Gacha games can't save this bizarre world.

Liberty City is particularly strange, or rather, the whole of America is strange.

Those outsiders who want to make their mark and pursue their dreams in other places will come to those big cities and dedicate their youth to the bright lights and bustling city life.

After years of hard work, apart from a very few lucky ones, the rest will pack their bags and leave this place when their youth is gone, sacrificing their youth to this vast city.

Those who are wealthy, on the other hand, will try their best to stay away from the city center.

The city center was, in their view, crowded, noisy, chaotic, dirty, and heavily polluted.

Indeed, after a period of rapid development during its golden age, this place is now filled with factories. Tall chimneys stand like a forest of steel in every corner of the city.

Thick black smoke shrouded the city in a hazy mist. This is the inevitable path of industrialization.

In places like Liberty City, the problem is even more severe.

In the 70s, Aramco suffered from severe environmental pollution. Thick black smoke billowed from the factory chimneys, and industrial fumes blotted out the sky. The air was filled with the smell of coal smoke and burnt plastic.

In this world beyond human comprehension, we wonder if so-called industry is some unknown entity giving us poisoned candy.

At least Zhao Hao had seen it when he was researching the four major cults. Thomas Midgley, the inventor of leaded gasoline, which was discovered to be harmful in the early 1970s and is still in use today, was "enlightened" by the Lord of the Mysterious Gods.

The Lord of All Changes, also known as the Eternal Change, is called the "God of the Creation and Dissemination of Terrifying Knowledge." He possesses abilities such as knowledge, calculation, strategy, and subversion.

He favors intelligent people. He claims that only change is constant.

His followers are conspirators and subversives, disseminators of terrifying news and forbidden knowledge. They chant the slogan: Which is more important, the right to know or the right to life?

Some people in certain regions mistakenly believe that He is a great being who spreads information and knowledge, and are revered as the god of knowledge.

But He does not make people actively seek knowledge; rather, He compels people to know both good and bad knowledge.

Compared to the toad god who spreads plagues and diseases, Sally who makes people sink into a sea of ​​desire from which they cannot extricate themselves, and Gotha who advocates violence and war, the dangers of the Lord of Change seem very subtle and secretive.

Take leaded gasoline, for example...

The immense harm that lead poses to the human body became known to later generations, but it was not known to the public at that time. It was even promoted as being harmless to humans.

Furthermore, Thomas used "ethyl" instead of "lead" in the instruction manual.

Although some scientists have revealed the dangers of leaded gasoline since the 20s, it is still in use.

The profits from leaded gasoline have already tied together many large conglomerates, especially oil organizations.

If there is enough profit, capitalists will sell the rope that hangs them.

They are aware that leaded gasoline is harmful to everyone, but they are also heartbroken to have to cut their own losses.

Perhaps in the eyes of the Lord of All Changes, this is the most interesting part.

By the way, Thomas, who was inspired by the God of Change, also invented Freon for refrigerator cooling.

This thing damages the ozone layer, and nobody has discovered it yet...

------------

Chapter 176 Harry Potter in the Chamber of Secrets...

The air in the countryside was indeed much better; when Zhao Hao woke up in the morning, he could hear the clear chirping of birds outside the window.

Gently waking Elena beside him, the two looked out the window at the vast lawns, open spaces, fountains, and woods, and thought how wonderful it was to be rich.

Zhao Hao: Damn it, I want a big house too! Ten times bigger than this one!

Zhao Hao did a quick calculation—yesterday he asked Ai Lan about the price of the manor, and Ai Lan specifically asked the butler, who said, "The land was bought sixteen years ago for 460 million."

The butler added, "This is a 'relatively small estate' that doesn't usually host business partners. It has only about 80 rooms, an orchard, a pond, and a small golf course."

"Compared to the land, the subsequent construction costs are much higher, including wine cellars, tasting rooms, silverware storage rooms with humidity control, gyms, indoor ice rinks, swimming pools, movie theaters, beauty salons, tennis courts, and so on... I don't know the specific prices."

Zhao Hao: This butler is a good choice. He's dressed in a black tailcoat, with a white towel draped over his arm, a gold pocket watch in his breast pocket, and his mustache is turned up. He's calm and collected when he makes his Versailles remarks, elevating his sophistication to the extreme!

Well, even if it's ten times larger, the price is simply multiplied by ten. The land alone would cost 4600 million? And that's the price from sixteen years ago?!

Indeed, there are some things that you weren't born with, and you can basically never hope to have them in this lifetime.

Zhao Hao: Forget it, I'd better go to sleep! You can dream about anything!

It has to be said, having a dozen or so people to serve you is truly a comfortable life.

This large estate is more than enough to meet all your needs.

Zhao Hao and Elena had a very pleasant few days here, and because they were in a good mood, they finished the first book of their new work, "The Great Adventure of Harry Potter"—"Harry Potter in the Chamber of Secrets".

It seems that going out to gather material is really important for the author!

Now that they have Ai Lan's connections, Zhao Hao and Gou Quan no longer need to contact more than a dozen small publishing houses to get started in publishing.

Now, the Duke family's news and public relations department handles everything.

While we're still proofreading here, the ads have already been put up over there.

Throughout the entire east coast of Amerinsha, within almost three days, advertisements for "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets" could be seen on many bus stops, subway stations, and billboards in plazas!

It's true that money can make the devil turn the millstone! Foreigners, in particular, fall for this.

The speed of the review process, the speed of printing, and the public relations efforts involving various advertorials and literary reviews.

Suddenly, it was as if a great writer had sprung up from a crack in the rock and written a masterpiece that was considered "unread if you're not an Amis, you're an outdated relic from the last century."

At this point, almost no one knew who the author, Bird Thief Who Loves to Dive, was.

Among the youth of Liberty City, a rumor circulated: the author, who was physically disabled but determined and whose Bible copying was so meticulous that it yellowed the pages, was back! He had published a new book under the pseudonym "Bird Thief Who Loves to Dive"!

Yes, it's that new book whose advertisements are everywhere.

Why don't you buy one of his copies!

What we owe the author is the vote we paid back when we copied Liu Bei's works back then!

Besides, the title of this book sounds rather unserious!

In a locked room... could it be a prison play? I like this kind of vibe!

Buy and buy!

Just three days after Zhao Hao finished the manuscript, the first batch of 50 copies of "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets" has already been released.

They sold out in a week. Luckily, the Duke family is very wealthy. Regardless of whether they sold out or not, the young master said, "Print as many as you can! If we can't sell them all, the Duke family will take care of them!"

It's easy to see that this year's bestseller list was predetermined.

Although the book's content was not what many craftsmen thought, they cursed every day, saying they would tear out the cunning schemes of the bird thief who loved diving and wrap them around the back tire of a bus for a year.

But the book's content is indeed excellent, as proven by parallel universes.

Zhao Hao has taken a big step forward on the serious path of literature.

Zhao Hao didn't care about royalties or anything like that; he was only concerned about the sales figures and reader feedback from the past few days.

I was quite pleased to hear that readers of Liberty City were gathering to hurl insults.

Soon, Zhao Hao and Elena had been there for almost a week, and they decided to leave. Although Elan Duke tried to persuade them to stay, they still had to go.

Instead of having Alan send a car to take them, Zhao Hao and Elena decided to go back on their own. It wasn't far anyway, so they figured they could treat it as a trip for two.

Unexpectedly, they encountered some trouble just a dozen miles away from the town.

……

"The clown! The clown!"

A twelve or thirteen-year-old child, screaming in terror, rushed recklessly from the alley and nearly bumped into Elena.

Zhao Hao reached out, picked up the kid, spun him around in the air, and placed him on the other side of his body.

Before the boy could recover from his shock, he was suddenly sent flying in a circle in the air, his eyes rolled back, and he fainted.

Zhao Hao's eyes widened, thinking to himself, "Great, you've managed to scam me!"

But Elena is kind-hearted, and she didn't agree to just leave.

“He didn’t mean to hit us; he seemed to be frightened by something. If we leave him here, something bad might happen. Let’s wait until he wakes up before we leave.”

Elena shook Zhao Hao's arm, her big, watery eyes were simply irresistible.

Zhao Hao sighed and reached out to pinch the boy's philtrum.

The reason Zhao Hao left the child there was that he didn't want to get involved in other people's business.

There was a very faint trace of spiritual energy on the child, which clearly indicated that something had happened.

But this has nothing to do with me. How can I be so kind as to help someone I've just met?

Besides, according to the Bureau of Mysteries, there are dozens or even hundreds of supernatural events of varying degrees every day in Ame. The Bureau's black-clad agents are running themselves ragged. How could I possibly manage them all? I'm not Superman!

But since Elena is around, this kid is lucky.

Zhao Hao pressed his finger, imbued with spiritual energy, onto the child's philtrum, instantly activating the Qi channels within his body and waking him up.

When the child woke up, his eyes were lifeless, and he still tried to call out.

Zhao Hao covered his mouth and tapped the top of his head, injecting a wisp of spiritual energy to calm him.

“Listen up, kid. I hate people yelling for no reason. I'm in a good mood right now, so I'm giving you a chance to tell your story. Use the fewest words you can to describe what happened to you. Got it?”

When Zhao Hao unleashed his imposing aura as Black Tiger Afu, the little boy was immediately intimidated and nodded cautiously.

"Go ahead."

Zhao Hao pulled Elena to sit on a bench by the roadside. Elena pointed to the bench and said, "You sit down and talk too."

One was red-faced, the other white-faced, which confused the little boy. They started pouring out their secrets.

It turns out that the town's main livelihood is logging, a trade prone to accidents. This likely explains why people frequently go missing or get into trouble in the town.

About a month ago, Bill, the younger brother of Finn's friend, went missing while it was raining.

Bill refused to accept that his brother was dead, believing that his brother must have been swept into the sewers and carried downstream.

Before long, a group of friends organized themselves and searched downstream along the river.

They eventually discovered that all the town's sewers converged at one point in the river, and found a dilapidated wooden hut on the edge of the nearby forest.

"The cabin looked like a forester's hut, but it was surprisingly large inside. It was dilapidated, filled with unimaginable clutter, and... and a well!"

As he said this, Finn's pupils dilated, sweat beaded on his forehead, his face turned pale, and he began to tremble and lose his composure.