Blue and white dragons swept over the city, and the protective barrier emitted a faint glow in the night, becoming one of the countless streamers of the neon-lit Tarlund metropolis, Gawain stood between Melita's shoulder blades, looking at the huge steel structure not far away that was used to support some kind of hanging garden, and couldn't help but ask, "Where are we going?" ”

Melita's deep voice came from the front: "We start with the beginning of a dragon's life—the centralized hatching center. ”

"Incubation ......" Gao Wen was stunned for a moment, feeling that he had heard a term he had never thought of, "Incubation center? ”

"You can also call it a hatchery factory, or a dragon egg hatchery, these are more colloquial names," Melita said casually, as she began to lower her height, "See that pillar-like facility in front of you?" That's the hatchery in Argondol. Stand firm, we're about to land. ”

Gawain subconsciously adjusted his standing posture, and at the same time, his gaze involuntarily fell ahead, he had already seen the huge "factory" - it was indeed like an incomparably huge pillar, with countless auxiliary facilities like gas tanks and a large number of pipes and support beams clustered around a cylindrical body, and there were lights extending from its half-waist obliquely, outlining a dozen light strips in the air to guide landing.

Gawain also saw a circle of landing platforms halfway up the waist, many of which had dragons taking off and landing, and the occupied platforms were surrounded by red lights, and the vacant platforms were marked by a striking white halo, which was very conspicuous - Melita and Noretta, who was not far away, were approaching one of the vacant platforms.

But just as Melita was about to lower her altitude, a gust of wind suddenly came from another direction, and then a black dragon flew from the night sky at a gallop, rushing towards the direction of the platform Melita had just chosen, and there was a roaring and anxious roar in the night sky: "I'm very sorry! The dragon egg I claimed broke out of its shell ahead of time! ”

"Grab you X...... Peace be upon your cubs! Melita, who was robbed of her position, was about to scold, but after hearing the roar from the other party, she changed her words, and then she flapped her wings suddenly, and said to Gawain with a little embarrassment while adjusting the direction to find her position again, "Sorry for showing you the less civilized side...... Please understand that it has not been easy to get an incubation permit all these years, it is just an anxious father. ”

Gawain: "......"

He now seemed to be numb to all the surprises in Tallund, and he didn't even bother to complain.

And after this small twist and turn, Melita and Noretta finally found the idle landing platform, and the two dragons landed smoothly on the two adjacent platforms, and before they landed, the lights around the platform had turned red, and after they landed, the entire platform was covered by a translucent barrier - until Gawain, Amber, and Veronica jumped off Melita's and Noretta's backs respectively, and the two dragon ladies also turned into human forms and left the platform area, and the platform's "temporary control" system switched back to idle- And it all seems to be automatic.

This should be regarded as the unique "traffic control system" of Tallund, which is a little eye-opening.

In front of a gate leading to the interior of the hatchery, Norretta, dressed in a white dress, came to Gawain and Melita with Amber and Veronica, and then Amber subconsciously raised her head and looked up at the gate that was much more magnificent than the city gate with amazement: "Wow......"

Veronica, however, looked into the deep corridor behind the door, at the cold steel, the flickering lights, and the lifeless polymer windows and conduits, and for a long time she whispered to herself, "I never thought about it...... Dragons are born in such places...... I thought it wasn't a nest in a hot spring, but at least it was next to my parents......"

"It was like that a long, long time ago," Noretta whispered in human form, "it was a long, long time ago......

"I've got the right to pass, Omega will open the floodgates on the route, you can just follow me in," Melita looked at Gawain and the others, "Just don't touch anything you don't know after entering, there are no other requirements - the dragon eggs are all tightly guarded, and normal visiting behavior will not affect the hatching." ”

Gawain and the others nodded, and then led by Melita and Noretta, stepped through the wide gate and entered the interior of the hatchery.

What Gawain saw afterwards fits exactly the description of the facility - a factory, a factory for incubating dragon eggs.

They enter the factory through a bridge suspended in mid-air, one end of which is fixed to the outer wall of the factory — an unusually thick metal shell filled with flowing lights and busy machinery — and a "vertical pipe" that leads to the core of the factory. After entering the standpipe, Melita began to introduce Gawain to various facilities along the way, and not long after continuing to go deeper, Gawain saw the dragon eggs that were in a state of hatching-

They are placed individually in large transparent "greenhouses", which look like slightly twisted ellipsoidal pressure chambers, the dragon eggs are located on soft trays in the cabin, about one meter in diameter, with pale yellow shells and black or brown spots, bright lights illuminate them from multiple directions, and mechanical probes of unknown purpose occasionally fall to irradiate and inspect the surface of the dragon eggs; The entire "greenhouse" is placed on circular metal platforms, the base of which is flickering and connected by pipes......

Hundreds, thousands of incubators are neatly arranged on both sides of some circular corridors, with pipes hanging from the sky and connecting to the "integration ports" behind the incubators, seemingly to supply energy or simply to collect data. Gawain looked up, trying to find the place where the pipes converged or originated, but all he saw was a vague darkness - the dome of the hatchery was extremely high and the roof was dim, and the pipes eventually converged into the depths of darkness, as if there was a dark abyss in the sky, swallowing all gaze.

He retracted his gaze and looked back at the neatly arranged incubation equipment, which looked like a production line, and a dragon egg was lying quietly in the nearest hatching pod, carefully tended by the machine, growing according to the schedule.

Amber also came to the incubator, and she watched the scene in front of her steadily, very rarely quiet, no more giggling, no more startled.

"That's how the newborn dragons were born," Veronica whispered, "how did they develop to take this path......

"There are many reasons why Tallund is what it is today, and the hatchery is just one of the insignificant ones, and it's ...... Hatcheries are just an old technology for us. Melita shook her head and said unhurriedly.

Norreta on the side took over the topic: "You should have heard of a saying - the more powerful the creature, the more difficult it is to reproduce, this is the 'balance' imposed by the laws of nature on all beings, and the dragon clan, as the most powerful individual in the mortal species, is even more difficult to reproduce to the limit......

"It is true," Gawain nodded, "and it's not just the bards and playwrights who say it, but the experts and scholars think so - although they can't study dragon samples, most creatures in nature follow this pattern. ”

"That's right, this law is correct, at least for us dragons. Dragons are poorly reproductive, have a long gestation cycle, and are difficult to hatch - but that's only under natural circumstances," Melita's mouth curled, "so we had hatchery technology and a huge industry a long, long time ago. We use biochemical technology to collect and catalyze 'green eggs', use biomass mother factories to mass produce blank dragon eggs, and use genetic engineering to edit parental genes, or single parent and single mother genes, and use factories to hatch them in batches...... These techniques have paid off.

"Technology can change a lot of things.

"Dragons are difficult to breed and scarce? This is just another misconception, in fact, many, many years ago, we began to actively control the number of our races, otherwise...... How could one Tarlund accommodate such a large number of people? ”

Melita said unhurriedly, and Gawain grew dumbfounded.

These were finally beyond his imagination.

The mysterious, ancient, "dragon race" at the top of the world of magic and fantasy in his mind had crumbled many times in a single day today, and now it finally fell apart, crumbling into a cold wreckage.

He suspects that the wreckage is far from the limit of disintegration, and that it will continue to crumble and collapse until it can fully see the real "Talrond", the "cradle of eternity" under the protection of the gods.

And beside him, Melita continued to explain:

"Deeper beneath our feet is the sorting and pre-treatment center of the hatchery – where the eggs brought from the 'mother factory' are sorted and culled, the defective eggs are destroyed, and only the healthy, potential eggs are sent to the Life Stagnant Workshop, where they temporarily stop developing until a dragon with a hatching permit arrives and claims one of them......

"The adoption of a dragon egg may be a pair of parents, or a single father or mother, and he or she or they have to apply and prepare in advance, in addition to a large number of forms and a long review cycle, the claimant must also submit a copy of his or her genetic factors, which will be injected into the blank dragon eggs to be used to synthesize embryos and become his or her or their real 'children'. And the embryos that have been synthesized will be sent here...... Send to this hatchery.

"The machine takes care of the little ones that are still in their shells, and the hatching sacs are as safe and warm as the nests carefully forged by the dragon's parents in ancient times. Most of the things here are handled by the machines, and the overall controller is Omega, so we only see a few 'staff' along the way - the main task of those 'staff' is only to monitor the status of the machines and receive the 'new parents' who have claimed the eggs.

"It's a boring and unskilled job, but it's one of the few real jobs in Talllund, and if you can get a position in the hatchery, you're going to get into the 'upper Talllund'."

Gawain listened quietly to Melita's explanations, when a hatchery near them suddenly buzzed and lights flickered.

Many of the probes cruising around the neighborhood immediately approached the area, and some manipulators moving along the slide came to the corresponding incubator, Gao Wen just wanted to ask what was going on, Melita had already taken the initiative to explain as she walked over there: "Come here! Hatched! We were just in time for a little guy to hatch! ”

As soon as Gawain heard this, his steps suddenly quickened, and he, Amber, and Veronica hurried to the hatching device that made noises and flashes, and almost as soon as they arrived, the dragon egg lying quietly in the polymer "greenhouse" began to shake slightly.

In the unblinking gaze of Gawain and the others, they saw that a crack suddenly opened on the surface of the dragon egg, and then the crack expanded rapidly, and some broken eggshells fell off - the young dragon was stronger than Gawain thought, and the whole process of breaking out of the shell did not take long at all, in just a few seconds, the seemingly solid eggshells were completely cracked, and a gray, unattractive "little" creature staggered out of it.

It was a young dragon, and it didn't even have scales on it, so it was impossible to tell the specific species, and it was impossible to tell the sex. With Gawain's gaze, he even felt that this cub was a little ...... Ugly, like a huge, hairless turkey, but in the eyes of the dragons, the cub was probably quite cute - because Melita and Noretta next to them were clearly with their eyes shining, and they were looking at the newly hatched dragoncubs with happy smiles.

Amber was finally surprised again, she let out a "wow", and then was about to ask for something, but suddenly there was something else in the "hatching bag": a number of small mechanical hands reached into the cabin from above and below, and grabbed the newly hatched dragon with great agility and speed, and the latter lost its movement as soon as it tried to struggle, as if it had been quickly anesthetized by something.

Gawain then saw the robots begin to move rapidly, they seemed to open a small opening at the back of the young dragon's head, and then implanted something that glowed with a glimmer of light, only the size of a human finger, and then several other robots moved forward and injected the baby dragon with something - that may be the "synergist" that Melita often mentioned - and after the injection, other devices entered the capsule, collected skin fragments and blood samples from the young dragon, and performed a quick scan......

All of this is dazzling fast.

Before Gawain could react, it was all over, he blinked, and then he heard a synthesized voice broadcast - he didn't understand what it was about, but soon he heard Melita whispering beside him.

She whispered to the factory announcement:

"Baby Dragon No. 1335, healthy. Average intellectual potential, expected adaptation implants: X, S, EN and universal implants. There are no assigned positions for the time being, and it is recommended - ordinary citizens of the lower city. ”

The manipulators and probes retreated.

The baby dragon in the hatching bag woke up.

He/she opened his eyes curiously, as if observing the world in amazement, and he/she staggered to his or her feet, working together with his wings and immature limbs, before he/she finally spotted several figures standing outside.

The little creature screamed happily.