The strange-looking face that would've unsettled ordinary people didn't surprise the homeless man at all. In their crowd, people like this were common, most of them seriously ill. If anything, he felt a bit of sympathy, at least compared to that guy, he himself was healthier.
Seeing the faint kindness in the homeless man's eyes, the tall figure's gaze flickered. He smiled, coughed twice, and forced words out of a throat that sounded dried out.
"Yes. It's my first time here."
The skinny homeless man perked up when the guy actually responded and immediately started chattering.
"You know what? They pay cash."
As he spoke, he pulled a bottle filled with dark red liquid from a cloth pouch at his waist.
"No matter how many times you sell, they'll take it as long as you're willing. And the price isn't lower than the market. They'll even buy it bottled like this."
The tall man's eyelid twitched, and the corner of his mouth curled into a mocking arc. He didn't speak, only nodded to the skinny homeless man.
"Chad Noema, you're up."
A woman in a suit spoke.
The tall homeless man nodded again, then followed her inside.
Blood bank
Zod sat atop a high-rise. With X-ray vision, he watched it all like a live-action movie, with chips and cola set beside him.
By the time Chad Noema began his slaughter inside the vampire blood bank, Zod was already inside as well.
The blood bank stored a staggering amount of plasma. Through the Black Queen, Zod had already looked up how vampires were affecting humans. Human blood bank plasma reserves had fallen below the warning line, and countless emergency patients died on operating tables because they couldn't get transfusions. The life-saving plasma had been eaten by vampires as food.
America called on people to go out and donate blood for free. During holidays, lines would form in front of blood donation vans.
That would have been a good thing in the real world, but the Marvel world didn't work the same way.
America didn't pay its tax-paying donors a single cent. But every time the vampires took one 100 mL100 mL bag of plasma from the American blood banks, they paid 400400 dollars. Yes, that was the deal America made with the vampires.
Patients dying from blood shortages weren't dying because of vampires' appetites, they were dying because of America's greed. It wasn't that the blood banks truly had no blood.
It was because America sold most of the plasma to the vampire empire for profit.
They called for people to donate blood for free, then sold it to vampires at a high price, making a fortune in the process.
Nick Fury of Serpent S.H.I.E.L.D. knew about this too, but he had no reaction. The利益 involved were simply too huge. Even if Nick Fury knew, he couldn't do anything, because many of Serpent S.H.I.E.L.D.'s expenses couldn't go through normal channels, and those hidden expenses...
As far as Zod knew, the entire blood clan's industries in North America, plus personal income tax, paid nearly 200200 billion dollars a year in taxes to America. America's annual tax revenue was 3.33.3 trillion dollars, meaning the blood clan accounted for nearly 7%7% of the total.
Vampires had existed for far too long. They were deeply entrenched across many industries, not to mention the massive fees they paid each year just to buy plasma.
This was a system unique to the Marvel world. Even if Zod uprooted the vampires overnight, it wouldn't help, because he couldn't suppress the upheaval that would follow.
So Zod could only fund Blade to hunt vampires and keep their numbers under control. If he used beast soldiers himself, the efficiency would indeed be much higher, but the capitalists who would lose利益 would absolutely stop him. They would even oppose Zod to protect vampires.
After all, vampires weren't just a source of money. Their near-eternal lifespans made capitalists drool with envy.
Vampires also stuck together, and their advantages were far stronger than the Jews'. The Jews, before World War II, were harvested by governments and capitalists in various ways. Vampires, on the other hand, had infiltrated human elites five thousand years ago. European noble families were penetrated so deeply that humans had to rely on the Church's religious activities to keep their class "pure."
Everyone knew vampires couldn't participate in Catholic rites. In the era of the Roman Republic, how many leading citizens were tied to vampires? In the imperial era, how many Roman emperors chose the Embrace for immortality? At the very least, Nero's relationship with vampires was extremely close.
Even though Nero himself was a demonic contractor...
Among his Roman officials and nobles, there were so many vampires that they could hold a blood clan conference right inside the palace.
As an existence rooted this deeply in the Western world, after the Industrial Revolution they were among the first to throw themselves into business and finance, seizing a huge share of the revolution's dividends. Later, during the world wars, they stirred chaos as borderless international capital, clustering together and coexisting. After the war, when international capital shifted to America, they then deeply influenced and controlled this nation.
The vampires' political and economic power needed no explanation. They were like parasites growing through the limbs and organs of the capitalist world, embedded from brain to body.
Many people called bankers vampires. Many times, that was meant literally.
Serpent S.H.I.E.L.D. could deal with aliens invading Earth, rulers from other dimensions, supervillains who lucked into power, and even HYDRA, which had hidden since ancient Egypt and grown into a colossal force. Yet it couldn't deal with vampires that fed on humans.
Because in a certain sense, vampires were this country, at least this country's economy.
The intruder
"Who are you?"
A voice interrupted Zod's thoughts, though Zod's senses had already detected the intrusion.
Chad Noema didn't smell the stench of a vampire on Zod. He was human.
Behind Chad Noema, groups of Reaper mutants tried more than once to pounce on Zod, along with this warehouse full of plasma.
"Homeless people's blood always carries bacteria and viruses."
Zod's super vision could already observe molecular structures, so he could see the bacteria and viruses inside blood as well. More than ninety percent of the plasma here was unhealthy.
Chad Noema vaguely sensed Zod would be trouble. Zod strode toward him, and the Reapers behind Chad Noema immediately couldn't hold back, charging straight at Zod.
"Their control is a bit weak."
Zod sounded disappointed.
/-\
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