Meng Chao remained silent for a long time.
"So, when all was said and done, everything you did was for money?"
He narrowed his eyes and asked, word by word.
"Is 'money' not reason enough?"
Shen Yulin said, "From Earth to the Otherworld, from when humanity had just learned to use fire to bake spearheads to when rockets weighing hundreds of tons soared into the blue sky, humanity had launched tens of thousands of wars. Which war, in the end, was not fought for money?
"Still, you are half right to ask. This time, we truly wanted more than money.
"What we wanted to seize from this war, besides wealth, was something even more important: dignity. The dignity that should have belonged to us in the first place—the dignity of all Transcendents!"
"The dignity of all Transcendents...?"
Meng Chao looked at Shen Yulin in confusion.
"Haven't you noticed that one year after the Monster War ended, Dragon City's atmosphere has become increasingly strange, and the way many ordinary people look at us Transcendents has become increasingly subtle?"
Shen Yulin said coldly, "When the vicious monsters were still running rampant through Dragon City, threatening ordinary people's lives at every moment, those ordinary people treated us Transcendents as heroes, saviors, and omnipotent guardian gods.
"They wagged their tails and begged before us, weeping bitter tears and snot as they pleaded with us to save their miserable lives.
"Then they piled all kinds of lofty hats onto our heads—'the battle blades of Dragon City Civilization,' 'the hope of human evolution,' 'superheroes'—forcing us to rush beneath the monsters' gaping maws and sharp fangs and claws, to fight until one side died.
"That would have been fine. As the leaders of Dragon City Civilization, we had both the responsibility and the right to protect our