Chapter 496: Chapter 343: The Burial of Xue Dili_3

"Over on your side, do a lot of people die or go missing because of those monsters?" Xue Dili asked.

"Still okay, I guess. According to the World Government’s stats, around the world, more than 800,000 people go missing every year because of Evil Ghosts and the like." Miss Witch said, taking a bite of apple and a sip of cola, feeling as happy as if she were living in Heaven.

"Eight hundred thousand missing? Okay, that really isn’t a lot." Xue Dili thought. After all, based on Earth’s numbers, the global annual count of missing people is in the several millions, usually concentrated in those small chaotic, war-torn countries, and in that world’s most populous caste‑system country.

In their world, only a few hundred thousand go missing each year because of Evil Ghosts; that really doesn’t count as much. The number of deaths probably isn’t even as high as the number of people on Earth who play extreme sports.

After all, the cave‑diving circle has once again brought bad news.

"Right, how many people are there in your world?" Xue Dili asked.

"Last time the World Government counted, over 200 million. Right now it’s already the most prosperous period in terms of population." She spoke as she kept gnawing on her fruit.

"How many?" Xue Dili froze on the spot. The sudden shock even made him, someone who rarely had much emotion, a bit stirred.

Two hundred million people, and over 800,000 go missing each year because of Evil Ghosts?

He’d thought 800,000 wasn’t a big problem only when comparing it with Earth’s 8‑plus billion. But when the total population drops down to only around 200 million, that number is anything but small.

"Is your world’s birth rate really high?" Xue Dili suddenly asked.

Miss Witch paused, then said, looking rather embarrassed, "It’s okay, I guess. I remember over there people usually get married between 11 and 14 years old, so the birth rate and stuff should be fine..."

Xue Dili: "..."

"What’s your normal life expectancy? I mean if you don’t get caught by Evil Ghosts or whatever?" he continued to press.

"Over a hundred years, I think, but I’ve only ever heard of that. In reality, people over 60 are very rare." The Young Lady continued answering. 𝑓𝘳𝑒𝑒𝓌𝘦𝘣𝘯ℴ𝑣𝘦𝑙.𝘤𝑜𝑚

Xue Dili leaned back in tactical retreat.

He already understood the situation in that world. You can infer a lot just from the age of childbirth. A normal lifespan of over a hundred, but the marriage age is around 11–14; that means people in her world basically have to start raising the next generation as soon as they’re capable of reproducing.

Looking at it this way, it’s the kind of situation where if you don’t have kids, the population can’t even be maintained; they can’t survive. It’s already bad to the extreme, and she still doesn’t realize how terrifying those numbers are.

In Xue Dili’s view, these numbers already mean the entire species could collapse at any moment.

It’s even possible that 800,000 people dying each year to Evil Ghosts and similar monsters is a conservative estimate. The truth might be over a million, even several million, just covered up. Otherwise there’s no way to explain how insane it is that people are expected to start having kids at 11.

Because 11–14 is exactly when boys and girls first start feeling romantic, the age when they most want love and need love. In ancient times, people usually married and left home around this age too, but back then, if you lived to fifty you already had one foot in the grave.

And this is also the most impulsive age. Add in heavy propaganda, and those clueless teens could easily end up "making a life by accident." Only then can that super‑high birth rate offset the gap created by deaths and disappearances.

Just from that childbearing age alone, Xue Dili could already see a miniature of a terrifying, man‑eating world.

For comparison, even in Angel’s original birth‑centric world under the Divine King’s control, where girls become "meat pigs," the age they start giving birth is only from about 13 upwards.

After all, too young an age easily causes problems and makes the next generation degenerate, so generally they don’t fully enter the birth‑centric phase until at least 14.

Yet in this world that doesn’t even look that twisted on the surface, the minimum childbearing age is 11...

Maybe their world is already dead, just still propped up, not buried yet...

So... could it be Apostles?

Doesn’t really feel like it. Even though both are man‑eating worlds, this one has Evil Ghosts, weird entities, and also some Demon nonsense going on. That doesn’t really fit what Apostles like to do.

Apostles prefer farming, not stuffing the place with all kinds of random crap, and it even seems like these different things are clashing with each other.

Xue Dili honestly felt like maybe he should just casually send his world’s coordinates to some Apostle—anyone as long as it’s not the Sixth Apostle. At the very least, under Xue Dili’s "Child Prosperity Initiative" speech, the Apostles are getting ready to seriously ramp up population growth.

That might actually be better than the environment in your world. At least Apostles can see that these freakish things are clearly bad for their headcount and would definitely help clean them up. After all, population is their wealth; they care about numbers more than anyone.

Sure enough, all worlds are just competing over who’s worse.

He’d thought the Ninth Apostle’s homeworld was already at cesspit level, bad enough that sending the Four Evil Gods there would basically be charity work. Didn’t expect to get slapped in the face by an even bigger septic tank showing up right after.

But Miss Witch didn’t seem to realize her world was trash at all, still happily munching on fruit.

"How many people are there in your world?" Little Witch casually asked, then continued to warily glance at the tens of billions above Xue Dili’s head, as if afraid her hometown would become part of Xue Dili’s KDA and tack another couple hundred million onto that number.

"A bit over 8 billion—more precisely, 8.3 billion." Xue Dili pulled out his phone and looked up the detailed data.

"Thud..." The watermelon in the Young Lady’s hand fell to the ground. In that moment, hearing that population figure, her whole mind went blank.