to capture them silently, we have to do even more meticulous work and face greater risks than our colleagues on Earth.

“There are plenty of times when we have to venture into gray areas and support gray forces of power that are loyal to us. Then, through not exactly legal channels, get a large amount of cultivation resources or clues that we can’t get through legal means.

“While we handle superhuman criminals, it’s inevitable that we sometimes use some simple and brutish methods. We might even end up working with some superhuman criminals who are not that dangerous to deal with superhuman criminals who are really evil.

“During this process, there have been many secret police officers who couldn’t resist the temptation and gradually fell from being ‘gray’ to ‘black’. They collaborated with superhuman criminals and even became puppets of abnormal beasts without their knowledge.”

Meng Chao knew that Shen Yupeng was talking about the matter a few months ago.

The Noble Descent Hotel ambush had been like a deep water bomb. Even though it had detonated a long time ago, the shockwaves were still making the city shake.

“After this reorganization where we had to cut off the poisonous parts within our organization, the general atmosphere in the adjudicator court has changed. I can assure you that right now, you can’t find any traces of illegal activity. There’s no gray areas, no one is keeping cultivation resources in secret, and all of our rules and procedures allow us to endure the strictest tests,” Shen Yupeng said.

“Of course, because of it, the position of secret police officer and adjudicator under the adjudicator court lost all its attractive qualities. There’s no cultivation resources, no room for getting stronger, and no chance of being revered by the public. It’s a tough and tiring job.

“If that wasn’t enough, while we’re in the process of capturing superhuman criminals, if we’re careless, it’s far too easy for us to end up causing collateral damage in terms of destroying buildings and harming innocent citizens. That’ll make us scapegoats for all sorts of crimes.

“So, a superhuman must be really taking things too hard on himself or herself to give up on being a hunter, pathfinder, or explorer and choose the adjudicator court.

“Most superhumans still know how to calculate, so even though we lost one-third of our members, it’s not much.

“The secret police who remain have not found their next prospect or have not made up their minds to create their own companies yet. One of the reasons behind it is because our workload has increased by one-third its original amount. The other reason is because we have to study the One Hundred Ways to Destroy Dragon City and imitate Lu Siya and the other model superhumans to do volunteer work and teach poor children how to cultivate so that we can become close to the normal citizens.

“Due to various reasons, it just can’t be helped that we didn’t manage to discover the Deification Capsules and the mastermind who created the whole plan beforehand.”